Morality Without God: What Science Actually Says

Religious people argue that morality comes entirely from religion, and that even secular or Western societies are quietly borrowing their moral values from religious traditions. The implication is straightforward: take away religion, and people lose their moral compass entirely.

Modern science disagrees. Research in neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and psychology suggests that our moral instincts are rooted in brain chemistry and hormones, not divine commandments.

But before we get into what science says, it helps to first understand the religious argument on its own terms. Specifically, two things are worth laying out clearly: what religious thinkers actually mean when they talk about morality, and what their main objection is to any moral system that leaves God out of the picture.

The Religious Argument: Morality Needs God to Be Real

The starting point for most religious thinkers is a straightforward claim: without God, morality cannot truly exist. This is not a fringe position. It sits at the center of how many religious scholars approach ethics, and it shapes nearly every debate between religious and secular worldviews.

To make this argument stick, religious thinkers draw a distinction between two types of morality.

Objective morality, in their framing, is morality that exists independently of what any individual person happens to want or prefer. It does not bend to personal taste, cultural fashion, or changing circumstances. It is simply true, the way a mathematical fact is true.

Subjective morality, by contrast, is just personal opinion dressed up as ethics. It reflects what a particular person or culture happens to like or dislike, nothing more.

The religious argument then follows a clean logical path: only God can be the source of objective morality, because only God stands outside of human preference and human history. Without God, all you are left with is subjective morality, which is really no morality at all.

How This Argument Gets Used in Practice

The popular Islamic commentator Daniel Haqiqatjou, who runs the widely read website MuslimSkeptic, lays this out bluntly. Writing about atheism and morality, he argues (link):

The vast majority of atheist "criticism" directed at Islam and religion in general rests on moral claims. Yet there is no justification for this from a thinking person. How can people who have no moral foundation of their own dare to make moral arguments? Simply put, there is objective morality and there is subjective morality. You can see that atheists have no objective morality whatsoever. Atheism can only produce subjective (personal) morality. "Subjective" means personal opinion. "Objective" means reality. There is no third option. For example, "red is the best color" is a subjective opinion, while "2+2=4" is an objective fact. In other words, atheists are criticizing Islam based purely on their own personal, subjective views. So when they say "I hate Islam because Muslims like green and I prefer blue," it is no different from the nonsense they already say.

His point is that atheists have no right to make moral criticisms of religion, because without God, their moral judgments carry no more weight than aesthetic preferences. Saying "this religious practice is cruel" is, in his view, logically equivalent to saying "I prefer blue over green."

A Key Confusion in the Religious View: Objective Morality vs. Absolute Morality

Our first criticism is this: religious thinkers, whether deliberately or unknowingly, conflate two very different concepts, namely Objective Morality and Absolute Morality, and then use this conflation as the basis for justifying their religious worldview.

When a religious person says: "Without God, there is no objective morality," what they actually mean is: "Without God, there is no absolute morality."

What Is Absolute Morality?

Absolute morality refers to a moral system that remains exactly the same:

• in every era
• in every place
• in every society
• under every circumstance

It would be 100 percent correct and allow no room for revision.

When religious thinkers say "without God there is no objective morality," what they are really saying is "without God there is no absolute morality." They have quietly swapped one word for another, hoping no one notices.

But here is the thing: even on their own terms, the religious claim to absolute morality falls apart immediately. Why? Because different religions have different absolute moralities that directly contradict each other. And within a single religion, different scholars, different schools of thought, and different historical periods have produced wildly different moral conclusions. If absolute morality exists and comes from God, whose God? Which version? Which interpretation?

The honest answer is that absolute morality, as religious thinkers define it, does not exist anywhere in practice. It is a philosophical claim that evaporates the moment you look at the real world.

What Is Objective Morality?

Objective morality, though, is a different story entirely from absolute morality.

Objective morality simply means:

• a moral framework that is not just personal opinion,
• one that is grounded in something beyond individual preference,
• that can be examined, tested, argued about, and refined.
• It does not have to be perfect or eternal. It just has to be more than "I personally feel like it."

And here is the key insight that religious thinkers work very hard to avoid: human beings can build objective morality without God.

A limited, close to perfection (i.e., still not 100% perfect), and genuinely real objective morality can be constructed from human nature, human reason, human empathy, and the shared experience of living together.

There is also a second problem with the religious version of morality that rarely gets named directly. Religious morality is not really objective at all. It is authoritarian. The reason you are told not to do something is not because it causes harm or undermines human dignity. The reason is simply because God said so. That is obedience to power, not moral reasoning. Dressing it up in the language of objectivity does not change what it actually is.

