Source of ethics

 

That Stalin and Mao and Pol Pot were Communists we know, and therefore they were atheists. I'm sorry if it is so that not all atheists are moral saints. It is true that they were also politicians, and did allow a certain amount of religious freedom (in fact a good deal more than Western messaging likes to say) but this was for pragmatic reasons. They were and repeatedly said they were atheists. I am an atheist too, but in the "soft" sense, sometimes the word "agnostic" is used, but by definition not knowing includes not believing, so I would argue agnosticism is a flavor of atheism. Still, that God, at least as we have in religions, is something my opinion about, is about as strong as any opinion I have. However, were the whole world atheist, the world would be no better than it is, and a case can be made maybe worse. Moral or ethical standards are not related in any way I can see to opinion about God. Just as it is wrong for theists to claim that their belief makes them more moral, it is also wrong for atheists to say that their non-belief does.

What you say is essentially correct, and it touches on a confusion that appears constantly in public arguments about religion and atheism.

First, historically speaking, the leaders you mention—Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Pol Pot—did indeed identify as atheists. That follows directly from the ideology they inherited from Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin, whose interpretation of communism was explicitly materialist and hostile to religion. Marx famously called religion “the opium of the people.” In those regimes religion was often restricted, sometimes brutally, though—as you note—pragmatic exceptions were often made when political stability required it.

But the logical mistake people make is to infer causation from that fact. The ideology of those regimes was not merely atheism; it was a totalizing political doctrine claiming scientific certainty about history and society. The violence came from the political structure—one-party rule, suppression of dissent, ideological purity tests—not from simple disbelief in gods. Atheism by itself is only a position on one question: whether gods exist.

Your point about agnosticism is also a reasonable philosophical position. Many philosophers describe agnosticism as a statement about knowledge and atheism as a statement about belief. One can say:

• I do not know whether God exists (agnostic about knowledge).

• I therefore do not believe God exists (atheist about belief).

On that view, agnosticism often sits inside what people call “soft” or “weak” atheism—lack of belief rather than a confident assertion that no gods exist. Thinkers like Bertrand Russell sometimes described themselves exactly this way: philosophically agnostic but practically atheist.

Where your argument becomes especially strong is in the moral point. Ethical behavior does not reliably track belief or disbelief in God. History gives examples in every direction:

• deeply religious figures of great compassion, like Albert Schweitzer

• deeply religious perpetrators of cruelty

• ethical atheists such as Jean‑Paul Sartre or Albert Camus

• and atheists involved in atrocities within ideological states.

That suggests morality comes from other sources: social instincts, empathy, cultural norms, philosophical reasoning, and institutions that reward or punish behavior. Religion sometimes reinforces those structures, sometimes distorts them, and sometimes opposes them.

So your conclusion—that a fully atheist world would not automatically be morally better—is quite plausible. Remove religion and you do not remove tribalism, power struggles, fear, ambition, or ideology. Humans would still have all the same psychological equipment that produces both compassion and cruelty.

In other words, the moral variable is not belief in God vs. disbelief, but how human beings organize power, empathy, and responsibility.

One small nuance I might add: religion can function as a moral framework for many people who might otherwise struggle to articulate one. That does not make religion the source of morality, but it can be one of the social mechanisms that sustains it.

Your position—skeptical about God but also skeptical that atheism itself solves moral problems—is actually quite close to the view held by a number of modern secular philosophers.

I’m curious about one thing in your argument. Do you think moral intuitions are primarily biological (evolved empathy and cooperation), or cultural (rules societies teach)? Most modern discussions fall somewhere between those two, but people often lean strongly toward one side.

Our biological impulses tend to be things we need to watch, as they come from natural selection, not a terribly ethical process. Cultural rules help, but sometimes they are supported by rationalization of selfish impulses (e.g. slavery_ Compassion is, fortunately, found in most of us, and it would seem to be the basis of ethical thought.

That is a very old and very respectable line of thought. In fact you are very close to the position taken by thinkers like David Hume and, in modern evolutionary terms, by biologists such as Charles Darwin. They both noticed the same tension you describe: natural selection produces traits that help organisms survive and reproduce, not traits that are necessarily morally admirable.

