Morality

Many people see morality as a gift from God that pushes us to do good. They feel that without God, a person is incapable of being moral. Indeed, the religious mind assumes all morality comes from God.

I am personally offended by this assumption. As someone who is living without any belief in a supernatural deity, I feel slighted when I hear someone say that I cannot be moral because I do not believe in God. They say things like "If there's no God, no heaven or hell, no punishment or reward why don't you go out killing and taking what you want? Why do anything to help anyone else if you do not think it is going to help get you into heaven?" These statements are not only ignorant and offensive, but they show the moral flaw that resides at the heart of the religious mind. In other words, they are implying that the only reason they do not kill or steal is because they are afraid of supernatural punishment. Were that punishment somehow proved not to exist, by their own admission, many religious people would react by going on a killing spree. I do not kill or steal because I am possessed with the evolutionary gift of empathy. I would feel terrible knowing that I had intentionally harmed another person. I do not need the added threat of eternal punishment to keep me from acting like a psychopath.

Similarly, when someone says the reason they do good is because they are compelled by the reward of heaven, that person shows his or her true selfishness. That means they may donate money to charity or work in a soup kitchen but they only do it so that they may be rewarded in the afterlife for doing so. I am charitable and good to other people for the same reason I do not hurt people: empathy. I feel good just knowing that I have done good. That is reward enough.

"So..." the religious person may counter, "Where then do you get your empathy? Do you deny that this is a gift from God designed specifically to give us a sense of morality?"

The answer (as usual) can be found in the theory of evolution. It began early in our history. We have not always been at the top of the food chain. Indeed, throughout most of our existence we have been relatively low on that chain. Therefore, we have had to develop certain strategies to avoid utter extinction. One of the major strategies we have used is to live in larger and larger groups. As these groups have become larger and slowly evolved from small bands of hunter gatherers to large cities, so too has our sense of empathy towards those with whom we live. This was necessary because as much protection as living in groups gives us from the outside environment, it does not protect us from other people within the group. If people can feel the suffering of other people they are less likely to knowingly cause that suffering. Over time our empathetic impulse has evolved so much that we can now feel for the suffering of all living beings, not just humans.

So please, if you are reading this and you are religious please think before you accuse us nonbelievers of being amoral. Morality is much older and more vital to society than the idea of God.