Another Chapter by Dr. David Eller: "Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality"
This is his Chapter 13 from my anthology "The Christian Delusion." Enjoy.
Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality by Dr. David Eller.
Imagine someone said to you that English provided the only basis for grammar. After you overcame your shock, you would respond that English is certainly not the only language with a grammar. You would add that grammar is not limited to language: understood broadly as rules for combination and transformation, many phenomena have a grammar, from sports to baking. Nor is grammar the sole or essential component of language: language also includes sound systems, vocabularies, genres, and styles of speech. And you would remind the speaker that grammar does not depend on human language at all: some nonhuman species, including chimps and parrots, can produce grammatical—that is, orderly and rule-conforming—short sentences. Ultimately, you would want to explain that English does not “provide a basis” for grammar at all but rather represents one particular instance of grammar. English grammar is definitely not the only grammar in the world and even more definitely not the “real” grammar.
The person who utters a statement like “English provides the only basis for grammar” either understands very little about English (and language in general) or grammar, or the person is expressing his or her partisanship about language (i.e., pro-English)—or, more likely, the speaker is doing both. Thus, the person who utters a statement like “Christianity provides the only basis for morality” either understands very little about Christianity (or religion in general) or morality, or the person is expressing his or her partisanship about religion (i.e., pro-Christianity)—or, more likely, the speaker is doing both. But, as a savvy responder, you would answer that Christianity is certainly not the only religion with morality. You would add that morality is not limited to religion: understood broadly as standards for behavior, many phenomena have a morality, from philosophy to business. Nor is morality the sole or essential component of religion: religion also includes myths, rituals, roles, and institutions of behavior. And you would remind the speaker that morality does not depend on human religion at all: some nonhuman species demonstrate moral—that is, orderly and standard-conforming—behavior. Ultimately, you would want to explain that Christianity does not “provide a basis” for morality at all but rather represents one particular instance of morality. Christian morality is definitely not the only morality in the world and even more definitely not the “real” morality.
In this chapter, then, we will first explore what religion and morality actually are. We will show that other religions have their own moralities and that morality does not depend on Christianity. Further, we will show that nonreligion can also provide “a basis” for morality, that morality does not depend on religion. We will even show that nonhumans can have a sort of, or a precursor to, morality—that morality does not depend on humanness. Finally, we will clarify how religion is related to morality and why it often appears that morality depends on religion but that this is part of the ideology of religion, not the nature of morality.
Not surprisingly, much of the confusion and (what passes for) debate about religion and morality boils down to a misunderstanding of both. There have been many attempts to define each term, most not so much wrong as highly biased. Accurately understanding religion and morality separately will help to make the relationship between them more comprehensible and will automatically dispense with the notion that morality depends on or is “provided by” any particular religion—or any religion at all.
Perhaps it is easiest to approach the problem of what religion or morality is by establishing what it is not. Let us start with religion. Many people, Christian or under the influence of Christianity, define religion as “belief in God” or, only slightly more generally, “belief in one god.” This is, of course, not a definition of religion in any way but rather a description of their particular religion. It is reminiscent of the opinion of Parson Thwackum in Henry Fielding’s novel The History of Tom Jones, who said, “When I mention religion I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England.” It is utterly inadequate and more than a bit egocentric.
Other more serious attempts have been made to define religion, in psychology, sociology, anthropology, and biology. Some emphasize individual experience (especially the “transcendent feeling” or the “oceanic feeling,” etc.); others stress ritual or myth or belief or institutions or, inevitably, morality. In reality, all of these are aspects of religion, but none of them is the essence or sine qua non of religion: there are religions without god(s), without (much) ritual, without (much) myth, without (many) institutions, and—depending on who you talk to—without morality. Rather, all of these are potential elements or building blocks of religions, in what many contemporary theorists have suggested as a “modular” approach to religion. In other words, according to thinkers like Pascal Boyer1 and Scott Atran,2 religion is not a “thing” at all but a composite of basic elements which, most critically, are not fundamentally “religious” in and of themselves. That is, there are religious rituals and there are nonreligious rituals; there are religious stories and there are nonreligious stories; there are religious institutions and there are nonreligious institutions; and, most importantly for our present purpose, there are religious moralities and there are nonreligious moralities. All of these are human phenomena, not specifically or exclusively religious phenomena.
Persons are those
with whom other persons interact with varying degrees of reciprocity. Persons
may be spoken with. Objects, by
contrast, are usually spoken about.
