What is the objective basis for morality? The answer isn’t “God”.

Since I view the existence of God as highly unlikely, God as moral arbiter seems similarly unlikely. Many people are perturbed by this; indeed, many reject atheism partially because they perceive nihilism to be the inevitable result—which, even if true, is simply an appeal to consequences.

But suppose we stipulate to the existence of God. Unfortunately, that doesn’t make moral questions much easier. For how are we to know the Divine Will? God rarely speaks on such matters. Prayer isn’t much good, since even prayerful people disagree. And the holy books of the world both disagree and have spotty coverage at best.

Let’s consider the most popular holy book, the Bible. Even the many Biblical laws don’t cover all the possibilities, and it’s ambiguous to boot. Thou shalt not kill—really? Even in self-defense? There’s plenty of killing in the Bible, of course; the sixth commandment is better rendered as Thou shalt not murder, but that simply begs the question: What, exactly, is murder? In other words, when is killing justified?

It’s justified when people work on the Sabbath, it turns out, and, as a result, nobody really believes in the entirety of Biblical law anyway. (How many Jews or Christians actually support the prescription in Exodus 31:15?) So, on what basis can we accept some laws (proscribing murder and theft, say), but reject others (death to adulterers and Sabbath-workers)?

No, morality isn’t easy, even if God exists.

As a kid I was heavily into “Greek mythology”; I was fascinated by the exploits of Zeus, Hera, Apollo, and the rest of the Olympian gods. Of course, I was never tempted actually to believe in them—and neither is anyone else, as far as I can tell. And yet, “Greek mythology” was, once upon a time, a living religion, complete with rituals, sacrifices, priests and priestesses, a holy book, and millions of real believers. Calling it mythology obscures this important fact; I prefer to call it “the religion of the ancient Greeks”.

I happen to have grown up in a highly religious area—Orange County, California—so I have quite a lot of specialized knowledge about the local religion, Christianity. I have a fairly deep understanding of Christianity’s claims, and why those claims are probably false (or at least unsubstantiated). But that knowledge is unnecessary; I am just as confident that Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and any of the many smaller religions are probably wrong—other than the tautology that living religions have adherents, I simply see no essential difference between living religions and dead ones. (I am much more sympathetic now than I was as a kid to why people believe—and, in particular, why they don’t stop believing—but that doesn’t change my underlying conviction that those beliefs are probably wrong.)

There are plenty of sophisticated arguments against religion in general, and the dominant religion in America in particular; some of them might well show up later in this blog. But—and I think I have some good company among the atheist/agnostic types out there—what it really boils down to is that it’s almost painfully obvious that all religions, though not provably false, are about as likely to be true as the religion of the ancient Greeks.

This realization about religion leads to some awkward situations. I know many intelligent, educated, thoughtful people who believe in a religion—not religion as community, or as metaphor, but as literal truth about our actual physical universe—which, as far as I’m concerned, might as well be actual gods living on Mount Olympus. Plenty of people have tried to convert me; I’m usually polite and even a bit coy. How do I tell them that they might as well ask me to worship Zeus or Apollo—that to me, believing in Christianity (or any other religion) is as absurd as believing in Greek mythology?

If any of those people are reading this: now you know.