Criticism of grounding arguments.

Kant's position is surprisingly weak. Kant himself had already demolished most of the traditional proofs of God's existence in his Critique of Pure Reason. He admitted that there might seem to be a logical need for a necessary being, but the need in itself could not prove the existence of such a being. It's a shame Kant did not use the same critical approach on his own ethical argument. Proving that God might come in handy for an ethical system is not the same as proving that He really exists. Kant is guilty of applying Voltaire's maxim about God: If God did not exist, we would have to invent him.

To summarize the theist claims:

• Religion is the solid basis that ethics needs.

• Religion provides ethical certainties.

• Religious sanctions are needed to back up ethics.

  Let's examine these claims one by one:

Traditional religions offer no adequate or solid basis for ethics

Religion's own base is weak.

Religion can only provide a solid base for ethics if religion's own base is solid - if it is founded on irrefutable evidence or on common sense that is plain to all. Yet there is no evidence outside scripture for the existence of a judging God or of a painstaking process of allocating new incarnations on the basis of past deeds. Many believers retain persistent doubts, and these doubts would give them the leeway to commit sins.

There is no philosophical reason to obey God.

Even if we could be certain that God existed and had given us definite commands, why should we follow them? The fact that God commands is in itself a weak philosophical basis for ethics. It is simply an edict of naked power, which is never a satisfactory basis for action.

We still need a philosophical reason to obey God's command. The usual reason given is that God is perfectly good. But how do we know he is good? Normally we judge people's goodness by their actions. Yet we see God producing babies blind or paralyzed from birth, or massacring thousands of people in earthquakes or epidemics. By human standards, this is very far from good.

The usual response is that these ills are necessary for a greater good. When theists are asked what that greater good is, they sometimes reply: present suffering will make salvation and resurrection all the sweeter when it comes. It may - for those who are saved. For the damned, the end will be even worse than present suffering.

The ultimate theist reply is: God's purposes are unknown to us. This argument is no better than a dogmatic assertion that God is good, even though he appears to be, in human terms, evil.

To justify obeying God's commands on a blanket basis, we would still need to prove that all of them were good commands. In Judaism and Islam, God requires the male foreskin to be snipped off. Circumcision in the days before modern medicine was a bloody procedure with risks of infection and even death. How could such a command be good? But if we pick and choose, then we are simply applying human ethical standards, and God's command is not the basis for our action.

Traditional religions provide no ethical certainties.

Most conventional religions do not offer the certainties that theists look for. It's not at all clear exactly what behaviour God requires of us. His commands are not written in the sky for all to see. Different religions have raised different demands at different times. Zoroastrianism requires us to destroy insects; Jainism asks us to go to great lengths to avoid destroying insects. Islam demands abstention from alcohol, Christian priests dispense alcohol to celebrants of mass.

On what basis can we choose between these religions to discover which one embodies God's true commands?

Internal contradictions.

Even if we boldly choose one religion, usually because we were brought up in it, the uncertainties don't end there.

Sometimes a religion sends out conflicting signals. Jesus urged us to love one another. Yet he also urged people to leave their families and social obligations to follow him. Which command should we follow? On what basis do we decide which obligation is prior?

Religions often preach double standards - one rule for behaviour towards one group of people, a different rule when a less favoured group are involved, such as women, foreigners, or unbelievers. Islam has one set of rules and rights for men, another, inferior set for women. The sixth commandment given to Moses says "Thou shalt not kill." Yet in the same book God orders Moses to tell the Levites to go out and slay all those who had worshipped the golden calf, and the Israelites were ordered to kill all males - including infants - in the land they conquered.

Sometimes the moral scheme of the religion contradicts itself. The three main Western religions urge you to be unselfish. Yet the main reason they give for obeying God's commands is that He will throw you into Hell if you don't. This is an utterly selfish motive and weakens the central message of unselfishness.

Sometimes the moral code is undermined by other aspects of the teaching. Buddhism demands kindness to humans and animals. Yet it also claims that humans and animals are merely fleeting agglomerations of liquids, solids, excreta and so on, or even illusions without substance, and that there is no self. If there is nothing to suffer if hurt, why should it matter if we are kind or not?