Persons are volitional, relational, cultural and social beings. They
demonstrate intentionality and agency with varying degrees of autonomy and
freedom. That some persons look like objects [or do not have visible appearance
at all] is of little more value to an understanding of [religion] than the
notion that some acts, characteristics, qualia, and so on may appear human-like
to some observers. Neither material form nor spiritual or mental faculties are
definitive.3
</BQ>
<BQ>
[I]n every situation commonly labeled religious we are dealing with action directed toward objects which are believed to respond in terms of certain categories—in our own culture those of purpose, intelligence, and emotion—which are also the distinctive categories for the description of human action. The application of these categories leads us to say that such objects are “personified.” The relationship between human beings and religious objects can be further defined as governed by certain ideas of patterning and obligation such as characterize relationships among human beings. In short, religion can be looked upon as an extension of the field of people’s social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society. And for completeness’ sake, we should perhaps add the rider that this extension must be one in which human beings involved see themselves in a dependent position vis-à-vis their nonhuman alters.4
</BQ>
If religion is the expansion of society to include nonhuman and superhuman agents, then what is morality? Much ink has been spilled on this question too, most of it also biased, egocentric, and inadequate. Let us, as before, start with what morality is not. First and foremost, morality is not any particular rule or principle or set of rules or principles. That is, morality as such is not chastity or marital fidelity or honesty or nonkilling; these are all specific (although perhaps widely held) moral claims or issues but not “morality” in and of itself—any more than theism is “religion” in and of itself.
Further, and more surprisingly, morality is not essentially about “goodness,” if only because “goodness” is completely relative. In other words, while people of a certain moral temper might consider prohibiting same-sex marriage to be “good,” no doubt most same-sex couples consider it “not good.” Likewise, if some remote tribe believed it was “good” to sacrifice humans or to throw virgins in volcanoes to appease the volcano god, this behavior was “not good” for the victims. “Good” must always and necessarily be “good for someone” or “good for some purpose.” It also goes without saying that morality is not what is “pleasurable” or “makes you happy,” since occasionally the things that might give you pleasure—like sex or taking someone’s property—are not deemed moral.
Finally, and most surprisingly, morality is not essentially about “prosocial” behavior. This is a common misconception, but of course it depends on one’s particular view of what society ought to be. Morality tends to be equated, first of all, with only the “positive” or “beneficial” values and behaviors, like altruism or generosity and love. But indisputably, any morality, including Judeo-Christian morality, accepts that there is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. When called upon (often by religion), killing and hating and warring are delightfully moral, even the highest and noblest thing we can do, a virtual commandment. More, “prosocial” is another relative term: killing witches may be “good for society” but is not good for witches, who are part of society. Banning gay marriage or preventing abortion may be good for one person’s notion of society and not good for another person’s. Worse yet, hardly anyone ever acts for the “good of society” but rather for some more local and personal good: most of us would act more altruistically toward our family or friends than toward strangers or enemies. We would kill to defend ourselves and our property, and the law sometimes recognizes this as a praiseworthy action (note the “make my day” laws that allow killing an intruder in your home). Finally, many things that preoccupy the Christian moral sensibility have little or nothing to do with prosociality, like nakedness or premarital sex; other cultures have adopted the exact opposite stance on these issues and have been happy and successful. At the same time, other cultures have their own moral preoccupations, like covering a woman’s face and figure in some Muslim countries, which do not constitute “moral” concerns in Christian countries in the first place.
If morality is not any of these things fundamentally, then what is it? Michael Shermer’s stab at the question in his The Science of Good and Evil makes a decent first approximation: morality, he says, refers to “right and wrong thoughts and behaviors in the context of the rules of a social group.”5 What this terse statement reminds us is that (1) morality always refers back to a set of rules and (2) each social group may have its own set of such rules. Therefore, as in the case of religion, we should look for the essence of morality in some larger and deeper area than the details of any particular moral system.
The answer can be sought in our new understanding of religion. Why are humans such obsessive agency detectors? Because we, as an inherently social species, are necessarily interested in the actions and intentions of other members of our group (which may include, we now realize, nonhuman agents as well). Therefore, we need to evaluate each other’s behavior—to be able to determine the meaning of that behavior, the intention of that behavior, and the predictability of that behavior. Indeed, the very existence of society depends on, one might even say is, a shared set of standards for the interpretation, evaluation, and prediction of behavior.
