The Psychological Basis for Moral Behaviour

[evangelicalhumanist]

Originally published August 3, 2006

Once again this week I was challenged about my morals – well not challenged so much as informed for the umpty-third time that atheists can’t appreciate true morality, and that therefore, while I might be a nice guy, I couldn’t possibly be “good.” Needless to say, I took a certain amount of umbrage at the suggestion. In less genteel terms, I was pissed!

Goodness, for those who espouse the you-can’t-be-good-without-God viewpoint, is apparently something that one does in obedience to commands of a Higher Power, under threat of rewards and punishments. This strikes me as a particularly poor basis for moral behaviour – One that puts the faithful at risk from everyone who does not recognize the same Higher Power, or adheres to different scriptural rules. (And in fact, looking around this troubled world, there is some reason to think so, but I digress.)

In this essay, I want to demonstrate that I can be good without God. (Whether I am in fact good or not is probably open to some debate.)

We humans are not as individual as we often like to think. Since the days of our earliest ancestors we have been heavily interdependent – using the strength of one, the speed of another and the cunning of a third to bring down prey. We have depended on this person's knowledge of which plants to eat, another's on how to tan hides or sew them together, and yet another's about which herbs could relieve a fever. In our hugely complex modern world, more than ever every one of us depends utterly on the products, skills, labour and knowledge of thousands we will never know, many of whom don’t even live in the same country. And in the case of the arts and letters, we depend on people who have been long dead. Just contemplate the provenance of everything you ate today, the clothes you wore, the vehicles that carried you from place to place and up and down, the buildings you were in, the skills you used, the books, papers or magazines you read, etc., etc. With imagination, this list could expand to volumes.

Make no mistake, this interdependence is so completely pervasive that it is impossible to imagine that humans are not psychologically predisposed to it. As we are born without language but primed to learn it, we are born unsocial but primed to become so. We are indeed “made that way.” Please re-read this paragraph. It is central to what follows.

We are psychologically built for interdependent cooperation. We begin seeing this expressed in childhood, where every game that is played has rules, and winning is supposed to be restricted to those who follow them. Ostracism of “cheaters” begins very early as kids tell known cheaters, “you can’t play!” As we grow up, we begin to learn that we also have obligations – roles that we should play and tasks that we must undertake – as our contribution to our interdependent world. It starts within the family as we are asked to feed the dog or take out the garbage on a daily basis. We become entitled to the benefits of the group by contributing to the group.

These behaviours, following the rules and contributing our share, soon develop for most of us into habits. They become integrated into our mental and social development so that members of the community can depend on us, as we depend on them, to do what is supposed to be done, to play by the rules, to honour our commitments. Even more, we come to know that others feel pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow, just as we do, and we care that they do. None of this is for any particular, identifiable gain, but merely so that we may be acceptable to the society we so urgently need to sustain us.

Let me repeat – we are built this way. The exceptions, and they do exist, can legitimately be considered non compos mentis.

Now, what happens to us if we behave in ways that run counter to this inbuilt interdependence? How will contrary behaviour be recognized or expressed, if it is truly, as I suggest, part of our psychological make-up? Very simply: we feel “guilty.”

Consider. We feel hungry when we are missing that which sustains our physical body, and provides the energy to make it go. We feel thirsty when we lack the hydration required for proper chemical functioning. We feel pain when the integrity of our physical body is compromised and needs to be attended to. And so, analogously, we feel guilty when we have neglected to attend to the things that are necessary to our sustenance through safe and secure membership in the group.

We are psychologically built to cooperate, to depend upon and be depended upon in our turn. These things give us pleasure because they satisfy our nature, because in fact they are necessary to our social nature and our need to depend upon others.

God, arbitrary rules and punishment are not required. In fact, the urge to satisfy the supposed dictates of a god has led far too many of us to commit atrocious acts. The kind of morality that will sustain and us and not fall prey to those errors lies within us, not outside of us, and depends on nothing more than nature and ordinary social development.