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Defining Morality
What is morality? What does it mean to be a moral person? The first question seems easy enough: Morality is about distinguishing between good and bad, or right and wrong. But that’s where it starts to get complicated, because people don’t always agree on what’s right and wrong. Some people decide whether something is right based on a holy book or by a person in authority. Atheists (and many believers as well) see a problem with this approach. Because the various holy books and authorities say different things, having discussions about right and wrong is more difficult than it should be. And if a scripture instructs followers to harm others, people outside of that book’s influence should be permitted to say it’s a bad source of moral guidance. (Not that any holy book would do that, of course. Ahem.) The same is true for authority. I shouldn’t consider something good just because someone else, even a greatly admired person, suggested it, without also thinking independently about whether it makes sense. For a chapter on morality without God, using a definition from an atheist makes sense. Neuroscientist Sam Harris says that morality is concerned with "the well-being of conscious creatures." If something contributes to that well-being, it’s moral. If it detracts from it, it’s immoral. Not all atheists agree with that definition but that’s par for the course. For my purposes here, think of morality as an effort to strive as much as possible for the well-being of conscious creatures.

Figuring out how individuals define morality
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done fascinating work on personal definitions of morality. He identified five moral “foundations”:
1. Fairness
2. Avoiding harm
3. Loyalty
4. Purity
5. Authority
He then ran a survey to see where people place the most importance. Some think an act is immoral if it’s somehow impure. Some think an act of disloyalty is a very big deal morally. Others are concerned with fairness or whether something harms people, whereas some think challenging authority is immoral. Most people are some combination of these, with more or less weight in each category. One really interesting result:
Haidt found that political liberals care most about fairness and avoiding harm, and a lot less about loyalty, purity, and authority. In other words, liberals (and most atheists) don’t usually think a sex act is immoral because it isn’t the standard, “pure” version, and they don’t think there’s anything wrong with challenging an authority figure. But they’re very concerned when someone is harmed or treated unfairly. Political conservatives are more concerned about loyalty, purity, and authority than liberals and less concerned about fairness and avoiding harm. Still concerned, of course, but less so.

Being Good without a Belief in God
The idea that concepts of right and wrong have to come from a supernatural source is as old as sin. In the Genesis story, Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden for eating fruit they were told not to eat. Don’t forget that the fruit was from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And the problem wasn’t the fruit itself so much as the act of disobedience. At the heart of this fascinating story is the idea that only God can know the difference between right and wrong. Morality is said to be a complete mystery to humanity,so all humans can do is follow his instructions. And when Adam and Eve failed to do that, they put the whole moral universe at risk. So when I claim that people can know right from wrong without God’s help, I know I’m yanking at some very deep roots. And when I say people can even be good without God, it’s time to explain just how that works. Read on...

Why bother being good at all?
1. I know what it feels like to be harmed or cheated or lied to, so I empathize with others and try not to harm, cheat, or lie to them.
2. When my empathy is overwhelmed by my own selfishness or greed, I get real human consequences from those around me.
3. Like most people, I want to be liked and respected by those around me, not held in contempt.
4. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder to see if those I’ve hurt are coming after me. If I treat people well, I can relax.
5. The cooperation and goodwill of those people around me makes my life easier.
6. I have self-respect, which is based in part on how I treat others.
7. I don’t want to be punished for breaking the rules of the society in which I live.
8. I can’t really ask others to behave morally if I don’t behave morally myself.
Some reasons are lofty and some are down to earth. Some may also be in the Bible, but they don’t rely on scripture or God they simply make sense. I can figure them out. In fact, moral development experts say most people figure out the ethical principles that make for a moral life not from books or teachers but through their own interactions with others on the playground, on sports teams, in their families, and in other social groups before they’re out of elementary school. These principles don’t guarantee my good behavior, but neither does any religious doctrine. In both cases, whenever a person loses his or her moral sense, plenty of other people and social institutions are willing to straighten that person out. Everyone makes moral decisions large and small a hundred times a day.And when those decisions are made well, everyone benefits.

