Morality Without God

Rev. Amy Russell - 2010-05-02

A short video clip produced by the web site “The Thinking Atheist” that is very popular on You Tube starts with this question: “So, your an atheist? Answer this question, Where do your morals come from? If you don't believe in God. After all, morality comes from God, Right? It then asks if this God is the same God who endorsed rape, human sacrifice, slavery, and kidnapping and it gives various Biblical references from the Old Testament in which God sanctions these atrocious actions. It ends with this quote from Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

These are intentionally inflammatory statements, designed to get people's blood pressure elevated. And it does just that. I asked several people to watch this video and asked their impression. Many of them said that while they agreed with what the video said, the pulsating drumbeat playing and the tone of the words made them feel agitated.

The video ends with this statement: Morality is a choice, not a church.

Now almost all of us as Unitarian Universalists would agree with this. Many of us came into this faith tradition because we believe that our rational minds and our inborn conscience gives us all the tools we need to make moral choices in this increasingly complex world. We understand that these moral choices aren't easy and that there isn't one moral standard to which we all agree. Many of us consider moral and ethical choices to be different according to the circumstances and the culture in which they are being considered.

The stories that we presented earlier about real life people in real life circumstances and the difficult choices they were facing are examples of just how complicated morality has become in our changing world. And how whatever choice we may make, might not be popular or even acceptable to some people that we know. But the situations that were described also point to how even people who may have grown up in religious communities and accepted the doctrine they were taught are still left with many questions about the right choice when faced with complex situations.

But rather than relying on simplistic answers provided by a religious doctrine that might apply moral standards with a black and white agenda, many religious liberals believe that humans have inherently a desire to treat their fellow humans with fairness and use an innate moral sense to accomplish that.

Dostoevsky's character Ivan Karamazov said, “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted.” Richard Dawkins presents a different view. Despite Dawkins somewhat inflammatory style, he presents a view that society without religion would be better off. He says, “Perhaps naively, I have inclined towards a less cynical view of human nature than Ivan Karamazov. Do we really need policing? - where by God or each other- in orde to stop us from behaving in a selfish and criminal manner? I dearly want to believe that I do not need such surveillance, and nor, dear reader, do you.”

Our Unitarian Universalist tradition has a long history of people who considered themselves “humanists”. Humanists are people who usually consider themselves atheist or agnostic but who believe that humans can life an ethical life according to universal values such as:
 The Golden rule- do unto others
 A sense of community where people care for one another
 and a believe in the inherent worth and dignity of humankind.

Humanism has a long history going back to philosophers such as Spinoza, a 17th century Dutch Jewish thinker who redefined God as the natural universe. Some have called Spinoza a “pantheist” or someone who believes that everything in the Universe is God, but that God is not the controller of the universe.

During the 1930's, there were a number of influential and respected leaders who became vocal about their acceptance of Humanism. John Dewey, the man who gave us the Dewey decimal system was a respected philosopher of the time. He added his name to the signing of the Humanist Manifesto in 1933. Dewey introduced an approach to humanism that redefined God as the “positive forces in the universe”. He called himself a “reconstructionist” or someone who reconstructs a definition of God to refer to the natural human values not a supernatural force.

One of the primary authors of the Humanist Manifesto was Dr. Edwin Wilson who was the minster of First Church in Dayton, during the early 1930's. You'll hear more about him at our 100th anniversary service on May 16th.

Humanism is something that many of us as UU's identify with, at least with the part of humanism that asks humans to take responsibility for deciding what is right and moral in this world and to act upon it.

But how do you make those decisions? Where do we find our ethical and moral basis? Does it come from our family, our education, the society we live in? Does it come innately from our own internal wisdom and how does that happen? We know that we have inherent worth but how do we use both our rational minds and our feeling hearts to make decisions about ethical issues that affect us?

Some say that our ability to make good moral choices comes from our understanding our human needs and interests by observing ourselves and others. We know how we feel about how we are treated and we have the ability to imagine how others will feel if treated the same way. This is the basis of the Golden Rule- do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This assumes that you know how you want to be treated and can therefore imagine actions that you take that will affect others in the same way.

The Humanist Manifesto describes it this way:
“Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstance, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.”

I think that being moral is all about that responsibility that one takes to understand that you don't live alone but within a pluralistic world with many different people all who have needs and interests different from your own. To understand that fully means to put yourself in other's shoes before making decisions that affect others.

So, if we look at the ethical situations that I described for you in the reading, in each case, the individual faced a decision that not only affected themselves but others. In the case of the couple who faced an unplanned for pregnancy, they were wrestling with a decision that would affect a fetus or a future child. This makes the moral choice they faced even more complex because it meant figuring out how they define life. And how a potential life would impact their lives and what the future would bring for a child brought into the world before they felt they were ready to be parents. Anyone who has faced this decision know how utterly heart-wrenching it can be. You face the issue of whether abortion kills a life, or whether bringing an unplanned child into life with parents not ready to parent is also immoral.

But as most of us believe, a reference in the Bible does not answer any of those complex questions for us, even if we believe the Bible holds some human inspiration.

I often feel that our gut instinct and our human emotion around these extremely hard choices are the first level of understanding of what we believe is right. Often our gut tells us things that we often can't understand with our rational mind. Our gut may tell us that while we believe one thing is a rational decision, that our intuition doesn't agree. When we feel in our gut that one choice is right, even if it isn't always the obvious answer- that is often our bodies and spirits telling us what we can live with.

An example of this:
John Adams was asked to defend the British soldiers who had been indicted for murder in the trial of the Boston Massacre. His life and his family's life were threatened by people who felt he was a traitor to the cause of the colonies if he defended them. And yet, he knew in his gut that it was the rule of law that had to prevail. He says in his diary:

"The Part I took in Defence of Cptn. Preston and the Soldiers, procured me Anxiety, and Obloquy enough. It was, however, one of the most gallant, generous, manly and disinterested Actions of my whole Life, and one of the best Pieces of Service I ever rendered my Country. Judgment of Death against those Soldiers would have been as foul a Stain upon this Country as the Executions of the Quakers or Witches, anciently. As the Evidence was, the Verdict of the Jury was exactly right.” The soldiers were acquitted due to the circumstances of the evening.

Rationally, he knew that he was putting himself and his family in danger, and yet, he knew morally, that he could not turn away from what he considered justice. He considered this his moral duty. It was his instinct that told him this.