cernuvid's review against another edition
3.0
Very well argued and thorough. The most important part of this book in my opinion, however, is the message it conveys about how Atheists and Theists have to learn from each other and how we should tolerate one another's beliefs.
The book tends to get rather repetitive though, where the same core point appears in almost every chapter.
The book tends to get rather repetitive though, where the same core point appears in almost every chapter.
jmanchester0's review against another edition
3.0
It was a short book but a slow read. I don't know if it's because he was preaching to the choir or if I thought his writing style was slow.
"...the Bible cannot provide a solid foundation for morality or for knowledge of morality."
This is what I'm wrestling with right now.
I have argued for a long time that the Bible is not a book to give us a list of moral rules. In fact, though I believe in God, I would agree with the author's harm-based morality.
Reading this book makes you realize how arbitrary people truly are with their morality. Especially religious people. How many religious people state their morality is based on God's commands, yet do all kinds of inference to preach against things that God never explicitly commanded against (e.g., abortion and gay marriage). And since no two groups of fundamentalists can agree on the specific rules, it ends up being completely arbitrary. If Christians can't agree on morality then which one has the right to impose to impose his (or hers)?
"...the Bible cannot provide a solid foundation for morality or for knowledge of morality."
This is what I'm wrestling with right now.
I have argued for a long time that the Bible is not a book to give us a list of moral rules. In fact, though I believe in God, I would agree with the author's harm-based morality.
Reading this book makes you realize how arbitrary people truly are with their morality. Especially religious people. How many religious people state their morality is based on God's commands, yet do all kinds of inference to preach against things that God never explicitly commanded against (e.g., abortion and gay marriage). And since no two groups of fundamentalists can agree on the specific rules, it ends up being completely arbitrary. If Christians can't agree on morality then which one has the right to impose to impose his (or hers)?
icywaterfall's review against another edition
4.0
The main point of the book is to make a case that morality isn’t dependent on the notion of God. Sinnott-Armstrong argues that not all atheists are morally bad; that secular societies are not bound to become corrupt and depraved (but this is tricky issue as we need to define immoral); that objective morality makes sense and has a firm foundation without God; that atheists have adequate reason to be moral; and finally that atheists can know what is right and wrong without guidance from God or religious scriptures or institutions.
- If God exists, then believers owe Him gratitude, but it is not immoral for atheists to refuse to worship, thank, or even recognise God. In order to show that atheists are immoral, theists need to show that atheists perform acts that are immoral on nonreligious grounds. The claim, by theists, is that only love of God and fear of Hell would lead people to do the right thing, so if anyone doesn’t believe in Christ he is going to be immoral. But it is cheating to use belief in christ as a premise to then make the conclusion that atheists are immoral; even non-Christians would be immoral on this view. This is not to deny that atheists who are bad people exist; they obviously do. But they are bad not because they are atheists; they are bad because they are human. There have been many good atheist and agnostic people; so there is no basis for claiming that belief in God is necessary for living a good life or for being a good person. But what about those atheists would were really bad, like Stalin or Mao? Again, they weren’t bad because they were atheists; that would commit the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this.) When atheists are responsible for mass murder that doesn’t show that atheism is itself responsible for mass murder.
- Ultimately, both theists and atheists are human, so in each group some will be good, and others will be bad. Which worldview is better overall cannot be solved by picking good individuals on your side and bad individuals on the opposing side, because two can play that game. The question then becomes: does widespread atheism lead to immorality? It is important that we don’t cite religious forms of immorality as that is question-begging; we need some independent criteria with which to judge people. It is cheating to cite religious restrictions to show that secular societies are corrupt.
HOMICIDE; One study found that secular societies tended to have lower rates of homicide, juvenile mortality rates (including suicide), sexually transmitted disease, and adolescent pregnancy and abortion; (“Gregory Paul, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Social Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in Prosperous Democracies,” Journal of Religion and Society 7 (2005), 1–17.) This shows that belief in God at least does not lower homicide rates.