In a word, humans—hopelessly social creatures that we are—do and must engage in the appraisal of each other’s actions. Morality is one form of such appraisal. Morality is a kind of talk about behavior, a discourse or language about which behaviors we commend and which behaviors we condemn. As Kai Nielsen has said it better than just about anyone:
<BQ>
Moral language is
the language we use in verbalizing a choice or a decision; it is the language
we use in appraising human conduct and in giving advice about courses of
action; and finally, it is the language we use in committing ourselves to a
principle of action. Moral language is a practical
kind of discourse that is concerned to answer the questions: “What should be
done?” or “What attitude should be taken toward what has been done, is being
done, or will be done?”6
</BQ>
In short, as a social process of behavioral appraisal, “morality functions to guide conduct and alter behavior or attitudes.”7 Of course, it does not do so infallibly or in isolation.
We say that morality does not guide and alter behavior infallibly because the existence of moral rules and of other people’s moral outrage does not guarantee consistently and exclusively “good” behavior. Despite the presence of moral injunctions against killing and stealing, for instance, some folks persist in killing and stealing. Even worse, despite the fact that morality supposedly serves as a “conversation stopper,” a bedrock basis for behavior and behavioral appraisal, the presence of moral injunctions has not ended and does not appear about to end the moral conversation. Instead, humans can and do argue about what the standards of appraisal are, what they mean, and when and how to apply them. Does “Thou shalt not kill” mean all killing, or merely “murder” (i.e., illicit killing)? Does it mean that you should avoid all killing, or only try to minimize killing (say, in war)? Does it mean killing anything at all, or only killing humans? (So much for carnivorism—or eating of any kind!)
So humans constantly appraise each other’s behavior and intentions (partly to determine future behavior), and they do so in relation to some group standard of behavior—some collective sense of what is “approved” or “disapproved” behavior. These standards unarguably differ across religions and cultures (although some big items do frequently appear). But morality is ultimately nothing more than a special case of the more general human predilection to appraise behavior and to erect systems and standards of appraisal. Even more, morality is not the only form that such appraisal systems/standards and such appraisal language can take. “Morality” is one entry in the universe of appraisal-talk, of which there are many other entries. What I mean is that “moral” and “immoral” are two labels that can be attached to behaviors depending on their conformity to group standards. But there are other labels, too, available to members to praise or denounce (and hopefully affect and control) behavior: legal/illegal, sane/insane, mature/immature, normal/abnormal, polite/impolite, ethical/unethical, professional/unprofessional, and so on. None of these other pairs of terms quite overlaps with moral/immoral.
As Nielsen also explains, “Not all practical discourse is moral discourse. Not all conduct is moral conduct and not all advice or appraisal of conduct is moral advice or moral appraisal. Nor are all attitudes or dispositions to action moral attitudes or moral dispositions to action.”8 That is, not every behavioral issue is a “moral” issue, and not every standard of behavior is a “moral” standard. As we mentioned, most Westerners do not regard the display of a woman’s face or arms to be a moral concern at all, and some tribes like the Warlpiri or the Yanomamo did not regard public nakedness to be a moral concern. The Jains consider eating vegetables or killing insects to be a moral problem, while the average Westerner does not. Nietzsche once asserted that there are no moral facts; in truth, there are no universal moral questions.
Finally, just as religion can and should be decomposed into more fundamental building blocks that are not “religious” in themselves, morality can and should be decomposed into more fundamental building blocks that are not “moral” in themselves. Shermer calls these “premoral sentiments” and includes among them:
<BQ>
attachment
and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and empathy, direct and
indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism, conflict resolution and
peacemaking, deception and deception detection, community concern and caring
about what others think about you, and awareness of and response to the social
rules of the group.9
</BQ>
Haidt and Graham condense the rudiments of morality down to five “psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity.”10 Most of these, it can be noticed, have little to do with religion and could easily stand without religion.
So, Christianity has its own behavioral interest and its own appraisal language—or perhaps we should say interests and appraisals, since not all Christians seem to agree on the details of “Christian morality.” It cannot even be claimed that Christianity is the only basis for a single morality, let alone for all morality. For example, some Christians think that dancing is bad, while others do not; some think that coffee or alcohol are bad, while others do not.
