Michael Shermer on Morality without God
Shermer has built a comprehensive case in The Moral Arc that morality is a natural phenomenon that improves through science and reason, not divine revelation.
Michael Shermer's The Moral Arc is one of the most detailed book-length arguments for secular morality in contemporary literature. He argues that moral progress is real, measurable, and driven by the same forces that drive scientific progress: the expansion of the moral circle to include more beings, the application of reason and evidence to moral questions, and the gradual replacement of authority-based moral systems with evidence-based ones.
Shermer documents the trajectory of moral progress across centuries: the decline of slavery, torture, and public execution; the expansion of rights to women, minorities, and LGBTQ people; the development of international humanitarian law and the concept of human rights. In every case, he argues, progress was driven by rational argument and empathy, not by divine revelation — and in most cases, religious institutions actively resisted the advance.
His positive vision of secular morality is grounded in what he calls the 'moral science' — the application of scientific methods to questions of human welfare. He argues that we can study, empirically, which social arrangements promote flourishing and which cause suffering, and that this knowledge provides a foundation for morality that is more reliable, more adaptable, and more humane than any system grounded in ancient texts and divine commands.
“The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice not because of divine providence but because of the application of reason, science, and humanistic values to moral questions.”