On the Choice between Secular Morality and Religious Morality

KAI NIELSEN On the Choice between Secular Morality and Religious Morality I In his Letter Concerning Toleration John Locke remarked: ... those are not all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all.] When we read this now we feel the cultural distance between ourselves and the seventeenth century. Even such a progressive and reasonable thinker as Locke is, in this respect, at a very great distance from us. There are in North America Neanderthal undercurrents, indeed at present very vocal and powerful undercurrents, which still think in this way, but among the intelligentsia, both religious and non-religious, such thinking is totally alien. David Gauthier commenting on this passage from Locke remarks: the supposition that moral conventions depend on religious belief has become alien to our way of thinking. Modern moral philosophers do not meet it with vigorous denials or refutations; usually they ignore it. If the dependence of moral conventions on religious belief was necessary for Locke, it is almost inconceivable to us.2 Is this just a shift in the Weltgeist or does it have rhyme or reason? Does the taking away of God or the thought of God - the sincere belief in his existence - dissolve all as Locke thought? If it does that would indeed, to understate the matter, make belief in God very central to any acceptance of morality. Butis there a dissolution such that beliefin God has so central a place? Suppose we try to say that it is God's commanding or ordaining something that makes something good. Without his ordaining it, it is claimed, it could not correctly be said to be good. There is no goodness without the commandments of God. Indeed, it is the very reality of its being commanded by God that constitutes its goodness. However, this plainly could not be true, because even in a Godless world kindness still would be a good thing and the torturing of little UNJVERSIn' OF TORONTO QUARTER.LY, VOLUME 53, NUMBER 2, WINTER 1983/4 128 KAI NIELSEN children would still be vile. Even if we believe in God, we will recognize, if we reflect on the matter and if we have any moral understanding at all, that such acts are wrong and that kindness and decency are good. Reflective people who believe in God and have an ordinary pretheoretical understanding of morality will come to recognize, if the matter is put to them forcefully, that even if there were no God, torturing people just for the fun of it would still be intolerable. Moreover, the religious believer himself will appreciate, if he carefully reflects, that even if that in which he places his trust and on which he sets his heart did not exist, keeping faith with his friends would still be a good thing and caring for his children would still be something that he ought to do. So the goodness or badness, the moral appropriateness or inappropriateness of these acts, cannot be constituted by their being commanded by God or ordained by God. Certain moral realities would remain just as intact in a Godless world as in a world with God. To the old conundrum 'Is something commanded by God because it is good or is it good because God commands it?: itshould be responded that whatever way the religious moralist goes here he is in trouble. On the one hand, that God commands something doesn't ipso facto make it good. We can come to appreCiate this if we examine reasonably closely our own considered convictions. If God, just like that, commands us to starve our children, that doesn't, justbecause God so commanded it, make it morally tolerable, let alone good. On the other hand, if God commands something because it is good, then plainly its goodness stands in logical and moral independence of God. Have I not missed, in arguing as I have, the perfectly evident consideration that if the God ofJudeo-Christianity exists, then everything is dependent on him: he created the world and...