Kath: “If you're an atheist, and you don't believe in an afterlife, if you don't believe in heaven and hell and all that, why don't you just go around raping and murdering as much as you want?”
Tony: “I do.”
Kath: “What?”
Tony: “I do go around raping and murdering as much as I want…which is not at all.”
That exchange is from an episode of Ricky Gervais' sad sweet comedy series Afterlife, and it provides a nice introduction to common ideas about God and morality — ideas like these:
“If you don't believe in God, you have no basis for morality.”
“Without God, right and wrong are only matters of preference. I prefer you don't murder me, but that doesn't make it wrong.”
“Without God, all things are permitted.”
The idea is that, without a higher authority to set the rules and penalize rule-breakers, there cannot be any objective standard for determining right and wrong.
I used to think that was a decent argument for God. Now it strikes me more as a useful argument for defending a religion and a religious text.
A common retort to this argument, from atheists: “If the only thing that keeps you from murdering people is that God will send you to hell for it, you aren't a moral person. You're just afraid of the consequences.”
That might be true, but it doesn't accurately describe what many Christians think. In a functioning and fairly safe society where there is enough food and at least a little hope that the average person can better their lot, few believers refrain from murder just because God says “Thou shalt not kill”. Instead, they “go around raping and murdering as much as (they) want…which is not at all.”
No, the idea that God is the basis of our morality (as I used to preach it) goes more like this:
Just as God laid down physical laws like gravity, he also established moral laws: You shall not steal, you shall not commit murder, you shall help your neighbors out when they need it. These ideas about right and wrong seem to be wired into humanity. After all, cultures all over the world have independently arrived at similar moral frameworks where theft and adultery and lying are condemned, and trustworthiness, courage, and loyalty are praised. Sure, there are differences of opinion as to what is the exact definition of murder (Can you kill in self-defense? In war? What about capital punishment?) And there are arguments about who the laws apply to (kings, chieftains and presidents can order quite a bit of killing). But the morals themselves are much the same from culture to culture. And the reason for this is that God, the Great Lawgiver, created a set of laws for us to live by and (in some undefined way) placed them in our hearts.
The paragraph above is the essence of what I thought and preached about morality during my ministry, and it was strongly informed by C.S. Lewis, who said that it is impossible to imagine a truly different kind of morality where, for example, cowards were considered heroes and people who murdered their families were admired. Lewis concluded that morality is not created tribe by tribe but rather is built into the universe, much like gravity, and we contend against it at our own peril. He also used this as an argument for belief in God.
So the argument that believers (at least informed believers) make isn't that people would be killing each other if they weren't afraid of God. It's that God has provided all people with a moral law that we cannot shake. You don't even need to know about God or read the Bible or see the 10 Commandments posted at school to know right from wrong (at a basic level).
That argument struck a chord with me when I was younger. It flips the question “If there is a God, why does he allow people to do so much evil?” by asking “Well if there is no God, why do people do anything good?”
But I later realized that there is a more natural way to explain our common morality, one that doesn't rely on an unseen God and an unproven method. Namely, some behaviors simply work better than others to produce human survival and flourishing.
Imagine ten prehistoric families who band together in a primitive and hostile world. They are more likely to survive and reproduce than one strong person going it alone. But those ten families can't survive if even a few people in the group are given to lying, stealing, treachery, cowardice, laziness, or even gluttony (when food is scarce). Such people would have to be left behind. And people who exhibit qualities that help the tribe (courage, honesty, industry) would be rewarded, and held up as examples.
People say that without God, morality is whatever you want it to be, but it really isn't. There are certain actions that help people work together and thrive. There are other actions that work against that goal.
Of course, people have always differed about who is required to obey the moral rules (and C. S. Lewis makes this point very well). That ten-family tribe can't tolerate theft or murder within the tribe. But in their dealings with outsiders, theft and murder are very likely the main order of business. It's a rough world and so it has to be us against them.
This of course is the story of human history — warring tribes killing each other in a fight for survival, yet practicing a very pragmatic morality with each other. Even Jesus noted this when he said that if you treat only your own people well, what are you doing more than the rest of humankind? Then he issued a call for a moral act that no one would call innate, and which is not often practiced by his followers: “Love your enemies.”
And now comes the big problem with the idea that God gives us a moral code: With God on our side, it seems that anything is permitted. One example: In the book of Numbers 31:14–18, after a battle with the Midianites in which the Israelite soldiers failed to slaughter all the non-combatants, Moses, the representative of God, had the following reaction:
But Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war. And Moses said to them, “Have you spared all the women? Behold, they caused the sons of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to be unfaithful to the Lord in the matter of Peor, so that the plague took place among the congregation of the Lord! Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known a man intimately. However, all the girls who have not known a man intimately, keep alive for yourselves.*
So, the moral guidance from God's prophet is this: 1) Kill all the boys (after all, they'll grow up to be our enemies); 2) Kill all the grown women, for they have been “spoiled” sexually, and they are temptresses who seduced our men and brought about a plague; 3) But as for the virgin girls? Consider them your reward.
For various reasons, I don't think this atrocious event really took place. I think it is a story to illustrate a point. But the point is that, with God, standards of right and wrong go out the window, and any atrocity is justified if someone with enough authority says that God commands it. Where is the innate, God-given moral code in that?
A few years ago, I asked a young man about this — a fine, moral, Christian guy who really is a decent and kind husband and father. He said that, yes, some atrocious things could be acceptable if God required them. I said that this could lead to some very dark places. He agreed, but stood firm in his conviction.
In my opinion, he is a good young man who nevertheless has been poisoned in his thinking by the very religion which gave his life direction at a time when he felt lost.
The great achievement of the Enlightenment with regard to morality is the expansion of the concept of “our tribe” to include more and more people — women, slaves, people of other races. Christians like to claim credit for most of these advances, but in truth Christians have rarely led the way in such matters. Instead, Christians in power have almost always curtailed freedoms, contracted the definition of the favored tribe, and used power to silence (or eliminate) contrary voices. This is what we see playing out before us in America today.
I'm not saying that there aren't some very good Christians. A few of the finest people I know are (or were) evangelical Christians. It is possible for Christianity to give direction and purpose to a directionless person and to put their life on a better path. But the same can be said for Islam or Alcoholics Anonymous or Crossfit, etc.
In my experience, though, Christians who are very good people either set aside some of the prejudices from the faith that limit their goodness, or else their own goodness is limited by the same.
So: “Without God, everything is permitted?” “Without God, there is nothing objective upon which to base morality?” I have come to think that it's just the opposite. If you believe that God is on your side, “everything is permitted for the sake of carrying out “God's will”.
But if you know that we're all in this life together, you'll see that morality isn't all that complicated and it doesn't require “divine hard-wiring” to explain it.
*New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. All rights reserved.