"Ethics Without Religion" - Peter Singer

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:00]Um it's a great pleasure to be here at this uh huge gathering and I thank the organizers for having made all that possible and I thank you of course for turning up on this uh early Sunday morning. I know that uh going to events to hear somebody talk on Sunday morning is not something that we atheists are usually in the habit of doing. So uh makes it all the better.

[00:00:24]Now, I'm going to begin with a a little true incident that happened last night at the dinner which some of you were here uh which which illustrates my theme nicely. Uh after dessert was served um there was a lot of standing up and milling around. We were all sitting at, for those who weren't here, we're sitting at tables of 10 or so. And I happened to notice that uh on the table where I was milling around, somebody had left their wallet in the middle of the table and got up and gone to talk to other people.

[00:00:55]What a fool. At an atheist convention, didn't this person know that without God everything is permitted and there's no morality?

[00:01:09]That's what uh that's what dststovki says in the brothers Karamazov.

[00:01:16]If there is no god everything is permitted if there is no immortality then there can be no virtue.

[00:01:25]And many religious people believe this.

[00:01:29]Uh I've had people writing to me about this quite often. Uh, I'll read you a sample email I got a couple of years ago.

[00:01:39]Dear sir, I read your writings with much interest and overall I'm very impressed by them. However, I do have one rather fundamental query.

[00:01:48]How is it possible to hold notions of good and bad on an atheistic worldview?

[00:01:55]I understand you apply a utilitarian approach, but why is the greatest happiness for the greatest number a good thing when it's just piles of flesh and bones you are talking about? Why instead can't I define the selfish pursuit of my own interests as good? Who are you or anyone else to say otherwise?

[00:02:18]Well, it's true that I am a utilitarian, though the greatest happiness of the greatest number isn't completely accurate account of what I do think is a good thing.

[00:02:26]Um, and of course, if we are talking about happiness or if we're talking about satisfying human desires or preferences or the preferences or desires of any sentient being, it can't be just piles of flesh and bones in the vivid image of this uh writer that we're talking about because piles of flesh and bones don't uh experience happiness or pain. um and they don't have desires or preferences.

[00:02:56]There has to be some conscious awareness. There has to be some sentience in the sense of there being subjective experiences uh for that to be the case. Now it may of course be uh that um these subjective experiences simply follow from uh a certain composition of matter certain uh uh brain physiology state of cells and so on. Um that's true. We certainly don't need to postulate any kind of uh special immaterial entities like spirits or souls in order to have subjective experiences. But I do think we need to have subjective experiences for us to have value. Um, and in that sense, the idea that everything is just a pile of flesh and bones doesn't get us there. I think if you imagine a world in which there were no beings capable of conscious experiences at all, there would also be no possibility of morality. Not only that there would be no moral agents capable of thinking about right or wrong but there would also be no uh moral patience if you like. That is no beings to whom one could do something that would be good or bad because uh there would be no value in that world. There would be nothing that could go better or worse. Just as if I were to say pick up this glass and hurl it on the floor and smash it into many pieces. It would not really be worse for the glass in itself. It might be a nuisance. We have to watch out to sweep it up. But that's cuz we care about it. The glass itself does not have any intrinsic states that are good or bad. Whereas we do and non-human animals do as well because uh they're capable of feeling pleasure or pain.

[00:04:55]So that I think is where value gets into the universe. But this challenge whether from dsttoyki or from the uh person who sent me that email does have to be met.

[00:05:07]we still have to say well what is the nature of mor morality uh if we don't believe in religion and I'm going to say a little bit about that and about address the reasons why people think that somehow something is missing if you don't believe in God uh something is missing for the concept of morality that people think we need and want to have um and then I'm going to say a little bit more positively about what morality ity really is all about how we can understand it on a non-religious worldview.

[00:05:45]So um let's start with this point about so who is to say what's good or bad without God.

[00:05:56]This is an ancient question that uh we find discussed in the beginnings of western philosophy in uh in ancient Greece 2 and a half thousand years ago in Plato. Uh there's a famous dialogue which I'm sure many of you will have already heard of known as the Uifro. Uh in Plato's dialogues he he typically has uh Socrates as present. Socrates, his uh mentor or teacher uh present as one character in the dialogue, the one who puts essentially his viewpoint and uh somebody else that he's discussing it with. And in in the Uifro, Socrates is discussing uh with Uthifer what it is to be pious. Um what piety is. We can I think roughly regard this as as equivalent to what it is to be good or what what goodness or morality is.

