More on God and Ethics

By Keith Parsons | 4 February 2026
Letters to a Free Country

(Image by Logga Wiggler from Pixabay)

AGAINST RELIGIOUS ETHICS

Catholic Apologist Trent Horn recently argued for the “moral madness of atheism”.

I criticized his argument in an earlier Letter. Here I would like to flip the table and argue against religious and particularly Christian ethics.

Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the United States (served 1923-1929) was a famously taciturn man—a quality one wishes more recent presidents would adopt. A reporter once told “Silent Cal” that he had bet his editor that he could get more than two words out of him. Coolidge’s reply: “You lose.” The story goes that after attending church service he was asked what the minister preached about. “Sin,” was the answer. “Well,” the inquirer persisted, “what did he say about it?” “He was against it.”

Coolidge gives an excellent succinct summation of Christian ethics. Sin is the essential, indispensable concept of Christian ethics. Indeed, it is central to the entire Christian message. Without sin there can be no need of redemption and atonement through the salvific sacrifice of Christ. Christian salvation is salvation from sin and its consequences. With respect particularly to ethics, for the Christian, what makes something wrong, at bottom, must be that it is sinful.

But what is sin?

But what is sin? As I learned in Sunday School long ago, sin is the transgression of the will of God by thought or deed. That thought can be sin is essential to the doctrine. God is telepathic; he can read your mind. So sinful thoughts are just as bad as sinful deeds. This is why Jesus said (Matthew 5:28) that one who has lusted in his heart is just as bad as one who has actually fornicated or committed adultery. It is certainly true that the will to commit evil is bad even if circumstance prevents its actual accomplishment. On the other hand, the sinfulness of thoughts prompts many to enact an internal censor, an inner nanny constantly trying to monitor and prevent sinful thoughts. However, as we have known at least since Freud, obsessive repression is harmful and repressed thoughts have a tendency to express themselves in harmful ways.

Guilt

The inevitable failure of the inner monitor engenders constant guilt, and a sense of sinfulness, that, mirabile dictu, only the church has the means to (temporarily) cure. There is no more searing indictment of the neuroses of an Irish Catholic upbringing than James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). Overwhelmed by a sense of sin, he goes to confession and gets absolution. Life is wonderful. Until he masturbates again. Quite a racket: Forgiveness is the addiction and the priest is the pusher.

The Will of God

So, for a Christian, moral goodness is obedience to the will of God and sin is transgression of the will of God. But how do we ascertain the will of God? Here are some things that various religions of today regard as contrary to the will of God: Eating pork, eating shellfish, eating meat with milk, drinking alcohol, drinking coffee, women wearing pants, women showing their faces, women doing pretty much anything, men shaving their beards, lighting a fire on the sabbath, having sex before marriage, masturbation, contraception, having an abortion, looking at porn, dancing, blasphemy (variously defined), denying the existence of God, denying the truth of the true religion (variously identified), being gay, being transgender, accepting biological evolution, disbelieving anything in holy scripture (variously identified), voting for a Democrat…and so on.

So one drawback of a religious ethic is that to identify good and bad with the will of God requires that one particular purported revelation be authorized. Further, there are many different interpretations of every purported revelation. Consensus on these points has been notoriously hard to obtain. It appears, then, that any religious ethic is going to have a very hard time meeting one desideratum of a good ethical theory—universality. As Kant realized, a legitimate account of ethical obligation must be binding on all. However, how can I have a duty to obey your God? To insist that everyone, whatever their beliefs, must obey the purported dictates of your God smacks of a kind of religious imperialism that has done much mischief.

Original Sin

An additional element of the concept of sin is that it appears to be something that can be inherited. This is the curious and disturbing doctrine of original sin. The primer used to teach the ABC’s to the children of New England Puritans began with, “In Adam’s fall, we sinned all.” That is, the decision of a putative ancestor many thousands of years ago to eat a piece of forbidden fruit has stained all subsequent generations with a burden of sinfulness that can only be expunged by the sacrament of baptism. An advocate of Christian ethics has the job of explaining how the concept of original sin is not just a pernicious superstition.

However, the basic problem with an ethical system based on the concept of sin is that it will either be harmful or superfluous. It is harmful when it designates as sinful things that are either harmless or beneficial. It is superfluous when it censures things that really are wrong, but their wrongness is more simply and cogently explained without reference to the will of a transcendent being.

