Ethics, Secular and Religious: An Evolved-Cognitive Analysis

Abstract

Morality from an evolutionary perspective is a code of conduct that regulates behavior within a group in order to promote social cohesion and stability. Both religion and secularism are grounded in the same moral psychology. How should the distinction between secular and religious ethics be assessed? Religious morality is a latecomer to the natural history of morality, reinforcing much of morality with a worldview about unnatural powers that humans' brains are prone to projecting onto reality. However, the natural history of morality reveals that religious moral traditions do not originate moral rules but instead reinforce ancient moral intuitions. Secularism as a worldview works within an immanent frame, compared to the transcendent frame of religious worldviews. This distinction is helpful in understanding the relationship between religious violence and secular-ideological driven violence.

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Abstract and Keywords
Morality from an evolutionary perspective is a code of conduct that regulates behavior
within a group in order to promote social cohesion and stability. Both religion and
secularism are grounded in the same moral psychology. How should the distinction
between secular and religious ethics be assessed? Religious morality is a late-comer to
the natural history of morality, reinforcing much of morality with a worldview about
unnatural powers that humans’ brains are prone to projecting onto reality. However, the
natural history of morality reveals that religious moral traditions do not originate moral
rules but instead reinforce ancient moral intuitions. Secularism as a worldview works
within an immanent frame, compared to the transcendent frame of religious worldviews.
This distinction is helpful in understanding the relationship between religious violence
and secular-ideological driven violence.
Keywords: morality, evolution, secular ethics, humanism, secularism, religious violence
“IF there were no God, then all would be permitted.” This claim from Dostoyevsky’s
Brothers Karamazov is perhaps the most famous formulation of what many take to
express a firm truth about morality: its necessary grounding in religion. For a religious
believer, the connection between morality and God is both obvious and compelling. God,
understood to be morally perfect, is the source of moral values. If there were no God,
then those values would have no force. Even avowed atheists such as Nietzsche and
Freud recognized the deep connection in the human psyche between god and morality
and the danger of ensuing moral anarchy that could follow from the “death of God.”
Evidence of the continuing relevance of this view is found in studies of anti-atheist
prejudice. There are numerous places in the world today where denial of the existence of
God is punishable by death, and while things are not so dire for atheists in, for example,
Ethics, Secular and Religious: An Evolved-Cognitive
Analysis
John Teehan
The Oxford Handbook of Secularism
Edited by Phil Zuckerman and John R. Shook
Print Publication Date: Feb 2017 Subject: Religion, Religion and Society
Online Publication Date: Jan 2017 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199988457.013.40
Oxford Handbooks Online

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western Europe and the United States, polls and studies still attest to widespread distrust
of atheists (Gervais et al. 2011). This distrust is very much to the point: atheists cannot
be trusted because they do not believe in God, and so their values, such as they may be,
must ultimately be based on self-interest and prudence. Without “the fear of God” then
what motivation do people have to be moral?
These are, of course, general attitudes, often expressing untutored personal biases. As
religious diversity has increased, and the visibility of various stripes of unbelief has
increased, a softening of this attitude can be detected. Many religious believers seem
more willing to concede that nonbelievers can still be morally decent, principled people.
Some people, at least, do not need God in order to be good. This, however, is often a
practical concession, not a rejection of the necessary connection between God and
morality. We often find this stance among more liberally minded theologians: individuals
may hold a sincere and even philosophically sophisticated ethical system and live morally
righteous lives without religion or belief in God—but ultimately there is still something
deficient about secular ethics, a certain “queerness” (Mavrodes 1986). The problem with
a secular ethical system is that, without being grounded in some transcendent reality,
such a system cannot square up with the reality of our ethical commitments, with our
innate sense of moral realism. A secular (p. 656) ethics ultimately renders morality
subjective and tied to personal preferences or cultural traditions, while our intuitive
moral sense is that some things are just wrong, regardless of what someone or some
culture thinks (Byrne 1992; Ritchie 2012).
Secular critics of religion, of course, are quick to point out that this proposed objective
religious grounding of ethics does not prevent religious people from often acting in highly
unethical ways. The sex abuse scandal within the Catholic Church is just one of the most
recent notable, and morally repugnant, examples; the long, sordid history of wars fought
in the name of God, with all the attendant atrocities, is too well known to require further
elaboration. If all of this is possible with belief in God and the influence of religion, then
the “queerness” of secular ethics does not seem too significant a problem. A common
apologetic response to such charges is to deny an actual connection between religion and
immoral violence. These are, instead, examples of individuals failing to live up to the
ethical demands of their religion, or of people abusing religion to justify their behavior,
which is motivated by other factors.
The relationship between ethical behavior and belief, or disbelief, in a religion is a
complex one, and disentangling the various elements is difficult. This chapter approaches
the issue from the perspective of evolved-cognitive science. Cognitive scientific accounts
of morality and of religion, based in an evolutionary framework, are opening up new and
fruitful ways to understand the relationship between religion and morality, and this
perspective has much to say about the genesis of violence. I will first set out a general