LESSER CRIMES; When it comes to lesser crimes, studies show that religious communities are somewhat less likely to engage in crime (“C. J. Baier and B. R. E. Wright, “‘If you love me, keep my commandments’: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Religion on Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38 (2001), 3–21.) and another study, which surveyed seventy-five metropolitan areas in the US found religion to be associated with less larceny, buglary, and assault but no less murder or rape. (W. S. Bainbridge, “The Religious Ecology of Deviance,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 288–95.) But we don’t know whether crime reduces religion or religion reduces crime.
DISCRIMINATION; many studies suggest an association between religion and discrimination, but the degree varies. Some groups of church-goers have been found to be less prejudices than others, but none has been found to be less prejudiced that non-religious people. (Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 459. See also 458–78, which summarize numerous studies; and C. D. Batson, P. A. Schoenrade, and L. W. Ventis, Religion and the Individual: A Socio-Psychological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.)
ABUSE; some crimes seem to be increased by religion; such as sexual abuse by clergy; but since we are all humans, it is not surprising that many religious people are bad. The question is whether religion exacerbates abuse. This is not limited to Catholic priests; about 75% of methodist clergywomen and also female rabbis indicate sexual abuse by male clergy (J. T. Chibnall, J. Wolf, and P. N. Duckro, “A National Survey of the Sexual Trauma Experiences of Catholic Nuns,” Review of Religious Research, 40 (1998), 142–67). When it comes to domestic abuse; surveys have found correlations between more frequent church attendance and less domestic abuse (For a summary of such surveys, see Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 439–43).
CHARITY; morally good people need to perform positive acts of helping the needy too; it was found that religious people were 25 percent more likely to give to the needy that secularists (91 versus 66 percent) and 23 percent more likely to volunteer (67 versus 44 percent). (“Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 34.) It would seem that many religious people donate in order to get out of Hell or to get into heaven; now it’s true that charity is an act in which the motive doesn’t matter (people in need who are helped don’t care if their benefactor had purity of heart) but forced gifts brings no moral credit. But since the above citation relies on self-reports; it’s not evident how accurate it is, since religious people are likely to inflate their charitable giving in surveys. When we turn to surveys that measure actual behavioural measures of helping, there is little evidence that religious people are more helpful than less religious or nonreligious people. (“Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, p. 447)
- Objective morality makes sense and has a firm base without God; we need to understand religion as obeying God’s command; and religion as constituting prevention of harm. Why is rape harmful? On the secular view, the answer is because it harms the victim for no adequate reason as there is no justification for the harm. What are harms? They include death, pain, disability; they aren’t uniquely ‘bad’ as they sometimes bring some good with them. Pain can build character; death can end pain, but harms are bad when they bring no benefit. Despite the fact that there are many diasgreements about what exactly constitutes causing harm, we can broadly agree on a lot, such as death, pain, and disability are all bad. Why are they bad? Because anyone who seeks them without an adequate reason is irrational. What is irrationality? One sign that an act is irrational is thta you would never advise anyone you care about to do that act. Causing harm to oneself without an adequate reason is irrational, not immoral. Morality enters the story when harm is caused to other people. Causing pain, disability, or death to others for no adequate reason is immoral. Why? The basic answer is that we have no reason to claim any special moral status for ourselves. This Golden Rule (do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is thought to come from Religion; but the fact that it is stated in so many diverse religious traditions shows the insights behind the Golden Rule does not depend on any particular religion. The Golden Rule is part of common sense. However, theists often say that secular moralities cannot explain what is so special about humans since other animals suffer. Theists can just say that humans were chosen by God, but secularists can say that humans are moral agents because
they are free and have free will; not Libertarian uncaused free will; but the freedom (or capacity) to reflect on and respond to reasons. So the reason humans have moral duties is because of our ability to reflect on and respond to reasons. But while harm should be prevented as far as possible, it cannot always be prevented. Judges and police cause harm when they jail criminals, but they cause harm in order to prevent further harm in the future, which is why these acts are not immoral, since they are justified harms. The question then becomes; when is it justified to cause harm to others? There is some empirical evidence of near-universal agreement when it comes to deciding which harms are justified. (“Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006)). More than 90% of respondents agreed that it is permissible to kill five people in order to save ten. This response is not affected much by religion, culture, gender, or