Part 1: You did not get your morals from god

Does that seem like a bold claim? It's not; in fact it's quite obvious.

In this set of journal entries I am going to discuss "morals" and where they might come from. In this section, I will introduce and destroy the notion that morals come from god. Next, I will examine the question of whether morals come from nature or natural laws and some of the consequences of that view. Then, in the final section, we'll consider the problem of arriving at morals through reason or the will of the group. Let me be clear about my agenda: my purpose in doing this is to undermine any confidence you may have in "morality." What you replace it with is up to you.

What kind of god might give us morals?

When discussing religion it's difficult to know where to start because, of course, there isn't just one god that we can talk about. Since the dawn of recorded history there have been a bewildering number of gods and a great many of them have been cited as the bringers of morals. But, be that as it may, a great number of theists that I've talked to have asserted confidently that "without god to give us a sense of right and wrong, we would have no beliefs." Or variations to that effect. In some cases, the god has given this moral guidance in a concrete form:



In other cases, it's more subtle. But, for those who believe their morals were god-given, there are a few possibilities:
- You believe in one of the current batch of gods (christian, muslim, jewish, hindu, buddhist, scientologist)
- You believe in your own personal variation of one of the current batch of gods
- You believe in some sort of divine essence that manifests itself in the form of all the gods people have ever and will ever believe in

The majority of people who claim to believe their god gave them morals fall into the first category, a handful into the second, and very few into the third. There might be other forms of belief (e.g.: scientology or Spinoza's god) but generally they aren't held up as teaching a particular divine morality.

I've encountered people who smilingly claim that all gods are manifestations of one and that any difference apparent between them is in man's imagining. Let us dispense with that one immediately: if there was such a god as the source of morals, then it must enjoy contradicting itself, since it has - at one time or another - offered moral guidance encouraging everything from child sacrifice to wearing funny hats. I think we can agree that a god that says "killing is bad" at the same time as it encourages child sacrifice cannot be said to be a moral being, itself.

In order to understand why none of the current batch of gods could have given us morality, let us take a quick look at the history of morals and gods.

The Ancient Chinese

Those of us (like myself) who have grown up in societies steeped in European/enlightenment thought, revere the ancient thinkers of Greece as the founders of philosophy, political science, logic, and science. The ancient greeks flourished as a culture of philosophy during the age of the greats Parmenides (450BC), Plato (430BC) and Aristotle (380BC) - about 100 years after the lifetime of Confucius. If we were trying to sort out priority for an academic game of "who published first?" in great philosophy, Confucius wins.


(Confucius Published First FTW)

In fact, Confucius touched on a number of points that are "ahead of his time." I note with interest that he beat the enlightenment political philosopher John Locke (1632AD) to the punch, as well. Locke's famous premise from his 2nd Treatise on Government (1689AD) Government rules with the consent of the governed is presaged by Confucius' own: "By winning the people, the kingdom is won; by losing the people, the kingdom is lost." Confucius' Analects also touches upon modern topics like divorce; my point here is not that he was "ahead of his time" but rather that people, in 500BC, were dealing with more or less the same issues that they do, today. I have to admit that while I was reading Confucius I kept expecting him to make some comments about not downloading MP3s or using pirated software.

Confucius, in fact, in a manner startlingly similar to Plato's channelling for Socrates, described himself as not a great sage but merely one who collected and organized the wisdom of thinkers before him. That's not a crazy claim, because Chinese civilization is very ancient and was relatively advanced compared to the rest of the world. The Chinese Shang Dynasty (1600BC) left behind written artifacts (referring to an earlier dynasty, still!) including bronze-works inscribed with text, intended for various ritual purposes. Some Shang Dynasty legends that come back to us through these bits of text, involve the downfall of the earlier dynasty:


(Shang Dynasty Bronze, ca. 1500BC)

The Xia dynasty have failed morally and Heaven has determined her end. Therefore, Shang Tang was commanded to destroy Xia with the promise of Heaven's help. In the dark, Heaven destroyed the fortress' pool. Shang Tang then gained victory easily.