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account of the cognitive evolution of both our moral and our religious mind and then use
that model to assess the nature of secular and religious ethics and the role of religion in
examples of ostensibly religious violence.
However, before we turn to this, we must come to grips with a conceptual problem. While
the terms “secular’ and “religious” are casually used with confidence, they are highly
contested terms within religious studies. If we do not know how to distinguish the secular
from the religious, then nothing in the following discussion will make sense, and yet some
deny that we can ultimately disambiguate these terms. That may be taking things too far,
but a more nuanced understanding of the terms is called for, and at least a working
definition is needed.
What Is It To Be Secular? To Be Religious?
In one sense, to be “secular” seems the most obvious of issues: it is to be nonreligious.
But, of course, a “secular” society is not a society without religion; it is a society in which
religion is held to be a private issue, separate from the public sphere. Just how that is
worked out is complicated and varies across “secular” societies, so “secular” can have
different connotations in different situations. What, then, does it mean when it qualifies
“ethics”? Here, again, it seems clear that it means an ethical system not grounded in or
justified by a religion—and that would be perfectly clear, if we had a clear understanding
of what is meant by “religion,” but this is far from the case. Indeed, “religion” is one of
the most contested terms in religious studies, a fact that can be quite puzzling to those
outside that discipline.
“Religion” strikes many as an unproblematic term, but this is due to our bringing a
default model of religion, Christianity, to bear on the issue. Leaving aside the
considerable problem (p. 657) of defining “Christianity,” given the broad and often
incompatible versions of what is professed to be Christianity, the deeper problem is that
this understanding of “religion,” even this understanding of Christianity, is a particularly
modern and Western view. It is the product of a peculiar constellation of events arising
during the early modern period, starting with the Reformation and coming to fullness
during the Enlightenment, and it bears all the concerns and biases of that set of events
(e.g., Asad 2003; Taylor 2007, 2011; Casanova 2011). Indeed, it is argued that “religion”
is “a product of Western secular modernity” (Casanova 2011: 61). A bifurcation of
existence into the profane, secular realm and the sacred, spiritual realm had “not existed
in any other human culture in history” claims Taylor (2011: 33). Consequent to this was a
shift in religious focus away from collective religious experiences and toward concerns

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with personal belief and commitment (Taylor 2007). Mark Juergensmeyer points out that,
in contrast, non-Enlightenment religion is “a broad framework of thinking and acting that
involves moral values, traditional customs, and publically articulated spiritual
sensibilities” (2011: 193). Within this traditional conception of religion, that is, one
common to non-Western societies and pre-Enlightenment Western societies, separation of
“secular” and “religious” is not readily conceivable. Since the processes that led to the
modern conceptualizations of these terms were specific to European Christianity, as we
move beyond Western contexts we should expect to find “multiple competing
secularisms” (Casanova 2011; 63; see also Asad 2003; Warner et al. 2010).
Recognizing the historically contingent nature of the secular–religious divide, and the
diverse nature of both secularisms and religions, we still need some working definition of
the secular in order to meaningfully distinguish secular and religious ethics, or even to
determine if there is a meaningful distinction. Here, Taylor (2007) provides a model. In
his magisterial treatment of secularism (2007). Taylor sets out a very specific answer to
what it is to be secular or, in his terminology, to live in “a secular age.” To live in a
secular age is to live our lives and pursue our goods within an “immanent frame.” The
key feature of the “immanent frame” is that
Belief in God, or in the transcendent in any form, is contested; it is an option
among many; it is therefore fragile; for some people in some milieus, it is difficult,
even “weird.” 500 years ago in Western civilization, this wasn’t so. Unbelief was
off the map, close to inconceivable, for most people (Taylor 2011: 49–50).
While this immanent frame makes unbelief possible, it does not compel it (Taylor 2007:
544). The distinctive character of the secular age is that it is possible to conceive of a life
lived completely within worldly boundaries, on naturalistic terms.
This conception of an immanent frame provides a useful way of distinguishing secular
from religious ethics. Taylor defines this in terms of what he calls “exclusive humanism”:
I mean by this a humanism accepting no final goals beyond human flourishing, nor
any allegiance to anything beyond human flourishing … a secular age is one in
which the eclipse of all goals beyond human flourishing becomes conceivable; or
better, it falls within the range of an imaginable life for masses of people. (2007:
18–19)
We will use this notion of the immanent frame and the exclusive humanism that derives
from it as setting the conditions for deeming an ethical system “secular.” We need to
recognize that it is not humanism, and the focus on human flourishing that defines an
ethical system as secular, since there are religious humanisms as well. It is seeing the

