In his bestselling book, the God Delusion, Richard Dawkin’s responds to the question: “If there is no God, Why be good?”

Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: ‘Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? …If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would ‘commit robbery, rape, and murder’, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, ‘and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you’. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.[1]

Dawkin’s thinks someone who asks “if there is no God, why be moral?” is assuming that the Gods approval is the only reason they to do good. He attacks this assumption with a dilemma. Either this assumption is true, or it is not true. If it is true, the questioner reveals themself to be an immoral person. He is someone who refrains from theft, murder and rape only because God will punish him. We should shun and avoid someone like this. If the questioner’s assumption is not true, then the claim that there is no reason to do good without God is undermined. The fact he would continue to do what is right, even if God did not exist shows that he does have reason to do good even if God does not exist. 

I think each step of this response is mistaken. 

First, is it true that this question presupposes that threat of divine punishment is the only reason anyone has to refrain from immoral behaviour? I think the answer is clearly no.

The question “why be good?” or “why be moral?” This question has a long history in western thought question going back at least as far as Plato’s republic. John Tilly explains that according to the standard interpretation of the question, it involves: 

A request for a justification for giving precedence to moral reasons for action when such reasons conflict with other reasons (e.g., those of self-interest). Whenever moral reasons recommend one course of action and nonmoral reasons recommend another, why should I favor the first set of reasons? What argument could persuade me to do[2]

This simple question has proved difficult to answer. So much so that, the 19th-century Philosopher Henry Sidgwick declared it to be “The profoundest problem in ethics”. During the 17th-19th[3] centuries, several philosophers argued this recalcitrant problem posed difficultly for any purely secular understanding of morality. Thomas Reid’s (1710–1796) summary is typical.

What about cases where concern for our happiness on the whole conflicts with a concern for duty? This is a merely imaginary conflict; there can’t actually be any such opposition between the two leading principles. While the world is under a wise and benevolent administration, it’s impossible that any man should be a loser by doing his duty. So every man who believes in God, while he is careful to do his duty, can safely leave the care of his happiness to his Maker. He realizes that his most effective way of attending to his long-run happiness is by attending to his duty. But consider the case of an atheist who wrongly thinks his virtue is contrary to his happiness on the whole. … this man’s dilemma is without remedy. It will be impossible for him to act so as not to ·seem to himself to· contradict a leading principle of his nature. He must either sacrifice his happiness to virtue, or his virtue to happiness, and he has to decide whether it is better to be a fool or to be a knave! [4]

Reid points out that the “why be moral?” challenge presupposes the existence of a dilemma: what duty requires contradicts what my long-term happiness requires. Because the “the world is under a wise and benevolent administration” Reid thinks such dilemmas are “imaginary”. They never, in fact, occur. However, they would occur if, contrary to fact, God did not exist. So, if atheism is true, some answer to this dilemma is needed if morality’s rational authority is to be vindicated.

Nothing in this line of argument assumes that the only reason Reid has to do good is divine reward or punishment. Reid speaks of a dilemma between “two rational governing principles in the constitution of man.” [5]. A dilemma occurs when one has two options, both of which are problematic. We do have powerful moral reasons independent of our self-interest demanding us to do what is right. But we also have powerful prudential reasons pointing the other way. For Reid, Divine sanctions mean that prudential reasons never really point the other way. But they are not the only reasons in the equation. Reid is not atypical in this. Someone who asks, “if there is no God, why be good?” need not assume the only reason he or anyone else has for doing good is divine reward or punishment.

However, let’s suppose for the sake of argument they did assume this. Dawkin’s attempted rebuttal of this assumption fails. Consider Dawkin’s discussion of the dilemmas first horn.

“If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would ‘commit robbery, rape, and murder’, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, ‘and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you’.[6]

Dawkin objects that anyone who answers “yes” reveals themselves to be an immoral person. That may be true. But it is also irrelevant in this context. Remember what the question is: Dawkin’s interlocutor asks the question “Why we should always do what is morally right when it contradicts our self-interest?”. To answer, “because if you don’t, you are acting immorality” misses the point. Dawkin’s interlocutor knows it is immoral to act contrary to immorality. He is instead asking why he should side with morality and not self-interest in the first place.

An illustration might help here. Imagine that a religious sceptic was asking “If God exists, why should I do what he says”? I doubt Dawkin’s would consider the response “because God tells you to and if you don’t, you aren’t following God” to be a satisfactory answer. The question is “why to obey God?”, answering “because God tells you to”  begs the very question at issue.