Here we have written examples that show that the Shang were worried about morals in (at least) 1600BC and probably quite a bit earlier than that - 1000 years before the birth of Confucius. Obviously, the word "moral" in that translation might be inaccurate, but we see clearly the linkage between the success of the state and the will of the gods. We see this connection time and time again throughout human history and I will revisit it several times in the course of this journal entry.

Also, before Confucius was the "Classic of History" ( Shàngshū ) - a collection of Chinese political and philosophical thinking dating from around 600BC. It includes things, going by the titles of sections, such as: "Marquis Lü on Punishments" and "Against Luxurious Ease." Again, here is a document that is clearly concerned with issues of morality, politics, and ethics.

The Ancient Greeks

I was raised with the idea that "The ancient Greek thinkers invented philosophy" but I think it's pretty clear that the ancient Chinese have priority - not merely for "publishing first" but because Confucius engages us in a deeply rational exploration of propriety, righteousness, loyalty, and filial piety. None of that diminishes in the slightest the amazing thinking that came out of Greece. There is one thing that I can say absolutely, for certain, and that is that Socrates and Confucius would have greatly enjoyed meeting eachother. The fireworks would have gone on for decades.


(Lycurgus, 800BC)

As with the Shang Dynasty bronzes and porcelains, we're only able to know that about the ancients that they left behind covered in writing. We know that the Spartan king Lycurgus "The Lawgiver"(800BC) established the laws of Sparta, and defined their social and moral structures. He claimed to have gotten advice from The Oracle At Delphi, and, the story goes, cemented his laws into place with a bit of a trick. He planned to visit The Oracle for a consultation and talked the council and people to swear to follow his laws until he returned - then went out into the wilderness and let himself starve to death so as to never return. Again, we see the dynamic between political establishment and the basis for the government, looking for reassurance and justification from The Oracle.

The golden age of ancient Greek philosophy was an amazing time: Parmenides, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle as well as Epicurus(341BC) and Archimedes (287BC). As when you read Confucius' Analects, one thing really jumps out at you as you read these philosophers: they were concerned with day-to-day events and were trying to figure out "what is the right thing to do?" They were trying to establish (or demolish) the justification of the state, or other people's actions. In some cases they were quirky and funny about it, but the deep questions they asked were serious. In Plato's Euthyphro(399BC), Socrates asks Euthyphro to help him out, because Euthyphro clearly knows what is pious and Socrates is facing trial for impiety. If you're familiar with Plato's dialogues, you know what happens next: Socrates ties poor Euthyphro in knots; it makes you a bit sympathetic to the Athenians who wanted Socrates killed - he was that annoying.

Euthyphro offers, at one point, the definition that piety (what is right) is "that which is loved by all the gods." In other words, god gives Euthyphro a sense of what is right and wrong. Socrates' counter-attack is to ask Euthyphro if that means that something is good only because the gods say it is, or is it good and the gods appreciate it in and of itself because it is good? Of course, this places Euthyphro in the horrible position of having to say either that there is a higher truth than the gods, or that he knows the gods' will better than they do. From that point on, it's mostly downhill for poor Euthyphro.

In 399BC we see highly intelligent people asking the same questions about the origin of morals as we hear today. Personally, if I were going to adopt the view that my morals were given to me by god, I'd be a bit nervous to discover that Socrates had already been on that particular case 2,400 years ago, and that religion's answer to Socrates' question was to silence him up by putting him to death. Other ancient Greek philosophers attacked the problem of evil (theodicy) by examining the moral basis of the gods' behavior. Epicurus questions whether the gods are either good, or powerless, thus:
- If a perfectly good god exists, then evil does not.
- There is evil in the world.
- Therefore, a perfectly good god does not exist.

If you are a believer in one of the current batch of gods, it might be a bit sobering to realize that your religion has probably not adequately answered that challenge, even though it has had over a 1,000 years to try. But that observation is not central to our question of whether you get your morals from god - after all, your god could be a flawed and disempowered being, holding you to an artificially high standard that even it cannot achieve, itself.