Chucking Stalin and the Inquisition and getting serious about morality
Neither religious belief nor religious disbelief is a guarantee of good behavior. Incentives like greed, power, anger, resentment, fear, or desperation can overwhelm the moral incentives, which can make an atheist or a believer behave badly. Still, plenty of people in both camps spend an enormous amount of energy trying to paint the other side as immoral by using the bad behavior of famous monsters dictators or criminals drunk on greed, power, anger, and all the rest as an indictment of everyone who shares the monster’s religious (or nonreligious) label. But using the horrendous acts of Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, or Adolf Hitler, or Fred Phelps to draw conclusions about the average Ned Flanders Christian is a stretch. Likewise, thinking that Idi Amin or Osama bin Laden are any reflection on the moral character of my Muslim neighbors ignores all the other variables that made the famous monsters what they were. The same applies to Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and other atheists with immoral behavior to answer for. Like the religious villains, their actions say more about unchecked power than about their opinions of gods. And drawing conclusions about what it means to be an everyday atheist from Stalin is as silly as doubting the ethics of a passing Quaker because Torquemada lost his moral compass. This brings me to a moral point worth noting. People of all worldviews should be judged on the moral standards they actually live by and endorse. Most Christians today think burning people at the stake is a bad idea, and most are outraged when Pastor Fred Phelps and members of his Westboro Baptist Church picket soldiers’ funerals with signs claiming to know that God hates gays. Few Muslims embrace the ethics of Idi Amin or Osama bin Laden. And most atheists think Stalin was an immoral criminal. Those opinions matter more than the labels they happen to share. If someone does endorse the violence and hatred that made these monsters infamous now that’s something worth objecting to.

Moral society without God the Scandinavians
One of the clearest arguments that people can be deeply good without believing in God is happening right now in the Scandinavian countries Denmark, Norway,and Sweden. By nearly every measure, these societies are some of the least religious in human history. Between 65 and 78 percent of the population expresses no belief in God, and regular church attendance hovers around 3 to 5 percent. But instead of teeming with depravity and violence, sociologist Phil Zuckerman notes that these countries are “moral, stable, humane, and deeply good.” They top the world in nearly every marker of a civilized society, including low crime rates, high literacy, low unemployment, and some of the highest GDPs per capita on Earth. And when it comes to generosity,the Scandinavians make up three of the top four countries in aid per capita given to poor countries. The (highly religious) United States does all right, giving $97 per person to developing countries in 2010. But secular Sweden gave $483 per person, doubting Denmark gave $517, and nonreligious Norway gave an incredible $936 for every man, woman, and child in their country to struggling nations nearly ten times the level of the United States. A pretty moving and impressive commitment to moral values, I’d say, all from countries with very little religious belief.

Being good without God a quick history
Most atheists will readily admit that a lot of religious believers are good people. From Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Dalai Lama to Mr. Rogers to my dear, sweet mother-in-law, I have no trouble coming up with countless examples of people who do their religion proud. But many religious people to think that nonbelievers simply can’t be moral people. Not all religious people think it, of course, but many have, and many do, and that misconception has caused a good deal of personal pain among atheists and other nonbelievers. When the philosopher Pierre Bayle said in 1681 that an atheist could be just as virtuous as a Christian, and that there’s no reason atheists couldn’t form a moral society of their own, Christian Europe fell off its chair. He eventually lost his teaching job in the Netherlands for saying such things. Funny thing, though: Three centuries later, the Netherlands is majority nontheistic. And Bayle was right it’s one of the most peaceful, orderly, nonviolent societies on Earth. But the misconception that atheists can’t be good is a persistent one. So before I turn to how morality works without supernatural religion, I want to offer a few cameos from the history of goodness without God.

The Confucians
Confucianism is a philosophy that’s all about ethics, self-improvement, virtue, altruism, and compassionate action and all without appealing to gods for help or clarification. Confucius articulated the earliest known version of the Golden Rule:
“What you do not wish for yourself, do not do to others.”

