Ethics without God
It's a mistake to think that if God does not exist, then neither does morality. This is one of the worst legacies of supernaturalism. I'll start by pointing out that it's simply counterintuitive to think, with Dostoyevsky, that "if God does not exist everything is permitted." Yes, I'm appealing to intuition here, but I mean nothing mystical by that word. Call it common sense. Most of us grow up with a sense of how we should treat others and ourselves . Sometimes it's called the moral compass. Adam Smith and David Hume, two of the great Scottish Enlightenment thinkers, spoke favorably of our "moral sentiments," fellow-feeling, sympathy , and the like. None of that requires a supernatural supreme being. (Before Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations he wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments , which he revised until the time of death.) In a previous post I pointed out, using a quotation from Bertrand Russell , that attributing morality to God presents mor