Morality Without God

A preacher of the Christian faith in many cases make it a point to say that the Bible is the key to living a moral life, when in fact morality and religion have no connection. People do not do what is right and what is wrong because God has told them too, but because morality is based off of the notion of happiness and suffering (Harris). The Bible while many see it as a “perfect guide to morality,” they ignore the more obscene advice such as “whenever children [gets] out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13:24, 20:30, and 23:13–14)” (Harris). Good Christians for example ignore these scriptures and interpret them in a different perspective because they are relatively good people and that the basis of morality doesn’t literally lie within the Bible.

If morality was necessary based off of God then what about different religions? Are they immoral because they do not believe in the same God or are atheist more likely to be immoral than a theist? “According to United Nations’ Human Development Report (2005), the most atheistic societies... [Tend to be] the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per-capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate, and infant mortality” (Harris). Most importantly, these facts prove that atheist societies do not need a God to be moral and live in a civilized manner (Harris).

Many churches will preach of the necessity to listen to God's commandments and impose Gods will on our morality, but as seen above not all the Bible can be taken as a guide for morality nor is it necessary to have to believe in a God to be moral. In a sense morality is all relative to a circumstance, but morality shouldn’t be simply based off of opinions, but rather explanations and reasons whether something is moral or not. For example the morality of human murder would need strong justifications to be considered moral, but because murder is always poorly justified it is a mutual societal agreement that ending one life for their own ideology is unacceptable. Instead of God being the guideline for morality one should use reason to seek choices that permit happiness and prohibit suffering rather than the word of God.

Works Cited

Harris, Sam. "The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos." Council for Secular Humanism. N.p.. Web. 10 Apr 2013. <http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=sharris_26_3.

Sinnott, Walter, perf. "Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on Morality Without God." Philosophy Bites. N.p., 28 Aug 2009. web. 12 Apr 2013.