The science behind religious morality

Californian Michael Shermer is a professional skeptic — the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, he is executive director of the Skeptics Society, host of the Skeptics Distinguished Science Lecture Series at Caltech, and ... you get the idea. He is also a monthly columnist for Scientific American, among other things. Earlier this month, the professor gave a lecture in Calgary entitled on The Moral Arc of Science: How Science Has Bent the Arc of the Moral Universe Toward Truth, Justice, Freedom, & Prosperity. The Post’s Jen Gerson spoke to Mr. Shermer.

Q Is your thesis basically that there’s an inherently moral side to scientific inquiry?

A The deeper idea is that ever since the enlightenment, the attempt to employ reason, empiricism, logic and rationality to solving human problems has accelerated the moral arc, that we have become more moral as a species. That the decline in violence, the increase in prosperity and rights and liberties and freedoms is, in part, because we understand the human species better. And societies function better when individuals are treated with inalienable rights.

Q I think people who still ascribe morality to a religious tenet would be surprised to hear that argument. A I’m sure they would, but the divine command theory, as it’s called, that God gives us rights, liberties or freedoms, or is the basis of morality is flawed. Because, first of all, there’s more than one holy book. Religions clearly differ on what they consider to be moral or immoral, so which one is the right one? In science, if there’s competing theories, there’s ways to figure out the one that’s most likely to be right using experiments, collecting data and hypothesis. There’s nothing like that in religion, there’s just your religion, my religion and everybody has their opinion.

Q I think this is a tricky thing to wrap your head around, the idea that you can test or experiment for a moral correctness in the same way you might experiment for an objective truth. How could we test to prove monogamous relationships are the most stable form of family for example in the same way we could test to prove the number of viruses in a drop of blood?

A One way is to ask the potentially affected parties, the two people in a relationship, how they feel about [the situation]. If the state’s not involved with the business of marriage, which it is, so that complicates it, each member of a couple can ask each other if it or is not OK. We know from anthropology that there’s great variation in this, and we know that most people are practising serial monogamy. Q How do we prove this using scientific hypotheses when so many moral tenets have their roots in religious beliefs?

A Religion and philosophy have had their say for thousands of years what’s moral and not moral. I’m just saying let’s add to our quiver the arrow of science to bring to it studies and data and experiments and research to see what works and what doesn’t.

Q Do you think scientific reasoning and thinking gives humans a little too much power to rationalize actions that might otherwise be consider immoral?

A Oh it does. We have to be careful about that, that’s why having rights grounded in constitutional protections like the bill of rights no matter what kind of evidence you can gather to support, say, slavery you’re not going to be able to implement that because that’s against the law.

Q Q. What evidence do you have to suggest that taking a scientific approach to morality is superior to taking a religious approach to morality?

A Well again religious morality has no means of testing whether its claims are true or not. Take something like female genital mutilation. Can we do better than to say it’s wrong in America but it’s OK in African countries? I think yes, we can base our moral values in scientific reasons, starting with the individual. [Female genital mutilation] is wrong because it robs the individual of dignity, autonomy and the core of her nature. That’s better than a religious doctrine that says it’s right or wrong because religion says so.