What It Means to Be Moral

Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life

By: Phil Zuckerman

Narrated by: Paul Brion

The author of Living the Secular Life deconstructs the arguments for a morality informed by religion, urging that major challenges like global warming and growing inequality are best approached from a framework of secular morality.

In What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life, Phil Zuckerman argues that morality does not come from God. Rather, it comes from us: our brains, our evolutionary past, our ongoing cultural development, our social experiences, and our ability to reason, reflect, and be sensitive to the suffering of others.

By deconstructing religious arguments for God-based morality and guiding listeners through the premises and promises of secular morality, Zuckerman argues that the major challenges facing the world today - from global warming and growing inequality to religious support for unethical political policies to gun violence and terrorism - are best approached from a nonreligious ethical framework. In short, we need to look to our fellow humans and within ourselves for moral progress and ethical action.

©2019 Phil Zuckerman (P)2019 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A thoughtful well reasoned argument. Convincing.

The narrator could not pronounce the word “concomitantly.” Distracting. Still, I would have given him 4 1/2 stars if that had been possible.

Finally! an ethical argument for non spiritual people

I’m an atheist/atheistic who feels underrepresented. The successes of non spiritual peoples are under appreciated in society. I wish I could meet this author to thank them and discuss their ideas and book more. To strengthen the argument in this book, I am someone who has applied my life’s goal to reducing inequality while not relying on a spiritual authority. I’m an MBA student who studies value creation and have been accepted into top universities to study ethics at the MA level following my MBA. Hopefully this book fairs well in history.

A genuine 'must-read' for theist and atheist alike

This is a truly brilliant work. It is encouraging, enlightening, well-informed, and highly informative. Yet it is also very readable and easily accessible to the lay reader. I highly recommend 'What it Means To Be Moral' for any and all persons interested in morality, justice, ethics, or the implications of Darwin and the evolutionary sciences for our understanding of human nature. I think it should be on the reading list of every atheist, and particularly anyone who considers themselves an agnostic. It should be required reading for the recently burgeoning populace of 'nones'. But perhaps most importantly, it should be read by the worlds copious devout, or at least those amongst them who are open-minded enough to consider justice, morality, and human good as the products of evolution, as entirely natural phenomenon, and no longer as the products of divine fiat or supernatural agency. An essential contribution to the secular canon, this important work should be in the library of everyone and anyone who is interested in ethics, morality, good and evil, or our increasingly naturalistic understanding of human nature.

Disservice

This book made me sad and angry at the same time. I knew Religion has done a disservice to humanity. But I can’t accept the idea that there is not a bigger reason for being here on this journey called life.

Praise for Faith No More

This 395 page well researched and well reasoned book explains what it means to be moral, why we should want to be moral and all without the need to invoke any gods. Nothing is coming from outer space to help us. We are the help we need and Zuckerman makes the case.