Can you have morals without acknowledging God? If so, where do they come from?

Comments

You can and many people do.

As for where we can get moral beliefs if we don't believe in God, two unoriginal thoughts.

The first is that in our actual day-to-day moral reasoning, most of us—even most religious people— don't base their moral responses on their religious beliefs. There are plenty of reasons to be honest or fair or kind or courageous without scurrying off to scripture. Some of the reasons might also show up in scripture: "Treat others as you'd wish to be treated" for example. But do we really think that someone who has internalized the point of that maxim would chuck it aside if they lost their religion?

The second thought is a hard one for some people to grasp; I tend to think of it as a test of philosophical aptitude. The fact that some powerful supernatural being commands something isn't by itself a reason to think it's good. The point is very old; it goes back at least to Plato's dialogue Euthyphro. It goes with a pair of questions for the believer: are things right because God commands them? Or does God command things because they're right? The first answer implies that if God commanded torturing the innocent, that would make it okay. The reply might be that God would never command any such thing. That's presumably because it's just obviously wrong to torture the innocent, and God (if there is a God) is smart enough to know that. However, that amounts to grasping the second horn of the dilemma: God commands things because they're right. In that case, right and wrong are independent of the mere will of God.

If I may: One can argue that

If I may: One can argue that people have morals only if they do not, in the relevant sense, "acknowledge God." I give such an argument in this chapter of a recent anthology.

Read another response by Allen Stairs, Stephen Maitzen

Read another response about Ethics, Religion