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possibilities (p. 658) and conditions of human flourishing as situated within the immanent
frame that marks such systems as secular.
It is the concept of the immanent frame that allows us to disambiguate “secular” and
“religious.” As has been pointed out, “secular” may often simply designate a focus on
worldly concerns. From a non-Enlightenment religious perspective, such worldly
concerns—for example, regulating marriage/reproductive pursuits, defining the norms of
social intercourse, the allocation of resources—could be conceptualized as secular and
the values informing such practices as secular values without at all implying an immanent
frame. In such traditions, it would make little sense to talk of addressing such “secular”
concerns outside of the framework of religious meanings and beliefs. The issue for us to
consider is not whether a particular ethical system distinguishes “secular” and “religious”
in a manner consistent with modern, Western definitions but whether its understanding
of what constitutes, and contributes to, human flourishing is worked out within an
immanent frame.
While I believe that defining “secular ethics” in this way properly focuses our discussion,
it does not answer the critiques of secular ethics noted earlier. Indeed, since, according
to this reading of the genealogy of the secular, the secular is a product of religious
dynamics, critics of secularism may argue that this is evidence of the derivative nature of
secular values—that they are simply religious values hidden under secular language and
that consequently they derive their validity, and their power to motivate, from that
religious grounding. Without this religious grounding morality, the demands of morality
simply do not make sense and perhaps are ultimately impotent in the face of those
darker, antisocial drives in human nature. To address this, we need to explore the natural
history of morality and of what we might call, in keeping with Taylor (2007), the
transcendent frame.
Evolution and the Moral Mind
Morality from an evolutionary perspective is a code of conduct that regulates behavior
within a group in order to promote social cohesion and stability. Successful social
coordination is a key adaptation for humans. It is the ability to act in concert with others
in facing the challenges of survival that makes it possible for social species to succeed in
the struggle for existence. The necessary condition for social coordination is that
individuals be willing to subject their immediate interests to the good of the group.
However, since evolution favors behavioral strategies that promote the genetic interests
of individual agents, meeting this condition is something of an evolutionary puzzle.
Eusocial species, such as ants and mole rats, solve this puzzle through high levels of

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genetic relatedness within the group. In this case, sacrificing for the group functions as a
long-term investment in one’s own genetic legacy. While earliest human groups were
largely kin based, the level of kinship never reached eusocial levels, and certainly as
groups expanded, they became more genetically diverse. Still, human evolution led
hominins on a path toward larger and more diverse social units, to the point where
humans came to live in the largest complex groups on the planet (Richerson and Boyd
2005). No species has the degree of social fluidity of human groups, nor the high rate of
genetically unrelated group members. Explaining how humans came to be unrivaled
(p. 659) social cooperators is a complex story with a rich and extensive literature that
cannot be presented here. It will suffice to set out just some of the basic elements that
contribute to our evolved moral psychology. This should not be read as an exhaustive
account—it is an intentional simplification, without, hopefully, being simplistic.
Theorists have long recognized the evolutionary value of direct and indirect reciprocity
(Trivers 1971; Axelrod and Hamilton 1981; Axelrod 2006; Alexander 1987). Cooperation
provides an advantage to kin and so contributes to our inclusive fitness, as well as to
unrelated individuals. Cooperation is such a valuable strategy for social creatures and
failure to reciprocate (i.e., cheating or defecting) is such a threat that our cognitive
evolution has led to mental tools to negotiate these situations. The human brain, shaped
by natural selection, functions to enable humans to successfully negotiate their
environments and meet the various challenges involved in survival and reproduction.
Humans, as social creatures descended from an ancient lineage of social creatures,
developed cognitive/emotional processes necessary to succeed in a group. Humans have
inherited a natural predisposition to cooperate with others, along with an acute
sensitivity to cheaters and to signals of untrustworthiness. We have powerful negative
emotional reactions to cheating and a strong motivation to punish those who cheat, even
if this comes at a substantial cost to the punisher. (e.g., Boyd and Richerson 1988;
Dunbar 1997; Henrich and Boyd 2001; Nesse 2001; Fehr and Gachter 2002; Vanneste et
al. 2007; Verplaetse et al. 2007; Henrich et al. 2010).
Moral intuitions are the outputs of evolved cognitive processes that manage various
aspects of social life. These outputs promote prosocial behavior, while guarding against
antisocial behavior, and this allows individuals to benefit from the advantages of group
living. The target of these moral intuitions is the in-group—that is, the group comprised
of those individuals situated to contribute to the success of the group in which I pursue
my inclusive fitness. Individual who are not part of my group occupy a different moral
space. They are not situated so as to reliably reciprocate my acts of altruism; they do not
stand to benefit from the strength and cohesion of my group and so have no ultimate
motivation to contribute to my group; in fact, members of other groups—groups that may
stand as competitors to my group—may constitute a threat to my group, and so to my

