Can Ethics Exist Without God? A Thomistic Critique of James Sterba’s Axiomatic Morality

Abstract

This essay explores the question: can we have an objective ethics without God? This question is raised by James Sterba, who argues in the affirmative. As an atheistic ethicist, Sterba is motivated to maintain an objective morality that is not based in theism and that can withstand the problems with Darwinism. Sterba examines what he sees as one of the most popular theistic attempts to ground human morality, viz., divine command theory. In rejecting both divine command theory and theism, Sterba offers what he believes can offer objective morality: a basic moral norm that all people should adhere to. This article examines Sterba’s criticism of divine command theory along with his own efforts at establishing an objective morality in what he considers a universal abstract principle. In the end, this article argues that Sterba’s axiomatic principle is unclear as to its ontological foundation as well as its causal efficacy in attempting to obligate objective human ethics. It will be argued that Sterba is correct about human nature being the locus of morality, but that atheism fails at providing human teleology to account for such morality.

1. Introduction

Is it possible to have an objective ethics without God? For a classical theist like me, the answer is, “nothing would even exist without God.” However, such is the subject of this essay. I am not addressing whether non-theists can be good; but rather, can an objective goodness be established without a God. The type of God in view here is the traditional or classical theistic God believed in by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. James Sterba has raised the question of “can ethics exist without God” and has attacked the standard divine command theory that many theists employ to make sense of human morality while offering an alternative view that attempts to safeguard objective morality through an abstract axiom that, according to him, obligates everyone to treat others fairly and justly (Sterba 2024). Sterba should be commended for such an attempt. This essay will seek to answer the question of whether there can be ethics without God by exploring Sterba’s criticisms of some of the typical theistic attempts at safeguarding objective morality, especially via divine command theory, and examining Sterba’s own case for an objective ethics via his axiomatic principle.

2. God and Morality

As Sterba notes, theists have historically employed a divine command theory to explain human morality, where morality is based in the divine commands. In response to such divine command theories, one may raise, as Sterba does, the Euthyphro Dilemma, which put in more modern fashion asks, “does God command something because it is good, or is it good because he commands it?” Theists want to avoid either horn of this dilemma (excepting Ockham and other strict volunterists). On the one hand, God seems arbitrary if something is good simply because God wills it, and on the other he seems less than ultimate if something apart from him is already good. What is a theist to do? While a strict divine command theory, in the vein of Ockham, could maintain that God can will anything to be good, others, such as Robert Adams and William Lane Craig, have maintained what some have called a soft form of divine command theory.1 A very short and concise explanation of this view can be seen from Craig: “We don’t need to refute either of the two horns of the Euthyphro dilemma, because the dilemma it presents is a false one: There’s a third alternative, namely, God wills something because He is good. What do I mean by that? I mean that God’s own nature is the standard of goodness, and His commandments to us are expressions of His nature. In short, our moral duties are determined by the commands of a just and loving God” (Craig 2010, p. 136).

I am sympathetic to some of Sterba’s criticisms of divine command theory, especially the harder, voluntaristic style of Ockham. But what about the softer form as expressed in the writings of Adams and Craig? Such a view has become commonplace in evangelical philosophy and apologetics to both answer the Euthyphro and safeguard the objectivity of morality and ethics. In doing so, it makes God into a moral being. Not only is he “a” moral being, he “is the standard of goodness.” It is indeed the case that at least recently, evangelical Christians generally take God to be a moral being who also is the objectification of morality for humans. But does such a view make sense?

While such a view is typical in evangelical thinking, I think there are some interesting objections and problems with such a view. First, it necessarily brings God into the realm of morality. Second, it makes a non-human the standard for human morality. Let us look at these issues in turn. In doing so, we will explore the way in which Sterba argues for an objective morality without God.

