As the first week of Ramadan unfolds, more than a billion Muslims around the world are reminded of the greatness of God and a higher power than humankind. Like Easter for Christians and Hanukkah for Jews, Ramadan is the holiest time of the year within the borders of Islam; a time for worship, respect and family. An individual known only as “Harbortenor” chose this time to submit an article arguing that there is no such thing as God.
Sin is different for different people and different gods at different times. In some countries people love their neighbours, in other countries people eat them. In Mexico, one man may marry one wife. In Yemen, one man may marry many women. In Tibet, one woman may marry many men. In Holland, a man may marry another man and a woman may marry another woman. We learn, therefore, that sin is geographical and that morality changes from time to time and from place to place.
But what is morality? Put very simply, it is about how we treat others. In order to live with a semblance of harmony in a social setting, we need to show consideration for others. We know humans do this. But we also know that various animals do it as well: dolphins, chimps, wolves…the list is endless. Many species of mammals have rules governing how to fight and how to reconcile. Even gestures of dominance and subordinance can be seen in a moral light.
How then do humans know what is right and wrong. To paraphrase Euthyphro’s dilemma: Is something good because some God commands it? Or does this God command something because it is good? If it is the former, then right and wrong are the product of God’s arbitrary and capricious will, and to heed his will and surrender to his morality would simply be blind obedience to authority—beyond the scope of discussion or appeal. However, if it is the latter, then good and bad, right and wrong are independent of God’s will, and knowledge of God’s will is redundant and unnecessary. We can discover morality for ourselves.
Where then do we get our morality if not from God? Morality has nothing to do with theology or philosophy. Morality is a product of biology. Scientists now talk of a moral grammar that is programmed into our brains and hardwired into our genes. There are certain schemas of behaviour that we are born with. We have an instinct for morality in the same way we have an instinct for language.
To say that people had no way to distinguish right from wrong until that precise moment Moses came down from the mountain with his ten commandments is to do a great disservice to humanity.
Some people may be prompted to ask why then, if we all have a moral compass, are there so many criminals?
There is a difference between deciding what is right and wrong and associating such an evaluation with the relevant emotion. Most criminals know instinctively that murder is wrong or cheating is wrong. But they do it anyway. So what is hampered in their case is not their moral compass, but their ability to make the appropriate emotional response. Knowing what is right and doing the right thing are two separate functions of the brain.
A crucial role in morality may also be played by memes: those non-genetic, cultural units—represented by an idea, value, or pattern of behaviour—that are passed from one person to another by imitation or instruction. To put it simply, memes are the cultural counterpart of genes.
Assisting a wounded member of the tribe, caring for an elderly relative, or showing reverence for one’s parents are examples of memes. Memes are just as useful in promoting this or that morality. The finer details may vary between communities, but in general, it has been found that the communities that survive are the ones that promote cooperation, negotiation, respect for authority, and so on. It is not in the tribe or community’s interest to waste valuable time, resources, and energy in in-fighting.
Our opinions on issues of morality are based on emotions, rational thought, or instinct. Consider the following newspaper headline: Mother kills her own four-year-old child.
Such an act would evoke disgust in most people regardless of time, place, or milieu. There would be calls for her to be severely punished.
But if we were to read the article further, we would discover that the mother was Akeda, a woman from Congo, where mercenaries from a rival faction had raped her repeatedly and killed three of her children. She was told that the only way she could protect her two-year-old infant was to pull the noose around her four-year-old child. It is a grotesque and unimaginably difficult thing to do. If she hadn’t done it, both her children would die. If she killed one, the other would survive. Akeda made the choice and did the deed. In doing so, she ensured the survival of her infant.
Most people, on being confronted with these facts, would feel an instinctive sense of pity for the mother’s plight. Even those who feel she acted wrongly would not call for a harsh punishment against her. Again, this reaction will be true regardless of time, place, or milieu. This is a classic moral case of emotion being overruled by instinct.
Another often-quoted example is of a train hurtling down, with a young man asleep on the tracks. The only way the driver can prevent a tragedy is to change tracks. But he notices there is a group of five children standing on the other track, and they will undoubtedly be killed if he changes tracks. What is the driver to do?
Most people from diverse cultures agree almost immediately that, in such a scenario, the driver will have no choice but to sacrifice the one man and save the five children.
