On the Knowledge of Good and Evil

MIKAEL GOOD | ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

On the Knowledge of Good and Evil:

The New Atheists, Secular Morality, and Moral Intuitions

Mikael R. Good

W

hy be good without God? In an increasingly secularized society, moral philosophers want to figure out whether a system of morality can be established in the absence of the divine. Many conclude that we can and should be good without God; a few conclude that we must throw out morality along with God. Most seem unwilling to follow the latter path. To save morality, then, atheists must not only justify the moral obligations commonly derived from moral intuitions but also explain why everyone has moral intuitions to begin with.

A group of contemporary scientists and philosophers informally known as the New Atheists seeks to accomplish both these tasks. They staunchly affirm moral realism and attempt to justify the presence of moral intuitions, which they often ground in evolutionary processes. They affirm that reality has moral features to which our moral intuitions point, but their naturalistic worldview does not satisfyingly explain why this is the case. Perhaps we do know about the nature of morality, even without belief in God—but why does reality have a moral structure? This paper will demonstrate that the moral realism of the New Atheists, albeit unjustified, is not surprising given the reality of divinely-instilled moral intuitions.

This paper will examine several facets of the New Atheists’ moral philosophy, including moral realism, moral objectivism, and attempts to justify moral obligations apart from God and religion. A few contemporary objections will help explain why New Atheist morality has no convincing metaphysical explana-

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tion: the New Atheists continue to assume a standard that transcends the natural even as they contend that only the natural exists. As this paper will explain, the benefit of Christianity is that it provides both a justification for objective morality and an elegant explanation for the stubborn existence of moral intuitions. Christianity accounts for the New Atheists’ unwillingness to give up on morality when their worldview cannot justify it: God has wired humanity to know good and evil whether or not they acknowledge His existence.

I. The New Atheists

New Atheism refers to a movement led by a small group of contemporary intellectuals who share similar views on science, religion, and morality. This group includes Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, there is no consensus on what exactly New Atheism entails. The New Atheists all published widely popular books around the same time in the early 2000s, and they all harshly criticize religion. 1 The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy identifies metaphysical, epistemological, and ethical components shared by the New Atheists: God and the supernatural do not exist, religious belief is irrational, and there exists an objective moral standard. 2 The New Atheists frequently employ the natural sciences in their philosophy, and they rely largely on scientific empiricism to determine the nature of reality. 3 With this background in place, let us consider the first major facet of New Atheist ethics: moral realism.

II. Moral Realism

The New Atheists uniformly believe that “good” and “evil” are real categories into which human actions fall. According to Chad Meister in his article “God, Evil and Morality,” the New Atheists are moral objectivists; they believe that evils such as racism are truly evil and goods such as generosity are truly good. 4 The New Atheists make no attempt to veil their moral realism: these

1. Paul Draper, “Atheism and Agnosticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition), ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/atheism-agnosticism/, accessed 9 May 2018.

2. James E. Taylor, “The New Atheists,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www. iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/, accessed 9 May 2018. 3. Ibid. 4. Chad Meister, “God, Evil and Morality,” in God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God is Reasonable and Responsible (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2009), 109.

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moral facts about reality are not relative to individuals or cultures. Christopher Hitchens even says that harming a child is “something that even the most dedicated secularist can safely describe as a sin.” 5 Daniel Dennett reveals that he believes in genuinely binding moral obligation when he says that he feels a “moral imperative” to teach people about evolution. 6

Sam Harris in particular makes an explicit case against moral relativism. In a debate with Rick Warren, he affirmed that he believes in an absolute right and wrong. Honor killing, for example, is unambiguously wrong; atheism does not preclude this conclusion. 7 In his book The End of Faith, Harris says that although many intellectuals have resorted to moral relativism, such a position “nonsensical.” 8 He points out that it is self-defeating, for moral relativism is itself an absolute claim about how we ought to live. Harris also deals with a subtler opponent of moral realism: pragmatism, the view that beliefs are tools rather than facts about reality. 9 Harris emphatically believes that our beliefs (including moral ones) should be a direct result of the way the world actually is. Reality is a certain way, independent of our beliefs, and according to Harris’s ethical realism there are moral truths which await our discovery just as scientific truths do. 10

