A consistent formulation of morality Ben Shapiro's latest column is absolute idiocy. It's the kind of stuff that reminds me that I'm not "right wing" and never will be as long as that means getting in the same ideological bed as the fundamentalists. A representative passage:

America has divided into two factions: those who fight evil and those who do not believe in evil. The dividing line is religion. Those who believe in a Judeo-Christian God know the difference between good and evil because they know the value of human life. They know that an element of man is divine and that man has a purpose in the universe. They know that man has free will to choose between good and evil. And because they know the value of life, they know the evil of those who take it for non-defensive purposes.

Others have beaten little Shapiro into the ground, but I wanted to deal with the fundamental question he raises: "Is it possible for atheists to have a consistent sense of morality?". I think the answer is yes. Do I think that morals and ethics exist in some absolute sense, as if we could measure 15 units of "good" as we can 15 kilograms? No. But "morals and ethics" are a useful shorthand for "societal conventions that are to some degree universal and have their roots in biology and game theory". In that sense, as a pragmatist, it's foolish to insist that moral or ethical considerations should never come into play when formulating policy or dealing with people. The cultural and biological apparatus of religiously inspired morality is a way to allow positive-sum communities to emerge and succeed. A biological propensity for religious belief probably encouraged people to stick to laws even when other people weren't watching.[1] In ancient times this likely meant that religiously predisposed communities were at an advantage vs. non-religiously predisposed communities because the latter were less likely to obey laws and rules without enforcement. At some point in the last thousand years or so, strong religious belief became a disadvantage in that it hampered scientific progress, and the pendulum swung back towards secular societies more rapidly than natural selection has accomodated. [2] In other words, morality is a real thing that is best described in terms of the contract structure of positive sum games. One need not believe in superstition to believe that this structure is useful for civilization. [1] Other things contributed to this as well; for example, the feeling of guilt (independent of one's belief in god) is likely a way of chemically enforcing contracts. [2] Galileo and Darwin are not the only examples; fundamentalists generally oppose the onslaught of technology.