Epicureans
The philosopher Epicurus and his followers in ancient Greece, most of whom were atheist, agnostic, or deistic, were among the first to talk about justice as a social contract between people an agreement not to do harm to each other.

The Jains
Jainism is a nontheistic religion centered on peace and nonviolence. Jains have been at the forefront of social and moral issues in India for centuries, all without reference to gods.

The Reformers
Atheists and agnostics have done courageous work on major moral issues of their times, such as
1. Pioneers of women’s rights including Susan B. Anthony,Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Simone de Beauvoir, and Gloria Steinem

2. Slavery abolitionists including Frances Wright, Ernestine Rose, Frederick Douglass, and Lydia Maria Child

3. Advocates of social equality,prison reform, and fair labor practices including Jeremy Bentham, Robert Owen, J.S. Mill, Felix Adler, Emma Goldman, Gora, and Jane Addams

4. Advocates of reproductive rights including Margaret Sanger and Katha Pollitt

5. Protestors against war and militarism including Bertrand Russell, Kate Hudson, Jane Addams, Noam Chomsky,and Aldous Huxley

The compassionate humanists
Nontheists have always been generous people. But in recent years an effort has evolved to specifically organize giving and volunteering around the values of that worldview, including mutual care and responsibility. If humanity wants a better world with less suffering and more justice, and there’s no supernatural power to make it happen well, then it’s up to humans. Several major nontheistic groups launched disaster relief efforts after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, including SHARE (by the Council for Secular Humanism) Non-Believers Giving Aid (by the Richard Dawkins Foundation), and Humanist Charities (by the American Humanist Association). In 2010, a humanist membership organization called Foundation Beyond Belief was created to focus and encourage generosity in the nontheistic community. As of late 2012, the atheist and humanist members of the Foundation have raised more than $750,000 for charities around the world and created a network of humanist volunteer teams in 23 cities across the United States.

Digging Up the Natural Roots of Morality
For as long as people have been thinking about the difference between good and bad, two ideas have competed for attention:
1. The human understanding of the good comes from outside of humanity God being the usual suspect.
2. The human understanding of the good is woven into the human mind, a natural part of being human.
For a long time this was considered a toss-up, and a tie generally goes to the Big Guy.But the last century or so has seen a huge amount of new understanding of how humans are put together. Fields like neuroscience, genetics, and biochemistry have shed much more light on how people know right from wrong and why they tend more often than not to choose the right. As with so many other discoveries, the resulting picture leaves little for God to do. Behaving well turns out to be highly adaptive. It aids survival. So evolution has naturally selected a tendency to be good, which puts moral understanding and behavior deep in the fabric of who and what human beings are. That’s a shocking claim to many people, even those who accept evolution. Sure, evolution can explain sex and aggression and hunger and fear but isn’t evolution about “survival of the fittest,” and “nature, red in tooth and claw”? How can that ever lead to morality? As it turns out, evolution not only can select for moral behavior, it really must. Even so, morality isn’t foolproof. Some evolved tendencies that were helpful a million years back aren’t the least bit helpful in the modern world. In those cases, humans have developed social norms, rules, and laws to protect each other from each other. The biologist David Lehti gives an arresting example: If you think of the way other social species on Earth behave, it’s frankly amazing that dozens of unrelated adult males can be confined together on a plane for hours with dozens of fertile females, yet everybody arrives at the gate in Cleveland alive and unharmed. Left to its own devices, evolution would tend to work against that happy outcome. Yet it happens ten thousand times a day because people have developed a social morality that thankfully trumps evolved human tendencies when it needs to. That doesn’t mean people are saints, not by a long shot. No one is (including saints). But we have a stronger inclination to be moral than immoral, and science points to several reasons why. These sections look at the natural roots of morality, as well as the ways society patches the gaps when human nature fails to keep people behaving.