However, consider the following scenario often quoted as a companion story to the previous one:
There is a doctor in a hospital. On one particular day he receives a patient who has had heart failure and needs a new heart. A short while later another patient is admitted who has had kidney failure and needs new kidneys. Shortly later, another patient is wheeled in who has liver cancer and needs a new liver. As the doctor contemplates how to go about treating these diverse patients, he notices a young man in the waiting room reading a newspaper and minding his own business. He looks in good enough condition. The doctor then wonders if he should sedate the young man, wheel him into the operation room, and harvest his kidneys, heart, and liver. In doing so he would save three people at the expense of one.
Most people from diverse cultures agree that to do so would be unethical. When pressed to explain how it is different from the previous case where one man is sacrificed for five, they were unable to justify their response. This is a classic moral case in which logic is overruled by instinct.
Things become more complicated in the example of the train if we assume the single person lying on the track happens to be the driver’s wife or mother or brother. What then should the driver do? What if there was a bridge above the tracks with a huge, heavy man sitting on the side of the bridge? If this heavy man were pushed upon the tracks he would die but the weight of his body would stop the train in its tracks. Should we push the fat man and save the five people?
Most people—in fact, almost all people—agree that it would be morally wrong to push the fat man off the bridge in order to save the five people. However, many are unable to articulate why they think so.
Marc Hauser, the Harvard biologist who came up with these thought experiments, backed up with statistical surveys, tells us that the responses to these case studies did not change if the person was religious or atheist. This is clinching evidence that one doesn’t need either God or religion to be moral. Morality is built into our minds and our genes. And because the moral faculty depends upon specialised brain systems, the failure of which can lead to moral deficiency, we would be compelled to treat criminals more humanely.
If we are moral, we are fortunate enough to have a brain that functions more or less “normally.” In many ways, this might be obvious, for it takes a seriously disturbed brain to direct a person to repeatedly kill, have sex with the dead victims, dismember the bodies, and eat them—as some serial killers have been known to do. It’s obvious that their brains are functioning very differently.
Seen in this light, it would seem that some of the religious strictures handed down to us are simply not powerful enough to stop us from disobeying if it goes against our instincts. A simple example is fornication. Centuries of flaccid priests and frustrated prophets have told us that sex before marriage is abominable in the eyes of the Lord—whether he be Allah, Jehovah, or Yahweh. They have been woefully inadequate in stopping people from fornicating. Fornicators instinctively see no harm in two unmarried consenting adults sleeping together. The only use religion has in such a situation is to make people feel guilty about what they’ve done, but it’s nowhere nearly persuasive enough to stop them.
For centuries we’ve had prophets, mullahs, and priests functioning as our morality bank, minting tokens of scruples and righteousness for us, crediting and debiting our piety account and keeping tabs on our collective conscience. It is my opinion that we don’t need religion to help us distinguish good from bad. We are born with this capacity. Morality is not divine, it is biological.
From Harbortenor…
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Your article sounds like it came out from a guy who just came out of his laboratory after 20 years of isolation and analysis that led him to nowhere. You give examples of everything, but never highlighted the real point. Why it is you as a person don’t believe in the existence of God? What is it about your life that has led you to be Godless? This is what interests me. I hope its not just because you read some books that told you so.
If your point was to make an article filled with useless stuff, then you did a great job, but if your serious then are you kidding me??
I have questions for you, because I’m curious as to what its like to be souless. You mentioned stuff about creation, so who created nature? Why do people have 5 senses and not 8? Why when people are in trouble, pain or helpless, most believe in a higher power or a soul living inside them? What values or spiritual beilefs so you have to pass on to your children? Most of all, I would like to hear about your peronsal experiences and beliefs and and not some theories from books that you’ve read.
I’m guessing you are or were a philosophy student, because this amateur stuff reads like a junior year paper from a Moral Philosophy class. (Ethyphro’s dilemma is used in all introductory classes to ease students into the analysis of Morality) Did you go any deeper I wonder? It seems not as I suspect you just pulled this up from an old file? You don’t offer much here.
Whether one believes in God is not the issue. You have successfully removed this point from the crux of the discussion. When I read your article, I simply see a poorly argued piece. Your anemic claim that religion’s inability to stop people from being “bad” as reason for its uselessness is especially impotent. Are you suggesting we should not believe in the rule of law? Laws certainly don’t stop anyone from being “bad” either. Laws, by extension, include doctrine like the bill of rights, which itself is guided by religious morality. Should these principles be cast aside as well? Should we simply rely on innate “biology” to control the masses of humankind? All I can say is poorly played.
