The Myth of Atheistic Ethics

Following upon the argument of the previous article, an insightful reader offered a clarification that by accidental is meant: “arising from specific experiences accumulated as an ethos over time,” and by arbitrary is meant: “concerning the dynamic of human to human interaction based on personal encounter.” Using these senses for the terms, which amount essentially to subjectivism, it can be observed that if ethics arise from specific experiences accumulated over time, i.e. accidentally, then ethics is essentially non-different from prejudice or personal taste, and can never escape subjectivism. Subjective ethics are no ethics. These accidental ethics can also never have any certainty, because when ethics is based on experience, then, hypothetically, an entirely different set of experiences could produce an entirely different ethics where the selfsame action, say theft, is both wrong and right depending on whether or not one has had a bad or good experience of it. Moreover, if ethics arise from the dynamic of human to human interaction based on personal encounter, i.e. arbitrarily, then ethics is again essentially non-different from prejudice or personal taste, and likewise cannot escape subjectivism. According to this scheme, ethics is made impossible.

One could perhaps also say more about the transfer from experience to ethical prescription, as to why, for example, a subjective experience y of action x ought to mean that action x is wrong. If action x causes suffering, what ethical principle renders the cause of suffering to be translated as ethically wrong? For example, giving birth causes suffering, so according to this reasoning then sex is ethical wrongdoing. At this point the very means of our survival is a fortiori unethical. Homework causes many people suffering, therefore it must be wrong. Taxation causes suffering, therefore it is wrong. The person who disagrees with another person causes suffering, therefore the one who disagrees is wrong. Eating vegetables causes suffering, therefore it is wrong to eat them. The consequences become absurd, and so it is nonsense to state that the foundation of ethics could be the experience of suffering, or even any experience. Suffering in and of itself does not determine whether or not something is ethical.

An atheist may also attempt to escape subjectivist ethics by pointing to the objective actions of nature in order to develop an ethic, but animals can be found to eat their young, cannibalize their own kind, commit tribal warfare and genocide, enslave, rape, and any number of other things. There would be almost no way to exclude any possible action on these terms, and so the actions of nature cannot provide a foundation for a system of ethics. Nature itself causes suffering, sometimes for the sake of survival and sometimes with no apparent cause, and so if nature’s actions justify an action, then nature itself would therefore justify causing suffering to others, either with or without apparent purpose. Moreover, the decision-making process of animals, driven by instinct and desire, would as a consequence of the appeal to nature become the ethical foundation for humans choosing according to the same principles of instinct and desire, and so subjectivism would not be escaped by appealing to the objective world in this way, either, but established as a foundation for ethical action.

Concerning historic atheism, one would not have to dig deeply into history in order to find examples of ethical disparities between individual atheists such as Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Richard Dawkins, and atheist governments such as the Soviet Union and China, but the question at hand is the issue that they had no truly objective means or canon to establish an ethical system beyond the opinions of the individuals and leaders themselves. In other words, arbitrariness is bound up with atheist ethics, and also with the atheist authority structures which would seek to impose the arbitrary ethical system. What is the guarantee of ethics in any of these systems? Is it, say, because of Rand’s wit, Sartre’s sensualism, Dawkin’s evolutionary philosophy, or Stalin's might, or because of a subjective experience of displeasure, a majority of people's opinion, or something else? Having no canon and nothing but subjective opinion loosely based on reasoning and personal experience, it is clear that these independent atheists found no meaningful or lasting agreement amongst themselves, discovered no transcendent self-evident ethical principle or authority, and so again in no way to escape subjectivism, either the subjectivism of the individual or the group.

In light of the foregoing, the great problem for the atheist is shown to be centered on induction’s inability to generate reliable ethical principles. In essence, where induction means “the inference of a general law from particular instances,” if an ethical prescription is not given from a non-arbitrary authoritative source, then any number of experiences will not discover an ethical principle. For example, as shown above, it is not at all clear that the experience of displeasure could serve as a foundation for an ethical system, and would, on the contrary, produce many absurd conclusions.

The conclusions of inductive reasoning can be disproved by a single contrary instance. For example, if a person states, “all blackbirds are black,” and then one non-black blackbird is found, then the statement “all blackbirds are black” is proved wrong. Thus if one inductively reasons according to the principle of displeasure to the wrongness of theft, all that needs to be found is one instance of theft which does not cause displeasure and the wrongness of theft goes up in smoke. Further problems with displeasure as the foundation for ethics arise, too, for if one, say, steals from a person and they are unaware of it, then the law of displeasure has not been violated, and the action cannot be considered unethical. Or, if one does not “care” that person z stole item x, then the law of displeasure has not been violated and the action cannot be considered unethical, but ethical!

To conclude, atheism lacks both a canon and an authority, cannot escape the arbitrariness of subjectivism, and cannot through the accidents of inductive reasoning develop a certain ethical system. Without a transcendental authority that reveals a true ethic together with ethical prescriptions, ethics is rendered impossible. Hopefully, atheism will decline as people realize that it is morally bankrupt.