Clarifying “survival of the fittest”
The phrase “survival of the fittest” brings to mind a world in which the strongest survive by pummeling the weak. That’s about as far from Harris’s definition of morality as you can get and if that were the contribution of evolution to morality, it wouldn’t be much of a contribution at all. More like something to overcome! But that’s not what the phrase means. “Survival of the fittest” doesn’t refer to physical fitness, but whether your traits are the best fit for your environment. An animal’s survival may depend on being puny so it can disappear under a rock when predators come by, while his bulky, muscular friend can’t hide and gets eaten. So “fitness” isn’t just about strength or the ability to squash others. In many cases, it’s about the ability to cooperate with them. Cooperation and empathy have been a much better fit for the conditions of human life than “pummel thy neighbor” ever could be. To see why, just imagine two Stone Age populations, one with a genetic tendency to kill each other, the other with a tendency to help each other. Which population is likely to still be around ten generations down the line, passing on those genes and tendencies to their kids? Not the one with murder as a national pastime, I’ll tell you that. “Every man for himself” is a terrible group survival strategy. This natural cooperation and empathy is strongest in a person’s “in-group” those closest and most similar to him or her. when it comes to living peacefully with “out-groups” those who look and act differently from a given person evolution offers some real challenges. Racism, nationalism, militarism, and the overblown fear of immigrants are among the less helpful things humans have inherited by natural selection, and getting over those fear-driven things is one of the biggest moral challenges facing the modern world.

Being afraid and getting over it
Fear is one of the greatest drivers of religious belief. This makes sense if the world has gone violently mad, there’s real comfort in the idea that someone with infinite power and goodness is in control. But religion isn’t responsible for the perpetual paranoia, though it often contributes to keeping fear alive. The original culprit, the biological parent of human fears, is evolution. Imagine a sunny Wednesday afternoon a million years ago. Two pre-human ancestors are walking through the high grass on the African savannah. Suddenly there’s a blur of movement off to the left! One of them assumes it’s something fun and goes in for a hug. The other jumps 15 feet straight up and grabs a tree limb. Even if it’s just a fluffy bunny nine times out of ten, which of these guys is more likely to pass on his genes to the next generation?

Counting the incarcerated
New inmates in the US federal prison system are asked their religious identity so officials can make accommodations in diet or schedule and know which clergy (if any) to call in times of need.
The results were interesting:
1. Most religions have about the same percentage in prison as in the general population. Mainline Protestants, for example, make up 31 percent of the US population and 32 percent of the federal prison population.

2. A few religions are slightly over represented in prison, and some are underrepresented. Mormons are an example of the latter, making up 1.3 percent of the US population but just 0.3 percent of the federal prison population.
You can’t draw direct moral conclusions from these data alone, of course. For one thing, a strong correlation exists between the average income in a given religion and the ability of its members to stay out of prison. Other sociological factors enter in as well. One major exception to the pattern does exist one worldview that’s right on the national average in income but is hugely underrepresented in prisons: atheists. About five percent of Americans identify not just as nonreligious but specifically as atheists. But only 0.09 percent of the federal prison population identifies as atheists 50 times fewer than would be expected. Remember that the data are taken at the time of entry,so conversions in the pen won’t show up, just their worldviews around the time their crimes were committed. The result contradicts popular assumptions about atheists. Although an atheist is regarded by much of society as inherently immoral, he or she is among the least likely people to end up in a federal prison. I don’t think this is because the legal system has a crush on atheists. Neither do I think it means atheists are necessarily more virtuous. But at the very least, it should give pause to those who think they’re less virtuous. In a long-ago world that was bent on killing us, no trait would have been more useful for survival than perpetual, sweaty paranoia. That’s why humans have inherited a strong tendency to assume that every shadow and sound is a threat, which in turn kept them alive and reproducing. Whenever I come upstairs from a dark basement, I feel a tingling on the back of my neck, my step quickens, and my heart races just a bit even though my basement, unlike basements on the ancient savannah, rarely contains a cheetah. That creepy feeling is less relevant now, but half a million years ago it was plenty useful for keeping predators of all kinds at bay including the strange, unfamiliar humans from over the hill. By the time high blood pressure killed off one of my ancient ancestors at 22, he’d already have several jittery, paranoid offspring pounding espressos and cradling stone shotguns through the long, terrifying night. Even as evolution has given people a tendency to cooperate with their immediate community, it also makes them fear and distrust those who are different. That worked at one time. But in a close-packed world of seven billion people of countless different colors, creeds, and kinds, such overblown fear and distrust isn’t as helpful for survival. People are in greater control of their environment than ever before, but the human brain hasn’t had a chance to catch up. So people stay afraid, keep believing that things have never been worse and keep clinging to the comfort of religious ideas. When religious ideas help people recognize their shared humanity, conquer their fears, and enlarge the circle of those they love and trust (as they often do), such ideas are part of the moral solution in the modern world. But when religious ideas reinforce ancient fears and hatreds, drawing lines and narrowing the circle of love and trust (as they often do), those ideas are part of the moral problem.