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inclusive fitness. Such individuals do not trigger our innate predisposition to cooperate,
at least not to the degree that in-group members do. They may instead trigger our
cheater-detection tools and our threat-avoidance tools. There is a wealth of empirical
studies and anthropological studies that attest to this moral in-group/out-group bias (e.g.,
Alexander 1987; Cashdan 2001; de Waal 2008; Ruffle and Sosis 2006; Mahajan et al.
2011).
Not only is there anthropological and psychological experimental evidence, but there is a
growing body of neuroscientific evidence attesting to this bias as well. Humans are more
sensitive to detecting pain of in-group members; they are more likely to interpret neutral
faces of out-group members as threatening; they have less aversive reactions to the
sufferings of out-group members; and in some case they get a neuro-chemical reward
from witnessing such sufferings. In fact, some out-group members are not even
processed as persons but instead activate neural disgust circuits (Fiske 2000; Phelps et
al. 2000; Han and Northoff 2008; Van Bavel et al. 2008; Xu et al. 2009; Avenanti et al.
2010; Chiao and Mathur 2010; Hein et al. 2010; Greene 2013). All of this happens at the
neurological, preconscious level. Individuals may respond to surveys and questionnaires
with moral egalitarianism, even quite sincerely, and yet exhibit a moral bias on a
neurological level. This a vitally important finding.
(p. 660) We have been discussing how evolved moral strategies shape behavior, but these
strategies are the ultimate causes for the moral psychology we have; it is an origins story
for our moral mind. It does not follow that humans are consciously applying these
strategies, or making these evolutionary evaluations, when coming to a moral decision.
We are not calculating degrees of kinship or probability of return on altruistic
investment, nor are we deliberatively assessing the moral status of an out-group member.
All of these strategies and mental tools constitute the preconscious conditions that give
rise to our moral perceptions. These are not tools we think with so much as tools we
perceive with. They give shape to our intuitive apprehension of moral situations and
generate the moral intuitions and emotions that motivate behavior. Cognitive science
argues that our moral thinking, like our thinking in general, is largely shaped by
preconscious cognitive/emotional processes that are neurologically instantiated (e.g.
Haidt 2001; Kahneman 2011; Greene 2013).
This does not mean that reason, or conscious deliberations, cannot play a decisive role in
moral judgments. Instead it highlights just how much of moral cognition is driven by
processes outside of conscious control. Daniel Kahneman (2011) has usefully discussed
human cognition as being a dual processor: System 1 is composed of these preconscious
cognitive processes that result in quick, automatic, often emotionally valenced
judgments, while System 2 processes are slower, more deliberative, more rational

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judgments. Often these two systems work in concert, with System 2 coming in to provide
rational explanation to or justification of judgments generated by System 1; at times,
System 1 processes conflict and System 2 comes in to reconcile those conflicts.
Sometimes, however, the judgments of System 2 conflict with the judgments of System 1.
In such conflicts, System 2 processes, being intuitively and perhaps emotionally
compelling, have a distinct advantage. However, top-down processes, such as
deliberative reasoning, can resist and/or modify System 1 outputs. This is, in effect, what
learning is—bringing in new information, new experiences, new patterns of behavior, to
modify, condition, or replace the outputs of preconscious cognitive processes and habits.
Individual deliberative reasoning is one such top-down process, but for social beings such
as ourselves, a much more powerful and effective top-down process is culture.
The patterns of behavior and belief we are exposed to from an early age have a
significant influence on how cognitive processes are given expression and how the
outputs of those processes are reinforced. The diverse ways in which these processes can
be expressed creates the conditions for the diversity of cultures we find throughout the
world, which in turn helps to explain the moral diversity we find throughout the world.
Despite this diversity, from an evolved-cognitive perspective, moral traditions are all built
from the same basic cognitive templates.
It is at this point that we begin to understand the role of religion in the natural history of
morality. Religion is one of the older and most ubiquitous cultural practices in human
history. It has had greater influence on morality than any other cultural practice, but that
influence is to give specific expressions to moral-cognitive processes that originate much
earlier in our evolutionary past. Indeed, certain aspects of this moral psychology, for
example, reciprocation exchanges and, more important, the in-group bias, are found not
only in our closest relatives, chimpanzees, but are found in many primate species, as well
as in other mammals such as dolphins and rats (de Waal 1996; Mahajan et al. 2011).
Religious morality is a late-comer to the natural history of morality.
(p. 661) Evolution and the Moral Function of
Religion
An evolved-cognitive science also uncovers the processes that underlie religious beliefs
and behaviors. Researchers in the field that has come to be known as the cognitive
science of religion (CSR) are developing an empirically grounded, experimentally
assessable, naturalistic model of the origin of religion. A central tenet of this field is that

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Belief in gods requires no special part of the brain. Belief in gods requires no
special mystical experiences … Belief in gods requires no coercion or
brainwashing … Rather, belief in gods arises because of the natural functioning of
completely normal mental tools working in common natural and social contexts.
(Barrett 2004: 21)
Cognitive science sees religious beliefs (e.g., god beliefs) as generated by numerous
cognitive processes that evolved because they provided a survival/reproductive benefit to
our earliest human ancestors. For example, humans have a well-attested predisposition to
interpret the world in terms of agency. Given the importance, and the potential danger, of
undetected agents in our environment, evolution would have designed this agency-
detection device (Barrett 2004) to be hypersensitive, producing a preponderance of false
positives (perceiving an agent when none is present) over false negatives (failing to
perceive an agent). The perception of an agent triggers our Theory of Mind system,
leading us to ascribe mental states to those agents (e.g. Boyer 2001; Atran 2002; Purzycki
and Sosis 2011). We perceive agents as acting with intention, having desires, emotions,
plans, and so on. This also has clear survival value—we need some sense of what the
detected agent might be planning so we can prepare an appropriate response.
The fact that the agent we have detected is not physically evident is not an obstacle to
ascribing intentions to it. Research reveals we have different cognitive systems for
dealing with physical bodies and mental events, making it cognitively easy to conceive of
bodies without minds and minds without bodies (Bloom 2007). Not only do we naturally
ascribe intentions to all sorts of agents, but we are cognitively predisposed to look for
patterns and purpose—we are “teleologically promiscuous” (Kelemen 2004).
Understanding what something is for is an important step in understanding how to
respond to it, and this provides an adaptive advantage. Wondering about the meaning of
life and our purpose in the universe are natural extensions of this pattern-seeking
tendency. And in wondering about a purpose or design, we are naturally led to wonder
about agency and intentions: Whose purpose? Whose design? The universal human
tendency to believe in gods, ghosts, spirits, and so on is grounded in these evolved
cognitive predispositions (Guthrie 1993; Boyer 2001; Atran 2002; Atran and Norenzayan
2004; Barrett 2004). This makes religious beliefs cognitively natural, which also can make
them intuitively compelling.
The fact that religion comes naturally says nothing about whether or not religious claims
are true. In fact, this evolutionary approach challenges the truth-value of religious
beliefs. As belief in God is generated by tools that evolved to promote survival, not to find
god, God beliefs seem to arise as a misfiring of these tools. There is a robust debate
within CSR about the philosophical and theological implications of these findings (Barrett