Because of this, Harris does not think moral truth can be determined solely via consensus. Even if everyone agrees about morality, their agreement does not constitute moral truth; it is conceivable that everyone is simply wrong. 11 Many moral relativists argue that the lack of consensus about morality disproves the objectivity of ethics. But on Harris’ view “differences of opinion do not pose a problem for ethical realism.” 12 We may disagree about morality as well as physics, but this is only natural given our finite knowledge of reality. Even the fact that moral standards differ widely between different cultures and times, Harris says, “suggests nothing at all about the status of moral truth.” 13 The starkness of the New Atheists’ moral realism is almost startling. They

5. Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Twelve, 2007), 52.

6. Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York:

Penguin Books, 2006), 268. 7. Meister, 111. 8. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, Inc, 2005), 178. 9. Ibid., 179. 10. Ibid., 181. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 187. 13. Ibid., 171.

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are unapologetically confident in the existence of objective moral standards which are binding on all people and at all times. Yet the New Atheists think these moral standards are in no way contingent on the influence of religion.

III. Religion and Morality

The New Atheists’ view of religion has two major prongs. First, they argue that morality is neither dependent on nor derived from religion. Second, they make a moral case against religion on the basis of the evil it spawns. As for the first, the New Atheists vehemently oppose the suggestion that atheists have no reason to be good. Hitchens thinks it an “appalling insinuation” that he would have no knowledge of right and wrong without the guidance of a “celestial dictatorship” which holds over him the threat of hell. 14 Dawkins says that morality motivated by religion is not actually praiseworthy, because trying to be good merely to gain God’s approval is “not morality, that’s just sucking up.” 15 Dennett agrees; he says that a doctrine which “trades in a person’s good intentions for the prudent desires of a rationalist maximizer shopping around for eternal bliss” is debasing to the pursuit of goodness. 16 A pretense of piety can actually prevent people from sacrifice and good works, which are truly admirable. 17 The New Atheists find it offensive to say that we will have no motivation to fulfill moral obligations outside the context of a divine command. We should be good for the sake of being good, not in order to gain a reward.

The New Atheists thus believe that morality has no essential link to religion. As Hitchens affirms in his book God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, “Ethics and morality are quite independent of faith, and cannot be derived from it.” 18 Hitchens believes that moral precepts, even the Golden Rule, need to be separated from the hysteria and insanity of religion; they do not belong in a religious context. 19 Dawkins thinks it is a low and pathetic view of man to think that without the vestiges of religion, “we would become callous and selfish hedonists, with no kindness, no charity, no generosity, nothing that would de-

14. Christopher Hitchens, “An Atheist Responds,” The Washington Post (14 July 2007), http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301461.html, accessed 7 May 2018. 15. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London, England: Bantam Press, 2006), 253. 16. Dennett, 281. 17. Ibid., 306. 18. Hitchens, God is not Great, 52. 19. Ibid., 214.

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serve the name of goodness.” 20 Harris emphasizes the fact that we do not need to learn morality from religion. We understand that 2+2=4 even without reading it in a math textbook; likewise, we understand that cruelty is wrong without reading it in a holy book. 21 Like Hitchens, Harris wants to remove the Golden Rule from its biblical context altogether, since religion is not only unnecessary for but actually counterproductive to moral education. Dennett also has high hopes for morality divorced from religious belief: “There is no reason at all why a disbelief in the immateriality or immortality of the soul should make a person less caring, less moral, less committed to the well-being of everybody on Earth.” 22

From their standpoint of irreligious morality, the New Atheists condemn religion on moral grounds. Much of Hitchens’ book God is not Great consists of moral arguments against religion. His meaning cannot be mistaken when he says that “religion is...not just amoral but immoral”; he even refers to religion as original sin. 23 Religion is immoral because it is based on concepts of atonement, blood sacrifice, and eternal punishment. 24 Dawkins agrees on this point, describing the doctrine of atonement as “vicious, sado-masochistic and repellent.” 25 Hitchens also specifically targets the “morality” of the Bible, spending two chapters of his book explaining why the Old and New Testaments are evil. Harris agrees that Christianity is no suitable foundation for morality; he says, “The deity who stalked the deserts of the Middle East millennia ago—and who seems to have abandoned them to bloodshed in his name ever since—is no one to consult on questions of ethics.” 26 Furthermore, on a practical level, religion perpetuates incredible amounts of violence and oppression in the world. Religion does not make people behave better; in fact, it usually inspires them to be dogmatic, intolerant, and violent. In an article for The Washington Post, Hitchens provides a laundry list of common religious practices which he condemns as immoral (such as burning witches, condemning sexual “deviants,” prohibiting certain foods, suicide bombing and jihad, and slaughtering other tribes in the name of religion). 27 Far from providing a foundation for morality, the New Atheists claim, religion actively brings about evil.

20. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 227. 21. Harris, 172. 22. Dennett, 305. 23. Hitchens, God is not Great, 52. 24. Ibid., 205. 25. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 253. 26. Harris, 172. 27. Hitchens, “An Atheist Responds,” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301461.html.

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But now a question arises: what is the basis for morality?

IV. Evolutionary Accounts of Morality

Given the New Atheists’ emphasis on natural science, it is unsurprising that they refer to evolutionary processes to explain morality. But none of them are willing to rely on natural selection as morality’s sole basis. In his book The God Delusion, Dawkins gives the fullest evolutionary account of morality. He admits that natural selection initially seems capable of explaining fear and sexual lust but not empathy and moral sense. The compassion we feel for a lonely widow or a crying child does not seem to contribute to our survival. But Dawkins argues that the concept of the “selfish gene,” upon which he bases his theories on evolution, does not necessitate a selfish organism or a selfish species. 28 In fact, there are four Darwinian explanations for altruism—that is, unselfish behavior in relationships. First, it is in animals’ interest to behave altruistically towards their kin. Second, animals from different species can have symbiotic relationships wherein they benefit from altruism; Dawkins calls this “reciprocal altruism.” 29 Third, animals may be motivated to be altruistic for the sake of reputation. Fourth, being altruistic can be interpreted as an advertisement of one’s dominance. Because altruism can contribute to survival, we have developed an impulse to be altruistic through evolutionary processes. But do the good things we feel obligated to do actually contribute to our survival? Dawkins explains,

In ancestral times, we had the opportunity to be altruistic only towards close kin and potential reciprocators. Nowadays that restriction is no longer there, but the rule of thumb persists. Why would it not? It is just like sexual desire. We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise unable to reproduce). Both are misfirings, Darwinian mistakes: blessed, precious mistakes. 30

Dawkins uses the language of “blessed, precious mistakes” because he does not want to degrade or delegitimize morality by explaining its evolutionary origins. He assures the reader that referring to “noble emotions” such as compassion and generosity as “misfirings” is not meant to be pejorative. 31 Evolution is

28. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 215. 29. Ibid., 216. 30. Ibid., 221. 31. Ibid.

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responsible for morality, but morality is still valuable in its own right.

However, in his book The Selfish Gene, Dawkins seems to say that morality must transcend biology. If we based society on the ruthless selfishness of the selfish gene, it would be “a very nasty society.” 32 By way of warning, Dawkins says that if we wish to create a society of unselfish cooperation aimed at the common good, we cannot expect biological nature to aid us. “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism,” Dawkins exhorts us, “because we are born selfish. Let us try to understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to.” 33 Our genes may tell us to be selfish, but we are “not necessarily compelled” to obey them. We may not be genetically programmed for altruism, but we can learn it. 34 Evidently, we have an obligation to be altruistic that is not rooted in biology after all.

Sam Harris agrees that evolutionary processes may explain the development of moral impulses but are ultimately insufficient to account for morality. He says that game theory as well as evolutionary biology tell “plausible stories” about the roots of altruism, but we must not take these too much to heart. They mostly serve to demonstrate that moral impulses are not instilled by religion. 35 Furthermore, what is “natural” in human nature—i.e., what gives us an evolutionary advantage—is not the same as what is “good.” In fact, “natural” and “good” are often at odds with each other. “Appeals to genetics and natural selection can take us only so far,” Harris concludes, “because nature has not adapted us to do anything more than breed.” 36 The New Atheists recognize that moral realism requires more than an evolutionary account of the origin of moral feelings. Impulses beneficial to survival do not constitute obligations which are binding no matter whether it is in our interest to fulfill them. The New Atheists do not give in fully to the evolutionary argument, and they attempt to supplement it with additional explanations for morality.