Playing nice
A lot of studies confirm our stronger tendency toward moral behavior. But isolating the variables out in the real world can be difficult. As a result, many researchers have been turning to a world where variables are under greater control the world of video and online gaming. For those who think human culture is losing its moral grip, these games are a convenient target. When they aren’t accused of sucking the brains out of children, video and online games are accused of greasing the slippery slope that’s plunging humanity into an abyss of immorality. After the Columbine High School killers were found to have played the violent video game Doom, many felt the case was closed. Violence in fantasy became violence in real life, they said even though many experts consider such game play to be an expression of violent tendencies, or even a helpful release, not the cause. And even though some games and situations do make me wonder about the human species, research in moral decision making using gaming scenarios is reinforcing the conclusion that people are actually surprisingly moral even in situations you’d think would surely go the other way. One such study looked at an online role-playing game called Pardus a virtual life game in which hundreds of thousands of people assume other identities and interact in a completely artificial environment. Spaceships move through a universe perpetually at war, while players forge alliances, trade, battle, and build with other players. Almost no rules are in place to guide behavior in the game. Seems like a perfect place for human nature to go berserk survival of the fittest in its usual, misunderstood meaning. But when the researchers tracked the behavior of 400,000 players in the game, assessing millions of individual human interactions by those players, they found that only 2 percent of all actions were aggressive in any way.Most players (who didn’t know they were being watched) most of the time behaved in a way the researchers described as social and compassionate even without specified rules. One researcher noted that far from anarchy, the result is participants organizing themselves as a social group with good intentions. Even in a virtual world without consequences or rules in which individuals with masked identities travel around in armed spaceships, people tend more often than not to behave pretty well. So maybe I shouldn’t be too surprised that the real world complete with social approval and disapproval, rules and consequences, and with far fewer starfighters functions even better. And sure enough, similar studies in the workplace, in family settings, and in communities of various sizes and types have shown the same result though people tend to mostly notice the bad exceptions, most people most of the time behave well. Suddenly the whole moral question is a lot less frantic. Instead of seeking a way to somehow become moral, you’re left with the interesting but less urgent question of why most people most of the time already are moral, with and without religion and the collective desire to work on the times they aren’t.

