‘Without God, What Stops People From Unethical Actions?’
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/02/04
That is a good question.
It raises some profound issues as to the nature of right and wrong, the nature of the transcendent, the ideas of pleasure and pain, guilt and shame, honour and ethical fulfillment, and even God the Most High.
So consider with me the idea proposed by many people within traditional ethical and moral traditions about the lack of a God and then the amoral anarchy to ensure from that place.
Yet we come to the less serious matter of the question often posed by the religious to the non-religious: If there is no God, won’t everyone act immorally? When it is not meant as a rhetorical question, it is often intended as a serious one.
That’s fair. It’s a possibility, not an impossibility. It does, though, seem improbable, not probable. Various formulations of God apart from God and, indeed, many gods have pervaded societies around the world. Immorality exists in societies that both adhere to God and go without it.
Most advanced industrial economies, with fewer individuals believing in a God than the rest of the world, take an internal per capita comparison with the international per nation contrast. Those societies are by far the best in advancing women’s rights, individual wealth, and a whole host of rights actualizations and freedoms in their societies.
Indeed, there are taboos and areas for profound improvement. However, they are doing quite well in terms of an operating system. The retort, in return, can resort to something other than an educated opinion, statistics, or quality of life metrics.
One merely needs to reflect. This individual — the poser of the question — is making a claim. With no God to rein people in, the worst and most basest desires will be fulfilled, and brutal actions will reign. Consider the nature of this; we know that a good upbringing and having the basics of life reduce violence, not eliminate it.
However, without a God, this person claims total anarchy will ensue. Others and I make no such claim and seem to behave quite well for the most part. Canadians seem to have a good reputation, especially with such a large non-religious population.
A large — to the questioner — population without any proper religious believers who should, by this logic, engage in the worst atrocities. If this is not the case, as we have seen, this question reflects less on the hypothetical and more on the character of the person giving the question.
They would act amorally without a God. That’s the reality. We come to the tired response: “It sounds as if you need God while I do not.” Isn’t this person proclaiming themselves as dangerous in light of the evidence?
There is no God, no moral acts, or fewer moral acts; thus, the conception sits in the psychology of the person asking the question in the first place. The God concept doesn’t come without consequences in the reasoning, such as the above.
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