What Modern Science Says About the Origins of Our Moral Behaviour

So if morality does not come from God, where does it come from?

Modern science, particularly evolutionary biology and neuroscience, has been building a clear answer to this question for decades. The short version is this: our moral instincts are biological. They evolved. They are real, they are powerful, and they existed long before any religion named them.

To understand this, it helps to think about what evolution actually required of our ancestors.

Early human beings could not survive alone. They lived in groups, and the groups that cooperated, shared resources, and looked out for one another were the groups that survived. Over millions of years, the individuals who felt empathy, who experienced discomfort when they harmed others, and who were capable of trust and connection, were more likely to survive and pass on their genes. Those instincts got baked into us.

At the same time, survival also required self-interest. You needed to protect yourself, your children, and your closest allies, sometimes at the expense of others. That instinct got baked in too.

This is why human beings are not simply good or simply selfish. We are both, and we always have been. The tension between caring for others and looking out for ourselves is not a moral failing. It is our evolutionary inheritance.

The Biological Foundations of Morality: Evolution and Hormones

Human beings did not descend from the heavens as angels; we are biological creatures shaped by millions of years of evolution. Throughout this journey, our bodies developed complex hormonal systems to ensure survival. These biological signals create the internal tendencies that form the raw material for our moral behavior.

The Drive for Self-Preservation and Self-Interest

This instinct is a fundamental requirement of evolution, designed to protect the individual and their immediate kin. In the face of danger, this drive prioritizes immediate reaction, aggression, and self-interest.

At a biological level, this is governed by the endocrine system:

• Cortisol and Adrenaline: These hormones trigger the "fight-or-flight" response. They do not dictate morality; rather, they activate survival instincts that demand a person put themselves first.

• The Survival Shadow: When left unchecked by reason or empathy, this instinct can manifest as oppression, exploitation, and the willingness to sacrifice others for personal gain.

The Drive for Empathy and Social Cooperation

In contrast to individual survival, evolution also prioritized the survival of the group. Because humans are social creatures who cannot thrive in isolation, we developed the capacity for love, cooperation, and sacrifice.

This "pro-social" side of our nature is fuelled by specific neurochemicals:

• Oxytocin and Serotonin: These chemicals foster trust, long-term attachment, and emotional connection. While they do not "create" morality themselves, they make possible the empathetic tendencies we identify as humanity or compassion.

• The Collective Good: This drive inclines us to feel the pain of others and, in many cases, to sacrifice our own comfort for the betterment of the community.

Moral Instincts: Good and Evil in Biological Terms

If we frame this in religious language (i.e., the concept of good and evil) the conclusion that emerges is that human beings are not perfect by instinct. We are born with a dual nature:

1. The Capacity for Good: The instinctive ability to feel the pain of others.

2. The Drive of Self-Interest: The equally instinctive drive to seek personal advantage.

Note: The role of neurochemical hormones is considerably more complex than this summary suggests. Many emotional intricacies such as love, anger, fear, shame, and curiosity, they all play vital roles in moral decisions. We are setting those complexities aside here for the sake of clarity, as the core of this discussion focuses on whether the roots of "good" and "evil" originate in religion or within the biological makeup of human beings themselves.

Do Hormones Give Us Absolute Morality?

No. Hormones are not morality themselves, nor do they lead us to complete Absolute Morality.

What they do suggest, to a certain degree, is a kind of biological objectivity:

The Objective Aspect (What Hormones Provide):

• Oxytocin operates in all human beings to enable empathy
• Seeing pain produces a sense of compassion in nearly everyone
• These are universal biological responses

The Aspects of Hormones That Are Not Absolute But Subjective:

• Hormone levels vary from person to person
• Some people are naturally more empathetic, others less so
• Social conditioning modifies these biological responses

The conclusion is that hormones bring us closer to Objective Morality, but they do not deliver Absolute Morality.

The Role of External Social Influences on Our Moral Behaviour

Research suggests that human beings possess an innate moral compass from infancy. Even without formal education, babies can instinctively distinguish between "good" and "bad." A child will naturally reach out to a loving figure, yet will mirror the distress of their mother, crying in response to her suffering. These are primal, untaught emotional responses.

As we mature, however, external factors begin to mould these raw instincts into practical moral behaviour. Through a process of trial and error, making mistakes and navigating their consequences, individuals gradually refine their personal moral judgment.

