Cover of Godless & Moral: Exploring morality without God.

Godless & Moral: Exploring morality without God.

Godless & Moral: Exploring morality without God.

By: Jorge Guerra Pires Ph.D
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Podcast Godless & Moral

Explore morality without God.

What remains when we leave religion behind?

Godless & Moral is a secular and openly atheist project dedicated to one of the most difficult questions in philosophy: how can we understand morality without appealing to God, divine revelation, or religious authority?

If there is no divine lawgiver, what grounds the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong? Can moral obligations be objective? Can reason, human flourishing, suffering, cooperation, virtue, or rationality provide a foundation for morality? Or does abandoning religion inevitably lead to moral relativism?

The blog explores these questions through secular ethics, moral philosophy, metaethics, evolutionary perspectives on morality, utilitarianism, virtue ethics, deontology, rationality, and moral realism and anti-realism.

Atheism is not the sole subject of Godless & Moral. It is the starting point: the intellectual premise that allows us to ask what morality might look like once supernatural foundations are removed.

Two particularly important influences on the project are Richard Carrier and Sam Harris. Their work provides very different, sometimes complementary, approaches to secular morality and the relationship between reason, human well-being, and ethics. Their ideas—and the criticisms they have received—will frequently appear throughout the project.

But Godless & Moral is not about defending a single philosopher or presenting a finished secular moral system.

It is about testing ideas.

If morality can exist without God, we should be able to examine its foundations without invoking God. And if secular morality has weaknesses, contradictions, or unanswered questions, those weaknesses deserve to be exposed as well.

No divine commands. No sacred answers. Just the difficult question:

How should we live?


© 2026 Godless & Moral: Exploring morality without God. Science Spirituality
Episodes
  • Objective morality is a biological reality | an analysis of Ayer, A. J.

    Objective morality is a biological reality | an analysis of Ayer, A. J.
    27 Sep 2026

    Analysis of Ayer, A. J. (1946). Language, Truth and Logic (2nd ed.). London: Penguin Books / Victor Gollancz. (Originally published 1936)


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    Godless & Moral explores morality from a secular and atheistic perspective.
    What grounds good and evil, right and wrong, when we abandon God and religious authority?
    Drawing on philosophy, science, and thinkers like Richard Carrier and Sam Harris, we explore how morality might stand on its own.

    Read my books!
    Show more Show less
    1 hr and 3 min
  • Is morality a feeling or an equation?

    Is morality a feeling or an equation?
    26 Sep 2026

    References

    1. Primary Sources

    • Ayer, A. J. (1946). Language, Truth and Logic (2nd ed.). London: Penguin Books / Victor Gollancz. (Originally published 1936).
    • Guerra Pires, J. (2026). The Anachronistic Misuse of Ayer Against Naturalist Moral Realism.
    • Guerra Pires, J. (Host), Benites, M., & Leroy, D. (Guests). O emotivismo é melhor que o realismo moral? [Video / Podcast transcript].
    • Guerra Pires, J. (Host), Carrier, R., & Leroy, D. (Guests). Richard Carrier, Daniel Leeroy, Jorge Pires: Can AI Help Us Understand Morality [Video / Podcast transcript].
    • Guerra Pires, J. (Host), & Carrier, R. (Guest). The Physics of Morality: Why Being Good is a Logical Necessity (No God Required) [Video / Podcast transcript].

    2. Philosophical & Scientific Works Referenced in the Debates

    • Carrier, R. (Forthcoming). From Ontology to Morality. (Anthology on secular metaethics and naturalist moral realism).
    • Curry, O. S. (2019). Morality as Cooperation. (Anthropological cross-cultural study of 60 societies).
    • Foot, P. (2001). Natural Goodness. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
    • Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
    • Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    • Railton, P. (1986). Moral Realism. Philosophical Review, 95(2), 163–207.



    =

    Godless & Moral explores morality from a secular and atheistic perspective.
    What grounds good and evil, right and wrong, when we abandon God and religious authority?
    Drawing on philosophy, science, and thinkers like Richard Carrier and Sam Harris, we explore how morality might stand on its own.

    Read my books!
    Show more Show less
    41 min
  • Emotivism vs. Realism: Are moral laws as real as physics?

    Emotivism vs. Realism: Are moral laws as real as physics?
    23 Sep 2026


    Learn more: Is emotivism better than moral realism?


    =

    Godless & Moral explores morality from a secular and atheistic perspective.
    What grounds good and evil, right and wrong, when we abandon God and religious authority?
    Drawing on philosophy, science, and thinkers like Richard Carrier and Sam Harris, we explore how morality might stand on its own.

    Read my books!
    Show more Show less
    27 min
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