Open For Debate - Every month, we will publish a controversial (we hope!) article, and give you, the reader, a chance to give us your opinion. We will compile selected opinions into an article, in the broadest range possible, for the next month's issue. (See "And the Debate Continues..." starting with next month's issue!)
Can there be an ethics without God? I take this question to mean: without a God who reveals the way to us, can we human beings, on our own, find a way to live in harmony within ourselves, in harmony with each other, in harmony with the other living beings with which we share our planet, in harmony with our non-living environment?
To me the evidence seems conclusive that in American society today an almost universal belief in a God, and an almost universal assent to ethical rules supposedly revealed by that God, have not produced such a harmonious way of life. So belief in God is surely not sufficient to bring about a workable ethical stance: if it were, our society and our world would be very different than they are.
Could it be, though, that our present inharmonious way of life arises out of our personal failures in living according to God's perfect revealed commandments, not from any defect in the commandments themselves? From our corrupt and sinful nature, rather than from imperfections in God's moral laws? The question thus arises: if we perfectly followed the moral injunctions which we find embodied in scripture, would we be living harmoniously? I think not. I believe that we might still find men dominating women, children being neglected or physically abused, gays and lesbians being criticized and ostracized, and the environment being despoiled. So something more than belief in God, perhaps even something other than belief in God, seems required.
Granting, then, that belief in God is not a sufficient condition for living harmoniously in the world, is it a necessary condition? Again, I think not. Although there are Christians and Jews and Muslims who do live personally, socially, and ecologically harmonious lives, there are also atheists and agnostics and secular humanists who do the same. In fact, the case might be made that those who adhere to the scientific worldview, who tend not to be religious in the conventional sense, are more likely to accept this vision of harmonious living than those who take their moral guidance from scripture. Scripture seems to be silent on many moral questions which in today's world seem crucially important, and to take a perspective on other moral questions (such as homosexuality) which enlightened contemporary opinion has outgrown. Be that as it may, it seems clear that belief in God is not a necessary condition for adopting and living by an ethic of harmony.
Hence belief in God is neither necessary nor sufficient as a basis for an ethic of harmony.
But does such an ethic already exist? If not, how do we get one?
The answer that makes the most sense to me is: we invent one. I think that the usual metaphor of "morality as Law" seriously misleads us. It leads us to seek a Lawgiver, and I believe that we do not find one. If we reject the notion of a Lawgiver as determining the Moral Law for us, but retain the notion of morality as Law, we are tempted to seek the origin of Moral Law in abstract reason: another exercise in futility, in my view. It seems to me that we do not find our ethic ready-made, either delivered to us by revelation from God or somehow established in the very nature of rationality. Instead, I think, we have to investigate the nature of man and the cosmos, and then devise a structure of duties and prohibitions and permissions which effectively harmonizes our lives within the cosmos. My metaphor is "morality as cultural design", with holistic harmony as the "design criterion".
Such an ethic is in process of being developed. Activists for children's welfare, the movement for gay and lesbian rights, the environmental movement, parts of the feminist movement--all these are engaged in struggles out of which I believe a unitary humanistic, "harmonistic" ethics can arise. But I believe that these fragments of an ethic, necessary and valuable as each of them may be, must be joined in an overarching conceptual unity if they are to be teachable, learnable, and livable. Devising such a unity can be an exciting project. Let us contribute to it.
**This work is copyrighted by Bert Clanton. Reproduction is prohibited without express permission of the author**