Can there be morality without God?

While walking among the book tables at the American Academy of Religion conference in Montreal this year I came across Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's new book Morality Without God? (Oxford University Press, 2009). Sinnott-Armstrong is an atheist at Dartmouth College, a respected scholar (as employment at an ivy-league school surely implies!) and a veteran debater with the evangelical champion of debate William Lane Craig. And for a person like myself weary of reading 500 page academic tomes, at only 170 pages Sinnott-Armstrong's book provided a pleasant read on the flight back home.

I appreciated Sinnott-Armstrong's book for two reasons. First, though he is an atheist he deals with Christians fairly (for the most part, but see below) and asks the same of those evangelical Christians who are his main interlocutors in the book. The first couple chapters especially provide an intriguing analysis of Christian prejudicial attitudes toward atheists. I was interested at this point in the convergence between Sinnott-Armstrong's views and my own as developed in my forthcoming book Not All Atheists are Fools. We would all benefit from Sinnott-Armstrong's advice:

We all--atheists and theists alike--need to learn to listen and observe instead of trying to feel our way into the lives of people who seem distant to us. (41)

In other words, don't simply assume that we know what the other person thinks or intends to argue, but try to see things from their point of view. This will do wonders and may even result in the destruction of our enemies for, as Lincoln famously said, do I not destroy an enemy when I make him my friend? Needless to say both the new atheists and their Christian opponents would do well to engage in more sympathetic listening.

I also appreciated Sinnott-Armstrong's defense of an objective ethic based on avoidance of harm. While much remains to be said in order to develop and defend his view (for instance, I would like to know his views on the ontological status of these objective moral laws so as to understand which naturalisms it is consistent with; a treatment of his moral epistemology would be helpful too), he provides atheists with a much more plausible morality than the evolutionary and social constructivist accounts that are all the rage these days.

The most notable lapse in Sinnott-Armstrong's generally admirable and fair style comes with his treatment of scripture which is occasionally tendentious to say the least. For instance, this is evident in his treatment of the concept of blaspheming the Holy Spirit (Mt. 12:31 and Mk. 3:28) (15-16). Moreover, he cherry-picks certain passages from the Old Testament to support the conclusion that "the Bible suggests that killing nonbelievers is morally required rather than morally wrong." (121) Really? The Christian is obliged to kill nonbelievers? Come on Walter (if I may), surely your hermeneutical ability is subtler than that.

 But those occasional lapses in discursive rigor and fairness should not deter us from an engaging and nuanced treatment of ethical objectivism, atheist-style.