V. Other Attempts to Justify Morality

In The God Delusion, Dawkins considers the objection that only religion can give us absolute standards of right and wrong. Dawkins refers to moral princi-

32. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 3. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Harris, 185. 36. Ibid.

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ples based on religion as “absolutist” principles. He admits that absolute moral standards usually come from religion. “Fortunately, however, morals do not have to be absolute,” Dawkins says. 37 Dawkins considers the deontology of Kant, who says that we must always do our duty solely for duty’s sake, and identifies this as moral absolutism. But there is also the option of consequentialist ethics, such as Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism; this is more of a pragmatic than an absolutist approach to ethics. 38

Dawkins concludes that it is fairly difficult to establish an absolutist morality without religion, but this does not preclude having an objective moral standard which is not absolutist. He does not specify the source and nature of this standard. But he concludes by observing that there is much consensus about moral standards apart from religion. Dawkins points to a “broad liberal consensus of ethical principles” which includes free speech, not cheating, not murdering, and following the Golden Rule. 39 He toys with the idea of a “New Ten Commandments” which would reflect this liberal consensus; perhaps it would instruct us not to cause harm to others, to administer justice but show forgiveness, to be open-minded, and not to discriminate on the basis of sex or race. 40 Dawkins ends his defense of secular morality by pointing to the amazing amount of moral progress the world has seen in recent years. 41

Harris attempts to give a more explicit account of the foundations of morality. He is concerned with the fact that without belief in God, why an action is good or bad is up for debate. A moral judgment such as “murder is wrong” does not seem “anchored to the facts of the world in the way that statements about planets or molecules appear to be.” 42 Yet as demonstrated earlier, Harris does believe that moral judgments are anchored to reality. He concludes that “a rational approach to ethics becomes possible once we realize that questions of right and wrong are really questions about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures.” 43 We have ethical responsibilities to people if we have influence over their happiness and suffering; that is, it is happiness and suffering which provide a legitimate context for morality. Harris thus links morality with consciousness, since consciousness creates

37. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 232. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 263. 40. Ibid., 264. 41. Ibid., 265. 42. Harris, 170. 43. Ibid.

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capacity for suffering. But he has a hard time determining to whom we have moral obligations. We cannot be obligated to every being with consciousness; it does not make sense to draw a clean line between animals and humans; in fact, we are not even sure what makes a creature human. 44 Harris also addresses a more foundational question: why do we care about the happiness and suffering of sentient creatures in the first place? Harris has no solid answer to this question, but he says it is evident that we do care and that this concern is the domain of ethics. 45 The concern cannot be justified by evolution, because morality is often not self-interested. Besides, our evolutionary self-interest is merely to have as many children as possible, but our conception of happiness is much greater than that. Harris attempts to synthesize his intuitions about morality thusly:

The basic facts are these: we experience happiness and suffering ourselves; we encounter others in the world and recognize that they experience happiness and suffering as well; we soon discover that “love” is largely a matter of wishing that others experience happiness rather than suffering; and most of us come to feel that love is more conducive to happiness, both our own and that of others, than hate. There is a circle here that links us to one another: we each want to be happy; the social feeling of love is one of our greatest sources of happiness; and love entails that we be concerned for the happiness of others. 46

Though Harris certainly does not provide a systematized account of his ethics, he tries to move past evolutionary accounts and give a more substantial foundation for morality which is in line with our moral intuitions. Like the other New Atheists, he attempts to provide a natural explanation for morality while still affirming morality as an independent reality.

