God, Morality, & Science

My local newspaper today had a letter to the editor from a local priest who argued that the "history of the Catholic church is a record of great love ..." (!!) and that "No God means no moral norms ..." For some reason, people regularly assume that the biggest benefit of a belief in God is the creation of a moral center in all of us sinning beings. This brought to mind an excellent session I saw at the Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason & Survival conference in 2006 that is completely available for viewing on the web. I haven't watched the video of all the sessions, but found the time to watch the first one (watch it here). It was absolutely fascinating to hear presentations by Steven Weinberg, Lawrence Krauss, Sam Harris, and Michael Shermer about the conflict between Science, Reason and God. They all ultimately believe the same thing, but had quite differing viewpoints on how strongly we should oppose a belief in God. One argued that because science is based on reason and evidence-based inference, it is not compatible with a belief in God. They reiterated the important point that a lack of belief in God is NOT the same as a belief in no God - an important distinction that many fail to see.

Anyway, one key point made by Sam Harris (I think) was that scientists (and believers in reason) need to reclaim the right to "morality." They argue that there is no evidence that believers are any more moral than non-believers. In fact, there is evidence to the opposite. People from countries with increasingly secular worldviews and less belief in God tend to do more for the poor and be more generous in terms of charitable giving (such as the Scandinavian countries). I firmly believe that belief in God (or lack of it) has no bearing on an individual's morality, decency or generosity. How do we eliminate this faulty perception that Godless people are immoral?

To me, the highlight of the video was a quote attributed to Steven Weinberg that now hangs on my office wall: "Science does not make it impossible to believe in God. It makes not believing in God possible." Exactly!