To circumvent these problems, we advocate a cross-culturally encompassing approach that fractionates both religion and morality while carefully distinguishing cognition from culture. In our view, many current investigations suffer from (a) a failure to fractionate “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded units (b) ethnocentric conceptions of religion and morality in particular, (c) sanitized conceptions of prosocial behavior, and (d) a tendency to conceptualize morality or religion as clusters of either cognitively or culturally evolved features rather than both. We begin by highlighting a set of conceptual limitations hampering contemporary academic discourse on this topic. Our aim in what follows will be to sort out some of the conceptual confusions and to provide a clear evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. To make progress on this issue, we require a more precise specification of which human virtues are under consideration and which features of religion might be thought to influence their expression. The interpretive difficulties are exacerbated by imprecise conceptions both of “religion” and “morality.” It is not clear that these terms are used in the same ways by those between, or even within, seemingly opposing camps. See the online article for the color version of this figure.Īlthough there is no shortage of lively polemic, scientific investigations of the connection between religion and morality have so far produced mixed results. Views of religion and morality ( Pew Research Center, 2007 reprinted with permission). Other nontheists have taken a softer line, arguing that moral inclinations are deeply embedded in our evolved psychology, flourishing quite naturally in the absence of religious indoctrination ( Pyysiäinen & Hauser, 2010). tak their civic duties seriously precisely because they don’t trust God to save humanity from its follies” ( Dennett, 2003). 2 Unsurprisingly, atheists explicitly disavow this connection, with some even suggesting that atheists are “the moral backbone of the nation.
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Although these associations are stronger in people who themselves believe in God, even atheist participants intuitively view acts such as serial murder, incest, and necrobestiality as more representative of atheists than of other religious, ethnic, or cultural groups ( Gervais, 2014a).
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In a series of compelling recent studies, Gervais and colleagues ( Gervais, Shariff, & Norenzayan, 2011 see also Gervais, 2011, 2013a, 2014a Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012b, 2013) have demonstrated strong implicit associations of atheists with immorality. More than half of Americans share Laura Schlessinger’s belief that morality is impossible without belief in God ( Pew Research Center, 2007), and in many countries this attitude is far more prevalent (see Figure 1). The notion that religion is a precondition for morality is widespread and deeply ingrained.
1 Echoing this refrain, conservatives like to claim that “declining moral standards” are at least partly attributable to the rise of secularism and the decline of organized religion (see Zuckerman, 2008). Although he favored the former proposal, many others have argued that morality is dictated by-and indeed unthinkable without-God: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” ( Dostoevsky, 1880/1990). In the Euthyphro, Socrates famously asked whether goodness is loved by the gods because it is good, or whether goodness is good because it is loved by the gods. The question of whether or not morality requires religion is both topical and ancient. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. We argue that to make progress, the categories “religion” and “morality” must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts-in particular, sanitized conceptions of “prosocial” behavior and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations.
The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated.
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