While scholars such as Craig, Adams et al., think it is axiomatic for God to be in the realm of moral beings, such a view has been questioned (for example, see Davies (2006), and McCabe (2010)). Ιn fact, Sterba and I have had our own debates on this topic (Huffling 2021; Sterba 2021; Huffling 2022). In order for God to be the standard of goodness that Craig and others maintain that he is, he would have to be moral himself. However, this seems very problematic. For humans, to be moral means that one should act the way he is supposed to. We follow certain laws, both moral and civil. But what would it mean for God to be moral? Most theists would not want to say that God is adhering to some standard outside of himself. Most theists who hold that God is perfectly moral maintain that God just is moral somehow because of his divinity. This could be the case because he is considered maximally perfect, and since perfection requires moral perfection, God must be morally perfect. But this raises the question of what it means for God to be moral. If whatever God does just is morally “justifiable,” as such theists are prone to say, then how is that any different from Ockham’s position that whatever God does just is right because he is God? Of course, the reply will be that God can only do what is morally acceptable according to his nature, but such again leads to the question of what it means for God to be morally acceptable. To whom, or what? To many people, if God were replaced with another being in the Book of Job, he would likely seem to be morally unjustified, since according to the text Job was righteous. All his suffering was apparently based on a bet with “the Satan.” In the end of the book, God does not claim to be morally justified; rather, he simply says that he is God.

Sterba seems to recognize a problem here as well. He argues that God, if he exists, would have to adhere to the norm of morality, just like other rational beings. This, for Sterba, is why God cannot be the ultimate say so for moral commands, since his commands, to be morally good, would have to line up with the standard. Otherwise, God could issue evil commands (Sterba 2024, p. 6).

While theists resist the view that God is moral because of something else besides himself, and rather maintain that God’s nature is goodness as such, Sterba maintains that God is a moral being by virtue of being rational. For example, he says “that the standard of goodness, and especially the standard of moral goodness, must be a norm, a requirement that one ought to act or be in a certain way. In the case of morality, I claim that the ultimate norm can be expressed as treat all relevant interests fairly. By contrast, the God of traditional theism, if he exists, would be just a concrete rational being, not an abstract norm. Such a rational being, if he exists, like ourselves, would be subject to the requirements of morality” (Sterba 2024, p. 6). Sterba’s position seems rather Platonic, although he may reject such a characterization. However, I do not know what else an “abstract norm” could be, given the way he describes it. It does not seem to be an abstraction from anything. The question that naturally arises here is how such an abstract norm came to be. Further, why are rational beings required to follow this norm? What is it about being a rational being that is sufficient for also being a moral being? Such a position just seems axiomatic to Sterba, or in his words, “the most basic norm of morality,” which is simply “to treat all relevant interests appropriately—that is, fairly—and then understand all other moral norms as derivable from this one most basic norm” (Ibid., 8). Given, such a position, by definition there could not be a more basic or axiomatic one that tells us to obey the abstract norm which says to treat others fairly. Sterba’s position seems at least somewhat similar to Kant’s categorical imperative to treat all people as ends and not means. All this is to say that God, according to Sterba, “if he exists, would have to be good, and in particular, he would have to be morally good, in order for his commands to have any moral authority over us at all.” Thus, when claiming that God is good, says Sterba, he can only be said to be good if he “accords with the requirements of morality.” However, the question, which Sterba raises, is, “what grounds or justifies the requirements of morality?” (Ibid.). In short, he likens morality to logic and math. No one causes laws of logic to be true, or basic truths of math. They just are. They are “justified by appealing to the ultimate axioms or norms to which” they belong (Ibid.). In the realm of morality, the most basic axiom is simply to treat others’ interests with respect.

Views like divine command theory do not make sense of this, says Sterba. But what if God did not exist? Would objective morality still be grounded? For Sterba, the answer is yes. He says, “Given that the works of Shakespeare would have objective value for us whether or not God exists, then so should the norms of morality have objective value for us whether or not God exists” (Ibid., 9) Sterba then points out that theists agree that atheists can live moral lives. (From a Christian point of view, no one is moral without Christ, so this morality would be relative to other people, not in the sight of God.) What theists deny, according to Sterba, is justification for such an objective morality. Since atheists can recognize a standard, like Sterba does, then it, arguably, cannot be based either in God’s commands or his nature. According to Sterba, the answer lies in the moral axiom of treating people fairly. One could ask if an objective morality is desirable in the atheistic view. While some have said that morality becomes subjective, Sterba and others maintain that it is desirable to defend an objectivity of ethics. Such may be a rather “common sense” or “normal” view so that one does not fall into moral anarchy. However, can such an objective ethics be maintained in atheism? Sterba says yes and tries to maintain such a view is consistent with Darwinian thought.

