In a post on his website titled “Can We Be Good without God?,” prominent Christian apologist William Lane Craig cogently lays out the common argument against the possibility of secular objective morality. He writes, “…if atheism is true, objective moral values do not exist. If God does not exist, then what is the foundation for moral values? More particularly, what is the basis for the value of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true.” He references the Holocaust and incest as examples of actions he claims are intellectually uncriticizable by those without a theistic moral perspective and notes that “If God does not exist...we are ultimately landed in nihilism.” Although the profundity of this line of thinking often proffered as evidence for God and objective morality warrants meaningful consideration, its power stems from a restrictive false binary that crucially excludes the existence of what I refer to as the collectively subjective.
William Lane Craig and much of the thinking religious community’s incredulity toward manmade moral systems is rooted in the belief that a moral system must be logically objective in order for it to even possibly exist. The idea is that, if a moral system is not logically objective, then it is merely a figment of its inventor’s subjective imagination just as valid and invalid as any other figment of any other person’s imagination. To them, the only escape from this conundrum is to posit the existence of a being unconstrained by human subjectivity with the power to construct metaphysical metrics of morality (enter: God). Atheistic figures like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Lawrence Krauss, who essentially claim “well being” constitutes the basis of morality and should be quantified in order to determine the rightfulness of any particular action, operate under this same assumption. They claim morality can be grounded scientifically, which is to say, objectively, because they posit the “scientific” concept of well being as the one true moral metric.
This idea that a conception of morality must be logically objective in order for it to be valid prohibits consideration of more nuanced perspectives of morality. When one starts speaking in universal terms, the complexity of lived experience is often drastically simplified and reduced into legalistic black and white categories. But human life is multifaceted and odd, our perspectives are results of a great many things, not least the time and place in which we are born and develop. The more we look at the whole of the world today and especially the more we examine it across time, the clearer it becomes that morality makes little sense as a static code for all and instead presents itself as a fluid result of social organization, culture, and available information - a phenomenon subject to change yet authentic and powerful in its application. The existence of people in today’s society like Craig with their “one logically true objective morality” whose conceptions differ and will differ from that of past and future people with their same certainty attests to the evolutionary nature of what I argue to be true morality. One’s “objective morality” is no more likely to actually exist than another’s “subjective morality” if both the objective and subjective conceptions die with their inventors. Only a definition of morality that allows for evolution of thought can withstand the test of time.
I’m not arguing morality is subjective nor objective, but that it is collectively subjective. If you lived alone on a desert island, for instance, there would be no morality for there would be no reason to consider anything as immoral. You would just do what you wanted to do without any thought as to the “rightness” of your actions. Perhaps you’d regret certain actions if they resulted in unintended negative consequences, but you’d never think in terms like “immoral” or “wrong.” However, if you were on an island with just one other person, such terminology would quickly emerge just from the sheer fact that the two of you would have to interact. As there’s now a practical need for common respect for you to effectively pursue both your individual and shared goals, you would judge your actions based on how you would want the other person to act. Now you would deem certain actions as wrong - and actually wrong and not merely regrettable - due to your understanding that you shouldn’t do what you wouldn’t want the other person to do less you risk tainting the established level of mutual respect. If the mutual respect is tarnished, then your and your island cohabitant’s goals are less likely to be realized. “Wrong” is the label you ascribe to actions that effectively distance you from your goals by adversely affecting your relationship with the other person on the island. If the other person ceased to exist, there would be no one to wrong and therefore no wrong at all.
The existence of the other person necessitates a construction of morals, expectations the two of you have for the both of you that apply objectively to each of you. Would it make any sense for you to abruptly decide to dream up and follow your own “personal morality?” No, to make up your own morality would be to pretend you are back to living on the island alone and, if you live on the island alone, you live without morality. Even if the two of you disagree about what should be the rules of the island and the expectations between you, the morality of the island is derived by how the two of you go about disagreeing.
Now say billions of people were added to the island. What then? Well they’d split up into different groups, occupy different places, and go about interacting in different ways based on their different goals. Over time, the goals of the people in each group may change such that the way people in that group want to be treated changes as well. Some may object to the changes, and the society either finds a way forward or goes to war and splits into separate groups with separate goals, separate norms of interaction, and, yes, separate moralities.
This conception of morality is neither objective in the universal and metaphysical sense nor subjectively rooted in individual imagination, it is collectively subjective meaning derived by a group of individuals’ either implicitly or explicitly agreed upon norms of interaction. What is right for one group may be wrong for another, but neither of them can be said to be “objectively” right or wrong for “objective rightness” itself becomes an oxymoron. This does not mean members of one group cannot deem actions of another as right or wrong according to their own moral framework, if they see what they believe to be an injustice then it would be arguably wrong of them not to view it as such. it. It also does not mean everyone in a group must agree intellectually about what should be labeled right or wrong. It means people should just continue to do what they always do regardless of their reflective thoughts about right and wrong - strive to do what they think is best at any given moment.
I believe we need to overcome the insecurity that makes up our desire to operate under assumed values and laws and challenge ourselves to embrace life in all of its uncertainty. The false binary of objective vs. nonexistent morality obstructs broader understandings of human morals, ones that attempt to balance a person’s circumstances with his decisions, his environment and his mentality, and his culture with his beliefs. Like Craig said, the alleged death of God has turned some to nihilism, but even an island of nihilists exhibits a system of morals. They may not decide they believe in “objective morality” upon reflection (or anything for that matter), but they all still do what they think is best at any given moment and begin to collectively align what is considered “best” for the sake of productive cohabitation. In short, if something can only ever be “wrong” if there’s someone to wrong, then perhaps “wrong” isn’t an intellectual position or a strict categorization, but a manner of interpersonal interaction deemed improper by those through whom the interaction occurs.