[00:06:51]And Socrates makes this uh presents this famous dilemma to youth. He says um is something good because the gods say it say that it's good or is it good um or do the gods say that it's good because it is good.

[00:07:14]And for somebody who wants to say that morality must come from uh God, this is I think uh a a real insoluble problem to which I haven't seen a satisfactory answer. Because uh if you say that um something is good only because God says it is, you essentially um make it arbitrary what good is and you make God into a kind of arbitrary tyrant. If God had said that it's good to plant bombs in crowded marketplaces and blow up lots of men, women, and children as they go about their daily business, then that would be a good thing to do. There may be some religious people in the world who actually believe that as we tragically um and conversely if God had said it's wrong to help somebody in distress when you can easily help them.

[00:08:10]Um then it would be wrong to help uh a stranger in distress. And you can't say well but God wouldn't have done that because God is is good and God only chooses things that are good. because then of course you're saying that there is a notion of good that is independent of what God wills. So either um God becomes an arbitrary tyrant uh or there is something some notion of good or bad independently of what God wills presumably some objective criteria for saying that it's better to help people in need than to uh kill and maim them uh as they go about their daily business.

[00:08:53]So um I don't think we can argue that we need God in order to have uh a conception of right and wrong at all.

[00:09:03]There must be some prior idea of right or wrong.

[00:09:08]Secondly, of course, people often say, well, okay, I'll grant you that there are things that are right and wrong. Um and I'll take the view that God tells us what's what's good and it is good independently of God. Um but without God, we would not have known what the things were uh that are good.

[00:09:30]Well, this really um doesn't seem to be the way things work when we look at uh the knowledge that people have of God because of course people typically say we God reveals to us in the scriptures what it is that is uh right or wrong.

[00:09:49]But as I'm sure you're all aware and uh already heard perhaps from previous speakers, in fact uh Christians are highly selective uh and other religious people as well who have scriptures highly selective in what they take from the scriptures and what they regard as good or bad. And there's all sorts of things uh some of them quite ridiculous which it seems uh if you read the Hebrew and Christian scriptures that uh God tells us to do. Um some of them of course are quite horrific like uh stoning to death somebody who works on the Sabbath.

[00:10:31]Um and uh you know one of I think one of the most horrific passages in the uh in the Hebrew scriptures if you read it is in uh the book of Numbers uh chapter 31 where God um directs it's only one of of several episodes where God directs Moses uh through Moses or Moses directs his generals to go and slaughter uh a people called the Midianites. Uh their crime is that apparently some of the women then neighbors of the Israelites, some of their women um have uh persuaded um some of the Israelites to uh worship their gods. And so God commands uh uh the Israelites to go and slaughter uh all of them, the men um and uh uh and the women uh to but to well sorry to slaughter the men uh and to take uh the women and children and uh God and God says that uh those of the women who have lain with men you shall slaughter. Um the boys you shall slaughter the male children you shall slaughter. um uh only you shall keep the virgin girls and they you shall take as your wives. So um essentially uh God is telling uh the Israelites to commit genocide um so that the people completely disappear and simply the uh women the girls who could not be pregnant with uh children of Midianite men um are going to be breeding stock for uh the Israelites. Those are verses of course get ignored if you talk to uh Christians. Um they generally have never heard of those verses. That's not what they're what they're taught in church.

[00:12:15]Not surprisingly. Um some of them of course will say uh you know and and then they will use selective verses to support what they want to support. For example to condemn homosexuality which is also uh condemned. But um it's it's a selective process that's going on. So, it's clearly their judgments, not an impartial reading of the scriptures.

[00:12:38]Some of them will say, "Ah, well, that's the Old Testament, but we follow Jesus."

[00:12:42]Um, but Jesus is not really much better in some of the things that um he suggests. Of course, he says that to marry a divorced woman is to commit adultery.

[00:12:52]Um, but uh there's relatively few Christians who take that as their guidance. He doesn't say anything about abortion. Um but Christians typically think that uh that abortion is wrong.

[00:13:03]That clearly doesn't come out of scriptures. And he does uh insist very forcefully that you must help the poor. Indeed, he tells the rich man that um uh he should sell all that he has and give it to the poor. Um and he emphasizes uh that this this is uh important and that it's very hard to be saved. uh that it's as um hard for a rich man to be saved as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Um yet nevertheless, you still see quite a lot of rich Christians. So um again, it's it's something that they don't want to accept and they don't they're clearly making up their own minds as to what it is that is right or wrong. They're not using the scriptures as a guide to ethical living.

