What is the foundation of secular morality? Can it criticize other moral principles? If it is based on social convention, how can it defend absolute values (such as what is “always” right or “always” wrong)? This is why some embrace amorality.

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In 1993, a surreal debate took place in New York.

Two American philosophers faced off: the renowned Richard C. Taylor and a then-young William Lane Craig. Both believers, the former a theist and the latter a Christian. The topic: is the foundation of morality natural (secular) or supernatural?

It was a dialogue of the deaf.

Or rather, reading the proceedings shows that Taylor — defending the natural foundation of morality — understood very little of Lane Craig’s arguments, while Craig — defending the opposite view — never managed to explain himself clearly.

 

On secular morality: the great misunderstanding

The subject lends itself to a huge misunderstanding that derails the discussion from the outset.

Claiming that secular morality cannot have an objective foundation DOES NOT MEAN that non-believers are bad people, lack morals, or other nonsense of the sort.

It is clear to everyone that many non-believers behave a hundred times more rightly and better than many believers.

The point is not this, but rather whether the secular morality they follow (which can be the best) has objective value or is the product of a social convention.

Much of R.C. Taylor’s argument rested on claiming that one does not need to believe in God to live ethically and that «there is no need to be religious to understand that for humans to live in peace and happiness, they must not aggress against each other».

But no one has ever doubted this (there lies the misunderstanding!).

Rather, the question is what foundation secular morality uses to back its claims? For example, how do you judge a person who does not want to live in peace and therefore feels justified in aggression? That person is wrong, okay. But why? Who decides what is right or wrong?

 

Secular morality is based on societal custom

When the famous philosopher Taylor hit the core of the debate, this is what he said: «The basis of morality is conventional, meaning the rules of morality were invented by humans over many generations».

Abstaining from lying, stealing, assaulting, killing, Taylor says, «these are not rules invented by God. No one imagines that without God telling us these things, we would not have known better or would see nothing wrong in doing them».

On the contrary, Taylor argued that Aristotle «assumed people knew the difference between right and wrong, deriving it from experience and conventions. The role of religion and ethics has been to reinforce this conventional morality».

According to Taylor, the basis of morality is the so-called ethic of reciprocity: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, do not do to others what you would not want done to you”. «Only in this way», he stated, «can we live in peace and achieve the human goods we need».

For Richard C. Taylor, morality (i.e., principles like loving your neighbor, living in peace, etc.) rests on a convention, on human experience, on the will and customs of that society at that given historical moment.

 

The weakness of secular morality and its contradictions

The problem is that this position is hardly sustainable and the contradiction is almost inevitable. A few questions suffice to expose its weakness.

For example, the “challenger” Lane Craig could have asked: if the majority in a society believes that peace is not right and that living constantly at war is more useful and morally virtuous, would peace then become immoral in that society?

There could be many ideological reasons supporting constant war, such as a heroic conception valuing martial virtues (courage, sacrifice, discipline, honor), conflict as the engine of history and natural selection, priority of social unity against a common enemy, and so on.

Are these ethical positions right? Wrong? If that particular society considers them right, who are other societies to judge?

And again: if by convention a society decides that the ethic of reciprocity Taylor speaks of is immoral and considers instead the law of pure advantage to be more virtuous (i.e., the only moral criterion is what maximizes one’s own benefit, regardless of consequences for others), then, in that society, would ethical selfishness become a moral virtue?

More bluntly: in a society of cannibals, would cannibalism become moral by convention? Or: would pedophilia cease to be wrong after humanity, societies, and their conventions disappear?

If the answer to all these questions is “no”, then one inevitably falls into contradiction.

Either morality is conventional, and therefore there can be no universal and immutable principle that resists the will of the societal majority, or morality is based on an absolute judgment and principles remain universal and immutable even if supported by a single person in the world. Or no one at all.

Saying it is always wrong to torture a child, for example, means stating objective moral values independent of social custom and majority will, that is, absolute and indisputable truths that remain such even if no one else supported them.

 

How to Evaluate One Set of Moral Principles as Better Than Another?

Another critical aspect of secular morality is how to justify criticism of those who, rationally and consistently, reject the will of the majority, the principle of reciprocity, and social convention?

For example, if someone believes that earning a living by murdering innocent people is a value (for themselves and their family), on what basis can we say that they are “wrong”?

One might say they are wrong because they do not follow the majority social convention that murder is wrong. This implicitly means that it would simply be enough for the will of society to change for their ethics to become right.

It is like saying that the racial discrimination imposed by the Nazis is not always wrong; theoretically, it could become right in a society of Nazis that accept it by convention.

Taylor and supporters of secular morality seem instead to claim that certain moral principles — such as peace, love, respect — are “self-evident”. And they are right. But in a system based on social convention, evidence holds no normative authority.

A society can conventionally decide that stealing is right, or that ongoing war is noble, or that reciprocity is weakness. And, according to the conventionalist thesis, this morality would be as right as any other. On what grounds can one claim that their own morality is “better” than another’s (better based on what, exactly)?

To give a concrete example, in India society has self-organized into a hierarchical social structure in which the population is divided into castes and the “Dalit“ are outside this scheme, subjected to severe discrimination.

A supporter of Western secular morality might say that Hindu morality is wrong because it causes suffering to the “Dalit”.

But by doing so they would be arbitrarily imposing their own moral customs on another society’s, without first having demonstrated that what they uphold is ethically better. Moreover, they do not explain why suffering would be a wrong in a society that, by convention and custom, is convinced that rewarding the elite and punishing the lowest rank of the hierarchy is a good.

The truth is that a purely conventional secular morality does not allow any “external” or “higher” criticism of what a society approves.

 

Secular Morality is Relative or Amorality

The only way to avoid contradiction for those who support a foundation of secular morality is to answer “yes” to the questions posed above.

But no one — rightly — will do so. Therefore, they should admit that there exist moral standards that do not depend on convention, the will of the majority, or their own culture: exactly what their theory denies.

Put more philosophically in the words of Tristram H. Engelhardt:

“All secular morals and bioethics become more or less clearly particular moral narratives, socio-historically conditioned, asserting particular configurations of moral intuitions moving within the dimension of the finite and the immanent. Contemporary secular morality is necessarily contingent and historically conditioned. Such contingency has dramatic implications concerning the force of normative claims advanced by the dominant contemporary secular moral theory on issues like the moral significance of autonomy, equality, equality of opportunity, human rights, social justice, and human dignity.”

The only coherent alternative seems to us to embrace amorality.

As already cited in the past, this is the position reached by Joel Marks, professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of New Haven.

“I have completely given up on morality […], I have long worked under an unverified assumption, namely that there is such a thing as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. I now believe there isn’t […]. I have become convinced that atheism implies amorality, and since I am an atheist, I must therefore embrace amorality […]. I have made the shocking discovery that religious fundamentalists are right: without God, there is no morality. But they are not correct, I still believe there is no God. So, I believe, there is no morality.”¹J. Marks, An Amoral Manifesto, Philosophy Now 2010

In short, we see only three options:
1) Either secular morality is contingent, temporary, and relative to conventions, and then no value is universally valid and one must admit that what we consider immoral is so only for us and for a social custom that has the same value as its opposite (war has the same value as peace);

2) Or one embraces amorality, denying that there exist moral values to defend and to educate towards;

3) Or one admits that some values are objective and require deeper — transcendent or metaphysical — foundations that go beyond mere social consensus.