Discovering “moral molecules” and mirrors in your head
Science has only recently begun to really plumb the depths of the incredible three-pound blob of jelly that is the human brain. And one of the things research is uncovering is the complex, evolved mechanism humans have that reinforces their morality. The role that the oxytocin molecule plays in sexual attraction and arousal has been known for a while, as well as its role in maternal feelings and bonding between people. But recent studies have also shown an important connection between oxytocin and moral behavior. When oxytocin is released, trust goes up and fear recedes. Individuals are more likely to feel empathy for others and therefore more likely to behave morally towards them. Subjects were 80 percent more likely to make generous decisions in simulated scenarios after getting a nasal injection of oxytocin. And on the flipside, it turns out psychopaths are bad at producing oxytocin. So it makes sense that Paul Zak, one of the top researchers in this area, calls oxytocin “the moral molecule.” A moral molecule would be a big hit with natural selection, of course, because fear and mistrust prevent societies from flourishing, whereas cooperation, empathy, and trust help them survive and thrive. Okay,I’ve saved my favorite for last: the mirror neuron. In your head are some neurons that fire whenever you do something. Pick up a marble, yawn, or slam your shin into a trailer hitch, and these neurons get busy.Scientists have known this for a long time. But in the past decade or so, they’ve discovered that these same neurons also fire when you see someone else picking up a marble, yawning, or slamming a shin. They are the reason you wince when you see a car door slam on somebody else’s fingers, and yawn when someone else yawns. They’re called mirror neurons, and they have the powerful capacity to make you feel, quite directly, what somebody else is feeling. You probably see where I’m going with this. The implications are huge. Mirror neurons make people vulnerable to the experiences and feelings of others. They go beyond sympathy (the concern for someone else’s well-being) to empathy the ability to feel what someone else is feeling. If Bill Clinton could really “feel your pain” like he said he did, his mirror neurons were helping him do that. So why did mirror neurons evolve? Like any evolutionary “why” question, it helps to think about what the absence of the feature would have meant. Mirror neurons make teaching and learning much easier, for one. All primates have them, so it turns out monkey see, monkey do is a matter of hardware, not just software. When Cave-Kid saw Mom or Dad starting a fire, or picking berries, or spearing dinner on the hoof, mirror neurons would have made it easier to duplicate the task. Populations without this cool adaptive anomaly would have had a selective disadvantage, resulting in fewer survivors over time, and voilà! Mirror neurons became the norm. Then there’s the selective advantage of being good. Without the hard-wired ability to feel what someone else feels, individuals really could be islands unto themselves, indifferent to each other’s pain and suffering. Picture one population of mutually indifferent, self-centered creatures, and another in which empathy is the norm. Which population is going to survive to pass on its genes? The most powerful human moral concept is the Reciprocity Principle: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Christians may recognize their Golden Rule in that, but its origin is much older and its presence much more universal than a single religion or philosophy. It’s the heart of human morality, something people generally figure out on their own by age six. And mirror neurons are a continuous, helpful nudge. Little effort is needed to see the root of empathy, sympathy, compassion, conscience, cooperation, guilt, and a whole lot of other useful tendencies in this remarkable neural system. It’s just one more reason humanity is still here after all these years.

Recognizing the changing nature of morality
I often hear that religion and God are necessary because they offer an unchanging moral code. It sounds very reassuring. But a moment’s reflection shows that an unchanging moral code is the last thing we want or need.
Most people wouldn’t want to live in a world governed by the moral norms of Bronze Age Mediterranean cultures say about 3,500 years ago. Women were considered the property of their husbands. Slavery was accepted as the rightful dominance of the strong over the weak. It was considered a holy duty to stone gays, fortune tellers, and disobedient children to death. This is the period in which the Old Testament was written, in which each of these actions was endorsed as morally correct. But finding a living Christian or Jew who thinks these things are morally correct now is nearly impossible. Our moral understanding, thankfully, has changed. The Pharisees in the New Testament apparently tried to evolve their morality a bit, but Jesus seemed to be irritated by that, scolding them for no longer observing the instruction to kill disobedient children (Mark 7:9–13). And women still had a miserable time of it, ordered to “obey their husbands as gods.” Again, most modern believers have now moved past that Bronze Age morality. In Europe in the Middle Ages, guilt was decided not by evidence but by trials of fire, water, and combat. Fortunately the ethics of fairness have changed since then. It was also considered a pressing moral duty to identify and burn witches. Not so much today (except in some parts of Africa). Humanity finds its way forward, changing moral norms over time. Slavery ended in the United States and United Kingdom in the 19th century, a change in moral norms driven by courageous atheists, as well as theists who in many cases had to find the moral courage to ignore their own scriptures. Women, whose inequality was considered morally neutral or even good for most of history, were finally granted the vote and other rights in several countries by the early 20th century. But there was more progress to be made. Despite many moral improvements in the United States, interracial marriage was still illegal in many states until 1967, and a woman couldn’t get contraception without her husband’s permission both “moral” positions that have since changed for the better. This list could go on, but you get the idea. Don’t be seduced by the idea that unchanging moral norms would be good. Such norms do change over time, and despite dire warnings of moral chaos, most people of all beliefs eventually agree that the changes in moral understanding I’ve listed here have been big improvements. When someone feels a change isn’t for the best, it’s time to have a discussion. But wishing away the ability to change the human mind about morality isn’t good for anyone.