[00:13:54]Okay. So the third claim that we find religious people then make is that uh they may say all right so there is a right or wrong independently of God. Uh it's also true that we are selective. We use our own judgment in deciding which of the scriptures we'll follow and which we won't follow. But without a god we wouldn't have the motivation to do what's right. And this again is what u Ivan Karamazov says in in uh according to dstovski he says at one point without immortality there would be no virtue. So it's it's the afterlife that is the kind of motivation for us doing the right thing. Uh we will be rewarded uh or punished in the afterlife according to what we've done. And uh so ultimately there it is a selfish motivation uh on this view for doing what's right. But um uh it's a kind of enlightened self-interest once we understand the way things are.

[00:14:58]Now this ought to really be quite a powerful motivation for doing what's right. If you think about it, if you really believe, try and put yourself in the state of mind of somebody who really believes that if you do what's right, you will be uh eternally rewarded in a blissful state in heaven. Um, and if you uh do something seriously wrong, you will be punished forever after in hell.

[00:15:26]Uh, for anyone with a decent kind of time horizon, you know, who doesn't just think short term, that ought to make a really big difference. And it is actually I think psychologically interesting says something about human beings that um it doesn't seem to make a difference when you compare the behavior of religious people and non-religious people. If we compare today for example uh those societies that are relatively more religious and those societies that are more secular um among industrialized nations you need to hold things reasonably constant in other ways. So among industrialized nations clearly the United States is a unusually religious for a modern industrialized nation and Europe with a couple of exceptions maybe Poland and perhaps still Ireland um is uh much more secular.

[00:16:19]But um uh Europe is by many measures I would say a morally better society than the more religious United States.

[00:16:27]Certainly the murder rate is far lower.

[00:16:30]The number of people in prison is far lower. You would think, well, if people believe in in eternal punishment, why do you need to threaten them with punishment here? But obviously, you do.

[00:16:41]Um although Jesus is reported, as I said, as saying that God will save those who fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, and clothe the naked. If you're weak and vulnerable, you'll be much better off in Europe, which generally has a decent welfare service and uh universal health coverage um than you will be in the United States, which of course, as you know, is still struggling to get universal health coverage. Um when it comes to helping the poor as well um the record of almost all the European nations is far better than that of the United States. Uh for example, Sweden which is a relatively secular society gives about four times as much in proportion to its gross national income as the United States.

[00:17:27]The United States has the highest juvenile um uh juvenile um mortality rates that is death for for young people and um uh pretty much the shortest lifespans. It has the highest abortion rate despite opinion against abortion being much higher according to uh polls.

[00:17:48]um uh highest abort abortion rates among democracies where abortion is legal of course and uh the highest sexually transmitted disease infection rates and the highest teen pregnancy rates as well. And then of course we uh we're all familiar uh with the fact that we've had a lot of publicity in recent years about uh not just Christians in general but these religious leaders uh priests uh evangelical leaders and others who are constantly talking about sin and yet seem to be unable to stop themselves from a wide variety of what they themselves consider to be the most vile kinds of sins for which they might well expect on their beliefs to be punished.

[00:18:31]So you have to assume that belief in hellfire is really not very efficacious in controlling behavior.

[00:18:38]Um now I think we have to be we have to be balanced here. I can't say that atheists have a fantastic record of being virtuous uh either. We've certainly had all sorts of atrocities committed by atheists such as Stalin and and Paul Pot. Um there's no doubt of that. uh and but we have comparable atrocities committed by Christians uh um through the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the 30 years war um and so on. And I'm certainly not going to concede to the uh religious moralists the claim that Hitler was an atheist. He's often lumped with uh Stalin and Paul Pot among the terrible atheists of the 20th century, but Hitler certainly talked a lot about God. He may not have been an Orthodox uh Catholic as he was brought up, but he certainly talked a lot about God if you read his table talk. And uh the German army had belt buckles that were inscribed with the words got mitz, God with us. So I don't think we can place the Nazis in the atheist side of the spectrum. And of course, it's not only uh Christians either that we should be concerned about here. We've had innumerable conflicts over the centuries between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in which all sorts of atrocities have also been committed. And of course, we have as one of the threats to peace today, religious fanatics uh of Islamic persuasion who uh blow themselves up reassured with the idea that uh this will win them a place in paradise. These seem to be perhaps the only religious people who are really confident um in a place in paradise. if they do what they believe to be the right thing.

