While some atheists believe morality and human freedom are meaningless and illusory, other atheists believe in objective moral values. Atheist neuroscientist, Sam Harris, posited the existence of objective moral values in his book, Moral Landscape.
Is it plausible to postulate objective moral values in a godless paradigm that atheists subscribe to? If there are objective moral values, there should be a source for these values. Hence we ask, “What is the foundation for objective moral values?”
Christian apologist, William Lane Craig, disagrees with Sam Harris. Dr. Craig asserts the impossibility of a foundation for objective moral values in the atheistic worldview. Here’s an excerpt from his article, “Navigating Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape”:1
A great merit of Sam Harris' recent book The Moral Landscape is his bold affirmation of the objectivity of moral values and duties. To say that moral values and duties are objective is to say they are valid and binding independent of human opinion. For example, to say that the Holocaust was objectively evil is to say it was evil even though the Nazis who carried it out thought it was good. And it would still have been evil even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in brainwashing or exterminating everyone who disagreed with them, so everybody who was left thought the Holocaust was good…
The question then is, what is the best foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties? What grounds them? What makes certain actions good or evil, right or wrong? Traditionally, God has been the highest Good (summum bonum) and His commandments constitutive of our moral duties. But if God does not exist, what foundation remains for objective moral values and duties?
Consider first the question of objective moral values. On atheism, what basis is there for affirming objective moral values? In particular, why think that human beings have objective moral worth? On the atheistic view human beings are just accidental byproducts of nature who have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called planet Earth — lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe — and are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. On atheism it is hard to see any reason to think that human well-being is objectively good, anymore than insect well-being or rat well-being or hyena well-being. This is what Harris calls "The Value Problem." [3]…
The purpose of Harris' The Moral Landscape is to solve the "value problem," to explain the basis, on atheism, for the existence of objective moral values. [4] He explicitly rejects the view that moral values are Platonic objects existing independently of the world. [5] So his only recourse is to try to ground moral values in the natural world. But can he do that, since nature in and of itself is morally neutral?...
On a naturalistic view, moral values are just the behavioral by-products of biological evolution and social conditioning. Just as a troupe of baboons exhibit co-operative and even self-sacrificial behavior because natural selection has determined it to be advantageous in the struggle for survival, so homo sapiens — their primate cousins — exhibit similar behavior for the same reason. As a result of sociobiological pressures there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of "herd morality" that functions well in the perpetuation of our species. But on the atheistic view there does not seem to be anything that makes this morality objectively true…
So how does Sam Harris propose to solve the "value problem"? The trick he proposes is simply to redefine what he means by "good" and "evil" in nonmoral terms. [9]He says we should "define 'good' as that which supports [the] well-being" of conscious creatures." [10] He states, "Good and evil need only consist in this: misery versus well-being." [11] Or again: "In speaking of 'moral truth,' I am saying that there must be facts regarding human and animal well-being." [12]
So, he says, "Questions about values … are really questions about the well-being of conscious creatures." [13] Therefore, he concludes, "It makes no sense … to ask whether maximizing well-being is 'good'." [14] Why not? Because he's redefined the word "good" to mean the well-being of conscious creatures. So to ask, "Why is maximizing creatures' well-being good?" is on his definition the same as asking, "Why does maximizing creatures' well-being maximize creatures' well-being?" It is simply a tautology — talking in a circle. Thus, Harris has "solved" his problem simply by redefining his terms. It is mere word play.
At the end of the day Harris is not really talking about moral values. He is just talking about what's conducive to the flourishing of sentient life on this planet. Seen in this light, his claim that science can tell us a great deal about what contributes to human flourishing is hardly controversial. Of course, it can — just as it can tell us what is conducive to the flourishing of corn or mosquitoes or bacteria. His so-called "moral landscape" picturing the highs and lows of human flourishing is not really a moral landscape at all.
On the next to last page of his book, Harris more or less admits this. For he makes the telling admission that if people such as rapists, liars, and thieves could be just as happy as good people, then his moral landscape would no longer be a moral landscape; rather it would just be a continuum of well-being, whose peaks are occupied by good and evil people alike. [15] What is interesting about this is that earlier in the book Harris observed that about 3 million Americans are psychopathic, that is to say, they do not care about the mental states of others. On the contrary, they enjoy inflicting pain on other people. [16]…
Thus, Harris has failed to solve the "value problem." He has not provided any justification or explanation of why, on atheism, objective moral values would exist at all. His so-called solution is just a semantic trick of providing an arbitrary and idiosyncratic redefinition of the words "good" and "evil" in nonmoral terms.
The second question that needs to be addressed is, “Are we obligated to be morally right?” If so, “Who are we obligated to, from within the atheistic worldview?” Dr. Craig dissects this aspect and provides a conclusion to this subject:2
That takes us to a second question: Does atheism provide a sound foundation for objective moral duties? Duty has to do with moral obligation and prohibition, what I ought or ought not to do…
First: Natural science tells us only what is, not what ought to be, the case. As philosopher Jerry Fodor has written, "Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it wouldn't tell us what is wrong with how we are." [17] In particular it cannot tell us that we have a moral obligation to take actions that are conducive to human flourishing.
So if there is no God, what foundation remains for objective moral duties? On the naturalistic view, human beings are just animals, and animals have no moral obligations to one another. When a lion kills a zebra, it kills the zebra, but it does not murder the zebra. When a great white shark forcibly copulates with a female, it forcibly copulates with her but it does not rape her — for there is no moral dimension to these actions. They are neither prohibited nor obligatory.
So if God does not exist, why think we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes these moral duties on us? Where do they come from? It is hard to see why they would be anything more than a subjective impression ingrained into us by societal and parental conditioning.
On the atheistic view, certain actions such as incest and rape may not be biologically and socially advantageous, and so in the course of human development have become taboo, that is, socially unacceptable behavior. But that does absolutely nothing to show that rape or incest is really wrong. Such behavior goes on all the time in the animal kingdom…If there is no moral lawgiver, then there is no objective moral law; and if there is no objective moral law, then we have no objective moral duties…
Second: "ought" implies "can." A person is not morally responsible for an action he is unable to avoid. For example, if somebody shoves you into another person, you are not to blame for bumping into this person. You had no choice. But Harris believes that all of our actions are causally determined and that there is no free will. [20]… But if there is no free will, no one is morally responsible for anything. In the end, Harris admits this, though it's tucked away in his endnotes. Moral responsibility, he says, "is a social construct," not an objective reality: "in neuroscientific terms no person is more or less responsible than any other" for the actions they perform. [21] His thoroughgoing determinism spells the end of any hope or possibility of objective moral duties on his worldview because we have no control over what we do…
…The fact remains that whether we experience the illusion of free will or not, on Harris' view we are thoroughly determined in all that we think and do and can therefore have no moral responsibilities.
Conclusion
On Harris' view there is both no source of objective moral duties and no possibility of objective moral duty. Therefore, on his view, despite his protestations to the contrary, there is no objective right or wrong.
Thus, Sam Harris' naturalistic view fails to provide a sound foundation for objective moral values and duties. If God does not exist, we are trapped in a morally valueless world in which nothing is prohibited. Harris' atheism thus sits very ill with his ethical objectivism.
Endnotes:
1https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/navigating-sam-harris-the-moral-landscape/
2Ibid.
Website last accessed on 31st August 2018.
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