For the time, let us leave the ancient Greeks and look at the religions that have sprung from the middle east: judaism, christianity, islam, and all their descendants.

The Morals of The King

When I was a child, they taught us that "the cradle of civilization" was the area between the Tigris and the Euphrates river, where the Sumerians established the first known agricultural advanced civilization around 5300BC. By 3500BC they had invented writing. That's how we know that in 2300BC, King Lagash made it illegal for a woman to take multiple husbands and established stoning as the penalty for doing so. Once again, clearly, we see a society that is very old that is concerned with questions of morality, behavior, and punishment.

I also feel I must mention that the Sumerians invented beer in around 4000BC. Truly, an advanced civilization.


(Hammurabi's Code)

By 1750BC the Babylonian king, Hammurabi, published his famous code of law. Most of us, as children, were told of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" - that's moral doctrine courtesy of Hammurabi. By the way, Hammurabi justified his authority to make these decrees as: the will of the god, Marduk. Time after time, we see this pattern: political authority justified by "the will of the gods" issuing decrees and making rules.

So, at this point, you must pause and consider an important question: Do you think god gave Hammurabi his morals?

Here's a gem from Hammurabi's code:
If anyone brings an accusation against a man, and the accused goes to the river and leaps into the river, if he sinks in the river his accuser shall take possession of his house.

If there is a moral basis to this law, I don't know what it is - unless it's that you should eat well (maintain lots of body fat) and be smart enough to fill your lungs with air when you jump into the river. By the way, it was the Greek, Archimedes, who figured out the principle by which things float in water, in 287BC.

Clearly, Hammurabi's code is not the work of a very moral god. Or, perhaps Marduk didn't know about Archimedes' Principle, either - or wasn't very concerned with justice. Most of us would probably not say that Hammurabi's code, with its retributive grievance system, was particularly "moral" - yet it contains 200+ rules and touches upon murder and theft. Once again, we see ancient people concerned with day-to-day problems about property, violence, etc.

If a man violate the wife (betrothed or child-wife) of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.

Obviously, Hammurabi understood what "rape" and "murder" and "theft" were. As well as the concept of "blame" which is crucial to any system of morality.

The Abrahamic Gods


This isn't Moses, it's St Jerome
But I like Caravaggio so much, you've just got to deal with it.

Judaism, christianity, and islam all spring from the ancient jewish religion established by Abraham. What was the god of Abraham? Unlike the ancient Greeks and Chinese, the bronze-age middle eastern nomads didn't create much in the way of lasting artifacts or writings. But, Babylon predates the biblical exodus, and the legend of Moses, rather handily. In terms of academic priority, Hammurabi published first. The rest is details.

I'm not going to try to wade into the gigantic mess of legendary claims that are early judaism, because it's not necessary for our ability to understand where morals came from. We can tell absolutely, for sure, that Moses was not the first guy who cooked up the idea of coming up with a bunch of rules and saying that they were handed to him by god. I'm also a bit less inclined to trust The Dead Sea Scrolls - the earliest written vesions of jewish lore - which are relatively "new" and date only from 200BC compared to pieces of Babylonian stone that are a 1000 years older than judaism as a religion, or Chinese bronzes that are 1500 years older than The Dead Sea Scrolls.

If you believe that Moses got morality from god, then did Hammurabi, also? Because, what The Code of Hammurabi shows us clearly and unequivocably, is that people already knew 'murder is wrong' before Moses told them. If you believe that "morals come from Marduk" then, maybe - just maybe - you've got a leg to stand on, but the ancient Chinese didn't worship Marduk and they were cooking up moral systems of their own, without any help from Moses on Sinai, Hammurabi of Babylon, or Lycurgus of Sparta.

In other words, if you think your morals come from god, you're simply fooling yourself. Worse, if you think your morals come from god, and now I've shown you that they don't, then you've been basing your morals on false belief; i.e.: you've been immoral.