Different religions have their particular behavioral rules and appraisal terms. Judaism was heralded as a religion of justice long before Christianity was invented; the word “justice” occurs dozens of times in the Torah/Old Testament, and the book of Job is centered on it (see Alan Dershowitz’s The Genesis of Justice for a discussion of the evolution of justice in the Torah’s first book11). Here, as in many of the cases to follow, “morality” might not quite be the right word to describe the specific concerns, but the concerns are recognizable as manifestations of an appraisal discourse. For instance, the Big Ten of moral rules were written centuries before the Gospels, with their admonitions against killing and stealing and lying and bearing false witness. But as anyone with minimal familiarity with the Judeo-Christian scriptures knows, not all of the “ten commandments” are “moral” in the conventional sense of the term. There is nothing “moral” (in the sense of “prosocial” or “altruistic”) in having no other gods before some god, nor in avoiding graven images (“or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth,” as Exodus 20:4 orders and which the average Western Christian utterly ignores), nor in keeping the Sabbath, nor in not coveting your neighbor’s possessions (which is the engine of Western capitalism).
What most Christians seem to conveniently forget is that the so-called “ten commandments” are neither the only rules nor the main rules in Judaism. Why, after the first tablets were broken, the Hebrew god gave Moses a new set with different commandments in Exodus 34, such as to keep the feast of unleavened bread, to offer the firstborn to their god (presumably by sacrifice, since they are also instructed not to offer the blood of sacrifice along with leaven), to observe the feast of weeks, and to assemble the men-children three times a year. Most modern Christians, if they have even heard of these rules, do not obey them and do regard them as “moral” worries.
Judaism also has a concern for “sin,” but a cursory examination shows that “sin” is not the same thing as the modern Christian concept of “immorality.” Sin in ancient Judaism was more akin to uncleanness or impurity: the dietary laws do not say it is “immoral” to eat pork or shellfish but that those substances are an “abomination,” and a woman is unclean after birth, not immoral. And Judaism’s behavioral rules are hardly exhausted with the ten (or twenty) orders but are famously said to run to 613 mitzvot or commandments. Among these mandates are that every man should write a copy of the Torah for himself,12 wear the tefillin or phylactery on the head and arm,13 not reap his entire field,14 and exempt a bridegroom from public labor or military service for one year;15 that a widow whose husband had no children should not marry anyone other than her dead husband’s brother;16 that one not kiss or hug or wink at or skip with a relative lest one commits incest;17 that one not to borrow money at interest;18 and one of my personal favorites, that one release any servant that one “buys” after six years.19
Islam is another well-known religion with a clear set of “moral” principles. According to the first lines in the Qur’an, Allah (simply the Arabic for “god”) is beneficent and merciful, a judge, and one who keeps humans on the right path. More specifically, Islam provides the standard for determining what behaviors are good or bad. An action is fard if it is obligatory; performing the action is meritorious, and not performing it is punishable. An action is halal if it is allowed or permitted, but not required; performing the action is neither good nor bad, moral nor immoral. An action is makruh if it is disapproved, though not forbidden. Finally, an action is haram if it is forbidden or prohibited or unlawful; performing the action has negative religious consequences.
Among the foods that are halal are milk, honey, fish, fruits, vegetables, and meat—as long as it is sacrificed according to Muslim ritual (throat slit and drained of blood, never strangled or bludgeoned to death). A foodstuff is haram if it contains or comes into contact with blood, pigs, dogs, reptiles, alcohol, animals with protruding canine teeth, or animals won by betting or gambling. But ingestion is hardly the only area of moral concern. A man should not wear gold ornaments or silk clothes, although a woman may; women should not wear tight or transparent clothing, and in more than a few societies, should be veiled from head to toe to show their modesty and preserve their honor. No one should alter their physical features in pursuit of beauty, and all excess is disapproved. Gold and silver utensils are haram, as are pure silk sheets and bedspreads. Keeping dogs inside the house as pets is forbidden too; as are songs that praise wine and encourage drinking, all forms of gambling and lottery, and movies that depict or incite sex, greed, crime, deviance, or false belief.
Just
to show how very “moral” Islam is, in May 2009
Outside the Western/Abrahamic religions, Hinduism is premised on the concept of dharma, the transcendent order of the universe and the duty that it imposes on humans. Failure to act in accordance with the dharma generates karma, which functions like a kind of moral weight or dirt or rust on the atman or soul. The entire caste system, the division of society into different and unequal social and occupational groups, is a moral imperative, resting on the spiritual purity or impurity of individuals; and many moral regulations go along with it, including who may or may not marry or even eat with someone else. One’s specific moral demands depend on one’s caste status: if one is pariah, one’s moral duty is to perform dirty jobs; and if one is kshatriya, one’s moral duty is to lead, to fight, to kill, and to die. The Bhagavad Gita, the beloved sacred tale of the warrior Arjuna, affirms that neither killing nor dying is a moral problem for the kshatriya warrior, since it is by definition meritorious, even mandatory, that a soldier slay and be slain and, even more fundamentally, the soul cannot be injured by death anyhow.
