What It Means to Be Moral. Phil Zuckerman

in an experiment. When an individual subject came in to the lab, he or she was greeted by a smart-looking, scientist-type individual—the “experimenter”—and then (falsely) told that the experiment about to be conducted concerned the mechanisms of learning. The individual was then told that another volunteer—who they met upon arrival—had been randomly selected to play the role of “learner” while they themselves had been randomly selected to play the role of “teacher.” They then watched as the “learner”—who was actually an accomplice of the study—was taken to an adjacent room, where he was strapped into a seat resembling an electric chair and hooked up to wires and nodes that could deliver an electric shock. The subject (“teacher”) was then instructed to go back to the original room and sit in front of a large machine that would produce electrical shocks every time the “learner” got an answer wrong in a test of memorized word patterns. During this entire time, the “experimenter” in charge of the experiment—dressed in a white coat and holding a clipboard—gave out continuous instructions to the “teacher” on how everything was to proceed.

      And then the experiment would begin. And every time the “learner” would get an answer wrong, the “teacher” was instructed by the “experimenter” to administer a shock. And with each wrong answer, the voltage of the shock was to increase. Now, after receiving a shock, the “learner” would express feelings of pain and discomfort: he would yell, or groan, or scream, and, as the voltage increased, beg to be let out of the room. The “learner,” of course, wasn’t really getting such shocks—it was all faked. But the subject in the role of “teacher” didn’t know that.

      And on it would go: the “experimenter” would sternly insist that the experiment continue, commanding the “teacher” to continue giving shocks with each wrong answer, no matter how loud the “learner” screamed or pleaded to be let free.

      How many subjects did as they were told, obeying the authoritative commands of the white-coated “experimenter” by administering ever-increasingly painful shocks to another human being? Most complied. Indeed, 65 percent of subjects (twenty-six individuals out of forty) administered the full dose of a 450-volt shock—repeatedly—even though the “learner” screamed in agony, complained of a heart condition, and eventually went silent, presumably dead or unconscious from the shocks. Why did these subjects do it? Because the man in a position of authority—a Yale professor running an experiment—told them to do so.

      Now, here’s the thing: most people would agree that it is manifestly wrong to shock an innocent person. Why? Simple: because it causes them unnecessary pain and suffering. End of story. And it does not matter that the command to administer such a shock comes from a person in a position of authority; the command remains immoral because it causes senseless harm. Most God-believers would agree to all of this. And most would agree that to administer painful or deadly shocks to an innocent person is flagrantly immoral, no matter if the command to do so comes from someone in a position of power.

      Oh, wait.

      Unless it is God.

      In that case, the command to cause pain and suffering to an innocent person suddenly becomes moral. Why? Because the command comes from God. And why does that automatically make it moral? Because God is so mighty. And again, there you have it: might makes right. Such is the potential moral paucity of theistic ethics.

      From a secular perspective, we know that no matter how strong a person (or deity) is, no matter how creative or powerful, no matter how magnificent or awesome, this incredible might does not automatically translate into moral righteousness. Yet this is exactly what religious theism teaches: that because God created everything, he must know more than us about how to be moral; because God knows and sees everything, we ought to just obey his commands and trust that he knows best. This approach to morality is, in the words of British philosopher Peter Geach, ultimately nothing more than power worship.²⁴ It is a form of extreme moral outsourcing, as I’ve argued in this chapter, that is manifestly immoral.

      As Elizabeth Anderson explains:

      Far from bolstering the authority of morality, appeals to divine authority can undermine it. For divine command theories of morality may make believers feel entitled to look only to their idea of God to determine what they are justified in doing. It is all too easy under such a system to ignore the complaints of those injured by one’s actions, since they are not acknowledged as moral authorities in their own right. But to ignore the complaints of others is to deprive oneself of the main source of information one needs to improve one’s conduct. Appealing to God rather than those affected by one’s actions amounts to an attempt to escape accountability to one’s fellow human beings.²⁵

      And finally, to say that something is moral just because God commands it opens up a whole can of worms regarding the very ontological basis of God’s relationship to morality. It’s a can of worms that was ripped open in ancient Greece some twenty-four hundred years ago, and no theist has ever successfully managed to get those worms back in the can.

       5

       Sally, Butch, and Plato’s Dilemma

      So far, I’ve argued that theistic morality—the long-standing, traditional religious approach to morals and ethics in which God is necessarily central—is untenable for three reasons: 1) “God” is an indefinable, incomprehensible entity that has never been proven to exist; 2) even if this unfathomable entity referred to as God were somehow proven to exist, theists can’t ever agree on what it wants of us or how it expects us to live, so that theistic morality immediately disintegrates into a morass of competing, contradictory, and subjective interpretations; and 3) even if we could prove that God was real and even if we could all agree on exactly what it wants, then this would suddenly mean that our only duty would be to obey God’s commands, which directly results in flagrant moral outsourcing, thereby destroying a true human morality based on choice, freedom, consideration, conscience, deliberation, reflection, sympathy, empathy, and compassion.

      But there’s something even more deeply problematic with morality based on faith in God than these three matters—something so ontologically and epistemologically insurmountable that no theologian has even been able to dull the biting, brilliant edge of its premise. In order to explain just what this something is—and in homage to the classical Socratic tradition of illustrating philosophical insights through didactic dialogue—I’d like to begin this final critique of theistic morality in the form of a conversation between two acquaintances, Butch and Sally.

      It was a Monday morning, around seven, in Eastern Kentucky. Butch, age thirty-five, was sitting on a wooden bench in front of the Rowan County Courthouse. No one else was around, and the courthouse wouldn’t be open for another hour. But Butch was already there, and his spine was taut and he was eager—he wanted to be sure to be the first in to see the district attorney.

      At around seven thirty, a woman the same age as Butch walked up to the entrance of the courthouse. She peered reluctantly into the glass of the two large, locked doors. And then Butch realized that he knew her.

      “Sally?”

      “Uh, yes . . . and you are . . .?”

      “Butch Sanders. From high school.”

      “Oh, my goodness—Butch—how are you?”

      “I’m just fine. And you?”

      “Good, yes—I mean—other than the fact that I’ve been called in to see the D.A.”

      Butch scooted over to the right side of the bench and gestured for Sally to sit down.

      “So nice to see you,” Sally said.

      “You,