Back To The Ancient Greeks

How, then, did humans build this elaborate history of claiming that morals come from the gods? And why?


Wherever you tread in philosophy
Plato and Confucius' footprints are there ahead of you.

The answer is pretty simple, and it shouldn't surprise you at all: political expediency. I've tried to point out, repeatedly, where the moral codes of societies are "rooted" in "the gods say so." One of the reasons for that is, simply, because establishing a moral system based on pure rationality is really, really hard (that's for part 3) and politicians eventually give up philosophizing and say the closest thing possible to "because I said so." It's hard to argue with a monarch who has monopolized violence at his back, when he says "the gods told me I'm right" - because that spearman, right there, is going to make a really big hole in you if you keep arguing. If you don't believe me, ask Socrates.

Plato offers answers in The Republic. At the upper levels of his utopia, we have the philosopher-king and guardians, the remainder of society stratified based on learning and ability. To achieve the higher ranks one must be increasingly educated. But what of the masses?

But what shall their education be? ... Now early life is very impressible, and children ought not to learn what they will have to unlearn when they grow up; we must therefore have a censorship of nursery tales, banishing some and keeping others. Some of them are very improper, as we may see in the great instances of Homer and Hesiod, who not only tell lies but bad lies; stories about Uranus and Saturn, which are immoral as well as false, and which should never be spoken of to young persons, or indeed at all; or, if at all, then in a mystery, after the sacrifice, not of an Eleusinian pig, but of some unprocurable animal. Shall our youth be encouraged to beat their fathers by the example of Zeus, or our citizens be incited to quarrel by hearing or seeing representations of strife among the gods? Shall they listen to the narrative of Hephaestus binding his mother, and of Zeus sending him flying for helping her when she was beaten? Such tales may possibly have a mystical interpretation, but the young are incapable of understanding allegory. If any one asks what tales are to be allowed, we will answer that we are legislators and not book-makers; we only lay down the principles according to which books are to be written; to write them is the duty of others.

In other words Plato's answer is: "We'll raise them on propaganda."

And our first principle is, that God must be represented as he is; not as the author of all things, but of good only. We will not suffer the poets to say that he is the steward of good and evil, or that he has two casks full of destinies;—or that Athene and Zeus incited Pandarus to break the treaty; or that God caused the sufferings of Niobe, or of Pelops, or the Trojan war; or that he makes men sin when he wishes to destroy them. Either these were not the actions of the gods, or God was just, and men were the better for being punished. But that the deed was evil, and God the author, is a wicked, suicidal fiction which we will allow no one, old or young, to utter. This is our first and great principle—God is the author of good only.

The ancient Greeks' gods were like normal people, only super-powerful. They fought, loved, lied, and envied, just like we do. Plato recognizes that divine morality and the moral justfication for the state are entwined in an embrace that can be either deadly(for the state) or controlling(for the people) and - as every politician before him, he explicitly advocates the use of religion as a tool for political control.

So there it lies. Does god give man morals? No. Instead, what we see is that humans have always been concerned with this topic, and countless ancient rulers have used piety as a tool to put their primacy in a place where it's safe from challenge. "Who made you king?" is easily answered by "the gods!" because otherwise you've got to spear a lot of your own people. To Plato, the gods must be moral because otherwise the citizens will question the legitimacy of their power to confer legitimacy upon the state.

If you started reading this with the idea in your mind that you got your morals from god, I hope you're going to re-assess that notion. Unfortunately, I will not be able to offer you a replacement - indeed, I expect to make matters worse in the next parts of this journal entry. Many theists I have talked to have claimed "but an atheist cannot have any basis for morality!" Well, you can take heart that you were probably right about that, but that's a topic for another day.

If you started reading this without that particular belief, I hope I've amused you a bit and maybe given you some more things to think about in the relationship between religion and political power. The notion that morals are a technique of political control is one we'll revisit again later.