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I disagree that most Christians are 'at least nominal deontologists', if only because I think most Christians do not know the word 'deontology'.
My guess would be that most Christians have a kind of 'folk morality' - they don't have explicit theories of ethics, but rather have an organic, messy series of moral convictions that they have not systematised, but which are heavily influenced by Christianity as they understand it (which depending on their tradition involves things like reading the Bible, what they learned in Sunday School growing up, what their ministers or pastors tell them, what they absorb via osmosis from other Christians, and so on).
Most Christians therefore probably endorse some strict moral rules or duties (e.g. the Ten Commandments), also endorse virtues (e.g. the Fruits of the Spirit, "let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus", etc.), and also are sensitive to consequences (e.g. "by their fruits shall you know them"). Depending on which of these things you emphasise, you can try to spin Christianity as deontological, virtue-ethics-focused, or consequentialist (of which utilitarianism is a subset), but I think any attempt to simplify it down to one of them would be misleading.
It seems more likely to me that there is no general consensus on these kinds of ethical theories among Christians. Rather, Christians as a group probably more-or-less endorse the ideas that they should follow moral rules, that they should strive to become good people, and that they should try to produce good outcomes for the world. And if you try to force them to consider edge cases where some of those principles conflict, as philosophers do in order to refine theories like deontology or consequentialism, I expect most Christians would umm and ahh and not have clear answers.
So with that in mind, what's going on with the, "How can you be good without God?" question?
I suspect it's probably just as simple as the fact that a lot of Christians regularly incorporate God into their moral reasoning. When faced with an ethical question, they ask themselves questions like what would Jesus do, or what does the Bible say about this, or they engage in practices like praying for guidance. If you do that a lot, you're from a community where that is the default form of moral reasoning, and you have very little experience with other people... well, people who don't do it are going to seem weird. Hence the question - how do you do morality, in a practical sense, without this framework? What framework do you use instead?
Most Christian denominations have such an idea as moral theology, and it's in practice treated as divine command theory by less well-educated believers. Better educated ones might have developed understandings of natural law, virtues, conformity to the will of God, etc.
Yes, there's certainly a more informed Christian ethical tradition that includes a great deal of reflection on this. However, my sense was that the question "how can you be good without God?" was mostly not a question coming from theologians. It was a lay question, and as such I'd bet that it had more to do with the practical experience of moral decision-making than it did with ethical theories as such.
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If there is no objective standard of morality or ethics, and if you do not have an authority from which you get such a standard, how do you arrive at: (1) sex is fine as long as all parties consent (2) women are equal to men (3) we should help the poor and needy (4) other standards which are not based on 'nature red in tooth and claw'?
It turns out to be some form of utilitarianism, and the exterior moral authority is Bentham or somebody. But Jeremy Bentham grew up in a Christian society, so the moral background to his foundation as an ethical being is derived from that, whether he knew it or not.
Basically, if we're springing off a purely materialist universe with nothing but the forces of evolution at work in forming us, how do we derive any standards? And if those standards are admitted to be purely subjective, then we can't condemn the past for burning witches or owning slaves, because that was their understanding at the time, and their standards were just as valid for them then as our standards about gay rights are for us today.
Basing your morality on utility, where that function is 'happiness' or some other measure, is an attempt to arrive at an independent objective standard of what is good and what is not, just as much as the project of religion.
I'm not sure how utilitarianism actually does any of that?
If we suppose that there is no objective standard, no objective normativity to the universe, and no authority or lawmaker capable of providing such, then there's only social convention, right? Moral rules are not different in kind to legal rules - they are shared fictions.
And obviously you could build a shared fiction on any foundation you like. Utilitarianism is one option, but in this hypothetical godless, moralityless universe, there are still plenty of other options. The categorical imperative is just as possible a candidate for foundation as is any concept of utility. Take your pick. All that matters is getting enough people to agree on it.
I'd also nitpick that there isn't an exterior moral authority for utilitarianism; Bentham is of only historical interest. At any rate, if we live in a universe without objective values, then the only thing there is is whether we collectively decide to adopt utilitarianism (or whatever it may be) as a kind of shared code of conduct. That's it.
This is true of some utilitarianisms, but not all, I would say? I think this is a fair criticism of e.g. Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape, which rests, ultimately, on the unjustified assertion that 'human flourishing' or 'human welfare' is good and therefore morality is the maximisation of this good. But J. L. Mackie takes a utilitarian position (or rather, a nuanced one he calls a kind of 'rule-right-duty-disposition utilitarianism'), and he does this after bluntly admitting that there is no objective standard, there are no objective values, and this is just an attempt to try to figure out how humans can live together in a way that he and many others would find congenial.
And that's a fine explanation. I'm saying that there is no reason to say that religion is made-up or fake or the rest of it, because it's all made-up and fake. There is no objective universal law of mercy for the downtrodden. If we invent a standard we want to apply, then it doesn't make a difference if it's "god say love our enemies" or a utilitarian philosopher. One is, by this measure, just as real as the other. Saying "but god does not exist" is no objection, because nothing exists to make rules except how we decide we want to make rules, and if I want to have a god who is a rule-giver, that works just as well as creating a philosophical basis for maximising human flourishing. We're both pulling our justification out of the aether.
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How is it an "unjustified assertion" by Harris to define "the wellbeing of conscious creature" as an axiom on which to build moral principles?
You have to start somewhere and there's literally no way to do that without asserting some kind of value/goal (or establishing a deity's authority to dictate).
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Some might say this has already happened.
I certainly manage it. There's no inherent contradiction between moral relativism and considering your own morality to be better. Anyone claiming otherwise is engaged in the same kind of delusion as free will.
It only seems like that's "not allowed" to someone who earnestly believes that there's even an objective source of morality to go off in the first place.
You can claim "By my own standards, my morality is better" but you can't impose your standards on the past, because you have no idea what future generations, with their standards, will say about things you think neutral or even innocuous. If there is no objective standard but "what we think best at the time" - yeah, maybe we know more about some things now. But if they didn't know that back then, then they can't be blamed for not holding the same standards. You wouldn't burn a witch because you don't believe in witches. What would you do if you did believe in them? What do you do now, when you do believe some thing or person or cause is not just wrong, but actively evil and harming humanity?
I don't dispute that at all, I simply don't think anyone can do better, or if they claim to do so, they're grossly deluded or lying.
Maybe one day we invent or discover a hyper-compelling form of morality such that almost all people adopt it. Or we become better at memetic engineering and find some that sticks. They still won't be objective, but that's an impossible objective in the first place.
Burn them. If it was today, you'd bet I would do quite a bit of research to make sure I wasn't killing innocent people, which would hopefully dissuade me, but if I was evidently convinced.
I think I have better epistemics than average, but I'm not so full of myself that I think that if I were a medieval peasant, I'd immediately form the Enlightenment.
Like so many people around today, that I can see with my own eyes and interact with online? Live and let live, evidently. The only people I've ever burned are pregnant women, which sounds really bad until you realize it was in the context of cauterizing surgical bleeds.
In the limit:
[To Hindu priests complaining to him about the prohibition of Sati religious funeral practice of burning widows alive on her husband’s funeral pyre.]
-Charles James Napier
So you agree to let widows be burned, so long as it's online and you don't have to do anything about it?
Oh I prefer to be the one doing the hanging of those who would burn widows, but everyone needs hobbies I guess!
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