MandM header image 2

Is belief in God essential for Morality? Why Crime Statistics don’t answer this question

November 18th, 2014 by Matt

Readers of this blog will note that, of late, I have been focusing a lot in my thinking, writing and research on questions of the relationship between religion and morality. One particular frustration I encounter in this topic is the, unfortunately common, tendency for writers and researchers to conflate separate questions and subsequently give answers to the wrong questions thinking they have answered the right ones.

A good example is article which was sent to me via e-mail recently entitled “The destructive myth about religion that Americans disproportionately believe.” The article comments on a recent survey which found that the majority of people in certain parts of the world, including the United States of America, believe that belief in God is essential for morality. The author considers this a “destructive myth”. His rebuttal involves two premises: (a) he interprets the survey’s results to mean that the majority of people believe you cannot live a morally good life unless you believe in God; (b) he aims to refute this by appealing to some unsourced crime statistics that suggest atheists do not commit disproportionately more crimes than theists.

o-PRISONER-READING-facebookI think his reasoning on both points is mistaken, before getting into why, I note that this article proposes to be about whether belief in God is essential to morality; it is not about the related, though separate, question of whether the existence of morality depends on the existence of God.

Turning to the first premise (a), the article opens with:

“Pew Research Center published the results of a survey conducted among 40,080 people in 40 countries between 2011 and 2013. The survey asked a simple question: Is belief in God essential to morality? While clear majorities say it is necessary, the U.S. continues to be an outlier. In 22 of the 40 countries surveyed, the majority says it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person. “This position is highly prevalent, if not universal, in Africa and the Middle East,” says the report.”

This is confused. The author states the question asked was: “Is belief in God essential to morality?” The author then interprets those answering in the affirmative as saying “it is necessary to believe in God in order to be a moral person.” This does not follow from the affirmative answer. The question asked was whether belief in God is essential to the institution of morality itself; such a question is asking whether the institution needs this belief. The question did not ask what attributes were necessary to be a moral person.

Not only are these separate issues, they are logically distinct.

To see this let us briefly ask the question why do people think that belief in God is necessary for morality? I think the reason is typically based on a conjunction of two ideas.

The first is that a person cannot be rationally committed to always doing the right thing unless they believe, explicitly or implicitly, that the world is ordered so that commitment is not inconsistent with their own long term happiness.  If this belief is false, then there will be cases where doing the right thing involves a significant sacrifice of one’s happiness and self-interest,  and when such cases occur, it is difficult to see why moral reasons must trump or always be overriding.

The second is that atheism tends to undermine this belief. If a person believes the world is created and providentially ordered by a loving and just God, he or she will have reasons to think the world is ordered so that being committed to doing the right thing does not disadvantage people in the long run. Atheists, however, lack reasons for thinking this is the case and arguably have, given their atheism, good reasons for denying such beliefs.

The upshot of both these ideas is that a person cannot rationally be committed to always doing the right thing, to the overriding authority of morality, if he or she does not believe in God. To have rational authority over people’s actions, morality requires belief in God or something like divine providence.

I don not have space to document it here but I believe something like this line of reasoning is behind the popularity of the claim that morality requires belief in God.  What is important to note, however, is that this line of reasoning does not mean atheists cannot be committed to living a moral life and or that they can do so successfully. The argument is that the atheist who is committed to moralitys overriding authority lacks rational justification for his or her commitment. The fact a person lacks justification for commitment does not mean he or she cannot have commitment. People can be, and often are, committed to things they cannot rationally justify. When atheists contend that  religious commitment is irrational they grant this very point.

The first premise, (a), is therefore mistaken; claiming belief in God is necessary for morality does not entail atheists cannot live morally upright lives.

Suppose, however, we assume for the sake of argument that this premise is true. This brings us to the second premise, (b); the author argues:

“So what of the U.S.? A comparatively eye-popping 53 percent of Americans essentially believe atheists and agnostics are living in sin. Despite the fact that a research analyst at the Federal Bureau of Prisons determined that atheists are thoroughly underrepresented in the places where rapists, thieves and murderers invariably end up: prisons. While atheists make upward of 15 percent of the U.S. population, they only make up 0.2 percent of the prison population.”

The appeal to atheist incarceration rates is one I have seen on several freethinker cites recently (they often appear to be based on self-reported statistics of prisoners who are seeking parole and data tends to not be provided as to their belief at the time of arrest, among other issues). One line of response to this sort of rebuttal is to call into question the figures cited and some of the problems with the figures are recorded here. In this post I want to put this response to one side and instead focus on two problems with any appeal to crime statistics in this context.

The first problem with such an appeal is that it is clearly invalid. The author attempts to refute the claim that atheists “live in sin” with the observation about  how many are “convicted criminals” but the categories of “sin” and “crime” are different categories. While many criminal activities are immoral, many immoral activities are not crimes. The criminal law often reflects the bare minimum of behaviour a society is willing to tolerate and leaves a considerable amount of moral decision making to an individual’s discretion. Any plausible view of the moral life will demand a lot more from people than simply the avoidance of crime.

An example will help illustrate this point: Suppose Tom regularly goes to the pub to get drunk,  lies about it to his family, and  cheats weekly on his wife. Tom commits no crime in doing these things, it does not follow that he is a paragon of virtue. Or consider Sally, who is extremely manipulative, who continually lies, routinely slanders and gossips and enjoys destroying other people’s friendships and relationships. Sally is not a good person but she is not committing a single crime in doing these things.

Conformity with the law actually tells us very little about a person’s character or lack thereof.

