Question In conversations with Christians (and members of other religious groups), more often than not I'm asked on what grounds atheism can claim to have an objective morality. This isn't a new question, but it is one I don't feel properly equipped to answer well. I think reason and our intuitions can aid us in finding objective moral truths, but I often find myself at a loss articulating a good defense. I do not find the theist's claim that morality depends on God's existence a good one, but I want to advance a better argument for why secular morality works out, and not just knock down their view. What's the general consensus among philosophers? Is there a firm foundation for morality without God?

Accepted:
November 17, 2012

Comments

The literature on this topic is huge. Much of the work in theoretical ethics and metaethics in the last 200 years has been an attempt to provide a non-theistic foundation for morality, whether a foundation within ethics or a foundation outside ethics. If you look under "ethics," "metaethics," and "moral" in the table of contents of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (linked in the right sidebar of this site), you'll find dozens of entries that give non-theistic treatments of ethics and ethical issues. Two good recent journal articles on the non-theistic grounding of ethics are this one by Wes Morriston and this one by Erik Wielenberg. You might also find this forthcoming paper of mine to be relevant. Best of luck in your research!