THE QUESTION LIBRARY GOD & BELIEF
Religions, philosophers and scientists each offer part of an answer, so here is what research shows about our moral sense and what it cannot settle.
THE SHORT ANSWER
From several places at once, and people still disagree about the deepest part. Research suggests our moral sense has roots in human nature and grows through upbringing and culture. Toddlers readily help others, and some monkeys react to unfair treatment. Many religions teach that right and wrong come from God. Philosophers point to good outcomes, duties or good character. What ultimately makes right right is beyond what science can settle.
WHERE THE EVIDENCE STANDS
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW YET
How much of our moral sense is inborn and how much is learned is still debated, and so is how early it appears. What ultimately makes right right is a question science cannot settle.
WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS ANSWER
Large new studies that found a reliable moral preference in young babies would strengthen the case for an inborn moral sense. Finding societies that praised cheating or abandoning family would weaken the case for shared moral rules.
From several places at once. Research suggests that our sense of right and wrong has roots in human nature. It then grows through family, faith, culture and our own thinking. Many religions teach that right and wrong come from God, or from a human nature God made. Philosophers offer other answers too. And the deepest question, what makes right truly right, is one science cannot settle.
People ask this for many reasons. A believer may wonder how a friend with no faith can be so kind. Someone who left a religion may worry that without God, nothing is really wrong. A parent may wonder whether kindness has to be taught. These are fair questions. People answer them in good faith from many directions.
Here is some of what research shows. In one study, toddlers as young as 18 months readily helped adults reach their goals, in many different situations. In another, capuchin monkeys refused to take part when a partner got a better reward for the same work. A study of 60 societies found seven cooperative rules, such as helping your family and returning favors, treated as good in every society where they showed up. But not every famous finding holds up. A 2007 study reported that babies prefer characters who help over ones who hinder. A large test in 37 labs, published in 2025, did not find that preference.
People also disagree about God and goodness. In a 2019 Pew Research Center survey in 34 countries, a median of 45% said it is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values. In the United States, 44% said so, and 54% said it is not necessary.
So we give two labels. How our moral sense develops: Supported, still debated. What ultimately grounds right and wrong: Beyond science. You are welcome here, whatever you believe.
In Western thought, religion and morality have been bound together from the start, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes. Two religious answers stand out.
Divine command theory says the source and binding force of morality, or at least of moral duty, come from God’s will or command. Philosophers such as Philip Quinn and Robert Adams have defended versions of it in recent decades. Adams, for example, argued that a duty is always a duty to someone, and that God is the most fitting someone.
Natural law, best known from the medieval thinker Thomas Aquinas, says God built an order into human nature. We share in that order through reason, by thinking about how our natural drives can be fulfilled in fitting ways. On this view, all human beings have a basic knowledge of the natural law, believers or not, even if working out the details can be hard.
Philosophers also offer three major approaches that do not depend on any one religion. The Stanford Encyclopedia’s entry on virtue ethics explains them with one example: someone in need should be helped. A consequentialist, such as a utilitarian, says help because it will lead to the most well-being. A deontologist says help because a moral rule requires it, such as “Do unto others as you would be done by.” The philosopher Immanuel Kant held that we must treat every person as an end, never merely as a means. A virtue ethicist says help because that is what a kind, generous person does.
Experts have not settled which approach is best. In the 2020 PhilPapers Survey of professional philosophers, of those who answered, 37.0% leaned toward virtue ethics, 32.1% toward deontology and 30.6% toward consequentialism. Some chose more than one. On a deeper question, 62.1% leaned toward moral realism, the view that there are real moral facts, and 26.1% leaned against it.
Scientists cannot test what makes right right. But they can study how people and other animals come to act and judge the way they do.
Helping starts early. In a 2006 study, the psychologists Warneken and Tomasello found that children as young as 18 months readily helped adults reach their goals in a range of situations. Three young chimpanzees showed similar helping, though it was less reliable.
Fairness has deep roots. In a 2003 study, the primate researchers Brosnan and de Waal found that brown capuchin monkeys refused to take part in a trade with a human when they saw a partner get a better reward for the same effort. The effect was stronger when the partner got the better reward for no effort at all. The authors saw this as a sign that dislike of unfairness has an early evolutionary origin.
Babies and helpers: a finding that did not hold. In 2007, the psychologists Hamlin, Wynn and Bloom reported in Nature that 6- and 10-month-old babies preferred a character who helped another climb a hill over one who hindered it. It was a famous result. But a 2020 replication with somewhat older babies, 14 to 16 months old, found that only 16 of 32 infants, exactly half, reached for the helper. Then a large team, including Hamlin, tested 1,018 infants in 37 labs on five continents. Of the 567 infants whose data could be used, 49.34% preferred the helper, no different from chance. The team concluded that the effect is weaker than first thought, absent, or develops later. That is science correcting itself in public.
In part. A team at the University of Oxford, led by Oliver Scott Curry, studied written accounts of ethics from 60 societies, over 600,000 words from more than 600 sources. It found seven cooperative behaviors, the university reported: help your family, help your group, return favors, be brave, defer to superiors, divide resources fairly, and respect others’ property. These were considered good in every society where they appeared, with no society calling them bad. But societies ranked them differently, which the team called “variation on a theme.”
A related theory, moral foundations theory, says people everywhere share a small set of moral intuitions, such as care, fairness, loyalty, respect for authority and purity. Its authors describe these as universally available but variably developed, which may explain why people and cultures weigh them differently. It is one of several competing theories, and it remains debated.
Some version of the golden rule also shows up widely. In 1993, the Parliament of the World’s Religions, meeting in Chicago, issued a Declaration Toward a Global Ethic. It says a principle has lasted for thousands of years in many religious and ethical traditions: what you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. Curry’s team offers one possible reason why some moral rules turn up so widely: people everywhere face a similar set of social problems, and use similar moral rules to solve them.
For religious answers, the oldest challenge comes from Plato. In his dialogue Euthyphro, Socrates asks whether the holy is holy because the gods love it, or whether the gods love it because it is holy. Applied to God, the worry is that either morality is arbitrary, or it has a standard beyond God’s command. Defenders have replies. Quinn, for example, defended divine command theory against the charge that it makes morality arbitrary.
For evolutionary answers, the strongest objection is that explaining where a feeling came from does not show that it is right. Here is an analogy: a history of why humans crave sugar tells us nothing about whether sugar is good for us. The analogy has limits, since moral feelings are about how to treat others, not about food. Still, the point stands. Research can describe our moral sense. It cannot, by itself, tell us which of our instincts to trust.
For the philosophical theories, the challenge is hard cases where they pull apart. The 2020 PhilPapers Survey asked whether you should push a man off a footbridge if doing so would save five people on the track below. Counting outcomes alone seems to favor pushing. Yet 56.0% of the philosophers who answered said don’t push, and 22.0% said push. Cases like this are part of why experts remain split.
More than debates suggest. Both can agree that kindness, fairness and keeping promises matter, and that some version of the golden rule is found across many traditions. Both can argue about hard cases by giving reasons that others can weigh: harm, fairness, duty, character. They may still disagree about why those reasons bind us. A believer may say they rest on God. A secular thinker may say they rest on reason or on human well-being. That disagreement about foundations is real, and it is Beyond science. But it does not stop people from working side by side. For more on this, see our story Can You Be Good Without God?
THREE THINGS TO REMEMBER
WORDS WORTH KNOWING
KEEP ASKING
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