The God Truthiness IV: Morality Play

dr clam finds The God Delusion's Chapter 6 “The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good?” to be “not very satisfying”. For me it couldn't be further from the truth. I will admit that it is a slightly weaker chapter because the last couple of pages stray from its intended purpose. Its final paragraph begins, “The springboard for this discussion of moral philosophy was a hypothetical religious claim that, without a God, morals are relative and arbitrary” (267). If Dawkins had stuck to disproving this hypothetical religious claim it would have been OK, but at the end of the chapter he drifts into the shoals where the voracious dr clam lays in wait. Otherwise though it does a great job of taking God out of morality.

After a foray into the kind of hate mail he gets from Christians, there is the section 'Does our Moral Sense have a Darwinian Origin?' in which he details a Darwinian explanation for altruism. This quote is the meat of it:

First, there is the special case of genetic kinship. Second, there is reciprocation: the payment of favours given, and the giving of favours in 'anticipation' of payback. Following on from this there is, third, the Darwinian benefit of acquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness. And fourth, if Zahavi is right, there is the particular additional benefit of conspicuous generosity as a way of buying unfakeably authentic advertising. (251)

This is followed up with 'A Case Study in the Roots of Morality' which showed studies by first Hauser and then Hauser and Singer which tracked the answers given by people to moral dilemmas. The studies included a tribe that had little organized religion, and believers and non-believers of religion. It was concluded that, “there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers in making these judgements” (258).

So armed with a Darwinian explanation for altruism plus Hauser's and Singer's studies Dawkins is on solid ground to declare, “This seems compatible with the view, which I and many others hold, that we do no need God in order to be good – or evil” (258).

dr clam says, “Richard's chapter six is about the roots of morality... He seems to be aware of the problem, but he never addresses it.” And in the comments to the post previous to this he says “The problem, which Dawkins' doesn't seem to get, is how to achieve an 'absolute morality' (as defined by theologians, philosophers, Wikipedia etc.) without God. I don't say this can't be done without God-in fact, I tried to work out how to do it without God myself once. I would love to see a serious atheistic attempt to address this problem. Dawkins' chapter is not it.”

As to the claim that “he never address” the roots of morality Chapter 6 does demonstrate that across belief and culture evolution has provided us with a guidebook to morality. And in life a guidebook is infinitely more useful than rulebook. As dr clam also wants “a serious atheistic attempt to address the problem” then I'd suggest a study of this guidebook. Conducting studies similar to Hauser's and Singer's, then looking for trends of the kinds of answers people make to particular kinds of dilemmas. From that a set of moral principles could be designed.

And Dawkins does mention Kant's "act only on the maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will it should become a universal law" (266) as one such example of a non-religious morality, although he does qualify that “it is no so easy to see how to broaden it to morality generally” (266).

We might not have all the answers to morality, but thanks to evolution we are equiped to find them.