It is the unfortunate and incorrect opinion of many that atheists and agnostics cannot legitimately have morals. The argument goes roughly as follows: “If I didn’t believe in God or in heaven and hell, what incentive would I have to act morally?”

Western religion is a poor vehicle for teaching and justifying morality. There is a real and distinct difference between the two.

Defining right and wrong in terms of the perceived commands of a supernatural being is known as a divine command theory of ethics. There are many problems with divine command theories, but I will focus on the logical inconsistency of divine command ethics and the idea of Abraham’s “God,” a purportedly omni-benevolent and omnipotent supernatural force.

Divine command theorists assert on God’s behalf not only that God is the ultimate force of good, but also that an act is right or wrong due to God’s command.

The initial problem with this view is that if the standards of right and wrong are subject to God’s command, God cannot be considered either good or evil. From this follows that God cannot be omni-benevolent.

While the thesis that God is not omni-benevolent has a lot more evidence than other views of God, I suspect that this is not a conclusion acceptable to most of the Judeo-Christian community.

The way out of this situation would be to suggest that the standards of right and wrong are external to God, and that God adheres to the right in such a way as to be considered perfectly good.

The apparent problem with this view, however, is that there now exists something higher than God that holds authority over him. In order to retain omni-benevolence, God loses omnipotence. Either conclusion nullifies his definition as produced by Western monotheism.

So it would seem that the application of divine command ethics leaves little left of the Christian god. At the very least, the basis for an entire mode of morality should not stand on conceptual misunderstandings and logical impossibility.

This issue left aside, could the fear of eternal punishment and hell be used as a proper motivator for moral behavior?

To suggest that a good way to live morally is through the want to avoid punishment and to love a god is naive. Can the fear of hell, a place of infinite punishment and eternal separation from God, be used to compel people to act? I argue that it cannot, for the concept of hell, like the concept of Christian divine command ethics, rests upon a contradiction.

According to the standard Christian conception of God, God is just. The argument for the existence of hell, naturally, is that it would be unjust for God to reward both the repentant and the unrepentant on Judgment Day. The word ‘just’ can perhaps best be taken to mean fair according to what is deserved. However, is God a just god in these circumstances?

I argue that he is not. First of all, God is supposed to love everybody, even those who purportedly do not deserve it — sinners. If they do not deserve it, then his love would be unjust according to his own moral standards.

Even putting this issue aside, hell is not just. It would be just to punish sinners in a way that is proportional to their sins. In the case of human beings who live finite amounts of time, this would amount to some sort of finite punishment. Infinite punishment for any amount of finite wrongdoing is undeserved, and thus unjust. Therefore, the conception of hell and God are muddled in a similar way as Christian divine command ethics. Building a moral foundation upon such unsure footing is dubious at best.

What is to be said for morality, then? Should we all run wild in the streets and burn, rape and pillage? Should I kill anybody who makes me angry because I do not and cannot rationally believe in eternal punishment, or in a god who can legitimately command right and wrong?

Of course not – I do not burn, rape and pillage because I find it offensive, horrendous and reprehensible behavior. I have a firm respect for mankind itself that is commanded by no god, compelled by no measure of eternal hell.

I believe it is wrong to kill others because doing so does not respect them as rational, sentient beings like myself. Such a moral code springs from love itself, not from fear.

I love my fellow human, for I am a human. We are social beings, and loving each other is a natural emotion. From social love comes the want and need to preserve happy, productive conditions, and from this ground springs sound, helpful morality.

E-mail Mike your thoughts on morality and religion at [email protected].