3. Evolution, Morality, and the Is/Ought

One question that naturally arises in these discussions is how one can account for objective morality if (atheistic) Darwinian evolution was true. The worry some have is that if Darwinism is true, there does not seem to be any kind of teleology to human nature that many believe is necessary for objective morality. Such would be the case since there would not be a guiding cause (God) over human nature and their behavior. Sterba recognizes the difficulty here. It is explanatory of human behavior, he says, but not prescriptive or evaluative (Ibid., 12). Such is the typical problem: how can blind forces account for prescriptive human morality? Sterba recognizes that such “turns out to be a general problem for Darwinian evolutionary theory” (Ibid.). This is why he says there is a “need to bring the evaluative resources of ethics to bear on the explanations provided by Darwinian evolutionary theory in order to determine what our moral response should be to them” (Ibid.). Ultimately, this will be performed by appealing to the aforementioned moral axioms of respecting other rational people’s needs. One issue here, for Sterba is the is/ought fallacy. He believes Hume’s claim that one cannot derive an ought from an is (or a fact) is correct (Ibid., 8). There would seem to be some aspect, then, of reality that provides the “ought” Sterba is looking for. He rejects God being this basis, as he says, “Failure to recognize [the is/ought fallacy] is the core mistake made by divine command theories in all their varieties because they all attempt to ultimately ground the ‘oughts’ of ethics in a fact, namely the fact of God’s existence” (Ibid.). Rather, he says, “Rejecting any foundation of this sort, I contend that the ‘oughts’ of ethics need to be grounded instead in one or more fundamental oughts” (Ibid.). This is where he introduces the notion that objective morality is simply as axiomatic as logic and math.

One issue with such analogies between logic and math is that they are not prescriptive in the sense of saying what “should” be the case, only what “will” be the case. For example, the law of non-contradiction only states that two propositions cannot both be true when the relationships entail that one be true and the other false. Such is simply a description of what will be the case if such an event arises. The same is the case for math. Math does not prescribe anything, it only describes what proofs, etc., actually say, much like the argumentation in logic. This is not the case with ethics. Ethics prescribes how humans should behave. But if one cannot derive an ought from an is, if there is no oughtness implicit in a thing’s nature, in this case a human, then there is only an “is.” Sterba has not demonstrated that evolution has given us anything other than the mere fact that some things just happen to adapt and survive better. There is no oughtness in such a scenario.

It does appear that Sterba recognizes the need for design, however. He says, “In Darwinian evolutionary theory, natural selection is a process where organisms with favorable traits are more likely to reproduce and survive. Natural selection produces entities unintentionally designed to keep themselves alive and to create more of their kind” in various ways (Ibid., 12; emphasis added). He further notes that natural selection “gives rise to organisms that are designed to pass on their genes” (Ibid.). This notion of being designed by random chance is contradictory as design requires intention. Something cannot be accidentally designed. However, such a designation is probably simply an analogy, as he would say things appear designed, as Richard Dawkins states in The Blind Watchmaker. Without design, however, it appears that Sterba may be running into the very problem he wants to avoid. If the mere existence of God is seen as a fact from which an ought cannot arise, why would the “existence” of an abstract notion of morality by anything other than a mere fact? And if such is the case, how would an ought be derived from it? It seems like Sterba is simply replacing God with an abstract notion. It is doubtable that Sterba sees the abstract notion as a really existing thing (then it would be a concrete particular, like God), but if it does not “exist” in the normal use of the word, then what is it? Abstract objects are usually seen as causally inert. Sterba’s position appears very unclear. Does he have in mind a Platonic notion? If so, how would it not be a particular of some sort, and also not be causally inert? If it is not Platonic, but rather an abstraction more in the Aristotelian sense where the notion (form) is thought about apart from the matter, then it would be arising from a concrete particular. So, it seems that either he has in mind a Platonic abstract form of some sort (which really does not seem to be the case) which would causally inert, at least on most accounts, or it would arise from concrete particulars as a “mere” mental abstraction and still not provide the “ought” that Sterba desires. One clue we have is his analogy with logic and math. However, as just mentioned, neither are prescriptive. (There are debates about whether numbers and logical propositions are abstract in some sense, but again, such are seen as causally inert usually.) It can also be argued that both logic and math are themselves abstractions from concrete particulars. While this is debated, logic can be argued to be grounded in actually existing things and not merely as mental abstractions. For example, the reason that a stick cannot be a stick and not be a stick is because of the nature of being. It is not merely a principle of thought, but a principle of being. The same holds true for numbers. When one sees a stick, he sees one stick. He can then add, multiply, and perform various mathematical operations. From an empiricist’s point of view, such abstractions are thus known via things and not merely as mental rules. However, it is not clear what Sterba means by such an abstract principle of treating everyone fairly other than it being a principle.

