Rational Morality: Harm, Care, and the Work of Living Together

Principle 5: Morality Preserves Life

Morality is not divine decree, but a human creation rooted in our need to survive and thrive together. To act morally is to minimize harm and nurture life — the only true measure of goodness.

This principle begins from a simple but often obscured insight: morality exists because humans are vulnerable. We are embodied beings who depend on one another across generations, families, and communities. Any moral system that fails to protect that fragile interdependence – regardless of how sacred its language – ultimately defeats its own purpose. And isn’t it curious how much moral systems throughout the world and history concern themselves with control of the human body – particularly women’s bodies? In this article, we lift the veil on religiously grounded moral systems and present an alternative foundation for morality, one based in humanism and rationality.

Anders Zorn, “On the blue-grey leather sofa” (1916). Public Domain.

In much of Western religious discourse, morality is framed primarily as obedience: actions are good or bad because a divine authority has declared them so. Yet this framing raises an enduring philosophical problem, articulated as early as classical antiquity: is something good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is good (Plato, Euthyphro)?

If goodness exists only by command, then morality becomes arbitrary. If goodness precedes command, then morality must be grounded in something more fundamental than decree. Across cultures and historical periods, that grounding has consistently been harm and care.

Morality Before Rules

Anthropological and evolutionary research suggests that core moral intuitions – empathy, fairness, reciprocity, and aversion to unnecessary harm – emerge wherever humans live together, long before formalized religious law (de Waal; Tomasello). These instincts are not abstract ideals; they are survival strategies. Groups that fail to restrain violence, exploitation, and neglect simply do not endure.

Religious moral systems did not invent these intuitions; they organized, narrated, and ritualized them. Commandments, laws, and moral codes functioned as social technologies – ways of stabilizing norms that already existed.

Seen this way, morality is not descended upon us from heaven. It grows upward from the ground of lived human need., but also – and this is crucial to guard from – as a means of social control.

Winslow Homer, “Snap the Whip” (1872). Public Domain.

Harm as the Measure of the Moral

Modern moral philosophy gave formal expression to this intuition by focusing on consequences rather than purity or intent. While no serious ethical system today reduces morality to simple calculation, there is broad agreement that suffering matters, that preventable harm counts against any moral rule, and that moral reasoning must remain responsive to real-world effects (Mill).

This approach clarifies why moral norms change over time. When a practice once believed to protect social order is shown instead to produce suffering – especially systematic suffering – it loses its moral legitimacy.

This does not mean “anything goes.” It means that morality must be accountable and open to re-evaluation.

Homosexuality and the Collapse of Harm-Free Prohibition

The moral reevaluation of homosexuality illustrates this process clearly. For centuries, same-sex relationships were condemned as immoral on religious grounds. Yet as societies began to evaluate morality in terms of harm rather than prohibition, a decisive question emerged: What damage does consensual homosexuality cause? 

Thomas Eakins, “Swimming” (1895). Public Domain.

Scientific and psychological research has shown consistently that same-sex orientation is a natural and recurring feature of human populations, observable across cultures and throughout history, and documented in numerous animal species (Bagemihl). Major medical and psychological institutions now agree that homosexuality is not a disorder and does not impair individual or social functioning (American Psychiatric Association).

By contrast, the moral condemnation of homosexuality has produced extensive, well-documented harm: family rejection, social exclusion, legal persecution, violence, and elevated risks of depression and suicide (Meyer). Under a harm-based moral framework, the conclusion is unavoidable: homosexuality is not immoral. The suffering associated with it is not intrinsic but socially imposed.

The same, of course, can be said about the moral condemnation of transgender people, who according to historians, anthropologists, and biologists, have always existed and are thus a natural feature of human life.

This pattern – a rule is preserved despite causing harm – reveals the danger of morality detached from its life-preserving function.

Families, Children, and Moral Formation

A morality rooted in harm reduction is not individualistic or permissive. On the contrary, it places families and children at the center of moral life.

Children do not learn morality through abstract rules alone. They learn it through modeling, trust, emotional safety, and consistent care. Families are the primary environment in which empathy, self-restraint, and responsibility are cultivated – or neglected.

Joaquín Sorolla, “Chicos en la playa” (1910). Public Domain.

Moral systems that foster fear, shame, or chronic suspicion within families undermine their own stated goals. When children are taught that bodies are inherently dangerous, that affection is suspect, or that difference is a threat, they do not become more moral – they become more anxious, less trusting, and more vulnerable.

A life-preserving morality asks not whether a rule enforces conformity, but whether it produces secure, resilient human beings capable of caring for others.

Morality and Public Nudity

Debates over public nudity offer a useful but limited illustration of this principle. When non-sexual nudity – especially in familial or communal contexts – is automatically framed as immoral or dangerous, the question should not be whether it violates a rule, but whether it causes harm.

In many historical and cross-cultural contexts, non-sexual nudity did not undermine family cohesion, corrupt children, or erode moral responsibility. Arguably, the insistence on treating the body as inherently shameful has produced more harm than the exposure itself (in the Community we use the term “retroactive trauma” to describe some of these effects, specifically the psychological harm done when children are “taught” after the fact that something they felt or did was morally wrong, even though it caused no harm to others).

Henrik Schouboe, “Badende moder og barn” (1908). Public Domain.

This does not imply that all norms around dress need to be abolished – there may be situations where clothing is necessary for physical protection, for instance – but it does demonstrate the necessity of contextual judgment rather than categorical fear. The issue is not nudity. It is whether moral norms preserve human well-being or sacrifice it to abstract anxiety.

Expanding the Moral Circle

If minimizing harm is the measure of goodness, morality cannot stop at the boundaries of tribe, belief, or even species. The same reasoning that condemns cruelty toward humans condemns unnecessary suffering inflicted on animals and the destruction of ecological systems that sustain future generations (Singer).

A morality that preserves life must take seriously:

• The long-term effects of environmental damage

• The normalization of preventable suffering

• The transmission of fear and shame across generations

This is not moral idealism. It is practical survival.

Life as the Criterion of the Good

The Community of the Cosmic Divine affirms that moral rules exist to serve life, not to override it. Traditions, symbols, and commandments matter – but only insofar as they protect embodied beings living together across time.

The true worth of any moral system cannot be judged by how many people subscribe to it – it is judged by what it leaves behind: healthier families, safer children, resilient communities, and a world still capable of sustaining life. That is the work morality was always meant to do.