The second, and I think deeper problem, is that even if atheism does have a demoralising effect on moral commitment, so that atheists cannot live morally good lives, one would not expect to see this manifested in crime statistics.

Here is why. The reason belief in God is held to be essential to morality is that atheists lack a reason to comply with morality in cases where a commitment to doing the right thing clashes or conflicts significantly with ones self-interest. Actions that result in criminal convictions are not actions of this sort.

When it comes to criminal actions, our society has set up a system so that some immoral actions are subjected to strong social sanctions, proportionate to the gravity of the crime. Society does this precisely to ensure that in this life these actions do not pay, and that they result in significant loss of self-interest and happiness. Moreover, they are the kinds of actions society goes to great lengths to detect precisely so they can hold those who do them accountable.

Where one would expect to find a difference would be in those classes of immoral actions which confer a significant benefit on the agent and are either not subject to strong social sanction, or are the sorts of things that the agent knows his or her non-compliance to morality will not be detected if engaged in. Actions that result in criminal conviction are almost by definition not members of this class.

In conclusion, despite its pervasive appearance in popular free thought commentary, I think appeal to the number of atheists with criminal convictions provides very little insight into the debate around God and morality. Even if belief in God is essential to morality it does not follow that atheists cannot live morally good lives, and even if it did it would not follow from this that they would commit more crimes. The real debate over these questions must be conducted on grounds other than crime statistics.


Tags:   · 7 Comments

7 responses so far ↓

  • Matt, I agree with you that crime statistics tell us absolutely nothing useful about the relationship between atheism and ethics. But do atheists really have a problem with justifying belief in objective ethics? I agree that most atheists do, but is that because of their atheism, or because of their naturalist materialism? What about a Platonist who believes in a transcendent eternal form of the Good? Or a Buddhist who believes in an eternal law of karma? I think both are examples of atheist, yet non-naturalist/non-materialist, views in which objective ethics is possible. It is much harder to attack the meta-ethical foundation of these views, than it is to attack the meta-ethical foundation of naturalist materialist atheism.

  • I believe in truth and truth is good enough for me. =

  • Simon the question in this post isn’t so much about the objectivity of moral requirements, but the rationality of being committed to always doing the right thing. In other words its about the decisive or overriding authority of morality.

    But as to your examples, I don’t think Platonism addresses this particular point. As to Karma, yes I happily concede that for a Buddist who believes in Karma doesn’t face the challenge I was discussing in the post. Note how I refered to the problem:

    The first is that a person cannot be rationally committed to always doing the right thing unless they believe, explicitly or implicitly, that the world is ordered so that commitment is not inconsistent with their own long term happiness. If this belief is false, then there will be cases where doing the right thing involves a significant sacrifice of one’s happiness and self-interest, and when such cases occur, it is difficult to see why moral reasons must trump or always be overriding.
    The second is that atheism tends to undermine this belief. If a person believes the world is created and providentially ordered by a loving and just God, he or she will have reasons to think the world is ordered so that being committed to doing the right thing does not disadvantage people in the long run. Atheists, however, lack reasons for thinking this is the case and arguably have, given their atheism, good reasons for denying such beliefs.

    The problem with a rational commitment to always doing the right thing, isn’t caused by atheism as such but rather the falsehood of the belief that that the world is ordered so that commitment to always doing the right is not inconsistent with their own long term happiness. in other words it’s a view of the world that means that self interest and virtue can and do in certain situations comes apart. It seems to be Buddhists who believe in Karma don’t hold such a view so they don’t inherit this particular problem.

  • The first is that a person cannot be rationally committed to always doing the right thing unless they believe, explicitly or implicitly, that the world is ordered so that commitment is not inconsistent with their own long term happiness. If this belief is false, then there will be cases where doing the right thing involves a significant sacrifice of one’s happiness and self-interest, and when such cases occur, it is difficult to see why moral reasons must trump or always be overriding.

    This seems to presuppose a humean conception of practical reasons. Nothing about atheism entails a humean conception of practical reasons.

  • This seems to presuppose a humean conception of practical reasons. Nothing about atheism entails a humean conception of practical reasons.

    I wasn’t claiming this argument was sound, but simply noting a common line of rebuttal doesn’t actually rebut it

    But two things, First, even if the argument does presuppose a Humean concept of reason’s and atheism doesn’t entail that, I don’t think that would refute the objection. Because the question is whether the Humean account is plausible. If atheism undercuts the rational commitment to doing the right thing, when its conjoined with a plausible account of practical reason, then that’s a problem for atheism. In the same way for example that theism would have a problem if a well established scientific theory conflicted with it. The fact theism doesn’t by itself doesn’t entail this theory wouldn’t really solve the problem.

    Second, I don’t think this argument does presuppose Humean concept of reasons. All the argument assumes is that there exist both prudential reasons, that is reasons to do what is in our long term self-interest, and moral reasons that is reasons to do the right thing, and it suggests that unless that the world is ordered so that commitment is not inconsistent with their own long term happiness these come apart. Nothing in these assumptions requires us to claim that either moral or prudential reasons are Humean reason’s, even they are non-Humean it can still be the case they exist and still be the case they come into conflict.

  • It’s a shame you don’t have a donate button! I’d certainly donate to this excellent blog!
    I suppose for now i’ll settle for bookmarking
    and adding your RSS feed to my Google account.
    I look forward to new updates and will share this blog
    with my Facebook group. Chat soon!

  • Hello, you used to write great, but the last few posts have been kinda boring?
    I miss your tremendous writings. Past few posts are just a little bit
    out of track! come on!