You Still Cannot Be Moral Without God

This post is part of a feature from Patheos called Head to Head.

This week, I’m debating the Catholic Channel’s Dr. Gregory Popcak. The question: is a deity necessary for morality?

This week’s question was inspired by Patheos Atheist writer Peter Mosley’s story on Theism’s Morality Glitch.

I stood in Vegas and millions of dollars worth of advertising tried to lure me to gamble foolishly. “Gaming” itself may not be a vice, but it comes very close to quite a few vices and so as I took my ten dollars into the MGM Grand, it was with trepidation. As I watched the machine work, I thought about what was happening and became . . . bored.

I lost my ten dollars, won back my ten dollars, and at no point should be credited for moral behavior. I discovered one set of vices (one of the few set of vices), those related to the gambler, that did not tempt me. Whatever evils were avoided were avoided passively: my education (all that mathematical logic) guarded me from vice.

I behaved morally, but not as a moral man.

We often say of a dog that is a “good dog” or a “bad dog,” but no dog is actually bad or good. If the dog grows up in a good society and receives good training, then most often the dog will exhibit behaviors we call good. No moral credit to the dog, some to the trainer.

And yet I am a man and not a dog. It is good to receive moral training, it keeps me from vice, but there is no credit in it. A man gets moral credit precisely when he defies what he wishes to do for what he ought to do or does what he doesn’t wish to do because he ought.

If I give money to the Star of Hope, a homeless person is helped (good!), but if I did it due to peer pressure, I did a good deed badly. In fact, my cowardice, going with the crowd, may set me up for great evils later. I was good without morality. When I give money to Star of Hope for the homeless (and I should) that I want to spend on a new computer game (Syberia!), then I am a moral man not a well trained member of the community.

You can do moral things without referring to God, but this is generally as the beneficiary of your culture. American atheists inherit a culture and (mostly) live in it with modifications. I did the same as a theist. Neither of us is fully human until we ask: “Should we be doing this?,” use reason to answer the question, and discover as adults the moral law.

God exists and so undergirds a morality that is inescapable. The good news in this is that we will mostly do good in any society of any size with any duration. Just as physical laws weed out those who keep trying to defy them, so moral laws grind down cultures in the areas where they grow libertine.

This may be part of the reason that officially godless societies (as opposed to societies that have many godless people in them) have been uniformly morally wretched. This is true of every such society in existence today. Denying the most important moral fact hasn’t gone well so far, though perhaps somebody somewhere will pull it off.

If they do, it will probably be for the same reason that unthinking theists do good things: humans were created in the image of God and we will mostly tend to virtue. Sadly, we are also broken and the moral mistakes we make, especially when culture agrees, cost us dearly.

When part (and it was only part) of the American church defended segregation, it agreed with local secular culture, but defied the moral law of the global church. The church of Kenya, Italy, and Russia looked on in horror. In fact, many brave Southern Christians acted against interest, such as Professor Sheldon Vanauken, and made a moral stand.

I was raised to abhor racism. No credit to me that it nauseates me. All credit to those like Vanauken who practiced what almost all Christians, in almost all places, at almost all times believed: all humans are one race. Until I made anti-racism my own, I was only “good” on race, not a good man. Sheldon Vanauken was one of many moral heroes of his time (and not the greatest).

Can you be moral without God? No. God has created a cosmos that bends toward righteousness, but also gives humankind free will. We will do many good things without reflection and even one who denies big moral truths (like the existence of God and moral law) will mostly get it right. Doing the right thing for wrong reasons will be helpful in some ways, but is very, very dangerous for a person and for a culture.

And so at the end of our childhood, to be a good man or woman, we must embrace reason and question everything so we can act as knowing moral agents in obedience to Divine commands. No person should hope to get by being a culturally lucky, unthinking, childish, doer of good deeds he does not fully understand.