Rational Morality
Moral Absolutes and the Rise of Divine Authority
The next draft chapter in the upcoming book, “Rational Morality”. Comments are welcome. I’ll publish the final version through the usual book stores and channels when it's all been released online. Enjoy!
As human societies grew beyond small tribes and into towns, cities, and civilizations, the structures that once enforced morality began to weaken. In a tribe where everyone knew everyone else, moral behavior was reinforced by memory and direct accountability. But in a city of ten thousand strangers, those old mechanisms no longer held. A reputation meant less when people didn’t know your story. Social cohesion could no longer rely on familiarity and instinct alone. Something larger was needed to unify people and maintain order.
This is where religion entered—not simply as a source of spiritual comfort, but as a solution to a growing social problem. Religion codified morality. It assigned moral authority to the divine, placing the weight of cosmic consequences behind everyday decisions. Stealing was no longer just a betrayal of your neighbor; it became a sin against God. Adultery was no longer a private offense; it was a violation of sacred law. The result was a moral framework that extended beyond the tribe, capable of binding together people who might never meet, yet were expected to live by the same rules.
For ancient civilizations, this shift was transformative. Religion offered something tribal memory could not: universality. Where tribal morality was personal and flexible, divine morality was absolute and eternal. The rules applied to everyone, regardless of status or circumstance, because they came from a source higher than any king or elder. This brought a sense of moral clarity and stability that allowed societies to expand without collapsing under the weight of internal conflicts over the definitions of right and wrong behavior.
But moral clarity came with a cost. When morality is derived from divine authority, it becomes far less open to interpretation or dissent. The idea of questioning a moral rule was no longer just a matter of debate; it became an act of heresy. In this new structure, obedience became a virtue in itself, and those who challenged the dominant moral order were labeled as corrupt, dangerous, or damned.
This shift helped stabilize society, but it also opened the door to a darker kind of control. Once morality is tied to divine will, it can be used not only to promote justice but to consolidate power. Those who claim to speak for God can shape the moral landscape in ways that serve their own interests, often at the expense of reason, compassion, or truth. History offers countless examples of this: religious wars fought in the name of God, inquisitions that punished thought as if it were action, and institutions that wielded moral authority to suppress dissent and enforce conformity.
Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in the history of the Catholic Church in medieval Europe. As the Church gained power, it became not just a spiritual authority but a political one. Moral instruction was no longer just about personal conduct; it was about allegiance to an institution. The sale of indulgences, the persecution of heretics, and the alignment with kings and empires turned what began as moral guidance into an instrument of control. Faith became a currency, and salvation a transaction. Corruption spread under the banner of holiness, and many who genuinely sought moral clarity found instead dogma and exploitation.
This crisis gave rise to a movement that reshaped the moral landscape of the West. In the early sixteenth century, a German monk named Martin Luther challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, sparking what would become the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s central claim was not simply that the Church had become corrupt, but that individuals should have direct access to divine truth without the mediation of an institution. His emphasis on scripture and personal conscience marked a radical shift, returning some measure of moral responsibility to the individual.
And yet, over time, many Protestant movements began to replicate the very problems they had sought to escape. Charismatic leaders became moral gatekeepers, new denominations fragmented over doctrinal disputes, and some pastors leveraged their influence for personal gain. The same forces that had corrupted the Catholic hierarchy—power, money, and ideological control—soon found fertile ground among the reformers. The cycle continued because the structure of authority remained the same. Morality was still tied to belief, and belief was still enforced by those who claimed to hold the truth.
The problem was not religion itself. At their best, religious traditions offer a profound sense of purpose, community, and moral wisdom. They connect individuals to something greater than themselves and remind us that our actions have meaning beyond the moment. But when morality is grounded entirely in divine authority, it becomes vulnerable to misuse. It invites certainty where humility is needed, and it often replaces personal reflection with obedience.
In this model, morality is something handed down rather than discovered. It is external rather than internal, enforced rather than chosen. And while that can provide strength in times of chaos, it can also weaken the individual’s capacity for personal responsibility. When people rely entirely on external authority to tell them what is right, they often stop thinking deeply about what they believe and why. They follow rules out of fear or social conformity rather than understanding, and they measure their goodness by compliance rather than by their character.
As societies have become more secular, many have abandoned religious morality without replacing it with an alternative. While the old certainties are gone, the need for moral clarity remains. People still want to know how to live, what is worth striving for, and what it means to be good. In this absence of shared beliefs, morality defined by cultural norms has filled the void–we behave as we see others around us behaving, regardless of whether that behavior is intrinsically good or bad. More importantly, that standard of behavior is constantly shifting as those who attempt to control populations redefine the meaning of “good” and “bad” to suit their aims.
We cannot go back to the tribal model of morality, and we cannot rely solely on divine command in a world where belief itself is fractured. What we need is a new foundation—not new in principle, but in application. One that reclaims the seriousness of moral living without falling into dogma. One that respects individual conscience without collapsing into relativism. One that grounds morality in something firmer than fashion, politics, or feeling.
That foundation is reason, aligned with virtue and lived through responsibility. It is what this book calls rational morality, and it begins not with obedience to a higher power, but with a commitment to live with clarity, courage, and integrity in a world that no longer makes such demands.