One of the things I encountered when I started telling people that I was no longer a Christian is a sudden concern about my morality. Not that they thought I’d immediately become a terrible person, but that they would basically believed I was abandoning objective meta-ethics. “How can you have morality without God?” they asked me- the question essentially serving as placeholder for the moral argument for God. Well, lucky for me, I’ve got thousands of years of philosophy to draw from when answering that question. I want to explore the most popular metaethical theories, and in doing so, hopefully show that you can certainly have morality without God.
Morality Without God?
So what do people even mean when they say that you can’t have morality without God? Well usually their concern is that objective ethics is impossible without divine command theory. Although there are other theistic ethical theories, most of them explicitly state that morality is built into the natural order and is thus discoverable through the use of human reason. Those concerned that objective ethics is impossible with God, are usually appealing to the necessity of God as the source and communicator of morality. Divine command theory essentially states is that morality is defined by God. Some people think this creates a problematic dichotomy know as the Euthyphro dilemma, first expressed by Plato:
"Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?"
The first option seems to imply that God is beholden to a moral code above Himself, which contradicts the concept that God is the ground of all being, but also means that ethics wouldn’t be ultimately be grounded in God. The second option seems to imply a sort of arbitrariness to morality, where it is at least possible that murder could have been a good thing if God commanded it so. Usually, Christians and other theists will attempt to resolve this dilemma in two ways.
Some will bite the bullet and concede that morality is arbitrarily chosen by God. After all, arbitrary literally means that something is determined by personal choice and not some external reason, which is precisely what divine command theory means. God is the arbiter of morality. Others like however, will appeal to some baser fact about God’s nature to explain why God commands what he does. In this view, the dilemma proposed by Plato is a false dichotomy, and is resolved by saying that God is goodness itself, and thus his commands simply reflect his nature. Why does any of this matter? Well, when theists claim that one can’t have objective ethics without God, they are basically claiming that divine command theory is the only legitimate meta-ethical theory that can account for objective moral facts. But is this true? Well, no.
What Even is Objective Ethics?
Before how I explain how we can have objective ethics without God, we first need to do some semantic groundwork. Outside of the realm of very niche discussions in academic philosophy that us plebs don’t have access to, there is much confusion about what it even means for ethics to be objective. I would define objective ethics as the following;
Objective ethics means that moral facts have truth value that is independent of subjective attitudes or preferences.
There are a few important things to note here. Firstly, this definition includes the claim that moral claims have truth value. This excludes any form of ethical non-cognitivism, which claims that moral facts cannot be true or false, because they are essentially expressions of emotion or preference, not propositions about reality. Secondly, we are claiming that these moral facts have truth value that is independent of subjective attitudes. This excludes ethical subjectivism, which is the claim that whilst moral claims are propositions about reality, they are ontologically grounded in the subject, and thus do not have any external referent.
To have objective morality then is to propose some form of ethical realism. This means that ethical statements are propositions that refer to objective facts about the world. Divine command theory posits that said moral facts are grounded in God’s commands/nature. If we want to have objective ethics without God, we need to find an ontological ground of ethics other than the big man in the sky or personal human opinion. The meta-ethical buck has to stop somewhere, so where does it stop for the non-theist?
Non-Theistic Options
If one wants to avoid invoking God in order to solve our ethical conundrum, then there are several options available to them, all of which have been proposed and defended throughout the history of philosophy.
Deontology states that there are moral duties that exist and that are intrinsically binding regardless of the result of the action. Importantly, this theory posits a categorical imperative, which means that moral laws are universally applicable in every circumstance. This seems to commit you to saying that lying is always immoral, even if by lying you could save someone’s life. This theory is most famously endorsed by Immanuel Kant.
Consequentialism states that the morality of any given action is defined by the consequences. The most famous of these is utilitarianism, which reduces concepts of “good” and “bad” down to “pleasure” and “pain”. The morality of any given action is measured based on the extent to which it maximises pleasure and minimises pain. This however seems to lead one to an unfailing commitment to the “greater good”, regardless of individual concerns. Famous utilitarians include Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Virtue ethics states that morality is about developing good character traits, not just following rules or calculating outcomes. The most famous proponent of virtue ethics is Western philosophy is none other than Aristotle, who believed that humanity’s purpose was built into reality, and that developing the virtues allowed us to flourish as human beings. Morality in this theory is less about actions or outcomes, and more about the kind of person you become along the way.
Natural law theory states that moral truths are embedded in human nature and can be known by reason. This theory is most popular amongst Roman Catholics, but the despite this, it doesn’t necessarily rest on theistic assumptions. Thomas Aquinas, the theory’s most popular representative, claims that there are natural purposes to things, and that morality is about aligning oneself to said purposes. For example, contraception is condemned in Catholicism on the basis that it frustrates the natural end of the sexual act (procreation according to them).
Moral platonism states that moral facts exist in an abstract eternal realm. Of course, the theory’s namesake is Plato himself, who believed that there exists a realm of perfect forms, which is used by him to explain to existence of metaphysical universals (which is super controversial btw). He thought that moral facts existed within this realm, and could be discovered by rational reflection.
None of these rely on a creator God to ground them, although most of them can be embedded within a theistic framework. For those concerned that its impossible to ground these facts in something other than God, its important to recognise that although independent reasons can be given for each of these theories, they will ultimately bottom out in brute facts. A brute fact is simply a fact with no deeper explanation. If that’s a problem for you, you should know that the same is true for theism. The only difference is that for the theist, God is explanatorily brute, instead of some other fact about reality.
Conclusion
As we’ve seen, claiming that the only legitimate and coherent meta-ethical theory that provides objective ethics is divine command theory is patently absurd. There is way more to discuss about ethics, which I hope to do in the future, but for now, I hope I have shown that you can indeed have morality without God!
If you are inclined to support me financially, you can become a paid subscriber, or alternatively, you can click the button below to make a one-time donation at ‘Buy Me A Coffee’ (although as a Brit, I prefer tea). Thank you in advance!
For those confused by some of the comments, this article used to include a defense of utilitarianism but I have since removed it in favour of a general explanation of various popular theories!
I’m keen on exploring and discussing alternative meta-ethical systems to theistic ones. To me, Utilitarianism still seems to fall into the trap of ‘personal preferences’ rather than descriptive of objective moral reality, however. To use your example: if I find the stash of food and eat it myself, sharing nothing, can it not be said that I have done nothing morally wrong, because what does it matter to me that the other five stranded people live or die? You might say, ‘their happiness/flourishing matters too’, to which I might reply, ‘upon which basis? Your personal preferences?’ You might say, ‘you’ll never achieve true flourishing on your lonesome, so you must share your food with the others so that you may achieve a higher standard of flourishing together.’ But to that I may simply say, ‘who are you to say that flourishing in an of itself, either by myself or with others, is in any way desirable? Is that not simple your preference?’
So, that to me is why theistic meta-ethics are satisfying to people - they outsource this ‘personal preference’ issue to a divine source, which a theist would conceive as infallible, or at least ideal. God’s preferences must be better than yours or mine, if he’s any God at all. If it’s just you or me, then who are you to say in any way why your preferences are ‘better’ or ‘more ideal’ than my own? Even if you point to the consequences of my selfish actions, I might view these same consequences desirable or preferable.
I’d love to hear more from yourself on this subject, if you’ve the time!