Once we leave childhood behind, the surrounding environment encompassing family, society, and religion takes a role in defining right and wrong. These external influences can be a double-edged sword: they have the power to sharpen and expand human compassion, but they can just as easily limit or suppress it.

The Role of Reason in Our Moral Behaviour

The fundamental function of reason is something like data processing. Reason does not generate data on its own. It receives input, processes it, and produces output.

The question then becomes: where does reason receive its input? There are two sources.

First Source: Our Inner Instinctive Tendencies

These are the various instinctive tendencies within us that are governed by hormones, including:

• the tendency toward empathy
• the tendency toward self-preservation and selfishness
• other feelings such as love, anger, fear, shame, and curiosity

All of these play a role in moral decisions.

An important thing to note here: reason can receive conflicting input from this source. For example, the tendency toward empathy says "help others," while the tendency toward selfishness says "look after your own interests." Reason must now decide which input to prioritize.

Second Source: External Environment, Upbringing, and Religion

This is the input that comes from our upbringing, environment, society, family, and religion. The important point is that here too, reason can receive conflicting input. For example:

• Our close relatives (family members) tell us from childhood that God exists.
• Society may later provide the input that, according to some people further away, God does not exist.

How, then, will reason process these two conflicting inputs?

Here, hormones play a role again. We tend to trust people more who:

• are close to us (family, friends)
• occupy positions of authority (parents, teachers, religious scholars)
• have an emotional connection with us
• whose words we hear repeatedly

This was essential for evolutionary survival. Trusting close relatives was important for staying alive. So reason gives greater "weight" to the input it receives from trusted and familiar people.

This is not a failure of reason. It is functioning exactly as evolution designed it to function.

This becomes clear from my own experience. In a previous period of my life, when I was Muslim, my reason was receiving these inputs:

• My close relatives were saying that God exists.
• My environment was saying that Islam is the truth.
• I had been taught repeatedly that God's wisdom is limitless.

At that time, based on reason alone, I concluded that:

• Killing an apostate is justified.
• Slavery is permissible.
• Because God exists and His wisdom is infinitely beyond my limited reason.

Note this carefully: that was also a decision of reason. I thought, I deliberated, and I reached a conclusion.

But later, when reason began to move beyond feelings of fear and reverence and started to question the very claims of God and of close relatives, things changed. My reason was now receiving new inputs:

• Questions about the very existence of God
• Contradictions within Islamic teachings
• The different perspectives of other people (i.e., non-Muslims)

The same reason, now processing data in a different way, concluded that:

• Killing an innocent human being in the name of apostasy is wrong.
• Slavery is an insult to humanity.

When a person is afraid, the logical part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) becomes paralyzed and the survival instinct takes over. But fear is not alone in doing this. Intense devotion, and even love, can bypass or paralyze the prefrontal cortex in the same way that fear does.

When a person is in a state of "reverence" toward a great being, power, or idea, the part of the brain that governs the sense of self becomes quiet. When the self grows small, a person loses the ability to ask questions, because asking questions requires an independent self to exist.

When you accept a being as "perfect" or "sacred," the brain unconsciously decides that there is no longer any need for "analysis." The brain then switches off logic as a way of conserving energy.

In fear, stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are at work. In reverence and love, a flood of oxytocin and dopamine arrives. Oxytocin compels a person toward trust. When this hormone is present in very large quantities, the part of the brain that detects deception or error (the part of the amygdala that senses danger) slows down. In both cases, the result is the same: the paralysis of reason.

Reason is not a permanent slave to hormones or upbringing.

Through neuroplasticity, we can consciously rewire our neural pathways and escape "brainwashing."

A powerful example of this conscious override is seen in the Judicial System. A judge’s primary duty is to achieve "Judicial Neutrality." To do this, they must:

• Recognize Bias: Acknowledge their own upbringing, personal ideologies, and instinctive feelings.

• Intentional Filtering: Deliberately set aside personal feelings to process only the legal evidence provided.

Just as a judge trains themselves to be a "neutral arbiter," any individual can use reason to audit their own internal data and decide which "inputs" are valid and which are merely the echoes of biology or environment.

Summary

Without God, a human being does not become an angel, but neither do they become a beast.

Complete Absolute Morality is not possible. Not within religion, and not within secular systems either.

Secular systems do not claim complete Absolute Morality to begin with, and that is their strength, because we live in an imperfect world where 100 percent perfection is impossible to achieve. And humanity does not need 100 percent perfect morality in order to survive.