VI. New Atheist Mor alit y is Not New

The New Atheists attempt to provide a rational foundation for morality that is modern, enlightened, and informed by the latest evolutionary science. But it is not really new. The New Atheists are not the first to try to establish a rationally based ethics, trace religion back to its man-made roots, disprove religion by means of science, and criticize the dangers and harms of religion. For example, Hume made the same arguments for atheism as Dawkins, and attempts

44. Harris, 177. 45. Ibid., 185. 46. Ibid., 187.

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to establish an anthropology of religion were already underway in the nineteenth century (see for example Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals). 47 Indeed, “it is difficult to identify anything philosophically unprecedented in their positions and arguments.” 48

Underlying New Atheism is an Enlightenment confidence in the sufficiency of reason to establish an objective basis for ethics. Moral theories such as Kant’s deontologism and J.S. Mill’s utilitarianism sought to establish a secular ethics without reference to God or religion. Mary Poplin, in her book about secularism, quotes David Bentley Hart in saying that secular moral theory has been shown to be insufficient by the test of time:

Part of the enthralling promise of an age of reason was, at least at first, the prospect of a genuinely rational ethics...not limited to the moral precepts of any particular creed, but available to all reasoning minds regardless of culture and—when recognized—immediately compelling to the rational will. Was there ever a more desperate fantasy than this? We live now in the wake of the most monstrously violent century in human history, during which the secular order...freed from the authority of religion, showed itself willing to kill on an unprecedented scale and with an ease of conscience worse than merely depraved. 49

The twentieth century teaches us that setting up man as the measure of all things is an unstable condition. The events of the twentieth century hastened the rise of postmodernism, with which came a loss of confidence in human reason and in the objectivity of ethics. Friedrich Nietzsche proposed that instead of trying to establish a rational basis for ethics, philosophers ought to question morality itself. Regarding moral values, “the value of these values themselves must first be called into question,” for morality itself may turn out to be dangerous. 50 Nietzsche concludes that once the idea of God is dead, man may move beyond the concepts of moral “good” and “evil.” What is “good” is merely whatever the strong man establishes as good via his will to power. Nietzsche’s view on morality is the honest end of atheism: without God, there is no moral order to the universe and no need to sustain a facade of moral obligation.

47. Draper, “Atheism and Agnosticism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/atheism-agnosticism/. 48. Taylor, “The New Atheists,” https://www.iep.utm.edu/n-atheis/. 49. Mary Poplin, Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews

(Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014), 152.

50. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in The Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 2000), 329.

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Though very few people since Nietzsche have been willing to give up morality (as he predicted), some other philosophers have recognized that morality cannot be sustained without God’s existence. Not the New Atheists. They are still in the business of trying to establish an objective, rational, secular ethics. They affirm that man can do this without referencing anything higher than himself. They are far from the first to do it, and they do not bring much new material to the table. But even after Nietzsche and his fellow moral nihilists seemed to undermine the possibility of establishing an objective secular morality, influential intellectuals of the twenty-first century seem more optimistic about the project than ever. Yet as those who went before have discovered, their project has insufficient foundations in a naturalistic worldview.

VII. The Queerness of New Atheist Morality

George Mavrodes, in his article “Religion and the Queerness of Morality,” sets the stage for the discussion of why New Atheism morality fails. It is not necessarily a specific flaw in New Atheist logic that constitutes its downfall; rather, the New Atheists’ overall beliefs about the nature of reality lack harmony with their moral philosophy. Mavrodes posits that if naturalism is correct, there can hardly be such oddities as binding moral obligations. He explores the nonreligious worldview from the perspective of Bertrand Russell, who in his essay “A Free Man’s Worship” says that man is a mere collection of atoms who will be completely extinguished at death. Not only the individual, in fact, but the entire human species is doomed to extinction. 51 What does this imply about the role of morality?

Mavrodes describes morality as something that prescribes certain duties or obligations which people must fulfill. A person’s unwillingness to fulfill her moral obligation is irrelevant to the obligation’s existence. Mavrodes admits that in many circumstances, fulfilling one’s moral obligations may result in a loss of contentment, pleasure, or happiness. Earthly benefits are the only ones possible in a Russellian world, but fulfilling our moral obligations often results in negative earthly benefits. Though it may benefit us if everyone else is moral, on many occasions it will actually hinder our self-interest to be moral ourselves. 52 Mavrodes writes,

51. George Mavrodes, “Religion and the Queerness of Morality,” in Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology, ed. Louis Pojman and Michael Rea, Thomson-Wadsworth, 2008.