[00:20:22]Unfortunately, if we look at the more positive side of good behavior, it's it's sometimes said that uh uh Christians give more to charity than secular people. There's some support for that if you look at the statistics about how much is given to charity in the United States. But um the if you look at at where what charities people are giving to the larger slice of the charitable pie in the United States is religious institutions themselves. So perhaps that accounts for some of the fact that religious people are giving more. they're giving to support the church and the salaries uh of their religious institutions where they are.

[00:21:04]It's worth noting that despite the fact that as I said Jesus has all this emphasis on helping the poor, three of the four greatest philanthropists in history concerned with with helping the poor and promoting the general good have been non-believers. I'm referring to Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Andrew Kanegi. The uh exception among the the top four is John D. Rockefeller who was a Protestant. Uh but of the contemporary philanthropists, Gates and Buffett stand out. They've given more even adjusted for inflation. They've given more than any other human being in history. And they have given it to deal with the greatest problems of the world that affect the poor. um to for example develop cures for diseases like malaria where there's not enough money going into research uh because most of the market would be in the developing world where people are too poor to provide a profitable market for the drug companies. Um so uh it's clear that people can be motivated to do what's best uh without religious belief.

[00:22:13]Um, one of my great uh greatest colleagues uh in the animal movement um was a man called Henry Spear uh who I think has also done an enormous amount to reduce the amount of pain and suffering in the universe because he was uh the most effective animal rights activist I think in the late 20th century. Um Henry Spar never had much money. um his form of philanthropy was to to devote time and energy and his very considerable intellect to finding effective ways to help the downtrodden and the oppressed. Um not only animals incidentally, he marched for civil rights in the south in the 60s. Uh he worked for uh the labor unions for union reform against corrupt union movements in the merchant marine where he served for a while. um and uh also of course for non-human animals. Towards the end of his life, he had cancer. He knew he didn't have very long to live. And I interviewed him to make a video so that others could learn from his methods and his general philosophy. And I asked him um given that he was an atheist um and that he regarded death as the end of his existence, what had driven him to spend his life working for others? and he replied, I guess basically one wants to feel that one's life has amounted to more than just consuming products and generating garbage.

[00:23:39]I think that one likes to look back and say that one's done the best one can to make this a better place for others. You look at it from this point of view. What greater motivation can there be than doing whatever one possibly can to reduce pain and suffering?

[00:23:57]Thank you.

[00:24:05]Still you might say, "So what is morality? If morality is not from God, I've I've sort of dismissed now the arguments for thinking that we need to believe in God for there to be morality." But still, you might say, "What is morality? Where does it come from?" I see morality as a natural evolved phenomenon. Um, I'm with people like Richard Dawkins, you'll be hearing from later today, of course, on on that.

[00:24:27]Um, and consistent with that, we find that moral practices are more universal than you would expect. They're more universal than you, well, sorry, than you would expect given the diversity of religions in the world, religious teachings. Um, and that's because they have evolved as ways of living together for human beings who were in many respects sharing common features of uh their conditions of living. that is human beings are mammals. They reasonably long lived. They have possibilities of cooperating with each other and benefiting from cooperation.

[00:25:05]Um they need to care for their offspring if their offspring are going to survive.

[00:25:09]Uh they live in social groups. Uh all of these things form the nature of the morality that we have evolved that helps us. Um and that's why when we compare uh religious cultures we have developed this kind of moral faculty that um makes us have a quite a lot of common judgments. For instance uh judgments that uh uh you should look after your children um that that you have an obligation a responsibility to care for your children. Uh also judgments about reciprocity. A lot of morality is concerned with the idea that um if you do something good for me, I should do something good back to you. But conversely, if you do something bad to me, I'm entitled to do something bad to you. Um that's this morality of of tit fortat, if you like, which it's been shown to work pretty well to foster cooperation, to foster the idea that um it's better to work together. And so we all mutually benefit because we work to together. For this reason, I don't agree with with those people, including some atheists, who say that Jesus was a great ethical teacher.

[00:26:26]I think there are some things that Jesus said that are lordable, if you like, but there are certainly other things that are not. And the one that particularly relates to what I'm saying now is the idea of turning the other cheek. If somebody smackes you on the cheek, turn the other cheek. This is supposed to be a very noble, lordable teaching that we should follow. Now again, it's one of these things of course that Christians typically don't follow. Certainly George W. Bush, the most strongly Christian recent president of the United States, was not notable for following that one.

