Guilt, Remorse and God: Response to Lynch and Dahanayake

Abstract

Renewing an old theme, Tony Lynch and Nishanathe Dahanayake have argued that morality is founded in the assumption of an absolute God. They claim that guilt is integral to morality, and that guilt involves the internalisation of a God-figure. Echoing Nietzsche, they argue that in a world without God, morality is in collapse; and that the New Atheism is complacent and mistaken in asserting a simple transition to an objective secular moral standard. I agree that morality has roots widely unappreciated by contemporary secular ethics, but I argue that what they call guilt is a partial distortion of the more fundamental phenomenon of remorse, whose importance to morality need not implicate religion. I explain why.