Buddhism has an elaborate and demanding set of behavioral strictures; one could argue with justification that Buddhism is more morality than religion. The very beginning of the Buddha’s teaching is the “Eightfold Path,” the discipline to observe right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. These “rights” go beyond the Judeo-Christian requirement to eschew lies and false witness: to observe right speech, the Buddhist must abstain from lies and deceit as well as slander and malicious words as well as harsh or hurtful words as well as idle chatter. But the Eightfold Path is only the most general of moral rules. The Buddhist should obey the ten precepts, to avoid harming any living thing, taking anything not freely given, misbehaving sexually, speaking falsely, ingesting alcohol or drugs, eating untimely meals, dancing/singing/miming, using garlands or perfumes or other adornments, sitting in high seats, and accepting gold or silver. Actually, the list of Buddhist ethical regulations is much more extensive.
Jainism may have the most stringent morality of all. A religion related to Hinduism and Buddhism, Jainism condemns all injuring of all living beings, even insects and microbes—the concept of ahimsa or no-harm. This is why some Jains can be seen wearing masks and drinking through a strainer lest they swallow an insect, or sweeping the path ahead of them with a small broom lest they trample one. A Jain must minimally be a vegetarian, but that is only the beginning: they should eat only plants that are already dead, so as to avoid injuring the plant. They cannot be farmers, because farming harms living things; they should not be blacksmiths because the hammering hurts the anvil and the bench. They must also, like Buddhists, avoid attachment to life, whether this be food, clothing, family members, or their own body. Jains who commit themselves to a more rigorous religious life also renounce travel, owning weapons, eating during night time, and contact with their spouse; they pledge to meditate frequently during the day, live a monk’s life as fully as possible, and ultimately become a complete ascetic by dwelling naked in the forest and dying proudly of self-starvation.
These are only some of the major “world religions.” Every ancient and tribal religion included its own moral standards, some similar to Christianity, some foreign to Christianity, some absurd to Christianity. And the feeling was mutual.
While religions have a lot—and a lot of different—moral compunctions, morality is not limited to religion. If we understand morality properly, as one expression of the human concern to organize one’s (and others’) behavior according to standards of appraisal, then there are at least four other potential bases for moral determination and moral evaluation: nature, reason, philosophy, and culture.
There are many people who assert that morality is “natural” or “real” or “objective,” and therefore independent of religion; in fact, they use (supposedly) natural/real/objective standards to judge, and often to reject, religious “morality.” I am not, for reasons not manageable in this chapter but hopefully obvious in this chapter, one of these people; morality is too diverse and contradictory to be natural or real or objective, and the total lack of agreement on moral answers—or even moral questions—contradicts the notion of a single “real” morality (as it does the notion of a single “real” language). Nevertheless, for those who use nature or reality as their standard of moral judgment, theirs is no more inadequate and no more ridiculous than some religious standard.21
Related to the idea of real morality is the idea of rational morality, that is, that one can determine the morality of one’s and others’ actions by reason and analysis. By starting from the relevant facts, one applies logic and critical thinking, possibly weighs the alternatives, and chooses the “moral” course of action. To be sure, this begs the question of which are the relevant facts and of how to weigh the alternatives. For instance, I asked a moral rationalist to explain the morality of abortion to me, and he answered that a fetus does not have a complete and functioning brain, that only beings with complete and functioning brains are persons, and therefore that it was morally acceptable to terminate a fetus. The problem with this manner of “reasoning” is that it stipulates the key terms of the debate (is a complete and functioning brain the definition of “personhood,” and is lack of personhood a justification for killing?) and ignores issues of interest and of value conflicts. Even so, this approach is not inferior to, and is often superior to, religious brands of morality.
Philosophers since Socrates have struggled with the problem of “the good.” They have made little headway and will make no more so long as they insist on finding the good way to act or live, but the exercise shows that one can philosophize about ethics and morality without reference to religion. In fact, in his dialogue entitled Euthyphro, Plato stalled on whether an action is good because some god(s) ordain(s) it or whether the god(s) ordain(s) it because it is good. The dilemma is crucial because if an action is good with or without god(s), then we do not need god(s) to tell us what is good; we can philosophize it out for ourselves. And if an action is good only because some god(s) say(s) that it is, then the action is not good in itself; its goodness is purely arbitrary and contingent on the whim of the god(s).