[00:26:56]Um, but you know, I don't condemn him for that. I do condemn him for a lot of decisions, but not for that. Because what happens if you do turn the other cheek? Well, what happens clearly is that those who are prepared to smite you will smite you again until they get whatever it is they want. Um, it does not foster a spirit of cooperation. It fosters an idea in which uh some people will play you for a sucker and get away with it. And because they get away with it, they will thrive and they will reproduce. And eventually you will therefore get a society that is dominated by those who think that you don't have to cooperate with others. Um you can just use force to get what it is you want. And that's not even as a society. It's not going to thrive as a society because uh it won't have the basic elements of cooperation that uh make things go better for us. So I think it is actually better to say that if somebody cheats you or tries to turn you into a sucker, you should retaliate. Or of course if we have a social system that retaliates, if we have a law that does that, better still. But um you can't simply take it because uh what you want is a society in which those who are bonafidey co cooperators, those who um do things for others uh and don't try to get away with a one-sided exchange uh are the ones who thrive in society and uh we'll all do better in that way.

[00:28:33]So that kind of morality is in fact quite universal despite some religious teachings to the contrary.

[00:28:41]Now um there's a lot of empirical work going on about the origins of morality and and how it works. And it's it has been really interesting in showing that some of these moral responses or moral judgments that we make are actually hardwired into us.

[00:28:57]um they're something that we have biological responses, intuitive responses to certain situations.

[00:29:07]And uh sometimes you call it a yuck response. If somebody describes something, you think, "Oh, that's yucky." And that is pretty close to saying that something is wrong. Very often if you ask people moral judgments and you can do this for for instance while you're uh getting an image of what's going on in their brain a real time uh using functional magnetic resonance imaging of what's going on in their brain. You see that there's a kind of really instant response when you describe a situation. And if you then ask them to give reasons that comes later comes more slowly. And uh uh quite often people can't give reasons even though they've got this kind of instant response to things. So we have evolved intuitions and uh that forms a large part of morality and that's a large part of why we make these judgments that are common judgments despite having different sets of cultures and moral beliefs.

[00:30:07]But even though that's natural, I don't think we should take that always as our standard. It might quite often be a good guide. So, you know, you see somebody um hitting a a child, for instance, you have a instant negative response and you want to get that person to stop. Okay, that's probably in most cases a good guide to uh what uh that there is something wrong going on here. But uh our moral judgments have evolved for situations that we were familiar with.

[00:30:42]They haven't evolved for a whole range of situations and I think that we need to get beyond them. In some cases, they may actually give us the wrong judgments. For example, there's some suggestions that um we have these kind of intuitive responses uh that have a certain element of xenophobia in them, certain element of hostility to strangers and to others and to people people who look very different to us. So in other words, there is possibly some kind of biological component to a certain instinctive racism.

[00:31:16]Uh and that's something that obviously we need to get over. um maybe something that has come from the millions of years we spent in small societies where we knew everyone in our society and somebody who was outside that society we considered uh an enemy but the world is a very different place now so we need to change that kind of response. um we shouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that because a response is a natural one, it's uh one that is somehow good or right. Um I think that very often the judgment that something is uh unnatural is used as a synonym for saying that it's wrong.

[00:32:02]But uh we have to go beyond that as well because the world in which we live is not that in which uh we evolved. So um among some things for instance that I think are are clearly serious moral issues now how we deal with complete strangers on the other side of the world has become one of the most important moral issues of our times and we don't have the right evolved responses to it.

[00:32:29]we don't uh have the same kind of emotional response towards helping strangers across the world especially where we can't relate to an individual as we do to helping someone right in front of us. Um, in my writings about world poverty, I've used the example of coming across a child drowning in a shallow pond. And I ask people, don't you think you should rescue that child, even if in order to do so, you have to wait into the pond and you're going to ruin an expensive pair of shoes that you just put on this morning and you don't have time to get rid of. And people say, "Well, of course, of course you should save the child. How can you compare a the cost of a pair of shoes with a child's life?

[00:33:15]But um uh if you then say okay but probably for about the cost of an expensive pair of shoes you can save the life of a child on the other side of the world by giving some money to Oxfam or one of the other aid organizations that are helping the poor.