Hormones and reason together bring us closer to Objective Morality. This is the best instrument nature has given us, and one we can continue to refine.

In the end, do not be afraid to doubt. That is the path of humanity.

The Religious Argument: Without Accountability, Why Should Anyone Sacrifice Their Desires?

Religious thinkers raise the argument that if there is no life after death and no system of reward and punishment, then a person has no solid reason to become "good" by sacrificing their desires. If an oppressor dies in comfort and a victim dies in agony, and both ultimately turn to dust, then morality seems like a pointless burden. According to religion, the fear of God is the only force that stops a person from wrongdoing even in "solitude."

Our Response:

Contrary to what religious thinkers claim, morality never feels like a "pointless burden," because showing empathy and helping others does not only benefit others. It benefits us as well, and it brings us "peace and happiness." This peace and happiness is immediate and real, not a promise for after death.

And this peace and happiness comes to us even when we are alone. So if we commit a wrong in private that harms others, our conscience still holds us to account, and we still carry the weight of that wrong.

Research shows that people with the greatest "fear of hell" are not necessarily the most moral. Prison surveys, for example, tell an interesting story:

• The proportion of religious people among prisoners is higher than that of non-religious people.
• In the United States, 85 to 90 percent of prisoners identify as religious, while atheists account for less than 1 percent, even though the proportion of atheists in the general American population is considerably higher.

Reference: Are Prisoners Less Likely To Be Atheists? - FiveThirtyEight

The Religious Argument: The Problem of "Is" and "Ought"

The third and final religious argument is that science and evolution can tell us what human beings "are" (Is), but they can never tell us what human beings "ought to be" (Ought). Evolution can tell us that compassion strengthens a tribe, but it cannot prove that compassion is a "moral duty." Religion claims that this "duty" or "command" can only come from a higher being (God) who stands above the material world.

Our response is the same as what we have already laid out above: the tendencies produced by hormones that arose through evolution, together with human reason, do not merely tell us what we "are." They go further and guide us toward what we "ought to be" in order to experience genuine inner peace and happiness, and away from what we "ought not to be," which would leave us facing the guilt and reproach of the humanity (conscience) within us.

Gautama Buddha: A Secular Moral Revolution Without a "Heavenly God"

Contrary to the religious claim that "morality is impossible without God," history tells us that the sense of our shared humanity is far older and more fundamental than all religions and deities, including the concept of Allah. The most luminous example of this is the figure of Gautama Buddha.

Buddha did not believe in a creator God. He never claimed that any angel came to him with divine revelation from above. Instead, he rooted all of his teachings in his own inner suffering, empathy, human reason, and contemplation.

Buddha challenged the so-called "sacred and eternal morality" of Hinduism at the time, a morality that treated the caste system as part of religion itself. He demonstrated that the "humanity" within a person is sufficient to distinguish good from evil.

Were Buddha's ethics 100 percent perfect? Certainly not, because the cultural influences of his era left their mark on him. But the real point is this: these "imperfect" moral principles, rooted in human conscience, have always exposed the contradictions of "sacred" religious moralities that for centuries gave a divine cover to atrocities like slavery and caste discrimination.

Remember, a 100 percent objective morality cannot exist in this world, because we are not living in a 100 percent perfect world. Religion's claim that its morality is 100 percent perfect is nothing more than an illusion and a deception.

Here we place a few questions before Muslim preachers:

1. Do you accept that Gautama Buddha was a person of high moral stature? Or do you claim that Buddhism has no moral framework at all, because its followers do not believe in any divine being?
2. Do you accept that Buddha had the right to criticize the "prevailing religious morality" of Hinduism on the basis of his humanity and reason?

If your answer is "yes," then how does it become "wrong" to criticize Islamic morality on the basis of human reason?

Why is there this double standard, where Buddha is given the right to examine the Vedas and the caste system through his own reason, but a modern atheist or thinker is denied that same right to question Islam's rulings on apostasy, slavery, and the institution of bondswomen?

This attitude is one of the worst examples of hypocrisy and double standards. If human reason can be the measure by which Hinduism is examined, it is equally capable of examining Islam or any other religion.

Closing Words

Religious morality is, in truth, created by human beings themselves. It has simply been given a "sacred" label so that it cannot be questioned.

The appeal, in the end, is this: do not strangle your own humanity and reason for the sake of religious honour or the "alleged wisdom" of God. The path of seeking truth is difficult, but it is the path that leads us out of the city of fear and into the light of awareness.

Remember: humanity precedes all religions, and our own reason is our greatest guide.