Since Plato’s time, philosophers have offered a number of analyses of morality or ethics. One popular approach to morality is personal interest or egoism: people do, or should do, what is best for themselves; interestingly, early (and some modern) theorists of capitalism see informed egoism as the principle on which markets in particular and societies in general do and should operate. (Others regard egoism as the very antithesis of morality.) Utilitarianism argues that the best and most ethical course of action is the one that promises to produce the most pleasure and the least pain, presumably for the most people (or else it is just egoism again): humans thus become moral calculators, adding up pleasures, subtracting pains, and arriving at the most congenial sums. The fact that moral choices often cost pleasure and cause pain complicates this calculation, and of course how one compares relative pleasures and pains (say, mine against yours) is a problem.
Immanuel Kant argued that morality flows from the perception of duty, that some actions are required of us simply because they are required of us. Moral actions are “imperatives,” he said, and “categorical” imperatives at that. A hypothetical imperative is the sort of requirement that relates means to ends: if you want to drive a nail into a board, it is a hypothetical imperative to use a hammer. A categorical imperative is not a means to an end. In fact, Kant insists that we should not treat other people as means at all; rather, we should think about the maxim underlying our action—for example, the maxim underlying my aversion to stealing is “you should not steal”—as if it were a universal rule. The maxims of moral action are universal or universalizable rules.
Aristotle, on the other hand, appraised behavior in terms of virtue, which is part of the character of persons. Living and acting virtuously was, as they say, its own reward—the cause and the effect of moral choices. A person who lived in the condition of eudaimonia (well-being, happiness, flourishing) behaved in ways to express and perpetuate this healthy state; of course, the person had to be educated and trained to be virtuous in the first place. Among the virtues were the eight “moral virtues” of prudence, justice, fortitude, courage, liberality, magnificence, magnanimity, and temperance. Further, a virtue was always the middle-way between two vices (in the case of courage, the vices would be cowardice and foolhardiness).
Other philosophical grounds for morality have been proposed, including justice and fairness and human rights. All of these really amount to little more than synonyms for morality and to formalizations of a particular form or view of morals or ethics. But Aristotle’s observation about the training of virtue raises the point about the cultural basis of morality. Culture, of which religion is inevitably a part, is a source of behavioral expectations and behavioral appraisal far beyond the part contributed by religion. Any culture provides all kinds of norms for human comportment, from what clothes to wear to how to eat at the dinner table to how to treat other people. Some of these norms are influenced by or derived from a culture’s religion, and some have no relation to the religion at all. Indeed, “moral” reactions often take the form more of cultural disdain than supernatural disapproval—it is more a matter of “what we do or don’t do around here” than “what the supernatural beings want.”
Humans—especially but not exclusively religious humans—have a tendency to imagine that morality is some unique human gift, sublime, ethereal, even “spiritual” or “supernatural.” This is one reason why many (like C. S. Lewis) have been inclined to attribute “the moral sense,” the very possibility of having morality or being a moral species along with the details of any specific moral system, to some source outside of humanity. Morality seems to them unprecedented in the natural world, transcendent and inexplicable.
This attitude is a combination of hubris, ignorance of the world around us, and more than a small dose of Christian exclusivism—the suggestion that humans are unlike anything else in existence. But humans are not unlike anything else in existence; we are natural beings too, a species that developed historically and continuously from nonhuman precursors. And just as we can find traces (clear and strong traces) of our physical characteristics in other species, so we can find traces of our psychological and even moral characteristics in them as well.
The question that is generally not asked in the discussion of morality, but that should be asked, is not “what is the basis of morality?” and certainly not “what is the true morality?” and not, as some well-intentioned thinkers have done, “why be moral?” Asking “why be moral?” is no more sensible than asking “why be linguistic?” or “why be bipedal?” Rather, the correct question is why are humans a moral species? That is, what is it about us that makes us the kind of beings who are capable of “morality,” who have “moral” interests and invent “moral” systems?
A great deal of
literature has accumulated over the last couple of decades to address this
question, although
The
details of the research into the evolution of morality are too vast and too
varied to explore in depth here. All we need to establish is that some
ancestral precursors to morality can be found in nonhuman species. Since
The core of this research is that “morality” is not utterly unique to humans but has its historical/evolutionary antecedents and its biological bases. “Morality” does not appear suddenly out of nowhere in humans but emerges gradually with the emergence of certain kinds of beings living certain kinds of lives. This is not to assert that animals have full-blown “morality” any more than they have full-blown language. It is to assert that, just as some prehuman beings have “linguistic” capacities, some prehuman beings also have “moral” capacities.
