richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

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the Muslim, by contrast, can claim that evil has an absolute meaning,
true for all time and in all places, according to which Hitler
was absolutely evil.'
Even if it were true that we need God to be moral, it would of
course not make God's existence more likely, merely more desirable
(many people cannot tell the difference). But that is not the issue
here. My imaginary religious apologist has no need to admit that
sucking up to God is the religious motive for doing good. Rather,
his claim is that, wherever the motive to be good comes from, without
God there would be no standard for deciding what is good. We
could each make up our own definition of the good, and behave
accordingly. Moral principles that are based only upon religion (as
opposed to, say, the 'golden rule', which is often associated with
religions but can be derived from elsewhere) may be called
absolutist. Good is good and bad is bad, and we don't mess around
deciding particular cases by whether, for example, somebody
suffers. My religious apologist would claim that only religion can
provide a basis for deciding what is good.
Some philosophers, notably Kant, have tried to derive absolute
morals from non-religious sources. Though a religious man himself,
as was almost inevitable in his time/' Kant tried to base a morality
on duty for duty's sake, rather than for God's. His famous
categorical imperative enjoins us to 'act only on that maxim
whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a
universal law'. This works tidily for the example of telling lies.
Imagine a world in which people told lies as a matter of principle,
where lying was regarded as a good and moral thing to do. In such
a world, lying itself would cease to have any meaning. Lying needs
a presumption of truth for its very definition. If a moral principle is
something we should wish everybody to follow, lying cannot be a
moral principle because the principle itself would break down in
meaninglessness. Lying, as a rule for life, is inherently unstable.
More generally, selfishness, or free-riding parasitism on the goodwill
of others, may work for me as a lone selfish individual and give
me personal satisfaction. But I cannot wish that everybody would
adopt selfish parasitism as a moral principle, if only because then I
would have nobody to parasitize.
* This is the standard interpretation of Kant's views. However, the noted philosopher
A. C. Grayling has plausibly argued (New Humanist, July-Aug. 2006) that, although
Kant publicly went along with the religious conventions of his time, he was really
an atheist.