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2009; Murray and Goldberg 2009; Shults 2014; Teehan 2014); however, we need not go
into this debate here. (p. 662) Whether or not religious beliefs are misfirings, the fact is
that they do persist. That religions play, and have played, such a significant role in human
history suggests that such beliefs provided some advantage to humans during our
evolutionary history. From an evolutionary perspective, religions developed to promote
prosocial behavior within groups as human societies became larger and the challenges of
social cooperation became greater (e.g., Teehan 2010; Norenzayan 2013). The function of
religion was to bind groups into moral communities and to extend the circle of ethical
concern beyond the limited tribal boundaries of early human society. Religion, it appears,
assumed a key moral function in human evolution.
Our moral mind evolved during an extended period of small, largely homogeneous
groups, characteristic of hunter-gatherer societies. In such groups, it was relatively easy
to recognize who was an in-group member, which members were reliable social
cooperators, and who was not to be trusted. The regular, repeated interactions such a
society afforded made it simple to keep track of one another’s behavior and so made
successful cheating difficult. The suite of evolved moral intuitions worked effectively to
bond the group together. However, in even the earliest human civilizations, societies
consisted of hundreds or thousands of individuals. In these larger, more anonymous
groups, knowing who was an in-group member worth cooperating with and who might be
a potential cheat, or even an out-group member looking to benefit from altruism before
defecting, became increasingly difficult. This strained our moral psychology and seemed
to limit the effective size of groups. Yet we know that under the competitive pressure
from intergroup conflict, human populations swelled—and religion was at least one factor
in making this possible.
This is a complex issue, but there are two basic ways religions came to assume a moral
function in human cultural evolution. One was through providing a system of signals of
commitment that distinguished in-group from out-group; the other was through shared
belief in supernatural agents (e.g., gods) who assumed the role of moral enforcer of the
group’s codes and mores. Rituals and customs can serve to mark out who is a member of
the group (Sosis and Alcorta 2003; Sosis 2006); that such signals are often costly in terms
of investment of time and resources, or arcane and without apparent logic, contributes to
their effectiveness (Irons 2001; Bulbulia 2004). Willingness to undergo a ritual of
scarification, or to keep all the requirements of, say, kosher regulations, indicates
commitment to the group that makes such demands, and by signaling in-group status one
becomes subject to all the moral benefits that follow. Such practices also signal devotion
to the god that oversees the moral code of the group. A shared belief in a moral God—one
who provides a grounding for the group’s code and who metes out rewards and
punishment accordingly—is a very effective means for policing the behavior of in-group

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members when the group has grown too large for regular, direct observation. Humans
are sensitively attuned to the perception of being watched, and even symbolic
suggestions of being watched can increase prosocial behavior and diminish cheating
(Fehr and Fischbacher 2003; Bering and Johnson 2005; Nowak and Sigmund 2005).
Religions trigger these evolved elements of our moral cognition and so function to extend
the domain of our moral intuitions beyond the small, homogeneous groups they were
designed to serve. By creating the conditions for larger and yet still cohesive groups,
religion came to be a cultural adaptation that provided a competitive advantage in the
struggle for resources between human groups. Groups with this cultural adaptation
outcompeted and therefore out-reproduced groups without religion—which helps to
explain why religion is a human universal (Wilson 2002; Bulbulia 2004; Alcorta and Sosis
2005; Johnson and Kruger 2004; Atran and Henrich 2010; Norenzayan 2013). Rather than
being the source of morality, (p. 663) this evolutionary model argues that religion is a
moral adaptation. Moral rules may be portrayed by religion as coming down from on
high, but the form and function of those divine commands have been shaped by our
evolutionary heritage (Teehan 2010, 2012). This allows us to see the relationship between
religious and secular ethics in a different light.
The Secular Basis of Religious Ethics
We began with the Dostoyevskian quotation, “If there were no God, then all would be
permitted” to express the ostensibly necessary connection between morality and religion.
This connection can be understood several ways, but I want to focus on just two:
genealogical and motivational. An evolved-cognitive perspective provides us with a fresh
approach to each of these connections.
The impact of a cognitive science of both religion and morality is perhaps clearest in
regards to the genealogical connection, which holds that God is the source of our moral
obligations and the author of our moral rules. In this case, if there were no God, then
there would be no moral rules—all would be permitted, as there would be no moral
proscriptions. However, the natural history of morality reveals that religious moral
traditions do not originate moral rules but rather give extended force to more ancient
moral intuitions. Religious moral codes, such as the Mosaic Law, function to promote
behavior that promotes in-group cooperation while discouraging antisocial behavior. They
provide a system of signals of commitment that identity in-group members and set the
boundaries of moral concern. These are the requirements of any moral system that
effectively binds a group into a stable and cohesive unit. How these requirements are