any of the other demographic factors that can usually be thought of as influencing morality. One major source of disagreement is scope; the general principle states that its immoral to cause harm for no adequate reason, but not to whom it is wrong to cause harm to. It is enough that many cases are clear. People almost always admit that others who are like them in whatver ways they see as relevant are in the protected class. The crucial point is that this view of morality has no need of God. Some harms are worse than others, and that can sometimes be used to determine which reasons are adequate to justify causing which harms, even if God does not exist or never tells us which harms are worse. And we can cite human abilities to explain why we have moral duties other animals lack, even if we are not special in any of god’s eyes. This account also makes morality objective. If what makes an aggressive war morally wrong is that it hurts innocent people, then whether it is wrong does not depend on my desires, such as whether I want to harm those people. It also does not deend on my beliefs, such as whether I believe that the war will hurt those people. Religion-based prohibitions cannot be used against my secular harm-based theory because I am not trying to give an account of everything that anyone thinks is immoral. If there are certain acts that are immoral and do not cause harm, then the harm-based account of morality is not complete. If it’s not complete, it still reveals what makes almost all common immoral acts immoral and the harm-based theory of morality shows that much of morality has nothing to do with God. The harm-based core of morality we can call shared morality, because it is shared with theists who agree that rape, murder, theft, child abuse, and neglect are morally wrong; there might be some immoral acts which are not harm-based, call this extra morality; and there is yet another class of moral beliefs that cannot be jusitifed without religious backing; call this religious morality. My only goal has been to show how atheists and agnostics can provide an initial rough outline of the beginning of an objective account of the shared part of morality without invoking God.
- Atheists have adequate reason to be moral; it is normally in atheists’ interest to be moral, since immorality rarely pays, some people get away with horrible misdemeanour, but the odds are stacked against them. But this is not always the case; sometimes harming others is in our best interests; but athesits can recognise and act on nonegoistic reasons as much as anybody else can. What is a reason? It is a fact with rational force which can turn an otherwise irrational act into a rational act. Removing my appendix for no reason is irrational; but the fact that it is about to burst and kill me is a fact that turns the removal of my appendix from an irrational act into a rational one. Why be moral then? The fact that an act causes harm to others is a reason not to do that act, and the fact that an act prevents harm to others is a reason to do that act. (We don’t act based on reasons though; we find reasons for acts that we already do. As Hume and Haidt tirelessly say, reason is a slave of the passions. We don’t harm others, but not because of the reason that an act can cause harm; we don’t harm others because we feel repulsed by the thought of committing harm to members of our in-group.) The secular harm based reason to be moral can motivate people to be moral as long as they care about other people. Almost all atheists and agnostics do care about others, just as theists do. If our only reason to be moral is to avoid Hell, then our motivation is far from ideal. Some people really want a reason to be moral that will motivate psychopaths and others want a reason to be moral that does not leave morality arbitrary. I share the latter goal, but I can appreciate the former wish; unfortunately, I doubt that the former wish can be fulfilled. No reason will succeed in convincing everyone to be moral. The conflict is between those people who are satisfied to do what they can in the temporary world that they inhabit and other people who feel that morality and life are empty and meaningless unless they have some kind of eternal significance. Finiphiles love their finite world but still grant that infinite gains are meaningful. Infiniphiles love the infinite so much that they deny that finite goods, harms, and lives have any meaning at all in the face of eternity
- If God exists, then believers owe Him gratitude, but it is not immoral for atheists to refuse to worship, thank, or even recognise God. In order to show that atheists are immoral, theists need to show that atheists perform acts that are immoral on nonreligious grounds. The claim, by theists, is that only love of God and fear of Hell would lead people to do the right thing, so if anyone doesn’t believe in Christ he is going to be immoral. But it is cheating to use belief in christ as a premise to then make the conclusion that atheists are immoral; even non-Christians would be immoral on this view. This is not to deny that atheists who are bad people exist; they obviously do. But they are bad not because they are atheists; they are bad because they are human. There have been many good atheist and agnostic people; so there is no basis for claiming that belief in God is necessary for living a good life or for being a good person. But what about those atheists would were really bad, like Stalin or Mao? Again, they weren’t bad because they were atheists; that would commit the fallacy post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this.) When atheists are responsible for mass murder that doesn’t show that atheism is itself responsible for mass murder.