[00:33:31]uh people um well you know they will they will try to find excuses why that case isn't really parallel to the child in the pawn case but I think what's going on really is that you just don't have the same emotional response to the statistic that there are according to UNICEF nearly 9 million children dying from avoidable poverty related causes each year that you have to the image of this child in the pond in front of you and that's somewhere where our evolved D responses are not good enough and we have to think about the situation intellectually realize the parallel and go on to it. Um another example I think where uh evolved responses are not good enough are to do with the animals we eat. Um where I think we've developed because no doubt for most of our history too we were omnivores. We took food wherever we could. We killed animals for food. So we don't have quite the same evolved response to food animals although we do to companion animals to dogs and cats we think generally most of us think anyway it would be you know yuck to kill them we have that yuck response I mentioned before to the idea of eating dogs and cats but we don't have it to the idea of eating pigs or cows or chickens even though certainly you know as George Orwell said in animal farm pigs are just as intelligent as dogs um it's not really a difference between the pigs and the dogs. It's just that we classify one as a food animal and don't have the same kind of negative response to eating it. And of course, we don't even see them generally because they're all locked up in factory farms.

[00:35:11]That's another issue.

[00:35:13]Um thirdly, uh the other great issue, the great moral issue that confronts us today that unfortunately we don't have any kind of um evolved response to is the issue of climate change. Um this is an interesting example, a terrible example in a way where um we are doing all sorts of things which are contributing to disastrous consequences.

[00:35:38]We know here in southern Australia, we actually know the disastrous consequences at firsthand because we've been short of water for a decade or so now. And we we see this in terms of our uh our own gardens and uh uh the the countryside around. Um of course people in the United States haven't really seen it. Certainly not in the Northeast where um where I'm teaching. Um but uh we know that it's going to be far more disastrous for people in Africa who are subsistence farmers dependent on rainfall patterns which are likely to change. And we're going to have hundreds of millions uh if not billions of climate refugees over the next century uh either because of rainfall patterns changing or because of rising sea levels inundating fertile regions of say Bangladesh or other low-lying areas the Mikong Delta.

[00:36:34]Um, and what you know, but we have no evolved response to this because what we're doing is simply turning on the air conditioning, driving a big gasg guzzling uh four-wheel drive, uh, flying too much, uh, eating meat again for that matter, because particularly ruminant animals, beef and and sheep are major contributors to climate change. uh and because this situation has not arisen until now, it's not something that has given us any kind of evolved response.

[00:37:05]And these things seem quite innocent to us and yet they're devastating uh in their long-term consequences. So that's why although morality is a natural phenomenon, um an evolved phenomenon, we can't simply rest with that. We have to use our intellect and think about what consequences we're having.

[00:37:27]Now, you might say, I want to allow a few minutes for questions, so I'm about to wind up. You might say, well, but you know, what is nevertheless the moral standard that you that you take? And obviously, I've taken as a moral standard the idea of concern for the interests of all of those affected by our actions. Um, this is something like and could be understood as uh what um Christians and uh Jews know as the golden rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And some people might say, well, look, really, isn't this a religious tradition after all that you're borrowing from even though you claim not to be in it? But I think it's the other way round. I think it's a general view that reflective people over millennia, religious or not religious, have come up with which has been taken up by religions as well as by others. So the the idea of the golden rule, treat others as you would have them treat you is something that I think comes out of this evolutionary idea of reciprocity and cooperation that I mentioned before and that you can find therefore in a wide variety of cultures and in roughly chronological order. You can find it in the teachings of Zoroasta, Confucious, Mahaviraa who was the founder of Janism, the Buddha in the Hindu epic, the Mahabraata in the book of Leviticus, the Jewish tradition, the teachings of Rabbi Hell, also in the Jewish tradition. Now we come to Jesus, then Marcus Aurelius, then Muhammad, then Kant in the 18th century European tradition and since then many many others um including my own teacher at Oxford University, the late professor RM Hair. So when people say that this is a religious teaching or say you know religion isn't really caring for others, we shouldn't accept that characterization. That's not what's distinctive about religion. That's something that religion shares with uh non-religious traditions as well.

[00:39:39]So um I think that we should take that as a general outlook. Um I think we should not simply follow uh rules that tell us that uh something is absolutely wrong because that can typically be disastrous and religious teachings that tell us that that we must stick to rules I think have often had disastrous consequences in many ways. Um uh just to give one quick example, um they have uh ruled out uh the practice of voluntary euthanasia or physician assisted suicide. Um because we're told that uh killing is always wrong. Killing an innocent person is always wrong. And therefore it's wrong for a doctor to kill someone even if that person wants to die. Even if that person is clearly in a rational frame of mind, even if that person only has days or weeks or months to live and has judged that the quality of that life is not worth living, um it's not any kind of concern or caring for others um that would lead us to deny such a person's request to die. its insistence on a rigid moral code which says that um it's always wrong to end the life of an innocent human being. I think we have to move beyond that. So let me stop at that point. Um I think we have I hope uh a few minutes for questions and I'll be very happy to take them. Thank you.

