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They say, Where would your morals come from if there was no God? It’s actually a question that’s posed in Dostoyevsky’s wonderful novel The Brothers Karamazov. One of the bothers says ... If God is dead, isn’t everything permitted? Isn’t everything permissible? Where would our ethics be if there was no superintending duty? This again seems to me a profound insult to us in our very deepest nature and character. It is not the case, I submit to you, that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from each other right now because we’re afraid of a divine punishment or because we’re looking for a divine reward. Christopher Hitchens, lecture Authors@Google online
I don’t believe that’s it’s true that religion is moral or ethical. Christopher Hitchens
It’s implicitly totalitarian. Second, it degrades our human self-respect by saying we wouldn’t act morally if it were not for fear of this celestial dictatorship ... Third, it seems to me to be invariably based on sexual repression and a fear and disgust of the sexual act. Christopher Hitchens v Mark Roberts 2007
Religion gets its morality from us; we don’t get our morality from religion. Christopher Hitchens, lecture 6th October 2009
There is something positive wicked ... You can’t be a God person and a good person ... What is moral about vicarious redemption? Christopher Hitchens, Freedom from Religion Foundation 2007
If God is dead, isn’t everything permitted? Isn’t everything permissible? And where would our ethics be if there was no superintending deity? This again seems to me a very profound insult to us in our very deepest nature and character. It is not the case, I submit to you, that we do not set about butchering and raping and thieving from each other right now only because we’re afraid of a divine punishment or because we’re looking for a divine reward. It’s an extraordinary base and insulting thing to say to people. Christopher Hitchens
The religious assumption that anyone who can mention God has a moral edge on me. Not so. Christopher Hitchens
Your antagonist has to be able to do the following thing: he or she has to name a moral action performed or a moral statement made by a believer that could not be made or performed by an unbeliever. Christopher Hitchens, AAI 2007
The true meaning of religion is thus not simply morality, but morality touched with emotion. Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma 1873
Religion blushing veils her sacred fires,
And unawares Morality expires. Alexander Pope, The Dunciad 1742
It is only be dispelling the clouds and phantoms of religion that we shall discover truth, reason and morality. Baron d’Holbach
All religions begin with a revolt against morality, and perish when morality conquers them. George Bernard Shaw
Pickering: Have you no morals, man?
Doolittle: Can’t afford them, Governor. George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion 1916
What is middle-class morality? Just an excuse for never giving me anything. ibid.
You find as you look around the world that every single bit of human progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is, the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. Bertrand Russell, Why I am Not a Christian pp 20-21
I want to examine how science reveals the true roots of human reality. Morality stems not from some fictional deity and his texts but from altruistic genes that have been naturally selected in our evolutionary past. Richard Dawkins, The Root of All Evil? The Virus of Faith, Channel 4 2006
I suspect that religion is simply a parasite on a much older moral sense ... But it is surely far more moral to do good things for their own sake rather than as a way of sucking up to God. Our true sense of right and wrong has nothing to do with religion. I believe there is kindness, charity and generosity in human nature. And I think there is a Darwinian explanation for this. ibid.
Do we really want to take our morals straight from the rather rigid rule book of an ancient desert tribe? Richard Dawkins, Sex, Death and The Meaning of Life I: Sin, Channel 4 2012
Now we’ve left religion behind, we are getting better, more moral and kinder. ibid.
Many religious people find it hard to imagine how, without religion, one can be good, or would even want to be good ... Moral considerations lie hidden behind religious attitudes to other topics that have no real link with morality. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p211
But what about the wrenching compassion we feel when we see an orphaned child weeping, an old widow in despair from loneliness, or an animal whimpering in pain? What gives us the powerful urge to send an anonymous gift of money or clothes to tsunami victims on the other side of the world whom we shall never meet, and who are highly unlikely to return the favour? Where does the Good Samaritan in us come from? ibid. p215
There are circumstances – not particularly rare – in which genes ensure their own selfish survival by influencing organisms to behave altruistically. ibid. p216
A gene that programs individual organisms to favour their genetic kin is statistically likely to benefit copies of itself ... The other main type of altruism for which we have a well-worked-out Darwinian rationale is reciprocal altruism. ibid. p217
In ancestral times, we had the opportunity to be altruistic only towards close kin and potential reciprocators. Nowadays, that restriction is no longer there, but the rule of thumb persists. Why would it not? ibid. p221
Hauser also wondered whether religious people differ from atheists in their moral intentions. Surely, if we get our morality from religion, they should different. But it seems they don’t. ibid. p225
Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain God’s approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? That’s not morality; that’s just sucking up. ibid. p226
Deontology is a fancy name for the belief that morality consists in the obeying of rules. ibid. p232
Not all absolutism is derived from religion. Nevertheless, it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones. ibid. p232
Modern morality, wherever else it comes from, does not come from the Bible. Apologists cannot get away with claiming that religion provides them with some sort of inside track to defining what is good and what is bad – a privileged source unavailable to atheists. ibid. pp246-247
The Bible may be an arresting and poetic work of fiction, but it is not the sort of book you should give your children to form their morals. ibid. p247
There seems to be a steadily shifting standard of what is morally acceptable. ibid. p268
Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is written in it? Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion lecture
People get their morality from somewhere quite other than the scriptures. Richard Dawkins, lecture The God Delusion, Lynchburg Virginia
The absolute morality that a religious person might profess would include stoning people for adultery, death for apostasy, punishment for breaking the Sabbath. These are all things which are religiously based on absolute moralities. I don’t think I want an absolute morality. Richard Dawkins, Australian ABC March 2009