52. Ibid., 584.

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I claim that in the actual world we have some obligations that, when we fulfill them, will confer on us no net Russellian benefit—in fact, they will result in a Russellian loss. If the world is Russellian, then Russellian benefits and losses are the only benefits and losses, and also then we have moral obligations whose fulfillment will result in a net loss of good to the one who fulfills them. I suggest, however, that it would be very strange to have such obligations—strange not simply in the sense of being unexpected or surprising but in some deeper way. I do not suggest that it is strange in the sense of having a straightforward logical defect, of being self-contradictory to claim that we have such obligations. Perhaps the best thing to say is that were it a fact that we had such obligations, then the world that included such a fact would be absurd—we would be living in a crazy world. 53

Mavrodes addresses various secular accounts of morality, including the theory that morality has evolutionary origins. Mavrodes thinks the evolutionary argument is plausible; perhaps moral feelings contribute to the survival of the species. However, moral feelings inbred by evolution are not the same as moral obligations. 54 The existence of moral obligations outside and above us would indicate that morality is not a subjective feeling but a feature of reality. It does not make sense that there are moral demands on us, says Mavrodes, “unless reality itself is committed to morality in some deep way. It makes sense only if there is a moral demand on the world too and only if reality will in the end satisfy that demand.” 55

If morality does exist in a Russellian world, Mavrodes concludes, it must be an “emergent” phenomenon with no true explanation. Perhaps “we have our duties. We can fulfill them and be moral, or we can ignore them and be immoral. If all that is crazy and absurd—well, so be it. Who are we to say that the world is not crazy and absurd?” 56 Obligations may emerge, but they cannot run deep. They “might cost a man everything but…[go] no further than man.” 57 This is not logically impossible. But neither does it seem plausible.

Mavrodes’ article is relevant to this discussion because the New Atheists emphatically believe in moral obligations. They do not think morality is merely an emotion or a matter of taste. They sometimes say that moral intuitions are the result of evolutionary processes, yet they clearly believe in an independent moral reality which is contingent on no individual’s feelings about it. Furthermore,

53. Mavrodes, 581. 54. Ibid., 582. 55. Ibid., 583. 56. Ibid., 585. 57. Ibid.

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Harris and Dawkins both admit that morally good behavior is often antithetical to our natural instincts of self-interest and self-preservation. Then who or what in the world requires such behavior of us? Perhaps, as the New Atheists seem to believe, morality simply is—we know it exists, and that’s that. But naturalism as an account of reality seems peculiarly ill-suited to encompass such a phenomenon. Perhaps there is a more plausible explanation: there is a moral order to the universe which flows out of the nature of its Creator, and He has given everyone knowledge of this order.

VIII. Contemporary Objections

Several contemporary philosophers have offered rebuttals to the New Atheist morality. Christian philosopher Chad Meister points out that the New Atheists rely heavily on the concept of objective evil in their critiques of religion. Rape, slavery, and racism are unambiguously evil, even if some cultures or religions condone them. But the concept of objective evil assumes that there are objective moral values which are binding on all people at all times. And if such objective moral values exist, Meister argues, they need a metaphysical foundation. 58 The lack of metaphysical foundation is New Atheism’s great shortcoming. Meister agrees with the New Atheists that people can (and do) believe in moral obligations even if they have no religious belief. The question is not whether people have moral beliefs but whether they are justified in those beliefs. The New Atheists confuse an epistemic issue with an ontological one. 59

We do indeed have moral knowledge, the nature of which seems to be transcendent of the natural world. And yet, from a naturalistic conception, how do we “understand the existence of a transcendent anything”? 60 We cannot, Meister argues—hence the New Atheists’ failure to offer any substantial, convincing moral theory. “Certainly objective moral values didn’t simply pop into existence ex nihilo...And indeed nothing in biological evolution, most especially the alleged selfish-gene phenomenon, is capable of providing the foundation necessary to ground unconditionally binding moral values.” 61 Simply put, atheists have never provided a convincing metaphysical basis for the existence of objective moral values, and the New Atheists are no exception.