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met, how these evolved moral intuitions are expressed, varies widely—there is no one
way to succeed as a culture, and so there will be no one expression of moral rules or of
divine commands. But these diverse, divine commands will be cultural expressions of an
underlying evolved moral cognitive system (Teehan 2010).
If we use the term “secular” in accord with its Latin root, saecularis, as belonging to the
world or to a worldly age, then we can claim a wholly secular origin and function for
morality and, by extension, of religious morality as well. Morality predates religion;
indeed, religion, as a cultural institution, arises in response to the evolved dynamics of
morality.
In regard to the motivational connection between morality and religion, the issue is less
straightforward but more urgent to grasp. The proposition is that without the watchful
eye of God, humans would have no motivation to follow a moral rule that conflicted with
their self-interests. On one level, an evolved-cognitive account of morality shows this to
be incorrect, and evidence both experiential and experimental attests to this. As many of
the studies cited here show, humans have a natural propensity to feel empathy and moral
concern for others. Even in studies that showed the mitigating effects of out-group status
on our empathetic systems, there still were empathetic responses, albeit diminished, for
the well-being of others—even when those others were strangers. And while “watched
people make for nice people,” even studies that demonstrate that being able to “get away
with it” reduces people’s generosity nevertheless reveal encouraging levels of honesty
and generosity—that is, even when people have no fear of consequences, significant
numbers will still “do the right thing,” even at a cost to their own self-interests. We have
evolved a moral sense that is sensitive to the sufferings of others, that is emotionally
invested in fairness, that inclines toward cooperation (p. 664) and reciprocation, and in
which “self-interest” is intimately connected with group interests. These cognitive moral
predispositions, as System 1 processes, are triggered quickly, automatically, and in a
compelling manner without the need of religious motivations or the fear of God. Humans
have naturally grounded motivations, that is, secular motivations, for being moral.
Religion is not necessary to motivate ethical behavior.
Still, we have also learned that this innate morality, grounded in secular concerns, is
deeply biased toward the in-group and was designed to function in small, homogenous
groupings. These conditions likely posed few problems for our earliest forebears, but in a
global society, with diverse and shifting demographics, these cognitive moral constraints,
which constitute a deep predisposition to xenophobia, can be tragically problematic.
Religions arose to mitigate just this problem—the parochial, tribal nature of our evolved
moral psychology. Religion extended the reach of our moral intuitions, allowing humans
to extend the boundaries of moral concern to encompass the large, complex, and
heterogeneous groups that characterize human civilization. While a secular ethics may

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suffice to motivate ethical concern on a small scale, can it be effective on a large enough
scale to avoid a moral regression to violent tribalism? Do we need religion to motivate
morality on a societal scale?
Much has been made of the success of European countries in establishing stable societies
with high levels of quality of life, along with low levels of religiosity and a
compartmentalizing of religion to the private sphere—especially Scandinavian societies
(Zuckerman 2008). This stands as evidence that religion is not necessary for larger,
modern societies to flourish. However, these countries, while incredibly diverse when
compared to ancient prehistorical groups, are still relatively homogenous; and the
stability of these societies can be attributed to their economic affluence and well-
established judicial systems. Studies suggest that these are just the sort of social
conditions conducive to the spread of nonreligious attitudes and belief systems (Barrett
2004; Gervais and Norenzayan 2012). These conditions, however, are not representative
of societies throughout much of the world; and, not coincidentally, we find religiosity and
the public role of religion to be much higher across the globe—Europe is the outlier. This
has significant implications: if secular societies only flourish under conditions of
economic affluence and strong social institutions, then perhaps religion is necessary to
stabilize society to the point where secularism can flourish; and even once established,
secular societies remain vulnerable to the re-emergence of religion, given the advent of
destabilizing factors.
We can see this playing out in secular European societies as they respond to the effects of
recession and to the influx of immigrants of predominantly Muslim heritage. One effect of
these changing conditions is the rise of anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric and
violence across Europe. This is consistent with what we know about the workings of the
moral mind. When the in-group is perceived to be threatened, whether through direct
attack or from fear of loss of resources, in-group status becomes more salient (Greenberg
et al. 1990; Burke et al. 2010). This follows from the evolutionary origins of human
psychology. The group is the locus of our strivings for inclusive fitness—it is the key
human adaptation in the struggle for survival—so when that survival seems threatened,
cleaving to the group and strengthening the group is the natural response. The
consequence to this is an increased out-group aversion and moral desensitization to out-
group members, that is, a rise in xenophobia—and this xenophobia need not take on
religious trappings. A nationalistic ethnocentrism can provide the rhetorical and
justificatory grounds for xenophobia just (p. 665) as effectively. Here we see the difficulty
in assessing secular and religious ethics in terms of their role in promoting the sort of
societies that create the conditions for human flourishing.
The religionist could argue that a society without God has an inadequate moral
grounding. While such a society might do well when conditions are good, they collapse

