A recent survey by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that 95% of print journalists and 86% of broadcast journalists believe that the statement that it is not necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values comes closer to their views than does the claim that God is necessary in order to be moral and have good values.
This result cries out for a little analysis. How, we'd like to know, did the respondents interpret the question? Did they take it to mean that if someone believes there is no God they can still live according to the same standards of behavior as anyone else? If so, it's hardly surprising that most journalists would agree with that because it's certainly true.
Or did they take the question to mean that the existence of God has no necessary connection to morality? If this was their interpretation then an awful lot of journalists need to reread Dostoyevsky and Neitzsche.
As we have argued here on a number of occasions, anyone can live however they choose, but unless there is a God, or at least a transcendent moral authority, there are no grounds for saying that one way of life is more moral than another. In other words, there is no right or wrong behavior in a moral sense unless there is an objective standard for behavior, and there can be no objective standard unless there is someone or something with the authority to establish it. Whatever that being is, it cannot be man. One man or group of men cannot determine what is moral and what is not in any non-arbitrary way.
If there is no moral authority such as I describe then right and wrong are simply matters of subjective preference. Behaviors I like I call moral, those I don't like I call immoral. Your likes and dislikes might be different from mine, but that doesn't make them better or worse. It only makes them different.
So it's silly to ask whether God is necessary for people to live what most take to be a "good" life. The important question is, is God, or something very much like God, necessary for there to be a non-subjective, non-arbitrary morality in the first place? To this latter question the answer is clearly yes.
Journalist and author Robert Wright has conducted a series of fascinating interviews with philosophers, theologians, and scientists, and one of the questions he asks in the course of many of these sessions is essentially this one - can there be moral value if there is no transcendent moral authority? In almost every case the interviewee either hedges on the question or ducks it altogether, but one of the more interesting and straightforward responses is by Ursula Goodenough. The short video clip with Ms Goodenough can be viewed here.
The interview with E.O. Wilson is interesting, too, because Wilson, an atheist, prides himself on the goodness of his life, but the only reason he can give for thinking that his behavior is "morally right" is that it makes him feel good.
The link to Wilson can be accessed at the Goodenough page.