Exercising the moral muscle
Whenever someone is a particular saint or sinner, people commonly look to that person’s upbringing for clues. Surely something her parents did (or didn’t do) set the stage for her selfless acts (or terrible crimes). Religious conservatives often cry out after heinous acts like mass shootings that morality is declining because children are no longer raised to honor and obey parents, authorities, and God; to follow instructions without question; and to know the Ten Commandments. They say the acts are a result of parenting gone wrong. One conservative religious parenting book after another cites “permissive parenting” as the cause of a supposed moral decline, and obedience and discipline as the solution. “Obedience is the foundation for all character,” In his book on Christian parenting, Baptist pastor Jack Hyles called obedience the foundation of character, of the home, and of society. A list of the 100 most frequent words in John MacArthur’s What the Bible Says About Parenting includes duty, authority, obedience, fear, command, law, and submit. Not all Christian parenting advice runs that way. Parenting With Love and Laughter: Finding God in Family Life doesn’t include a single one of those nasty obsessions in its top 100. And that book shares fully half of its top 50 words and a lot of its other values with Parenting Beyond Belief, my own thought for nonreligious parents. Both of these emphasize involving kids in ethical decision making and inviting them to ask the reasons behind the rules and neither counts “Because I said so” as a valid reason. As is often the case, religious moderates have more in common with the nonreligious than they do with fundamentalists. Parenting styles do strongly affect children’s ethical development. But is unquestioning obedience really the way to go, or do the less authoritarian books have it right? Moral development research consistently recommends the less authoritarian approach. Dr. Joan Grusec, a leader in this field, says parents who demand unquestioning obedience are actually less likely to raise ethical kids than those who emphasize reasoning and questioning. That’s the exact opposite of popular opinion.

Comparing rescuers and non-rescuers in Nazi Europe
In one especially powerful study, 700 survivors of Nazi Europe were interviewed, including rescuers (people who actively helped others hide or escape, often at great risk to themselves) and non-rescuers (people who were either passive in the face of the atrocities or actively involved). The researchers asked both groups about their upbringing specifically how their parents taught them values and ethics. Almost everyone described growing up in a home where morality was taken seriously.But when the questions turned to how that was done, an astonishing pattern emerged. The non-rescuers were 21 times more likely to have been raised in families that emphasized obedience to authority. Rules were meant to be followed without question in other words, the rules were taught by indoctrination. If a child asked why a given rule was in place, the parent was likely to say, “Because I said so.” Rescuers, on the other hand, were three times more likely than non-rescuers to identify reasoning as an element of their moral education. Explained, the authors said, was one of the most common words used by rescuers in describing their parents’ ways of talking about rules and ethical ideas. The parents explained why something was right or wrong and allowed the children to ask further questions. This in turn gave the kids experience not just at rule-following but at thinking morally. When the Nazis rose to power, most of those raised to obey authority kept obeying authority,while those taught to think morally kept thinking morally and were able to see that this particular authority should be resisted. Indoctrinating kids to rules (teaching by rote without encouraging independent thought or challenge) is one of the worst things parents can do to develop the ethical judgment of their children. Researcher Larry Nucci has said indoctrination is worse than doing nothing, because it actually interferes with a child’s moral development. Yet conservative commentators urge parents to indoctrinate because it feels so decisive. People with nondogmatic worldviews, including atheists, have an easier time walking away from the rule-following approach to ethics. That’s a good thing, because the questioning path leads more reliably to ethical adults who will question both commands and commandments rather than boldly do whatever they’re told.