4. Human Nature and Teleology

Sterba recognizes the relevance of human nature when he argues, “Consider, for example, the objective moral requirement to not plunge a knife into some other innocent human’s chest. Suppose our human nature were to change such that when someone plunged a knife into our chests, we died instantly and then immediately sprang back to life with a feeling of Intense pleasure. If this became the new reality for us, then from that moment on, there would be a new objective moral requirement to plunge knives into people’s chests as often as possible” (Ibid., 9). He further notes that “the actual requirements of morality for here and now can be seen to change, while still remaining objective, if there are appropriate changes in human nature or in the circumstances of our lives that are relevant to the application of the basic norms of morality” (Ibid.). As a natural law proponent, I agree that morality is bound up in our nature. In fact, I think this is the crux of the debate: can naturalism explain human nature in a way that provides an objective prescriptive moral framework?

I believe that Sterba is correct in stating that there is a human nature (although our meaning of that probably differs greatly) and that morality is tied to that nature. It is this human nature that many believe is the foundation for objective morality. This is why theism is touted to provide more of a safeguard to such an objective morality: there is a cause and design to human nature. Natural law theory is clearly developed in Aquinas’ thought on his Treatise on Law in the Summa Theologiae. Aquinas first establishes that there is an eternal law (of course, he has already established theism at this point). Further, it is the eternal law that directs his creation. He likens God to an artificer who has knowledge (divine ideas) of the things he can create. He states: “Wherefore as the type of Divine Wisdom, inasmuch as by It all things are created, has the character of art, exemplar or idea; so the type of Divine Wisdom, as moving all things to their due end, bears the character of law. Accordingly the eternal law is nothing else than the type of Divine Wisdom, as directing all actions and movements” (Aquinas n.d., ST, I-II, Q. 93, A. 1). Thus, God, as the artisan and lawmaker, directs all creation through the eternal law, which is simply God directing all things to their ends. Such ends are inherent in their nature. Further, since all humans are rational and share the same nature, Aquinas argues that the natural law is the same for all men (Ibid., I-II, Q. 94, A. 4). Thus, there is a commonality here between Sterba and Aquinas: the role of reason in ethics. The difference is the metaphysical foundation. For Sterba, Darwinian evolution has led to all men being rational and being obligated by an axiomatic moral principal to be ethically good. As pointed out, this seems to have metaphysical problems with the grounding and obligatory nature of such a principal. On the other hand, Aquinas maintains a transcendent being that causes and directs all things, which safeguards (even requires) objective morality.2

There is another question that is often discussed in this debate, and Sterba raises it as well: can humans know that there is an objective morality apart from appealing to God? Most theists will answer in the affirmative. As Ed Feser writes, “From an Aristotelian point of view, the essences and final causes of things are knowable simply by studying the things themselves, without any appeal to the existence or intentions of a creator” (Feser 2009, chap 5). Given the belief that all people can benefit from general revelation, Feser notes that “it seems clear that at least a substantial part of morality can, on a Thomistic account, be known in principle without appealing to God” (Ibid.). He does, however, note that a full blown moral theory would require a more theological framework since it involves God as the efficient and final cause. From a Thomistic point of view, human nature can only be accounted for because it is based in divine ideas in God’s mind and willed to exist in the world.

