This year the New Zealand apologetics organization Thinking Matters ran a “Confident Christianity Conference” in Auckland. I was asked to speak at this conference on the topic. Does Morality Need God? Below is a slightly streamlined version of the talk I gave.

I outlined four assumptions about the kind of requirements morality imposes upon us. These were

1. Inescapability: moral requirements apply to us irrespective of whether following them contributes to any ends or aims we currently desire.
2. Impartiality: moral requirements are justified from an impartial perspective.
3. Authority: agents always have conclusive reasons to do what is morally required and never have sufficiently good reasons for doing what is morally wrong.
4. Accountability: if something is morally required, we are guilty and liable to blame if we fail to do it and lack an adequate excuse.  

We can now turn to my first contention: secular accounts of morality cannot coherently account for these assumptions. I will make two points in support of this.

The first is that unless prudential and impartial requirements never conflict, we won’t be able to account for these assumptions coherently.[1] Why think this? Suppose it is not always in one’s long-term self-interest to comply with impartial demands. Sometimes a particular type of practical dilemma will occur. Impartial demands will conflict with prudential requirements. When they do, we face the question: What reason is there to act impartially rather than in one’s self-interest? What reason do we have for always giving precedence to impartial demands in such cases? [2]

One cannot answer this question by pointing out that we have impartial reasons to follow such rules based on the fact that other people will benefit or be harmed by our actions. The question, after all, is why I should give impartial reasons precedence in such cases. Nor can it be answered by appealing to my interests or because the case is one where morality and such things conflict. Many philosophers have argued that no answer is forthcoming. Three examples will illustrate the problem:

Example #1. Ms. Poore has lived many years in grinding poverty. She is not starving but has only the bare necessities. She has tried very hard to get ahead by hard work, but nothing has come of her efforts. An opportunity to steal a large sum of money arises. If Ms. Poore steals the money and invests it wisely, she can obtain many desirable things her poverty has denied her: a well-balanced diet, decent housing, adequate heat in the winter, health insurance, new career opportunities through education, and so on. Moreover, if she steals the money, her chances of being caught are very low, and she knows this. She is also aware that the person who owns the money is well off and will not be greatly harmed by the theft. Let us add that Ms. Poore rationally believes that if she fails to steal the money, she will likely live in poverty for the remainder of her life. In short, Ms. Poore faces the choice of stealing the money or living in grinding poverty the rest of her life.[3]

Example 2: A young woman has her heart set on getting into medical school. If she gets in, through hard work and dedication she will graduate and become a good physician. However, even after much study she has been unable to score high enough on the MCATs to be admitted to any medical school. She finds herself with an opportunity to cheat that will ensure her an MCAT score that is high enough to gain admittance to some medical school and so to eventually fulfill her lifelong dream. Her patients will not be harmed by being treated by an incompetent physician because she will not be an incompetent physician once she receives the necessary training. At most the only person who will be harmed is the person denied admittance to medical school because this young woman will take one of the available places and so leave one less slot to be filled. Assume that this person will only be slightly harmed and that somehow the young woman knows all this. It would be wrong for this young woman to cheat to get into medical school, but why isn’t it true that if she does not care about cheating, then what she has most reason to do is to cheat if she knows she can get away with it?[4]

Example: 3 Suppose your son has robbed a rich man of his jewels, the police are after him, and he asks you to help him escape to Brazil. You know you can arrange things so that neither of you will get caught. You also know that if he is caught he will be sent to prison and his life will be ruined, but if he escapes, he will have a good life in Brazil. It would be wrong of you to help him escape, but why isn’t it true that what you have most reason to do is to help your son escape justice?[5]

Cases like this suggest that, if impartial and prudential requirements conflict, agents don’t always have reasons to give precedence to the former. However, this means the total reasons in favor of doing what is impartially demanded will not always be stronger than the reasons against acting. Consequently, agents will not have conclusive reasons to do what they are morally required to do.

We can summarize the conclusion here as an inference from three intuitively plausible premises:

[1] Moral requirements are inescapable demands justified from an impartial perspective

[2] agents always have conclusive reasons to do what is morally required

[3] If there are cases where impartial and prudential requirements clash, then either (a) agents have reasons to always give precedence to impartial demands in such cases or (b) agents do not always have conclusive reasons to follow impartial demands.

