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Can Morality Exist Without God?

The Short Answer

Almost everyone believes that some things are really wrong, not merely disliked: torturing a child for fun, for example. The question is what makes that true. Catholics hold that real, binding moral truths are best explained if goodness itself is rooted in God, the source of all being and goodness, who made us with a nature that points towards what is good for us. Without God, morality can still be felt and practised, but it is hard to explain why it is anything more than preference, instinct or social agreement. This is the moral argument for God.

Many atheists answer that morality needs no God: it arises from human nature, evolution, reason and agreement. And they turn the question back with an old dilemma from Plato: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good? These are serious objections, and they deserve careful answers.

What the Church Does and Does Not Claim

The Church does not claim:

The Church does claim that the natural law is “nothing else than the rational creature’s participation of the eternal law” (St Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I-II, q. 91, a. 2), and that in conscience “man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself” (Gaudium et Spes 16).

Why Catholics Believe It

Step one: some things really are wrong

Most of us are more certain that cruelty is evil than of almost any philosophical theory. The Holocaust was not merely unpopular; slavery is not merely out of fashion. If someone says morality is purely subjective, they must say that a torturer is not really worse than a nurse, only different. Very few people, when pressed, can live with that.

Step two: what could make them true?

If moral truths are real, something must ground them.

Step three: goodness rooted in God

The Catholic answer is that God is goodness itself. “No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). He made human beings with a nature directed to real goods, such as life, knowledge, friendship and justice, and with reason to recognise them. The moral law is the law of our own nature, as made by God. That is why it binds us, why it is the same for everyone, and why conscience feels like a voice we did not invent. Gaudium et Spes calls conscience “the most secret core and sanctuary of a man,” where “he is alone with God, Whose voice echoes in his depths” (n. 16).

Common Objections

”Is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good?”

This is the Euthyphro dilemma, named after a dialogue of Plato. If good is simply whatever God commands, morality seems arbitrary: God could have commanded cruelty. If God commands things because they are good, goodness seems to be a standard above God, and God is not needed to explain it.

The classical Christian answer is that the dilemma offers a false choice. Goodness is neither an arbitrary command nor a standard outside God. It is God’s own nature. God does not look up goodness in a rulebook above Him, and He does not invent it by decree; He is goodness, and His commands flow from who He is. He could not command cruelty, not because something outside Him forbids it, but because cruelty is contrary to His nature. St Thomas Aquinas taught that God alone is good by His very essence, and all other things are good by sharing in His goodness (Summa Theologiae I, q. 6, a. 3).

”Morality is just a product of evolution and culture.”

Evolution and culture certainly shape how we come to understand morality. But if morality is nothing more than that, it has no more authority than any other evolved instinct or cultural habit. We could then have no grounds to call a whole culture’s morality mistaken, and moral progress, such as the abolition of slavery, would be mere change. Most people believe moral progress is real, which suggests morality is something we discover, not invent.

”Atheists can ground morality in human wellbeing.”

Human wellbeing matters enormously, and Catholic moral teaching is itself about the flourishing of the human person. But why are we obliged to care about the wellbeing of others, especially strangers, when it costs us? And why does every human being, including the weak and useless, have equal worth? Those convictions fit naturally in a world made by a good God who made each person in His image (Genesis 1:27). They are much harder to justify in a world that is only matter.

”Nietzsche showed that atheists can face this honestly.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, an atheist, agreed that Christian morality could not survive the loss of Christian faith: “When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one’s feet” (Twilight of the Idols, 1889). He concluded that values would have to be created anew. Most atheists today reject his conclusion and hold on to compassion and human dignity. The Catholic suggestion is that they are right to do so, and that those convictions point to God.

In Summary

Nearly everyone believes that some things are really right and others really wrong. The moral argument asks what makes that true, and answers: a God who is goodness itself and who made us with a nature ordered to the good. The Euthyphro dilemma is answered by recognising that goodness is neither an arbitrary command nor a standard above God, but God’s own nature. The argument does not compel belief. But it invites us to take seriously what we already know, that right and wrong are real, and to ask where that knowledge comes from.

See also What Is Morality, and Why Is Being Good Worth It?, Does God Exist? and What Is Natural Law?

This article follows the method St Robert Bellarmine used in his Controversies*: state the question fairly, clear away misunderstandings, make the case, then answer each objection. See How We Answer Objections.*

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