Does this not resort back to a divine command theory? Such would not be the case in the way previously mentioned. On such a view, God has all knowledge of what he can create in his mind, called divine ideas. God does not have to create anything, so in a sense, creation is arbitrary. However, if he does decide to create (not in a temporal sense), then whatever he does create is willed (given classical theism) immutably, eternally, and simply. This is due to God being immutable, eternal and simple, so whatever he does, he does from his nature. (It is recognized that this view of God is controversial, but it is the historical, classical view.) Thus, if God wills to create humans, humans have a particular nature. In the Thomistic framework, God issues commands in accordance with the human nature. So, it is not the case that God can, contra Ockham, just will whatever he wants. This is because (1) God has willed immutably and eternally, and (2) the human nature is fixed. Unlike Sterba’s knife example, human nature is not thought to be able to change in such a way (not that he thinks it does in reality), so morality is fixed and objective. God’s commands are, therefore, not arbitrary as they are in accordance with the human nature’s telos, i.e., its natural good. Since God has willed both human nature and its natural good from eternity, the human nature is fixed. (As Sterba notes, according to some, like Aquinas, God can issue commands that override previous commands, such as killing—in the case of Abraham and Isaac—and adultery in the case of Hosea (Sterba 2024, p. 4). Aquinas answers this by saying in the case of killing, since all men deserve death, God can choose how they die, and in the case of Hosea, since adultery is forbidden per the law from God, God can override such law with another command (Aquinas n.d., ST, I-II, Q. 94, A. 5, ad. 2). In such cases, natural law is not changing, but one law is being overridden with another, not broken since the law maker has made it so.) The fact that God has created the human nature and gives commands in accordance with such nature makes morality objective.

5. Conclusions

Such is the case with natural law, but what if God does not exist? Objective morality has certain requirements. One must be an objective and fixed nature. Without an objective nature, we would not be able to say very much about ethics if humans did not share a nature that universal rules could apply to. Can atheism account for such natures? In attempting to do so, it would have to account for how biological life came about from non-life, how consciousness came from matter, and why people should go along with ethical rules. Atheists have not provided satisfactory answers to such questions.

Another necessary condition is the existence of the universe. As mentioned in the introduction, while the subject of this essay is not about God’s existence, per se, it is the thinking of theists that not only would human nature and ethics not exist, but nothing at all would exist either.

Has Sterba effectively demonstrated that there can be objective ethics without God? He has maintained that ethics is objective since we all have interests and that we should treat people’s interests fairly. Such is indeed a good and ethical goal. In establishing such a goal, Sterba claims that all rational beings are bound by an abstract moral axiom that all should follow. While it is noble that all people should treat others with respect and fairness, it is difficult to see how Sterba has effectively and successfully demonstrated the nature of this moral axiom. It appears more stipulated than demonstrated. It is not clear from where such an axiom originates Sterba says it is an abstract notion, but abstract in what sense, and from where does its causal efficacy arise? It seems open to the difficulty that some see with Kant’s categorical imperative: why should someone adhere to such an abstract principle?

In short, I argue that Sterba’s view fails to demonstrate the objective and universal obligation that he so admirably wants to maintain. An abstract principle itself is not enough to offer such an obligation. There must be some sort of moral obligation being imposed on humans, and such obligation would have to be objective and transcendent to human nature. While morality is bound up in the design and teleology of human nature, it does not appear that human nature in an atheistic framework can account for why there is such teleology and obligation, or even why such a nature exists. Without such an obligation, such as seen in a lawgiver, there does not seem to be a way to ground universal obligation across all humanity. It is difficult to escape the Darwinian problem that Sterba recognizes and wants to avoid. However, theism can avoid such problems while also explaining how morality (and human nature) can be objective and binding for all.