[4] agents do not always have reasons to give precedence to impartial demands in such cases.

If these premises are all correct, we must either embrace the assumption that impartial and prudential demands never conflict or embrace a contradiction. We cannot claim both those moral requirements are inescapable and impartial and claim that agents have conclusive reasons to follow them. 

Second, secular accounts of the kind of accountability we have to morality would, if true, undermine this assumption. They entail that impartial and prudential requirements do sometimes conflict. I noted earlier that if something is morally required, we are accountable for doing it. Historically, many understood this in terms of accountability to God. However, God cannot play that role in a secular theory. What does? Atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott Armstrong answers: “human beings” do. “We each have the authority to hold people responsible for violating moral duties. If my neighbor steals jewelry from his grandmother, then surely, I have the authority to criticize him and his action…You do, too.” [6] “Morality is enforced verbally by public condemnation or socially by ostracizing violators.” [7]. In addition, “we all have the authority to vote for representatives who enforce moral norms through formal institutions, such as by legal punishments…. We collectively have the authority to impose such sanctions.” [8]

These kinds of sanctions might account for our being accountable to moral requirements. However, they are insufficient to ensure that it is always in everyone’s self-interest to comply with impartial requirements. The” norms enforced through legal punishments,” “public condemnation,” or “social ostracization” are often not justified from an impartial point of view. Laws often endorse or permit unjust practices that fail to take the interests of a segment of society into account. The accepted mores of the groups people belong to, such as nations, and gangs, often are designed to advance the interests of the group over and above those of others. The mores we legally and socially enforce are often unjustified by facts and sound reasoning. The laws of a society can and often do persecute people who act impartially. There are familiar cases where a person becomes a member of a social group where acting immoral enhances their social status, whereas doing what is right results in social ostracization.

Even if these norms were co-extensive, agents would not be held to account in cases where a person can violate these norms secretly without being detected. There also will be cases where whatever sanctions are incurred will be more than offset by the benefits gained by non-compliance. There will be many cases where a person knows that it is extremely unlikely they will be caught, and the risk of punishment or sanction is more than outweighed by the benefits one receives from disobeying.^[9]

In summary, unless we assume that prudential and impartial commands never conflict, we cannot account for our fundamental intuitions about morality. Second, secular accounts of the kind of accountability we have to morality undermine this assumption. This means that secular accounts of morality cannot coherently account for our fundamental assumptions about morality.

[1] The argument from this section is influenced by the argument proposed by Henry Sidgwick (1900) The Methods of Ethics Book IV, chapter VI available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46743/46743-h/46743-h.htm#Page_496 and also John Gay (1731) The Dissertation Concerning the Fundamental Principle of Virtue or Morality available at https://oll.libertyfund.org/title/wollaston-british-moralists-vol-2#lf1368-02_head_022  I adapt their ideas in my own way. David Brink develops a similar line of argument; see David Brink, “A Puzzle about the Rational Authority of Morality” and also “Kantian Rationalism: Inescapability, Authority, and Supremacy” in In Garrett Cullity & Berys Nigel Gaut (eds.), Ethics and Practical Reason. (Oxford University Press, 1997). 255–291 

[2] See, for example, David Brink, “Self-Love and Altruism” Social Philosophy & Policy 14 (1997) 123.

[3] This example comes from C. Stephen Layman’s “God and the Moral Order” Faith and Philosophy, 23 (2006): 307

[4]  This example comes from Bruce Russell’s “Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism,” in Louis Pojman, Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings (New York: Wadsworth, 1998), p. 595.

[5] Ibid 595,

[6] Walter Sinnott Armstrong, Morality Without God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 98.

[7] Ibid, 98.

[8] Ibid,

[9] These last two paragraphs summarize the argument of Henry Sidgwick in “The Method of Ethics” see Book II, chapter V.  available at https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46743/46743-h/46743-h.htm#Page_162 accessed 25/8/22

Tags:   Bruce Russell · Dualism of Practical Reason · Henry Sidgwick · Stephen Layman · Walter Sinnott-ArmstrongNo Comments