Posted on April 19, 2008

The Primacy of Secular Morality

Religionists often accuse humanists of being without morals. This is wrong. The difference is that humanists ground their morality in actions impacting this world and not in those that might determine our place in the next. We recognize that morality does not exist without a crowd, that actions are to be judged not by whether a magical man in the sky finds them tasteful but, rather, whether they cause or alleviate worldly suffering.

Within the humanist ethical framework, a behavior that harms no one—and lacks wholly the potential to do so—cannot, by definition, be immoral. We find it extraordinarily bizarre that so many of our fellow global citizens base their notions of right and wrong on something so far removed from this simple principle. We watch in wonder and dismay as preachers, politicians, imams, and believers shout themselves hoarse and often take up arms because of a misplaced moral sense derived from guesses about the admittance criteria of a posthumous, immaterial theme park.

Because humanists believe this life is the only one we get, and that every other human is living his own, non-serial existence, we are acutely sensitive to the need to make it the most fulfilling, the most satisfying, the best it can be—and that we must constantly respect the desire of others to do the same. This understanding is the cornerstone of our morality. This placement of moral principle in the world, in the reality we all share, is what raises humanist ethics above those emanating from scripture. We can judge and adjust our actions not by the immutable standards of an invisible creator, but by the very real effects we see them cause around us.

That feedback, that awareness, is why humanist morality needs to be advanced, why work needs to be done to see it eventually usurp the religious. Until that shift transpires, wives around the world will continue to suffer at the hands of their godly husbands, men and women born to love their own gender will continue to be hated and murdered for nothing more than private displays of human tenderness, and children will continue to be taught to despise those with different superstitions than themselves.

It is time to take morality away from the prophets and give it back to the people.