Bertrand Russell on Morality without God

Russell was one of the twentieth century's most prominent advocates for secular morality. In Why I Am Not a Christian and throughout his public career, he argued that moral values derive from human needs, desires, and the capacity for empathy — not from divine command. The claim that without God there can be no morality struck him as both philosophically confused and empirically false.

He pointed out that the moral progress of civilisation has consistently moved away from biblical morality, not toward it. The abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, the recognition of children's rights, and the decline of judicial torture were all achieved by secular moral reasoning, often against religious resistance. If morality came from God, we would expect religious institutions to be leading moral progress. Instead, they have been among its most persistent obstacles.

Russell also made the philosophical argument that tying morality to God's commands makes ethics worse, not better. If the good is simply whatever God commands, then morality is arbitrary. If God commands the good because it is good, then goodness is independent of God. Either way, divine command theory fails to provide the objective foundation for morality that its proponents claim.