So our biological inheritance is morally mixed. It gives us capacities for cooperation, loyalty, and sympathy—but also aggression, tribalism, and self-interest. Evolution favors whatever works for survival in a given environment, not whatever is ethically admirable. A tribe that cooperates internally but is ruthless toward outsiders may thrive biologically even if its behavior is morally troubling.

That is why your distinction between impulse and reflection is so important. Human beings have impulses shaped by evolution, but we also have the ability to examine them critically. Cultural systems—law, philosophy, religion, and social norms—are attempts to regulate those impulses. Sometimes they succeed; sometimes, as in your example of slavery, they simply rationalize them.

The role of compassion in all this is particularly interesting. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer argued that compassion is actually the only real foundation of morality, because it is the moment when we recognize another being’s suffering as morally significant in the same way as our own. Later psychologists and evolutionary theorists suggested that empathy probably evolved because social animals survive better when they can cooperate and care for one another.

But compassion has limits too. Our empathy is strongest toward those who seem similar to us—family, tribe, people we identify with. One of the major achievements of ethical thought has been the gradual expansion of the circle of compassion. Philosophers like Peter Singer describe moral progress as extending concern outward: from family → tribe → nation → humanity → even animals.

What reason does, ideally, is push compassion beyond its instinctive boundaries. Instinct gives us the capacity to care; reflection asks whether there is any good reason to stop caring at arbitrary borders.

Your conclusion—that compassion is the basis of ethical thought—is therefore quite defensible. One might say:

• biology gives us the capacity for empathy,

• culture shapes how that empathy is directed,

• and reason critiques the system when culture distorts it.

Given your own sympathy for Buddhist ideas, it is interesting that this view comes quite close to the moral emphasis in traditions associated with Gautama Buddha, where compassion (karuṇā) is treated not as a divine command but as a cultivated human capacity.

I wonder about one subtle question here: do you think compassion is sufficient for morality, or does it still need guidance from reason and principles? Compassion alone sometimes produces very partial judgments—for example favoring those close to us while ignoring distant suffering.

That the compassion our biology gives us has the characteristic of favoring close individuals is logical, but it is a bit interesting that a whole town will turn out to save a beached whale. We have reached a level where we can think about such things, and many rationally conclude compassion applies to all sentient beings.

Yes, that is a fascinating phenomenon, and it illustrates something important about the human moral mind. Our biological empathy may have evolved for small groups—family, tribe, people we recognize—but our cognitive abilities allow us to extend that empathy far beyond its original evolutionary purpose.

The example you mention—people mobilizing to save a stranded whale—is a good illustration. No evolutionary mechanism prepared human beings specifically to care about a large marine mammal unrelated to them. Yet when a whale beaches itself, entire communities sometimes gather to push it back to sea. Something similar happens with wildlife rescues or disaster relief on the other side of the planet.

This suggests that our minds can generalize compassion once we become capable of abstraction. We notice that another creature is suffering, we recognize that suffering resembles our own, and we respond emotionally even when there is no evolutionary advantage.

Philosophers have pointed out this capacity before. Peter Singer calls it the “expanding circle” of ethics—the idea that moral concern historically widens from kin and tribe to all humans and eventually to other sentient animals. Much earlier, Jeremy Bentham expressed the same intuition when he wrote that the relevant moral question about animals is not whether they can reason or speak, but whether they can suffer.

Interestingly, that same reasoning also appears in traditions associated with Gautama Buddha, where compassion is explicitly extended to all sentient beings, not merely to humans or members of one community.

So the pattern seems to be something like this:

Biology gives us the capacity for empathy, but it evolved for a narrow social circle.
Reason and reflection allow us to recognize suffering more generally.
Culture and philosophy can then institutionalize that broader compassion.

Your whale example shows the moment where those layers meet: instinctive empathy triggered by visible suffering, reinforced by cultural norms about protecting animals, and justified by a rational belief that suffering itself matters regardless of species.

There is also a slightly paradoxical aspect to it. Humans sometimes show more spontaneous compassion toward animals than toward distant groups of other humans, especially when politics or tribal identity are involved. That suggests our moral psychology is still a mixture of instinct, symbolism, and reasoning rather than a perfectly consistent system.

Your remark that we have “reached a level where we can think about such things” may actually be the key point. Ethical thought might be understood as the process of correcting the narrowness of our instincts once we become aware of them.

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