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into xenophobic violence and discrimination when things become difficult. Only a God-
based moral system can ground and motivate a truly universal moral commitment.
Without fear of divinely administered punishment, there is nothing to hold back the worst
excesses of xenophobia, particularly when it is harnessed to a cult of personality, or sense
of national exceptionalism, and the history of the twentieth century is evidence of this.
Without God, the Motherland or Fuhrer steps into the breach with horrendous results.
There is some legitimacy to this concern, but its implication—that a God-based morality
would protect us from such violence—is demonstrably false. The horrors perpetrated in
the name of religion are too numerous to count and too common to need enumerating.
The religious apologist, we have seen, may counter that such acts are not legitimately
religious in nature. They are an abuse of religion, a violation of the true nature of
religion, which is invariably deemed to be peaceful and loving. Even nonreligious
commentators often downplay or dismiss the religious element of violence done under the
banner of religion, even when the actors explicitly cite religion as part of their
justification. CSR allows us to see how such apologetic responses misunderstand the role
of religion in religious violence.
Let us look at a specific example of religious violence. On the morning of 7 January 2015,
two men walked into the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo and
opened fire, killing eleven people. The assailants attacked the magazine for its portrayals
of the Prophet Muhammad, which they deemed blasphemous and deserving of death.
They specifically targeted individuals responsible for the offensive drawings, and during
their escape loudly proclaimed they had done this in defense of Islam. Was this not
clearly an act of religious violence? One might think so, but numerous prominent voices
argued that it was not. Much of this can be dismissed as knee-jerk religious apologetics,
or politically grounded strategy, but there were more sophisticated analyses that rejected
the religious dimension of this attack as well. For example, noted journalist Chris Hedges
wrote,
It was not about radical Islam. … It was a harbinger of an emerging dystopia
where the wretched of the earth, deprived of resources to survive, devoid of hope,
brutally controlled … lash out in nihilistic fury. (2015).
While Hedges is correct about the social-economic conditions that underlie such acts, to
eliminate religion from this analysis is to miss an important aspect of the story (Teehan
2015). Religions function as markers of identity with a group, as well as of commitment to
that group. This triggers deep and powerful moral intuitions that lead us to act in defense
of the group. These same mental tools also generate out-group antipathy, especially
under situations of threat or instability. A situation, such as that surrounding the Charlie
Hebdo attacks, is perfectly suited to set off both aspects of these cognitive tools. We have
two individuals who at some stage of their lives came to identify with Islam, and so the

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Muslim in-group. They lived in a society in which Muslims are a distinct minority, and by
which they feel disrespected—that is, their in-group lives under social stress. Then, from
within the established out-group, comes an act that directly insults the symbol of the
Muslim in-group identity, the Prophet Muhammad. While the dominant out-group defends
this as an act of free speech, (p. 666) that is not how this is processed through the
dynamics of in-group psychology—it is a direct attack on the group, violating a sacred
value that defines the group. Such attacks must be answered or the group invites further
attacks.
Responses to that threat need not come through violence, and, indeed, the vast majority
of French Muslims did not respond with violence. However, a violent response is an
option, a particularly costly option, and we know that costly signals of commitment in
defense of the group—a willingness to accept a great loss in order to punish those who
attack the group—has powerful emotional appeal and promises great benefits for the
reputation of those incurring the cost. All societies confer prestige on those willing to
sacrifice for the greater good—soldiers, police, firefighters, emergency workers, and so
on. That prestige is part of the social motivational structure that leads individuals to take
on such dangerous roles, and this has particular appeal to young males—who have always
been the major source of volunteers for these social roles. For young males, who feel
unattached to the larger social structures and find little meaning or hope in that society,
the draw of making a meaningful sacrifice in defense of the greater good (i.e., the in-
group) can be irresistible. This psychological structure of violence is not restricted to or
unique to religion, but the issue at hand is not whether only religion can spur on such
violence but whether it ever does, and the answer is, clearly, yes. When a religion, such
as Islam, serves as a marker of identity with an in-group, it primes the dynamics of in-
group/out-group moral psychology. When that group is perceived to be under threat by
an out-group, the moral bias comes into play: self-sacrifice in defense of the religious
group and moral desensitization toward the potential suffering of the out-group. While
any marker of in-group identity can do this—for example, nationalism, ethnicity, soccer
club affiliation—religion, because of its ancient evolutionary ties to moral psychology, is
particularly powerful in this respect.
To grasp the religious nature of “religious violence,” it is important to note that the
individuals committing the violence need not be particularly religious. It has been noted
that so-called religious terrorists are often not church/synagogue/mosque-going believers,
well versed in sophisticated theological understanding of their faith and that in numerous
cases these individuals showed little interest or involvement in religion before committing
their acts in the name of their religion. Judging that religion could not be a causal factor
ignores the cognitive dynamics of the situation. Religion plays a role in religious violence
not through particular teachings or doctrines—at least not primarily—but through its