The key to the evolutionary theory of morality is that social beings tend reasonably to develop interests in the behavior of others and capacities to determine and to influence that behavior. This might start most obviously with offspring: parents of many species show concern for their offspring, disadvantage themselves for their offspring (for instance, by spending time feeding them), and put their own lives at risk for their offspring (the notorious problem of “altruism”). Some species exhibit these same behaviors toward adult members of the “family,” or toward adult members of the larger social group, or ultimately, in humans, to all members of the species and perhaps to other species as well. In this regard, human “morality” is an extension of more “short-range” helping behaviors.
With such costly but prosocial behaviors, we have taken a long step toward “morality.” Or, as Shermer puts it, the capacity and tendency to have “moral sentiments” or moral concerns evolved out of the “premoral” feelings and tendencies of prehuman species. Frans de Waal and other animal watchers have accordingly gathered an enormous amount of data on prehuman “morality,” including sharing, indications of “fairness,” gratitude, self-sacrifice, sympathy and comforting, and many more. O’Connell has been able to catalogue hundreds of reported cases of “empathy” and “moral” behavior in chimps,23 and it has been observed in an extraordinary variety of species, from birds to elephants to primates.
As de Waal reminds us, social living depends on social “regularity,” which he characterizes as a “set of expectations about the way in which oneself (or others) should be treated and how resources should be divided.”24 Individuals without some sense of what to expect from others—and of what others expect of him or her—would not be properly “social.” And this social regularity entails some method for handling exceptions and deviations: “Whenever reality deviates from these expectations to one’s (or the other’s) disadvantage, a negative reaction ensues, most commonly protest by subordinate individuals and punishment by dominant individuals.”25
Thus, a certain amount of regularity and predictability in behavior is a requisite for social coexistence and for the eventual formation of “morality.” However, it is only one component. As in the case of religion, “morality” is not a single monolithic thing or skill but a composite phenomenon of multiple skills and interests. To reach premoral behavior, and ultimately human morality, a variety of other pieces must be in place. One of the essential pieces is a certain degree of “intersubjectivity,” the ability to understand (and therefore hopefully predict) the thoughts and feelings of others. Beyond the mere awareness of others’ thoughts and feelings is the capacity to share them in some way, what de Waal calls “emotional contagion.” As beings approach “moral” status, they develop the capacity to experience the experiences of others. Fortunately, some of the most fascinating recent work has identified a basis for this phenomenon in so-called mirror neurons in the brain. Mirror neurons, as the name suggests, imitate or mimic the activity of other parts of the brain—or of other brains. Experiments have shown that “neurons in the same area of the brain were activated whether the animals were performing a particular movement . . . or simply observing another monkey—or a researcher—perform the same action.”26 This provides a literal biological foundation for empathy: individuals with mirror neurons, including humans and other primates, can actually feel what others feel.
Other premoral habits and skills include the ability to inhibit one’s own actions and to remember, which is crucial for preserving and learning from previous interactions with the same individuals. A third is the ability to detect and respond to “cheaters” or those who violate expectations. A fourth is “symbolic” thought, ultimately in the form of language and even quite abstract thought about “rules” and “principles.” Few, if any, nonhuman animals meet all of these qualifications, but then neither do very young human children—proving that “morality” is a developmental achievement. However, many or most of these talents exist in nonhuman species, and by the time these talents all appear together in one species, namely humans, we have a patently unmysterious and unsupernatural “moral” sensibility. The fact that nonhumans do not have human morality, de Waal reminds us, is no reason to discount the natural, prehuman roots of “morality”:
<BQ>
To neglect the common ground of primates, and to deny the evolutionary roots of human morality, would be like arriving at the top of a tower to declare that the rest of the building is irrelevant, that the precious concept of “tower” ought to be reserved for its summit.
Are animals moral?
Let us simply conclude that they occupy several floors of the tower of
morality. Rejection of even this modest proposal can only result in an
impoverished view of the structure as a whole.27
</BQ>
We have proved that Christianity is not the only basis for morality, since religion of any kind is not required for morality nor is humanity even required. Let the silly and biased claim never be uttered again.
But what is the relationship between Christianity and morality? There certainly appears to be a connection. The relationship is the same one as between any religion and its local morality system. It consists of two parts: first, the religion as a source of specific moral claims and second, the religion as a legitimation of those moral claims.