- Ultimately, both theists and atheists are human, so in each group some will be good, and others will be bad. Which worldview is better overall cannot be solved by picking good individuals on your side and bad individuals on the opposing side, because two can play that game. The question then becomes: does widespread atheism lead to immorality? It is important that we don’t cite religious forms of immorality as that is question-begging; we need some independent criteria with which to judge people. It is cheating to cite religious restrictions to show that secular societies are corrupt.
HOMICIDE; One study found that secular societies tended to have lower rates of homicide, juvenile mortality rates (including suicide), sexually transmitted disease, and adolescent pregnancy and abortion; (“Gregory Paul, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Social Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in Prosperous Democracies,” Journal of Religion and Society 7 (2005), 1–17.) This shows that belief in God at least does not lower homicide rates.
LESSER CRIMES; When it comes to lesser crimes, studies show that religious communities are somewhat less likely to engage in crime (“C. J. Baier and B. R. E. Wright, “‘If you love me, keep my commandments’: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Religion on Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38 (2001), 3–21.) and another study, which surveyed seventy-five metropolitan areas in the US found religion to be associated with less larceny, buglary, and assault but no less murder or rape. (W. S. Bainbridge, “The Religious Ecology of Deviance,” American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 288–95.) But we don’t know whether crime reduces religion or religion reduces crime.
DISCRIMINATION; many studies suggest an association between religion and discrimination, but the degree varies. Some groups of church-goers have been found to be less prejudices than others, but none has been found to be less prejudiced that non-religious people. (Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 459. See also 458–78, which summarize numerous studies; and C. D. Batson, P. A. Schoenrade, and L. W. Ventis, Religion and the Individual: A Socio-Psychological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993.)
ABUSE; some crimes seem to be increased by religion; such as sexual abuse by clergy; but since we are all humans, it is not surprising that many religious people are bad. The question is whether religion exacerbates abuse. This is not limited to Catholic priests; about 75% of methodist clergywomen and also female rabbis indicate sexual abuse by male clergy (J. T. Chibnall, J. Wolf, and P. N. Duckro, “A National Survey of the Sexual Trauma Experiences of Catholic Nuns,” Review of Religious Research, 40 (1998), 142–67). When it comes to domestic abuse; surveys have found correlations between more frequent church attendance and less domestic abuse (For a summary of such surveys, see Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 439–43).
CHARITY; morally good people need to perform positive acts of helping the needy too; it was found that religious people were 25 percent more likely to give to the needy that secularists (91 versus 66 percent) and 23 percent more likely to volunteer (67 versus 44 percent). (“Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 34.) It would seem that many religious people donate in order to get out of Hell or to get into heaven; now it’s true that charity is an act in which the motive doesn’t matter (people in need who are helped don’t care if their benefactor had purity of heart) but forced gifts brings no moral credit. But since the above citation relies on self-reports; it’s not evident how accurate it is, since religious people are likely to inflate their charitable giving in surveys. When we turn to surveys that measure actual behavioural measures of helping, there is little evidence that religious people are more helpful than less religious or nonreligious people. (“Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, p. 447)
- Objective morality makes sense and has a firm base without God; we need to understand religion as obeying God’s command; and religion as constituting prevention of harm. Why is rape harmful? On the secular view, the answer is because it harms the victim for no adequate reason as there is no justification for the harm. What are harms? They include death, pain, disability; they aren’t uniquely ‘bad’ as they sometimes bring some good with them. Pain can build character; death can end pain, but harms are bad when they bring no benefit. Despite the fact that there are many diasgreements about what exactly constitutes causing harm, we can broadly agree on a lot, such as death, pain, and disability are all bad. Why are they bad? Because anyone who seeks them without an adequate reason is irrational. What is irrationality? One sign that an act is irrational is thta you would never advise anyone you care about to do that act. Causing harm to oneself without an adequate reason is irrational, not immoral. Morality enters the story when harm is caused to other people. Causing pain, disability, or death to others for no adequate reason is immoral. Why? The basic answer is that we have no reason to claim any special moral status for ourselves. This Golden Rule (do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is thought to come from Religion; but the fact that it is stated in so many diverse religious traditions shows the insights behind the Golden Rule does not depend on any particular religion. The Golden Rule is part of common sense. However, theists often say that secular moralities cannot explain what is so special about humans since other animals suffer. Theists can just say that humans were chosen by God, but secularists can say that humans are moral agents because