The same thing is true when the question is “if there is no God, why be good”. Dawkin’s interlocutor is asking “if God does not exist, why always do what is required by morality”? The response “if you don’t you are immoral” begs the question in the same way. Just as the theist cannot cite God’s commands as a reason for obeying God’s commands, the atheist cannot cite moral requirements as a reason for obeying moral requirements.

So Dawkin’s treatment of the first horn misses the point. What about the second horn? Dawkin’s writes.

If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.[7]

This confuses two separate questions. The original question was “why should you be good, without God”. The questioner doubts we always have reasons to do always what is right. However, this doubt is compatible with admitting that one would continue to do what is right without God. What you should do and what you would do are not the same thing. Dawkin’s argument here was anticipated and responded to by Henry Sidgwick :

It was no use to say that if I was a moral hero, I should have formed a habit of willing actions beneficial to others which would remain in force, even with my own pleasure in the other scale. I knew that at any rate, I was not the kind of moral hero who does this without reason; from blind habit. Nor did I ever wish to be that kind of hero: for it seemed to me that that kind of hero, however admirable, was certainly not a philosopher. I must somehow see that it was right for me to sacrifice my happiness for the good of the whole of which I am a part.[8]

Sidgwick accepts that if I am a highly moral person, I will have formed a habit of doing good actions. These habits will mean I will have a strong disposition to continue doing good when I believe it is not in my self-interest. But, this does not show that I really do have a reason for doing this. I could be just acting out of blind habit and prior commitment to morality. One possible response to the question, “why be good?” is to admit there is no reason and affirm we “must simply decide between the moral life and its alternatives.” [9] People can sometimes make arbitrary non-rational leaps of faith where they commit to some form of life without reason or rational grounds. If people never did this, the whole raison d’être for writing The God Delusion is undermined. The fact that morally upright people admit that they would always do what is right in the absence of God. Doesn’t show they have reasons to do so.

Lets recap: Someone asks a serious sceptical question about Dawkin’s beliefs. His response is first to express outrage at an “ignoble.” [10] question and claim it is a “conversation stopper.” [11]. Then he paints a very uncharitable and inaccurate picture of the person who dares ask this ignoble question. Suggesting that religious believers who raise this sceptical challenge reveal themselves to be selfish egoists, amoral people we should consider shunning. When the believer objects that he isnt, in fact, an amoralist, Dawkin’s takes that as evidence the believer doesn’t really accept the sceptical challenge. The subtext is that anyone who really harboured this doubt about secular morality is a dangerous psychopath we are well-advised to keep away from. 

For the reasons spelt out above, none of this count as a good answer to the question: why be moral without God” There may, or may not, be a good answer to this question. But if there is Dawkin’s doesn’t provide it. This seems to be more a case of passive-aggressive rhetorical bullying than substance. He responds to a sceptical question, not by answering it. But with sarcastic outrage, an insinuation the questioner is dangerous, evil, and should be shunned for asking the question. These are the kind of tactics one expects from cult leaders or so-called religious fundamentalists. One doesn’t expect it from someone who is supposed to be a proponent of rational scientific free inquiry. 

[1] Richard Dawkin’s, The God Delusion (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) 226-227

[2] John Tilley, “Two (Faulty) Responses to the Challenge of Amoralism” available at https://www.pdcnet.org/wcp20-paideia/content/wcp20-paideia_1998_0044_0248_0253 accessed 26/1/21 

[3] Examples include Rene Descartes, John Locke, George Berkeley, John Gay, John Brown, Edmund Law William Paley, Thomas Reid, and Immanuel Kant, perhaps most famous for pressing this difficulty is Henry’s Sidgwick.

[4] Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, III iii. viii, 4 see http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/reid1788essay3part3.pdf accessed 12 January 2020

[5] See, Thomas Reid, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, III iii. viii, 4 seehttp://www.earlymoderntexts.com/assets/pdfs/reid1788essay3part3.pdf accessed 12 January 2020

[6] Dawkins, God Delusion, 227

[7] Dawkins, God Delusion, 227

[8] See, Henry Sidgwick “Method of Ethics” Preface to the sixth edition.

[9] See Tilley, Two (Faulty) Responses to the Challenge of Amoralism” available at https://www.pdcnet.org/wcp20-paideia/content/wcp20-paideia_1998_0044_0248_0253 accessed 26/1/21

[10] Dawkins, God Delusion, 226

[11] Dawkins, God Delusion, he has no answer to the question and hence nothing to say. 

Tags:   God and Morality · Henry Sidgwick · Richard Dawkins · The God Delusion · Thomas Reid · Why be Moral?No Comments