Traditional religious sanctions are ineffective and implausible.

Ineffectiveness.

If fear of imaginary judges, imaginary rewards, imaginary punishments were effective sanctions, then crime rates would be lower in devout countries than in sceptical and secular ones. Yet crime rates are many times higher in Catholic Latin America, where belief in judgement in the afterlife is strong, than in Japan, where it is virtually absent.

Flexibility.

God's merciful and forgiving character in the three Western religions is a weakening of the sanctions. If you truly and deeply repent of your sins, God will forgive them and remit your eternal punishment. Sin is wiped out once it is repented. So it is easy to commit sin, knowing that it can be forgiven.

Implausibility.

Finally, sanctions are only effective if they are credible.

The problem with rewards and punishment in the afterlife is that they happen after death, and there are no witnesses who report back to the living. No-one has returned from heaven or hell to tell us if these places exist, or if the punishments and rewards there fit the deeds. There have been no studies of people claiming to be reincarnated, to check whether each new incarnation corresponds to the merits of the previous life. Indeed to substantiate fully the karma theory, interviews with animals would be required.

Ethical systems whose sanctions are invisible and have never been witnessed by any living person, stand on shaky ground.

Human sanctions are quite adequate.

Order is not kept in society by fear of God. It is maintained by social sanctions: concern for reputation, hope for reciprocation, fear of law and punishment. These sanctions work for the vast majority of people in almost all countries with functioning governments.

Traditional religious ethics are inflexible and outdated.

Revealed religions like Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam do prescribe some clear and unambiguous rules. If, as they usually claim, their scriptures were authored or dictated by God, then the commands in them are God's own commands. They cannot be changed if human circumstances change or ethical ideas progress.

The risk of inflexibility is particularly powerful in Judaism and Islam. The Mosaic laws enshrined in the Pentateuch are long and detailed, and contain prescriptions for every area of life. They were written in days when electricity, petrol engines and other modern inventions had never been envisaged. If taken literally, they impose severe restrictions on normal life, and are largely responsible for the self-segregation of orthodox Jews throughout history.

The Koran and the hadith - reported sayings of Mohammed - contain many detailed ethical rules. Their view of women's position was progressive for seventh century Arabia - but in the modern world it is a serious obstacle to women's equality. Most Islamic countries west of India have a poor performance in women's education and literacy compared to their wealth.

Christianity's prescriptions are looser, but its prevailing ethos of world- and body-rejection or imminent world-ending was moulded in chaotic times of upheaval and insecurity, when withdrawal from the world was one way of managing intolerable stress. It is wholly inappropriate today.

The importance of flexible moral codes.

The scope of human ethics has broadened over the centuries. Among hunter-gatherers ethics of sharing and mutual help applied only to the small band of 50-100 close relatives who moved around together. Outside the band, murder, theft and rape were permitted or encouraged.

As states grew in size, ethical systems generalized our obligations to wider and wider groups. Even in St Paul's day, full obligations and rights did not extend to slaves or women. St Paul condoned slavery, encouraged slaves to be obedient, and even returned a runaway slave to his master [1 Timothy 6:1-2; Philemon 12.]

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries democracy spread. Slavery came to be seen as unacceptable. Since then new principles have appeared and been widely accepted: equality for women, ethnic minorities, and the disabled; a wide range of rights. In our generation new environmental ideas are spreading: animal rights, concern for ecosystems, the importance of sustainability.

Though we are still far from living up fully to all these principles, this progress represents a remarkable triumph for human reason and human ideas of justice and fairness. None of this flowed from scripture. None of it would have been possible if people had stuck faithfully to revealed scriptures.

People who refuse to move beyond or question the ethical codes of ancient scripture still resist many of these advances. Others, seeking scriptural backing for the demands of today, have to ransack the New Testament for environmental messages which simply are not there (see The Bible and the Environment), or toothcomb the Koran and the hadith searching for messages of women's equality.

We are on our own when it comes to choosing ethical codes. We always will be. And we always were.

Go to Pantheist ethics.