Keeping two moral ideas in view
Being able to put human morality into words is helpful. And as it happens, two simple ethical concepts underline just about all of human morality. They are as follows:
Reciprocity:
Reciprocity is the idea that I should treat others as I wish to be treated. No matter where or when people live or what their religion is, if any, the ethic of reciprocity is part of their culture and moral system. By simply interacting with others, people learn that treating others as they would like to be treated is a good idea. Children internalize this early on, usually by age 7 or 8 at the latest. Harvard Humanist chaplain Greg Epstein notes that no religion or ethical philosophy ever completely misses this concept and that it makes perfect sense without reference to a God.

Universalizability:
Universalizability also known (without saving a single syllable) as the categorical imperative is another idea so simple that kids understand it. When I threw my ice cream stick on the ground and my mom said, “What if everyone did that?”, she was appealing to my ability to see that I’d done a thing that wasn’t universalizable. I pictured myself swimming in a ten-foot drift of ice cream sticks. Fun, but sticky, and even at five years old, I didn’t do sticky. Given a minute, I could probably have thought of ten other reasons it was not good for everyone to throw their ice cream sticks on the ground. Reasons, not doctrines. Naming a moral idea isn’t the same as following it, of course. But for the many reasons already discussed here, religious believers and atheists alike tend to follow these moral principles more often than not. In fact, it’s harder to derail a person from basically moral tendencies than people often think. Character development specialist Marvin Berkowitz puts it this way: if a kid grows up in a basically pro-social family and culture, the child tends to develop into a good person. Religion is just one way to frame a moral life. There are countless other ways to do so without any reference to God.

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You didn't read all that you copy and pasted here, don't lie?

Rilwayne001:
You didn't read all that you copy and pasted here, don't lie?

I did Mr psychologist or how do U explain it been well organised?

Rilwayne001:
You didn't read all that you copy and pasted here, don't lie?

Neither did you. Don't lie

This is such a great post! Long but thorough and worth the read.

Contains some really good points, my favorites:
How a stagnant moral code would be horrible, and how human morality has evolved for the better through constant questioning & revision of preheld norms
Mirror neurons & how they help guide our pro-social actions
The real meaning of "survival of the fittest" because so many people misunderstand that term
How irrational fears & paranoia are rooted in our evolutionary drive to avoid danger & how religion stems from that
How authoritative parenting/learning is very ineffective & harmful compared to learning that welcomes questioning

hahn:
Neither did you. Don't lie

No I didn't.

Rilwayne001:
No I didn't.

Neither did I

Rilwayne001:
No I didn't.

Then why did you lie in the first instance?

Lying is not good o.

But neither did I read it also.

HCpaul:
Then why did you lie in the first instance?

Lying is not good o.

But neither did I read it also.

I never said I read it.

Rilwayne001:
I never said I read it.

Kinda joking. Am sorry bro

No time to read all that.
In addition to the graphic, the last words are

More likely to end in Hell

Then they will realise the need GOD to be perfect.

MistadeRegal:
No time to read all that.
In addition to the graphic, the last words are

More likely to end in Hell

Then they will realise the need GOD to be perfect.

I see. You want to be perfect. I don't. Imperfection in nature is what makes it enjoyable

Wow!! Thanks for this post. I've learnt some new things

A fool saith in his heart there is no God!

You're goodness and morality will lead you to Hell. Get wisdom and repent!

Aaronsrod:
A fool saith in his heart there is no God!

You're goodness and morality will lead you to Hell. Get wisdom and repent!

The wise man says it out loud