We have seen that all religions contain behavioral instructions or norms of some sort or another; however, the details of these instructions vary wildly. Each religion advances its particular version of morality and backs it up with its own promises and threats (hell, reincarnation, bad karma, or whatever). To be sure, there are some commonalities across these religion-inspired moral systems, but what is specifically religious in moralities is not universal or important, and what is universal and important in moralities is not specifically religious. Humans, like all social beings, have codes and consequences for behavior; religions add to that natural and nonreligious base a layer of diverse, trivial, irrational, and divisive—and as often as not, immoral, viewed from outside the religion—bits and pieces. Frankly, human morality would be better off without the religious additions.
More critical, but regularly overlooked, is the legitimation effect of religion on morality (and on many other aspects of human life, like marriage or political institutions). The problem comes down to this: why this moral claim or moral system as opposed to some other? Why is this way of marrying or eating or dressing or living “moral” instead of that way? In a word, on what authority is this moral claim/system based? There are various possibilities: a moral (or social) system might be based on tradition or popular opinion or majority vote or some theory (like Marxism) or, in the end, force. None of these is a very adequate base, though, because (1) we could disagree and (2) we could be wrong.
What religion does for morality and for society in general is move the authority, the responsibility, for rules and institutions out of human hands. Each religion adds some idiosyncratic elements to the nonreligious human tendency to create and enforce behavioral norms and appraisals and then attributes the whole system to a nonhuman and superhuman source. Individually and collectively, our relationship to (putatively) religion-given morality is thus not creation or criticism but obligation: “the moral” is that which we as members of the group must do and which is the most praiseworthy to do and the most reprehensible not to do. This also solves the problem of the diversity of moral codes and commands: the moralities of different religions and societies have little in common except the fact that those behaviors are the most obligatory in their group. Other rules exist, but their seriousness is not as great: violating a lesser obligation might be impolite or childish or abnormal, but violating a big obligation is immoral. But what is a big and “moral” obligation in one religion/society may be a small one in another—or not a moral obligation or issue at all.
In the end, the return of morality back to earth, to the natural world and the human world, puts morality in the hands of the humans who create and sustain it in the first place. It does not “solve” the moral problems of humanity—since there is still no agreement on what the solution or what the very problems are—but it empowers us to be the ones to decide. It is humans and only humans who must struggle and negotiate and compete to arrange “moral” affairs, but then we were always alone on this mission, and religion—as history plainly and painfully shows—was never much help anyhow.
1. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins
of Religious Thought (
2. Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape
of Religion (
3. Graham Harvey, Animism: Respecting the Living World (
4. Robin Horton, “A Definition of
Religion, and Its Uses,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological
5. Michael Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil: Why People
Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule (
6. Kai Nielsen, Why Be Moral? (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1989), p.
39.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., p. 40.
9. Shermer, The Science of Good and Evil, p. 31.
10. Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham,
“When Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intuitions that
Liberals may not Recognize,” Social
Justice Research 20 (March 2007): 98.
11. Alan Dershowitz, The Genesis of Justice: Ten Stories of
Biblical Injustice that Led to the Ten Commandments and Modern Law (
12. Dueteronomy 31: 19. The analysis
for these commandments (notes 12 through 19) comes from “A List of the 613
Mitzvot” published on “Judaism 101,” http://www.jewfaq.org/613.htm. The
published list, in turn, is explicitly derived from the writings of Rabbi Moshe
ben Maimon, also known as Maimonides, whom the list compiler regards as the
most widely accepted of the mitzvah commentators. Readers may find that the original
passages in scripture do not always appear to support these interpretations,
which only goes to show how subjective such “moral” regulations are.
13. Deuteronomy 6: 8.
14. Leviticus 19: 9; Leviticus 23: 22.
15. Deuteronomy 24: 5.
16. Deuteronomy 25: 5.
17. Leviticus 18: 6.
18. Deuteronomy 23: 20.
19. Exodus 21: 2.
20. CBS News, “Saudi’s ‘Miss Beautiful
Morals’ Pageant,”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/07/world/main4998112.shtml?source=RSSattr=World_4998112.
21. [Editor’s note: Although Dr. Eller still
finds them unconvincing, for two defenses of this kind of secular moral
realism, see Richard Carrier, Sense and
Goodness without God (
22. Charles Darwin, The
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray: 1882 [1871]), p. 98.
23. S. M. O’Connell, “Empathy in
Chimpanzees: Evidence for Theory of Mind?”
Primates 36 (1995).
24. Frans de Waal, Primates and Philosophers: How Morality
Evolved (
25. Ibid., p. 44–45.
26. Thomas S. May, “Terms of
Empathy: Your Pain in My Pain—If You Play a Fair Game,” Brain Work 16 (May–June 2006): 3.
27. De Waal, Primates and Philosophers, p. 181.
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