[00:41:14]line up and maybe line up the steps.

[00:41:19]>> We do have mics in the in the aisles front, middle, and there. Um, we'll take as many questions as we can for the time we have. Um, do we have someone down here to uh good morning Dr. Singer and on behalf of everyone, thank you very much for your presentation this morning.

[00:41:36]you use as a bolster for a system of secular ethics a lot of examples from the west and what typifies the west is a strong social contract. In many other times and places around the world the social contract has not been as strong and I wonder whether you have discounted the powerful force that religion has been to enforce more virtuous conduct in situations like that. Of course, if a person believes that they are being judged even in their private conduct uh by an invisible arbiter, they will be more virtuous.

[00:42:16]Isn't it true that in many other parts of the world where the social contract is not as developed or or as just that that belief that you are being judged by God is actually a force for good?

[00:42:33]Um well I I don't think that the west has any monopoly on uh places that are you know I'm not sure about the term social contract which tends to come out of the western tradition but places that have a strong sense of um public order and concern for others. I don't think the west has a monopoly on that. I think if you look at uh China and the Confucian tradition, it's clearly not a religious tradition, but it has a strong sense of uh duty to the public. And I wouldn't say that there was any less virtue in general in the population uh of China or Japan, which was also influenced by that tradition than than there has been in the west. Um now you know there may be other places where there was less of an ordered state and that I think uh means that there is more danger to life. there is more if you like uh kill or be killed kind of attitude in some in some circumstances but I don't think we should exaggerate even that because generally speaking uh most people have lived in reasonably peaceful circumstances uh in say smallcale societies which prevailed for most of uh the time that that our species has been here and uh I don't know of any you know surveys that show that uh there has mean more virtue in the west and uh uh or in religious societies and less in others that were not religious. If you are aware of some figures on that uh would be interesting to see them but clearly it would be very difficult to get proper comparisons of very different societies.

[00:44:15]>> All right. Is there someone uh in the in the middle aisle up here?

[00:44:19]>> Peter, thank you for your talk. Um you briefly touched on it uh with the uh drowning boy example that we know especially in the environment and in religion that people don't connect very well with their actions when they're externalized and they're different or they're spaced over time or place. Does ethics provide any aspect to a framework with how we can get people to engage with their actions when they don't see them directly?

[00:44:47]Well, um, philosophical ethics is really concerned with, uh, trying to work out the nature of ethics, uh, and which ethical views are more defensible than others. Um, the question that you've asked moves more to psychological questions. That is if somebody accepts the idea that uh something is right or wrong, how do you get them to to act on that?

[00:45:17]And I think that's certainly a a huge problem for anyone religious or non-religious concerned about getting people to act in a better way because um as I said although you might think it would make sense that people who are religious and particularly if they believe in a reward and punishment in the afterlife act a lot better than those who don't um they have this extra motivation. Um it doesn't really seem to work that way. Uh so I don't really know the answers. I mean there's there's a fair amount of psychological research going on with these questions. And in uh my book, The Life You Can Save, I summarize some of the psychological research specifically about what fosters people acting altruistically, what fosters people acting to help others and what is a barrier. And um it seems like it's factors that have nothing to do with religious belief. For example, one of the big factors that make someone more likely to help somebody else is if they see that others are doing it. Um, you know, so psychologists have set up examples where um, uh, there's somebody who who seems to be in distress and need help and, uh, there's a stoogge who is helping. And if the stoogge is helping, then the real subject of the experiment is likely to help. And if the stoogge doesn't help, just ignores the person in distress, the person is is much less likely to help, too. um and and very strange little factors. There's a funny story which maybe fits quite nicely here. Some experiments done by Princeton colleagues of mine um where they wanted to see uh what would what factors would affect whether somebody helped somebody who was lying beside a pathway apparently suffering a heart attack or some distressing condition like that.

[00:47:02]And they used theology students at the Princeton Theological Seminary as their subjects.

[00:47:08]And they told them that they had to go to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan, >> the story of the Good Samaritan.

[00:47:17]And they divided them into into two groups. They they they they were in building A to be briefed before the lecture and then they had to go to building B. And of course on the pathway between building A and building B was the person groaning in distress by the pathway. They divided them into two groups. Group A, after briefing, they said, "Okay, well, you might as well head over to building B now. You've got plenty of time. Um, but you might as well leave now." And group B, they said, "Oh, we've left it a bit late. You better hurry or you'll be late for your lecture."

