While talking to Nancy Powell (President of United States Atheists in Portland) this week she said something that really hit home with me. She said she had a revelation recently about the whole concept of “morality”. Too often we as atheists are asked that, since we don’t believe in God of the Bible, where do our morals come from? Nancy said that when asked this question in the future, she is simply going to respond “I have no morals. I have ethics.” I think I agree with her.
When you look up the word “moral” in the dictionary you get several definitions:
If we look at the two words it appears that morals tend to be concerned with “right and wrong” or “goodness and badness”. Morals judge people. They define behavior as moral or immoral — right or wrong — black and white.
But life is not black and white, rather it is shades of gray. In the Bible the moral principal says “Thou shall not kill”, yet there are good reasons to kill, such as self defence and defending your family. The Bible also offers the moral “Honor thy father and mother”, but what about those parents who harm their children? Do they deserve to be honored? It would seem that morals are more concerned with judging and the appearance of correctness, rather than with practical application in real life.
When I was in high school I came up with an ethic that I try to live my life by. That ethic is: Everyone should be able to live and act as they choose, provided they don’t infringe upon the basic rights of other human beings. An ethic doesn’t have to judge right and wrong, just offer a standard of conduct that is fair to everyone. I may not agree with how some people live their lives, but they have every right to live as they choose, as long as they aren’t infringing upon others. (We all must realize that “infringing upon others” also includes destruction of the environment, such as pollution, clearcutting the rainforests and driving other species to extinction.) I guess I was a Humanist back then and didn’t know it.
The problem with moral conduct is that it is usually has religious origins and tries to infringe upon others’ lives. Morals try to says abortion is wrong, but so is birth control to prevent the need for the abortion. Morals also try to say living a gay lifestyle is wrong simply because an old book says it’s wrong. It doesn’t offer any proof about why living a gay lifestyle is wrong. I recently heard Pat Robertson say that the reason a homosexual lifestyle is immoral is because it does not lead to procreation. What about infertile heterosexual couples? Or heterosexual couples that do not want children? That’s the problem with morals, they can be applied differently to different people.
Morals change depending on when and where you live and what religion dominates, therefore they are very inconsistent. In the Taliban Afghanistan, it was immoral for a woman to be in public showing any skin. While in other cultures nudity is common and often the norm. In the past, Christians once used the Bible to justify slavery. They were bringing the slaves to a better “Christian” life. They later used the same Bible to admonish slavery. After all, in the Bible Jesus said, “Love thy brother as thy soul, guard him as the apple of thine eye”.
If you examine the Ethical Standards of various groups, you will see that ethics do not judge. Rather they offer a proper way to conduct yourself in life. Ethics speak to responsibility, respect, treating others fairly and being accountable for your actions. Because ethics are a standard of behavior and not subjectively based upon something like religion, they can be applied to everyone everywhere.
I’ve never liked the idea of “moral conduct” and I now understand why. I think I have to agree with Nancy, and when asked where my morals come from, next time I will simply respond, “I don’t have morals, I have ethics.” I like that.
Hello. My name is Angela Christine Byers (yes, my mother actually named me “Angel of Christ”), and I am an atheist.
When you look up the word “ethic” you get the simple definition:
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Angela C. Byers