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cognitive-moral function as a trigger for the in-group/out-group bias. It is identification
with a religion, not necessarily believing in or following a religion, that implicates religion
as a source of violence.
This does not mean that the doctrines of a religion do not contribute to violence. All three
monotheistic faiths supply a textual basis for justifying, even advocating, sanctified
violence, and studies show how reading authoritative religious texts can increase
willingness to act out aggressively and to promote an uncritical acceptance of the text
(Bushman et al. 2007; Atran and Ginges 2012; Neuberg et al. 2014). Immersion within a
religious tradition that emphasizes an insular worldview, that perceives itself under siege
from a hostile, powerful out-group, and that provides divine sanction for actions in
defense of the group makes for a particularly lethal mix. This moral-cognitive analysis
does not support the converse view that religion is precisely the problem. Such human
behaviors are far too complex to be reduced to any one causal story, but religion is part
of the causal explanation. Religious apologists can rightly point to numerous secular
examples of in-group identity leading to (p. 667) horrific violence and denigration of
others. While religious identity may be particularly powerful, it does not constitute a
distinct kind of danger in relation to secular ideologies.
What Can a Secular Ethics Offer?
If both religion and secularism are grounded in the same moral psychology, how then are
we to assess the distinction between secular and religious ethics? Is there in fact a
morally significant distinction? There is another way of casting the issue that might offer
insight—and here we need to return to Charles Taylor. As we discussed, Taylor (2007)
characterized secularism as a worldview that works within an immanent frame, compared
to the transcendent frame of religious worldviews, and this distinction is helpful in
understanding the relationship between religious violence and secular-ideological driven
violence.
It has been argued that secular ideologies such as communism, fascism, and Nazism can
function as religions. They each certainly set forth a clearly marked in-group, imbued
with sacred value. They identified an out-group threat that needed to be defeated. They
developed signals of commitment to and identity with the in-group, and they all inspired
and justified widespread, lethal violence in defense of the group. While these secular
ideologies may have lacked a god, or a notion of a supernatural force supporting the
group, they operated within a transcendent frame—that is, they all defined their
worldview in terms of a final good that transcended the limits of the present age or of any

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worldly age. They all looked forward to a future period where the triumph of the group
would usher in a higher stage of human existence, a social order that would leave behind
the messy instability of historical societies. They taught that commitment to achieving
this final good outweighed any personal sacrifice endured in the here and now and
imbued that sacrifice with a meaning that no ordinary endeavor could match. In service
of this good, no price was too high, no sacrifice of self or other too costly. It is this
transcendent frame that set the conditions for so many of the atrocities that have marred
human history—whether done in the name of God or in the name of the state—and that
poses an exponentially greater threat in a world with weapons of mass destruction.
It is in this sense that a secular worldview, one that understands the greater good to
reside within an immanent frame, can claim the advantage. Within an immanent frame,
all goods are valued because of their contribution to human flourishing. These are secular
goods in the sense of having their fulfillment in this age and this world. This does not
mean sacrifice will not be called for or justified, but those sacrifices—which take place in
the here and now—must be outweighed by goods to be realized in the here and now.
Such goods need not be merely individual goods. There may still be a greater good, but
that greater good will be conceived in terms of contributing to human flourishing and
justice, not in abstract, idealized terms. Also, in limiting the fulfillment of the good to this
age and world, an immanent frame does not require a temporal myopia. Many of the
goods worth struggling for and sacrificing for may not, and perhaps cannot, be fulfilled
within the lifetime of any particular individual or even generation. For example, social
justice and the establishment of truly democratic polity are long-term goals, of uncertain
success, but working for such long-term goals can still bring benefits to the here and now
—whether in terms of making small but concrete steps toward the goal, in the meaning
gained from working for something larger than the (p. 668) individual self, or in terms of
the practical benefits that may accrue to a society that commits to such long-term goals.
This also works on less grand, though no less noble, social scales. The sacrifices that
people regularly make in the here and now so that their children and grandchildren will
have a better life is also an example of a long-term, uncertain good that will find its
fulfillment in a future yet still immanent timeframe. An immanent frame will not do away
with the potential danger inherent in our evolved in-group/out-group bias, but it may limit
the extent of the damage that bias can wreak when unconstrained by the real-world
measurements of success and failure.
Taylor (2007) identifies humanism as the worldview operating within an immanent frame.
It is important to recognize that while humanism is secular in terms of working within
secular conditions and a secular time frame, it need not be secular in terms of being
nonreligious. Religious humanism is a worldview that, while informed by a religious
tradition and religiously inspired moral vision, sees the focus of that moral vision to be

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human flourishing and social justice within an immanent frame. For example, we may
count Martin Luther King Jr. as a religious humanist. He was a Christian minister, with a
Bible-based value system, but saw the actualization of that religious moral vision to
require the struggle for social justice and the improvement of human life in the here and
now. Even if that “here and now” did not encompass his lifetime, its fulfillment was to be
sought within a secular time frame—it could not wait for the Kingdom of God. While King
is a very special example, his religious humanism is not an exceptional case or an
aberration. All the major religions contain within them a vision of social justice and
human good to be sought and valued within completely secular terms, even if that vision
is understood to be divinely inspired.
The significant distinction between secular and religious ethics is not whether it has a
“religious” or “secular” articulation but whether it operates within a transcendent or an
immanent frame. The moral significance of “secularism” is in its defining the secular
conditions under which we pursue our vision of the good and its privileging of humanistic
values that those secular conditions demand, not the ostensible origins—worldly or
otherworldly—of those values.
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John Teehan
John Teehan, Department of Religion, Hofstra University