Editor-in-chief
I feel hard done by and misrepresented in your choice of title and the introductory blurb for the article. I had chosen the title “The Grammar of Morality.” The point I am making is that morality has biological origins. The present title is confusing and unnecessarily sensationalistic.
Psychosomatic
The title is misleading and was not of my choosing. I am NOT arguing for the existence or non-existence of God. (About which one would have to be agnostic to a certain degree, if only for philosophical argument. Although, one would be tempted to ask “which God?” – Mithra, Wotan, Zeus, Krishna, Allah, Jehovah, Quetzalcoatl, Ra…)
The point I am making is that we are born with a moral instinct just as we are born with an instinct for language.
If I were to argue against the existence of God, this would have been a very different article. But there are better writers out there. I recommend Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennet, Michael Shermer, Iyaan Hirsi Ali, and Bertrand Russell.
If you think my choice for a title is unfair, my apologies. Re-naming articles is something I do quite often (along with writing intros) so as to better grab attention of readers. Your article was entirely unedited and stands on its own. With that said, you certainly are an atheist, are you not?
When you say what is morally right is not Divine, you are saying quite plainly morality is Godless, are you not?
And it was also your choice to get into the topic of religion’s lack of significance during what I’m sure you know is Ramadan, was it not?
No need to beat around the bush is always my approach to journalism, so let’s just say like it is: You quite obliviously do not believe in God. No need to fancy it up, no need to reach out for atheist apostles like Dawkins for justification.
Stand on your own two feet and say so and like the above comment, use your own personal experience to reach our readers; to explain how you’ve arrived at this place. The average person is none too concerned with the list of names above. They will want to hear your story. I continue to invite you to tell it.
Editor-in-chief
My being an atheist is not entirely germane to the crux of the article. Ramadan is not on my radar and has very little significance to me. So the article wasn’t written to deliberately antagonise Muslims. It has pan-religious significance. But I won’t deny that on a scale of one to ten (one being a believer in a god and ten being an absolute non-believer) I’d give myself a nine and a half.
Memonah’s queries, though sincere, are quite amusing. “What is it like to be soulless?” I could quite as easily ask the same of almost anyone. No one has a soul. It’s something we made up to deal with death. There’s no evidence for it. No heaven and no hell. These are fairytales designed to frighten people into obedience.
Atheists are not wicked people. The point of the article is that it is possible to be moral without god. And I believe as an atheist I can be, and am, moral. We don’t go around blowing up buildings or raping or looting. In fact, every Muslim or Christian is an atheist towards the millions of other gods that other people believe in . Atheists just go one god further in their disbelief.
Why am I an atheist? Because the holy books are far too numerous and contradictory; because the gods of the Abrahamic/Mosaic religions are invisible bronze age sky deities whose regulations have little significance in the 21st century; because evolution is a more than adequate explanation for why we are here; because I don’t need the comfort of heaven or the threat of hell to live a fulfilled life; because religion depends on blind faith and a suspension of reason; because I refuse to behave like a slave towards an imaginary dictator in the sky; and because more blood has been spilled in the name of religion than for any other cause.
Throughout this history of our species, there has always been strong openness to a belief in things unseen. Long before Judea-Christian-Muslim times, back to very beginnings, as seen on cave paintings and in ancient sculptures, we have always seen more than the limits of our five senses. Harbortenors, please understand I am not offended or bothered by what you want to think is true. I don’t really care what an atheist thinks to be honest, but there is something you’re missing.
As a rule, human beings have never wanted and continue to simply have no desire to live without faith. If you want to live in a thoroughly disenchanted world, a completely secularized world, a world with no mystery or hope or faith, go right ahead. If you want to live a cold and barren, and yes, “soulless” life, feel free. I, and most of the planet, through our wide variety of religion, beliefs, and hopes, will continue to see the magic that comes with being a human being, continue to celebrate the things unseen, continue to live beyond the limits of our minds, so we can grasp all that makes us who we are.
I have been reading Relativity for a while, but this will be my first comment. I’m a Japanese male living in South Africa and I have been agnostic all my life. Although if you ask most will say they are Shinto / Buddhist, there isn’t really much religion in Japan. For me, being an agnostic means I don’t know if there is a God, but I surely hope there is. It would be sad if there wasn’t.