[00:47:47]And that was turned out to be the decisive factor as to whether people helped or not. Only a very small minority of those who were in a in a hurry stopped to help the stranger even though they were about to give a lecture on the Good Samaritan.

[00:47:59]And a majority of those who were told they had plenty of time did help. So, you know, we're strange beings really.

[00:48:05]And uh a lot of things that you would think would make a big difference seem to just float over the surface. And other things that you wouldn't think make such a big difference to whether we act on our beliefs actually make a bigger difference than you'd think.

[00:48:17]>> Is there a question from the rafters up here?

[00:48:20]>> That exper is this on? Ah, that experiment is awesome.

[00:48:24]um you you've made a lot of um reciprocity and the golden rule as a a rational basis for morality. My question is related to a couple of historical figures. We've got um Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela who activated great social change by seemingly ignoring that rule. Were they acting justly in doing so?

[00:48:48]Um well uh I certainly think that um they were you know doing something that was that was right and they were doing something that clearly had uh a great effect. Now, uh there may well be circumstances where you can have better consequences by ignoring that rule, particularly if you're in a position of physical weakness or military weakness, but moral strength.

[00:49:17]And I think that's what they were doing um in this situation. Martin Luther King um you can you can add to this. So if you're dealing with a foe um who in some way is vulnerable to the power of moral example um then it may be the right thing to do simply because it will lead to the best consequences and as I said I think that's really what counts. So uh yes against the British uh Gandhi could do that very successfully and he probably could not have succeeded by trying to strike uh militarily uh had he been dealing with the Nazis. Um, I don't think it would have had the same result, unfortunately.

[00:49:56]>> All right, down back here to the front.

[00:50:02]>> You you mentioned uh the fact that Paul Pot and uh Stalin were atheists.

[00:50:08]Atheists are often supposed to take the blame for the crimes of these people.

[00:50:13]I'm personally not prepared to do so.

[00:50:15]What do you think about the argument that uh religious violence is motivated by religion? Therefore, in a sense, they should take the blame. But atheist violence is motivated by some other pathology unrelated to atheism. And therefore, we shouldn't take the blame for it. We don't have to. Well, the question is how much of the religious violence is motivated by religion? Um I think we have to recognize that the religion covers a very diverse phenomenon and of course there are many religious people who are good people, loving, caring people and would not want to use violence to promote religion. Um and there are no doubt many people who are violent people or see uh violence as a means to achieving their ends and use religion as a cover for trying to achieve territorial domination or some other goal. So I don't think we can blame all violence that is uh officially in the name of religion as um being uh something that religion is responsible for. Um, having said that, there's no doubt that uh, religious belief is sometimes a cause of of violence and uh, there is therefore reason to think that as the intensity of religious belief fades, we can overcome some of that sectarian violence and and certainly as I mentioned uh, you know, Shiite and Sunni, you could talk about Catholic and Protestant violence in Northern Ireland and and so on. Religion has been a divisive force in many cases and uh sometimes uh it can be blamed but I think we need to be careful about saying that everything that is done in the name of religion is actually done for religion.

[00:52:08]>> We're going to have um question uh last question here in the middle.

[00:52:15]>> Oh, thank you. My name is Ian Bryce of the Secular Party. Peter, you mentioned that there will be millions or billions of refugees due to climate change and sea level rise and so forth. Do you think there will be a contribution due to increasing religious wars? For example, the Taliban campaigns in Iraq and Iran and Afghanistan and Pakistan and Somalia.

[00:52:38]>> Well, uh we certainly have um already seen uh some refugees from uh religion and no doubt we'll see more. Um I'm I'm hopeful that the kind of enlightened thinking that is represented here is indeed on the rise as uh as we're seeing there and that this will be a declining factor in the future. Um we need to try to to make that so. But uh for let me just say one one thought that that gives rise to that did occur to me uh last night as well.

[00:53:10]In fact, I said to um uh the not stamp collector guy, Steve um about the videos that he made that it'd be great to make videos that uh didn't just take horrible passages from the uh Jewish and Christian scriptures um and show how absurd they are, but took them from the Quran um and maybe translated them into Arabic as well and put them on YouTube.

[00:53:33]Um, now he said that he'd like to live a long and comfortable life and uh but I but I do think that we actually, you know, need to focus atheist teachings not only on the Western world and on the Jewish and and Christian groups, but um on Islam as well if we're to reduce some of the consequences, unfortunate consequences of religion that we've been seeing. Thank you very much for your attention.