Pew Research: Does morality require belief in God?

Belief in God is not necessary in order to have morality/ethics.

A couple of reasons:

• Common grace: People still have conscience, regardless of their overall worldview or belief system (See Rom 2:14)
• Humans are not logically consistent. Even if we make the case that atheism logically means there can be no right or wrong (I agree), people who deny any ultimate basis for it can still believe in right and wrong … it happens all the time.

We should be careful about parroting the stereotype that atheists are immoral. It’s just not that simple.

Yes, you've got common grace, but when one's position is challenged, it sure helps to have an authority outside yourself to appeal to. No?

Or, put differently, I don't think it's an accident that almost all of the nastiest genocides in history were done by regimes that rejected God--Communist China, the USSR, then Nazi Germany, Communist Cambodia, etc.. If you don't have a fixed point of reference for morality with authority greater than yourself, you're at least a step or two closer to atrocities.

Bert, I don’t really disagree with you about the worst genocides being done by atheists, but at least in the particular case of Nazi Germany, the regime was not averse to using dominant religion to get the people motivated and behind what they were doing.

One of the scariest/shocking moments (to me) in Riefenstahl’s propaganda films (I forget whether it was Triumph of the Will or The Victory of Faith), is near the end when the whole Nazi party leadership is gathered together with many others in attendance, they sing “We Gather Together to Ask the Lord’s Blessing” (with German lyrics, but the translation was pretty close to our English ones), and the whole place is singing out together, as vigorously as they might in a large church gathering. It was a powerful propaganda moment, which I’m sure got lots of airplay with the populace. They wanted at least to give the impression that God was behind what they were doing, maybe because even being an atheistic party, they knew that most of the populace believed in God, and would want to have a “moral” impetus to get behind them. So yes, it helps to have a power outside of yourself to appeal to, as you said.

Common grace (along with “the invisible things are clearly seen…”) can be a powerful motivator all on its own, without specific belief in the true God of the Bible.

The difference is in the definition of "morals and good values". The 2nd greatest commandment is to love your neighbor and in many regards those that have good values tend to try mirroring that. I do agree that we are all given common grace and so murder and rape are often viewed as bad for anyone. Most of what people define as good values are those that relate to our neighbors. But that in and of itself is not the end statement for morals and good values. As Christians we hold to a higher standard than that, and the morals and values are related to a fixed standard, a holy God. And those morals and values carry greater weight. I don't agree that atrocities are just rooted in a disbelief in God. Many atheists would point to the OT as being filled with atrocities and genocides. The Holy Roman Empire did many terrible things in the name of Christ. I personally don't believe that should be our standard. Unfortunately in way too many cases, the worlds values look a lot better than way too many values exhibited by Christians. We defend a presidential candidate that lies, abuses women, makes crude jokes and is a mockery to Christian values. We look down on immigrants crossing the borders that are in need, and we ridicule those who are struggling.

Merriam-Webster on Morality:

mo•ral•i•ty \mə-ˈra-lə-tē, mȯ-\ noun

plural -ties 14th century

1 a: a moral discourse, statement, or lesson

b: a literary or other imaginative work teaching a moral lesson

2 a: a doctrine or system of moral conduct

b plural: particular moral principles or rules of conduct

3: conformity to ideals of right human conduct

4: moral conduct: VIRTUE

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).

Since all men are made with a conscience (however seared, however ill-informed, however ill-founded), when men adopt a standard of write and wrong, they make moral judgements.

Hence, to much of the world today, we are some kind of "phobe" - ie, not a fearer, but a hater -- an immoral person.

It's not that they are incapable of morality, it is that they refuse to accept God's definition of morality, whether by general or special revelation.

Yes, they would use the state churches, but in 1934, they had attacked the Catholics so badly that Hitler had to backtrack and work out a treaty with Rome so that the Pope wouldn't start denouncing Hitler personally, no? I guess yes, some people didn't pay attention, sadly, but I consider Naziism at its heart pagan or atheistic in nature.

Bert Perry wrote:

Yes, you’ve got common grace, but when one’s position is challenged, it sure helps to have an authority outside yourself to appeal to. No?

Or, put differently, I don’t think it’s an accident that almost all of the nastiest genocides in history were done by regimes that rejected God—Communist China, the USSR, then Nazi Germany, Communist Cambodia, etc.. If you don’t have a fixed point of

I don’t disagree with any of that. It’s one thing to say “you have to believe in God to have morals” and another thing to say “people without God have better morals than people who do believe in God.” History is pretty clear that understanding there is accountability to the Judge of All the Earth makes a difference.

Don Johnson wrote:

Hence, to much of the world today, we are some kind of “phobe” - ie, not a fearer, but a hater — an immoral person.

It’s not that they are incapable of morality, it is that they refuse to accept God’s definition of morality, whether by general or special revelation.

Agree with that also, though I would add that right now there seems to be too much focus on what’s wrong morally in our culture and a bit too little appreciation for what isn’t wrong… that maybe was wrong 100 years ago. A couple of examples: As a culture, we no longer think it’s OK to turn a blind eye to sexual harassment of women in the workplace. We don’t think it’s OK to segregate black people. We don’t think it’s OK to cover up sexual abuse. We don’t think it’s OK to threaten or demean people because of their race or religion or sexual orientation.

That’s not a long list, but if we tried, we could make a longer one. And it’s interesting that if you go back 100 yrs, many Christians were not doing any better than the lost in these areas. We’re still struggling a good bit with several of them.

I have to say, too, that part of what makes the whole “phobe”/hater stereotype sell as well as it does is that there are actual phobes and haters. More than we’d like to admit. I think more than we realize, because sometimes we start talking about human beings as though they were aliens or devils rather than as fellow sinners who happen to be broken in this way vs. that way. And when we dehumanize in subtle ways, what we’re doing is replacing a person with an “object to be feared” or “object to be loathed” or both.

I speak as one who has been guilty in one way or another, but when God drops a really, really good spiritual mirror in front of you—well, other people stop looking quite so bad. Know what I mean? Tell me you haven’t been there! The effect tends to be temporary, though. It’s an ongoing struggle.

Someone can be "good" with out God - but not for long.

Whatever morality they have comes from the influences of the surrounding culture/family. The problem is that, while the person who does not believe in God may have some degree of morality, his descendants will not have those influences and will be less moral than he was. So one generation may have a degree of goodness without God, the descendants will not. To verify this, all you need to do is look at the generational/age breakdown in surveys about moral issues. Actually, you don't even need to do that. Look at the growing influence of trans and woke beliefs/identification among younger age groups in a society that has rejected the Bible.