As adumbrated by the above list of things stigmatized by various religions, churches have designated as sinful many harmless things, like masturbation, drinking coffee, and dancing. When you proscribe harmless pleasures, you limit the enjoyment that people can have and, if they do indulge, you afflict them with a sense of guilt. There is the ancient joke that asks why Baptists do not have sex standing up. Answer: Because someone might see them and think that they are dancing. The Puritans cautioned against excessive mirth. Those who laugh too heartily will soon be tempted to laugh at God. Stop laughing and go contemplate your original sin.

Of course, where the churches have always been most eager to find sin is in relation to sex. Reading St. Augustine on sex (a painful task) one cannot help but get the impression that for him sex is always regrettable, but, sigh, since it is indispensable, we should try to take the joy out of it as much as possible. Even married couples are to have sex not to satiate desire but with the sole aim of reproduction. Simple joy is out; you have to be a moral acrobat. Hard to see how any man could get an erection on Augustine’s terms!

Sex

C.S. Lewis is unflinching in his statement of the Christian demand for chastity. From Mere Christianity:

Chastity is the most unpopular of the Christian virtues. There is no getting away from it. The old Christian rule is, “Either marriage, with complete faithfulness to your partner, or else total abstinence.”

Why? Why is it necessarily sinful for two unmarried adults to have sex? Lewis’s answer is this:

The monstrosity [!] of sexual intercourse outside of marriage is that those who indulge in it are trying to isolate one kind of union (the sexual) from all the other kinds of union which were intended to go along with it to make up the total union.

Intended? Intended by whom? If he means intended by God, then his argument is question-begging if addressed to the nonbeliever. Could he mean that there is something unnatural about sex outside of marriage, that the human being is “designed” by evolution to have sex only with a single permanent partner? It is hard to see how he could argue this. Unlike some species, humans are not hardwired to mate for life. Rather, humans appear spontaneously and naturally to be sexually aroused by persons with whom they would not want to spend a lifetime. Is such desire unnatural? Further, unlike God, natural selection issues no moral demands. Besides, about 99% of what we do is “unnatural” in the sense that it was not selected for; rather we make innovative use of functions and capacities that were selected for something else. Our Homo sapiens sapiens brains were not designed to do calculus but to deal with the complexities of social life and to have the cleverness to survive in an often hostile natural environment. Doing calculus is therefore “unnatural.”

From Augustine to C.S. Lewis, the Christian view has been that sex is bad unless it is incorporated into some “higher” purpose, such as reproduction or a “total union.” I disagree. I think that sexual desire is good per se and does not need to be justified by any “higher” aim or purpose. There are potential complications, but, in general, I see nothing wrong with responsible, mutually respectful sex between two unmarried adults. That they are mutually attracted is all the “justification” needed.

The Catholic Church continues to oppose contraception, one of the great benefits of medical science. The argument is that contraception interferes with the “natural” function of sex which is for reproduction. It is true, of course, that reproduction is necessary for maintaining the species, but it does not follow that it is necessary or even desirable for each member of the species. What an individual human being is for is the happiness and well-being of that individual. Full stop. Sex therefore serves its purpose for the individual when it promotes the happiness and well-being of that person. If the Church says otherwise, then it opposes the happiness and well-being of humans.

Compassion, Peace, and Christian-Secular Cooperation

Churches do in fact designate as sinful some things which really are morally opprobrious. The Catholic bishops have, admirably, come out with very powerful statements in support of immigrant communities against the brutal depredations of the Trump ICE goons.

Other statements by popes, cardinals, and other officials of the Catholic Church have called for compassion and peace, not only in Minneapolis, but in Gaza and around the world. Good. Many Protestant churches have been equally forceful and eloquent in opposing the cruelty we see enacted daily on our streets. Ministers have joined the protestors and even been attacked by ICE thugs.

When religious people take a stand against cruelty, oppression, and intolerance, secular people must join hands with them.

Harmful or Superfluous

So we do see that religious people are often motivated by their beliefs to do good, even heroic things. However, what justifies their good actions is their compassion, humanity, and love. Further, what they oppose they oppose because it is hateful, cruel, oppressive, and bigoted. These are all the justifications our judgements of good and bad require. Shooting down innocent people in the streets is bad because it is cruel, inhumane, and heartless. That is why it is wrong. Adding further that it displeases a heavenly being does not make it more wrong. Our ordinary judgements of right and wrong suffice. They are not made any surer or better by saying that they are endorsed by God.

Religious and, in particular, Christian ethics is either harmful or superfluous. Ethics has no need of God.

Keith Parsons is a Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, emeritus at the University of Houston at Clear Lake and the former editor of the philosophy journal Philo. He has debated William Lane Craig on the topics “Is Christianity True?” and “Does God Exist?”. Dr. Parsons holds a Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Queens University.

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