John F. Haught, in his book God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens, voices similar thoughts to Meister. He identifies

58. Meister, 109. 59. Ibid., 110. 60. Ibid., 112. 61. Ibid., 117.

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a major flaw in Dawkins’ evolutionary account of morality: Dawkins sets out to provide a naturalistic account of morality, but he ends up admitting that virtue has little to do with the natural world. As stated previously, Dawkins thinks that many of our moral impulses are “misfirings” of our survival instincts. Yet as soon as Dawkins begins to speak of “blessed” misfirings of human behavior, he is no longer giving a purely naturalistic account of morality. He is saying that evolutionary impulses are such that they sometimes misfire in ethical directions. 62 Yet why is one kind of misfiring more ethical than another? Dawkins thinks he can make judgments about which types of evolutionary misfirings are ethical, and thus, “the actual content of our moral reflection and decision lies completely outside the scope of Darwinian explication after all.” 63 Besides, even if evolutionary processes can fully account for morality, this fact undermines Dawkins’ critiques of religion. Dawkins thinks he stands on higher moral ground than religious people do, but how could “a blind, indifferent, and amoral natural process” get him there? Such a process cannot account for why “justice, love, and the pursuit of truth are now unconditionally binding virtues.” 64

Haught makes an important distinction: Dawkins gives a historical account of morality, but not a metaphysical one. He assumes an objective moral standard when evaluating the products of evolutionary processes. And in The Selfish Gene, Dawkins plainly admits that our natural impulses are not that to which we should conform but which we ought to transcend. It is not in our biological nature to be good, yet we are morally obligated to be good nonetheless. If all that exists is the natural world, such an obligation cannot be accounted for.

In addition, Haught critiques Harris’s insistence that human reason is a sufficient ground for morality. Harris’s basic explanation, Haught says, is that “reason alone is the ultimate source, foundation, and justification of ethics.” 65 Yet why should we trust our reason? According to evolutionary thought, our minds are the product of irrational and mindless processes. 66 And even if reason is a means to moral knowledge, it is not infallible, and it certainly does not create morality. The fact that we seem to be able to grasp moral realities via our reason does not explain the nature and source of moral realities.

The New Atheists exhibit a pattern of missing the deeper issue in their discussions about morality. Perhaps evolution can explain our moral impulses—but

62. John F. Haught, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and

Hitchens (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 71. 63. Ibid., 71. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 74. 66. Ibid., 73.

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how is it that we can be aware of a moral obligation when we have absolutely no desire to fulfill it and doing so will not directly benefit us? Why should we fulfill such an obligation? Perhaps we are motivated to be good even if we do not believe in God. But why? Maybe we think we know who “deserves the name of goodness,” in Dawkins’ words. But who bestows this name, and why do we care? Perhaps moral truths are akin to self-evident mathematical truths. Perhaps rational people tend to agree about ethics and have a hardy sense of what is right and wrong which is a fairly stable foundation for practical morality. But why do rational people agree? Why are they so confident in their common starting-points for morality? Is there any way to account for all these “whys”? The New Atheists do not offer any satisfying answers, because they lack one crucial thing: a metaphysical foundation for moral intuitions.

IX. The Power of Moral Intuitions

The New Atheists cannot adequately explain the existence of moral intuitions. Yet they treat them as foundational. Even if their worldview indicates that moral intuitions have no grounding in metaphysical reality, the power of moral intuitions is such that they cannot dismiss them. The New Atheists seem to see their strongest moral intuitions as akin to foundational a priori truths or first principles. Even if they cannot be explained, they exist, and we must live according to them. Harris says that intuition is “the most basic constituent of our faculty of understanding.” 67 Yes, we may have to rely on intuition in ethical matters, but that does not mean that ethics is relative or ambiguous. 68 Intuition gives us knowledge of reality. Hitchens says he would probably commit suicide if he were even suspected of harming a child, saying, “This revulsion is innate in any healthy person, and does not need to be taught.” 69 He also says that “ordinary conscience” is sufficient as a moral guide, independent of religion. 70

Dawkins points out that different people tend to have very similar moral intuitions even if those intuitions are not well-thought out. He refers to a book by Marc Hauser about the universal sense of morality which has supposedly been inculcated by natural processes. When faced with moral dilemmas like the Trolley Problem (and its variations), people tend to come to the same conclusions even if they are unable to justify them. After doing studies where he posed ethical dilemmas to various groups, Hauser concluded that there is no significant

67. Harris, 182. 68. Ibid., 184. 69. Hitchens, God is not Great, 52. 70. Ibid., 214.

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difference between the moral intuitions of atheists and unbelievers, or between those of people in the West and people in non-Western cultures. 71 Hauser’s point, Dawkins says, is that “such moral intuitions are often not well thought out but that we feel them strongly anyway, because of our evolutionary heritage.” 72 We have already seen (from Dawkins himself) that evolutionary heritage cannot adequately explain morality. But Hauser’s central observation remains: common moral intuitions have powerful sway over virtually all human beings.