they are free and have free will; not Libertarian uncaused free will; but the freedom (or capacity) to reflect on and respond to reasons. So the reason humans have moral duties is because of our ability to reflect on and respond to reasons. But while harm should be prevented as far as possible, it cannot always be prevented. Judges and police cause harm when they jail criminals, but they cause harm in order to prevent further harm in the future, which is why these acts are not immoral, since they are justified harms. The question then becomes; when is it justified to cause harm to others? There is some empirical evidence of near-universal agreement when it comes to deciding which harms are justified. (“Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006)). More than 90% of respondents agreed that it is permissible to kill five people in order to save ten. This response is not affected much by religion, culture, gender, or any of the other demographic factors that can usually be thought of as influencing morality. One major source of disagreement is scope; the general principle states that its immoral to cause harm for no adequate reason, but not to whom it is wrong to cause harm to. It is enough that many cases are clear. People almost always admit that others who are like them in whatver ways they see as relevant are in the protected class. The crucial point is that this view of morality has no need of God. Some harms are worse than others, and that can sometimes be used to determine which reasons are adequate to justify causing which harms, even if God does not exist or never tells us which harms are worse. And we can cite human abilities to explain why we have moral duties other animals lack, even if we are not special in any of god’s eyes. This account also makes morality objective. If what makes an aggressive war morally wrong is that it hurts innocent people, then whether it is wrong does not depend on my desires, such as whether I want to harm those people. It also does not deend on my beliefs, such as whether I believe that the war will hurt those people. Religion-based prohibitions cannot be used against my secular harm-based theory because I am not trying to give an account of everything that anyone thinks is immoral. If there are certain acts that are immoral and do not cause harm, then the harm-based account of morality is not complete. If it’s not complete, it still reveals what makes almost all common immoral acts immoral and the harm-based theory of morality shows that much of morality has nothing to do with God. The harm-based core of morality we can call shared morality, because it is shared with theists who agree that rape, murder, theft, child abuse, and neglect are morally wrong; there might be some immoral acts which are not harm-based, call this extra morality; and there is yet another class of moral beliefs that cannot be jusitifed without religious backing; call this religious morality. My only goal has been to show how atheists and agnostics can provide an initial rough outline of the beginning of an objective account of the shared part of morality without invoking God.
- Atheists have adequate reason to be moral; it is normally in atheists’ interest to be moral, since immorality rarely pays, some people get away with horrible misdemeanour, but the odds are stacked against them. But this is not always the case; sometimes harming others is in our best interests; but athesits can recognise and act on nonegoistic reasons as much as anybody else can. What is a reason? It is a fact with rational force which can turn an otherwise irrational act into a rational act. Removing my appendix for no reason is irrational; but the fact that it is about to burst and kill me is a fact that turns the removal of my appendix from an irrational act into a rational one. Why be moral then? The fact that an act causes harm to others is a reason not to do that act, and the fact that an act prevents harm to others is a reason to do that act. (We don’t act based on reasons though; we find reasons for acts that we already do. As Hume and Haidt tirelessly say, reason is a slave of the passions. We don’t harm others, but not because of the reason that an act can cause harm; we don’t harm others because we feel repulsed by the thought of committing harm to members of our in-group.) The secular harm based reason to be moral can motivate people to be moral as long as they care about other people. Almost all atheists and agnostics do care about others, just as theists do. If our only reason to be moral is to avoid Hell, then our motivation is far from ideal. Some people really want a reason to be moral that will motivate psychopaths and others want a reason to be moral that does not leave morality arbitrary. I share the latter goal, but I can appreciate the former wish; unfortunately, I doubt that the former wish can be fulfilled. No reason will succeed in convincing everyone to be moral. The conflict is between those people who are satisfied to do what they can in the temporary world that they inhabit and other people who feel that morality and life are empty and meaningless unless they have some kind of eternal significance. Finiphiles love their finite world but still grant that infinite gains are meaningful. Infiniphiles love the infinite so much that they deny that finite goods, harms, and lives have any meaning at all in the face of eternity
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