IIHumanism and Morality

It is conventionally believed, especially by those with a religious frame of mind, that we get our knowledge and understanding of moral beliefs and practices from religion. In fact, it is often claimed by the faithful, that without religion our moral sense would atrophy. Humanists believe that nothing could be further from the truth.

Our morals are the choices we make and principles we adopt in deciding how we should treat other people. Alone on his desert island, Robinson Crusoe had no moral questions until Man Friday came along. In our time this simple point of view has become complicated. Now environmental issues such as climate change and our relationship to animals are part of our moral landscape.

Humanists believe that our moral sense is not taught by God or other religious sources. In Christian cultures the morality promoted by the Bible, especially the Old Testament morality, consists of, by and large, the moral beliefs and values of a specific people at a certain stage in their history. Much of the advice offered by God to the old testament tribes, would be found morally repugnant by many people these days. As far as New Testament teaching is concerned, although it is grounded on a maturer sense of moral virtue than the Old Testament, at its heart lie some ideas that are, to say the least, questionable. These include the Doctrines of Original Sin and the Atonement.

Our moral compass is developed socially and is rooted in the Darwinian need to survive. We had to learn how to work and live together. Learning to do so conveyed a strong evolutionary benefit. In fact humanity has developed a widespread consensus on our moral values. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins calls it "the Moral Zeitgeist" and as evidence for it cites, as one example among many, an internet site offering "New 10 commandments for today", as follows:

• Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
• In all things, strive to cause no harm.
• Treat your fellow human beings, your fellow living things, and the world in general with love, honesty, faithfulness and respect,
• Do not overlook evil of shrink from administering justice, but always be ready to forgive wrongdoing freely admitted and honestly regretted.
• Live life with a sense of joy and wonder.
• Always seek to be learning something new.
• Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be ready to discard even a cherished belief if it does not conform to them.
• Never seek to censor or cut yourself off from dissent; always respect the right of others to disagree with you.
• Form independent opinions on the basis of your own reason and experience; do not allow yourself to be led blindly by others.
• Question everything.

As Dawkins points out, the source of this text has no obvious connection with religious belief.

In our own times, especially well-understood by professionals working in education, we believe that our acquisition of moral judgement is best understood in terms of developmental psychology. It is acquired, stage by stage, as we grow from childhood into adult life. In simple terms, the sanctions on the behaviour of a baby are pleasure and pain. If it hurts, don't do it. This stage is sometimes referred to as anomie. The next stage, heteronomy, is governed by reward and punishment. Then comes socionomy where the main sanctions are social praise and blame and is strongly influenced by the individual's need to belong. Finally, there is the Kantian ideal of autonomy, the independent self-determining, adult. Humanists believe that this Enlightenment ideal is to be celebrated as part of our human birthright.

It follows from this that humanists see the moral life as essentially reasonable. If any moral authority is to be truly accepted, its strength must lie in its reasonableness, not in the source of its putative authority. It is clear from the culture of modern children that a key element in reasonableness is fairness.

Humanists feel it is regrettable than in the religious culture that has prevailed for generations we continue to try to root our moral teachings in a source that many people find impossible to believe. It is not surprising that many young people seem to suffer from a moral rootlessness with predictable social consequences.