The New Atheists are outraged by the suggestion that atheists would resort to lives of uninhibited immorality. But if there is no God telling us what to do, what does prevent us from being bad? It is our moral intuitions. We are wired in such a way that makes it almost impossible for us to ignore or dismiss morality. New Atheism cannot explain this. Christianity can.

X. The Divine Context of Morality

From the Christian perspective, it makes sense that people have moral intuitions even if they have no religious training or education. It makes sense that they do not lead lives of total self-interest but instead continue to value sacrifice, kindness, and generosity. It makes sense that secularism and naturalism have been unable to eradicate morality even though they have stripped away its metaphysical foundations.

Christianity tells us that we are moral beings who inhabit a moral universe. We can deny God’s existence and develop philosophies which are void of the transcendent, but we cannot escape the reality in which we live. God has set eternity in the human heart and given us knowledge of good and evil. He has created us to be like him in righteousness and holiness. He has instilled in us a yearning for Himself, the source of all truth and goodness. This account of reality adequately explains the existence of moral intuitions and humanity’s ongoing commitment to morality. It is significantly more plausible than the New Atheists’ account of reality.

Haught says that from a Christian perspective, we have good reason to trust the rightness of our intuitions. We understand the source of these intuitions; they do in fact reflect truth and reality, for this is their divine purpose. Haught sums up the explanatory power of the Christian worldview beautifully:

Our minds have already been taken captive by a truthfulness that inheres in things, a truthfulness that we cannot possess but which possesses us. Likewise, we can

71. Dawkins, The God Delusion, 226. 72. Ibid., 225.

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MIKAEL GOOD | ON THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOOD AND EVIL

trust our sense of outrage at evil ultimately because we are already grasped by a goodness that is not made by ourselves, or by our genes, but which is the silent and unobtrusive goal of all our moral striving. Meaning, Truth, and Goodness are all names for the ultimate and endless horizon of Being in which our minds first awaken and our longing for rightness blossoms into virtue. The name theology gives to this ever-present context of all existence, thought, and action is “God.” And the name for our trustful surrender to this mystery is known as “faith.” 73

We are not born tabula rasa. Our minds are captive to the truth, even if we deny it. We are created with the imago Dei and wired to strive towards the Good. God in His mercy has given us knowledge of Himself and His ways; we know something about His invisible qualities from our moral intuitions. The moral nature of creation is meant to point beyond itself. Unfortunately, the New Atheists are short-sighted, worshiping moral goodness without looking up to worship the Creator.

73. Haught, God and the New Atheism, 75.

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Bibliogr aphy

Dawkins, Richard. The God Delusion. London, England: Bantam Press, 2006.

———. The Selfish Gene. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Dennett, Daniel C. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Penguin Books,2006.

Draper, Paul. “Atheism and Agnosticism.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2017 Edition),edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2017/entries/atheism-agnosticism/,accessed 9 May 2018.

Harris, Sam. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton& Company, Inc., 2005.

Haught, John F. God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens.Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008.

Hitchens, Christopher. “An Atheist Responds.” The Washington Post, 14 July 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/13/AR2007071301461.html, accessed 7 May 2018.

———. God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. New York: Twelve. 2007.

Mavrodes, George. “Religion and the Queerness of Morality.” In Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. Edited by Louis Pojman and Michael Rea. Thomson-Wadsworth. 2008.

Meister, Chad. “God, Evil and Morality.” In God is Great, God is Good: Why Believing in God is Reasonable and Responsible. Edited by Chad Meister & William Lane Craig. Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP Books, 2009.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Edited by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Random House, 2000.

Poplin, Mary. Is Reality Secular?: Testing the Assumptions of Four Global Worldviews. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

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