An Accidental Virtue: Why Atheist Ethics are Necessarily Arbitrary and Accidental

A common claim of atheists is that they “don't need ‘a book’ to tell them how to be a good person.” The purport of this claim is that the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, and virtue and vice, are in some sense self-evident and readily accessible to reason. If, however, this claim is examined more closely, then its emptiness will become clear.

In order to make this problem more clear, the concept of canon will prove illuminating. It is not a word which is often heard in day to day speech, and so deserves a brief explanation. One standard definition of the term canon is “a general law, rule, principle, or criterion by which something is judged.” It comes from the Greek, kanon, and calls to mind a measuring stick like a ruler or “any straight rod or bar; rule; standard of excellence.”

The notion of canon is important, especially in things requiring measurement, for without an objective standard of measure, a canon, there is no way to have any certainty regarding the true dimensions of any object of inquiry. An additional consequence of having no accurate measurement means that one will also be unable to squarely fit any additional pieces together. Thus if one wants, say, to lay the foundation for a house, fit a pipe, or build a bridge, one must have an objective canon, a fixed measure or criterion by which to ensure that the construction does not fall apart.

A similar situation obtains in ethics. For example, if there is an ethical prescription, say, against theft, meaning the forbidding of a claim to ownership of any property that is not rightfully one’s own, i.e. to not steal, then this prescription serves as a canon, a criterion, a measure by which to evaluate whether or not an act can be regarded as theft. Without this objective canon, however, nothing is objectively ethical, and therefore it would be impossible to measure whether or not an action was ethically forbidden and thus wrong. It is the criterion which makes this evaluation possible. In other words, a canon is the organizing principle that makes ethics possible.

An additional factor impacting the concept of canon is that of authority. This is made obvious in the differences between the US standard and the metric systems. For example, when people design parts for a machine, they will measure according to one or the other system. When a system is chosen and put in place, the various manufacturers can produce size-matching products. Although in this example the systems of measure are each equally valid, it is clear that uniformity of measure is what makes complex integration of many machine parts feasible, and that the imposition of this measure by an authority that makes its feasibility actual. In other words, the canon becomes effectual because it is established by an authority (whether this be initiated by an academic institution, scientific academy, or governmental organization, etc.).

Without an authority there is no foundation upon which to establish the consistent criterion requisite for effectual compatibility. No authority means no canon; no canon means no organizing principle. The problem, therefore, for the atheist, is that there is neither an objective criterion nor authority, and therefore no possibility for establishing any stable, non-arbitrary ethical system.

Atheism can equally produce anything from a principle of hedonism to total permissiveness to one of eugenics-inspired genocide to one of killing all humans in order to preserve the environment, and anything inbetween. But within atheism there is absolutely no authority that can be appealed to which states one is objectively right and the other objectively wrong. The appeal will be to reason, desire, force (alas), precedent, survival, democratic processes, various philosophers, studies, aesthetics, psychology, or any number of other things, but canonically none of them will agree with each other or be able to establish a certain foundation or principle of integration for ethics.

Christianity, however, as regards ethics, has an explicit, unquestioned authority in the Lord Jesus Christ, and as such He establishes both the canon and the authority for determining what is right and wrong. For example, if a man hates his enemy, one can immediately point to Christ who stated unequivocally to love one’s enemy (Matthew 5:44; Romans 13:9; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5:4; 1 John 2:9, 2:11, 4:20). The atheist, however, has no fixed reference to point to. He may point to this or that atheist philosopher, idea, or ruling authority, either individual or collective, perhaps a Hegel, a Rand, or a Stalin, a survival of the fittest, but ultimately they all will prove arbitrary starting points for ethical thinking, each unable to escape the ethical subjectivism which ultimately destroys all ethics. He can compel conformity, certainly, but virtue remains unknown.

Of course, very many atheists have claimed that they have a system for distinguishing right from wrong, and for identifying virtue, but without a canon these are by nature arbitrary and accidental virtue. Atheism, when it comes down to it, cannot determine whether it has produced virtuous or vicious acts, and, what is worse, there is no mechanism that in principle can inform them. It could be moral to kill inferior races, to lie to further a political cause, to destroy humanity in order to save the planet, to sterilize those deemed undesirable, or the opposite, they cannot really know. They will borrow ethical momentum from Christian civilization, of course, and arbitrarily claim it as self-evident, but without Christ these borrowed virtues will lose their center and become increasingly distorted, grotesque caricatures.

And so atheists are incorrect when they state they don’t need an authoritative source for being a good person. Without an authoritative source there is no objective canon, and with no canon there is no ability to truly distinguish right from wrong. They philosophically cannot know what a good person is or does, and so any virtue they practice is necessarily arbitrary and accidental. Virtue is not self-evident, and therefore the atheist’s claim to have it while having no means to certainly identify it and distinguish it from vice is empty.

See the following article for continued analysis.