With that said, I can surely see why people would take offence to your words, Harbortenors. You need to learn how to say things like, “I believe I don’t have a soul” instead of “No one has a soul.” You certainly don’t know that what you think is the truth. You certainly don’t speak for the rest of the world. It’s atheists like you who give a bad name to people who don’t believe, by suggesting you know more than everyone else, and that others are stupid for believing in God. You might try, as an atheist friend of mine says, “I find myself unable to believe in God” and move on from there.
I am familiar with this Dawkins character, kind of like a prophet to you atheist types, as you all quote or refer to him all the time. He was in fact quoted as calling people who believe in God “stupid.” How dare he or anyone else attack others for what they believe? No you’re not wicked Harbortenors, you and atheists like you are just arrogant.
Agnostic,
Atheists have no prophets. And Dawkins is certainly not one. But he’s a staggeringly brilliant geneticist and zoologist who was voted the world’s top intellectual (along with Noam Chomsky). How would you like being called arrogant if you maintained (and rightly so) that pixies, gnomes, fairies, and flying unicorns don’t exist?
Miss Universe
As I’ve said elsewhere on this site, a large number of people believing a proposition no more makes the proposition true, any more than a large number of people contracting a disease makes the disease good. Expand your world view a little. Atheists don’t live in a barren world. We see beauty in nature, music, art, love, and companionship. No need to drag imaginary entities into all this. It is faith and lack of the questioning spirit that drives people to become suicide bombers. The issue of whether or not gods exist outside our imaginations is a scientific question and should be approached as such.
I’m perfectly aware that that Atheists dont have prophets. I simply said atheists quote him a lot. No need to be pompous (or maybe with you there is) and insult my intelligence. And your arrogance lies in your refusal to say “I beleive” instead of “I know.” This is diplomacy 101. You really are quite immature.
Just like a religious zealot, I see you have a case of bad tunnel vision, Harbortenors. You see only what you want to see and anything outside your view is wrong. Imagination is the whole point!
And yes, just because many people believe something to be true doesn’t make it so, but only a few people believing something to be true doesn’t make it so either. You’re really not worth much else.
agnostic,
As an agnostic are you in a perpetual state of not knowing or do you ever get off the fence about anything? You certainly seem quite cocksure about how people should phrase their sentences.
miss universe,
If you don’t have anything useful to say about the origins of morality, I suggest you open another book of fairytales. I recommend “Jack and the Beanstalk.” It’s got giants and a goose that lays golden eggs.
Wow Harbortenors, you piss everyone off dont ya, you horses ass you! LOLLLL! “No one has a soul,” Muslims and Christians are atheists”???!!! What the hell are you on!!?? And then you cry like a little suck because the title was changed!??
I give credit to the magazine for letting you come on and embarass yourself. In fact, you’re the most hilarious one on this site!! Thanks for always making me feel better, you guarantee a good laugh every time you open your mouth!! LOL! Now hit me with your pearls of wisdom you rube! Make yourself look like the moron you are again!
Looking over these comments, I feel like I’m the father coming in here and telling the kids to be nice – but be nice people. The name calling and personal attacks are simply not necessary. Mr. Harbortenors has a right to his opinion.
I’m nearly 60 years old and soon to be a grandfather. I am guessing that you, Harbortenors are a lot younger than me. Let this old dog offer you a piece of advice: A man only has to live by his principles; he doesn’t need to state them over and over again.
You certainly seem sure of your views, but if that is the case, why do you try so hard to prove others are wrong? You are flailing away at every comment and looking rough around the edges because of it. You have even lowered yourself from your former higher position with your last two postings. You stated your opinion – now let others tee off on it as much as they want.
I for one will choose not to tell my daughters their world is Godless and that they have no souls. I just could never do that. That doesn’t mean I don’t respect you or the right you have to be who you want to be. Coming back with a comment to argue against this point is fruitless. Be who you are and be proud and dont worry about what other people think. If you can do that then everything, as my father used to say, is good as gravy.
You’re absolutely right John.
Despite me closing out this post, this peice has recieved a few more comments. Most continue to abuse Harbortenors with over the top attacks on his/her person, with at least one, perhaps rightfully aimed at Canucklehead. With that said, the comments are only going around in circles. I thought the last two comments were a nice way to end things and have taken John’s advice. As said above “Being Godless” is closed out. Feel free to attack the magazine for this decison elsewhere.