Can Atheists Believe In Moral Absolutes?

If you ever attended a religiously conservative church, chances are that you have heard the following: one cannot believe in moral absolutes or universal morals without believing in God. Why? We are often told that it is because without the fear of punishment, we have no incentive to be moral. Thus, the conclusion that atheists cannot believe in moral absolutes is reached deductively.

But there is a problem with our deductively reached proclamations. The problem is that if they are contradicted inductively, they serve no purpose except for self-deception.

What does it mean to prove something inductively. In the case of trying to prove that atheists cannot believe in moral absolutes, one must one must be unable to find any examples of atheists who believe that there are moral absolutes. Another route to take would be to try to disprove the contention by finding at least one atheist who believes in moral absolutes without appealing to any religious grounds.

An example that shows the latter approach is the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (U.D.). such examples with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The U.D. states standards of how we must treat others that apply to all nations. And it does not appeal to  any religious grounds in so doing.

A combination of the two approaches would involve finding at least one example of an atheist who believes in moral absolutes. And that isn't difficult to do. Noam Chomsky (click here for a bio) is one such atheist who believes in moral absolutes or universal morals. And Chomsky is an atheist. Thus, the claim that one must believe in God to hold to moral absolutes has been proven false. And if we stopped right there, it would be our loss. The important question for us to consider is, why does an atheist like Chomsky in moral absolutes.

The belief in moral absolutes is called Moral Universalism. And both theists and atheists can hold to that idea. The grounds for an atheist to embrace Moral Universalism can include our common humanity, our vulnerabilities, and a sense of fairness while assuming equality.

In a couple of articles that are not about Moral Universalism but references it, Chomsky lays out an non-theistic approach to moral absolutes. It has to do with fairness. In one article, Chomsky describes the Principle of Universality in the following way (click here for the source):

if an action is right (or wrong) for others, it is right (or wrong) for us

Another way of stating the same standard is as follows (click here for the source):

we apply to ourselves the same standards we do to others, if not more stringent ones

We should note that in the article that uses the last quote is the claim that the principle is 'the foundation of just war theory.' 

Thus, it should be obvious that atheists can believe in moral absolutes or moral universalism. 

But what about the Christian claims contrary? The Christian claim is that without the fear of God's punishment, people cannot hold to moral absolutes. Such a claim might reveal something that is not so nice about some of religiously conservative Christians. That we practice moral principles not because of a concern for others, but in order to save our skin. That much of our moral posturing is done out of self-interest alone, not out of  a love for others. Again that is for some, not all, of us who are religiously conservative Christians.

Of course, something could be added to that. That the real reason why we believe that no once can hold to moral absolutes without fearing punishment from God is that we are simply projecting on to all atheists what some of us Christians feel. And we feel forced to that make a charge because we are trying to show why people must believe in Christ. And thus some of us always seem compelled to find a defect in unbelievers that we do not have because of our faith.

Here we religiously conservative Christians must be honest with ourselves, we are not better than unbelievers. Hopefully we are better than what we use to be before we believed. But it is not how good we are that proves the Gospel, it is what Christ did in not sinning, going to the cross for those who believe, and the being raised again that proves the Gospel.

And if it is Christ who proves the Gospel, then we can afford to talk about unbelievers as equals rather than always looking for a defect in them that shows our alleged superiority. In the meantime, we need to learn and appreciate what we can learn from atheists who both talk about and practice moral standards that we should be following. And we should do that out of a mix of both fear of God and love for God and people.