Moral Progress Without a Standard

Atheists frequently appeal to the idea of “moral progress,” claiming that societies improve morally as they become more secular. Yet progress is not mere change; it is change measured against a standard of better and worse.

If morality is ultimately contingent on social preference, then what counts as progress reduces to whatever a given society happens to endorse at a particular moment. In that case, moral progress is not an objective fact but a rhetorical label applied to favored outcomes.

Theism provides a stable reference point: moral truth stands above society and is capable of judging society. This allows moral reformers to be correct even when they stand against cultural consensus.

Atheism may attempt to ground progress in concepts such as well-being or flourishing, but this immediately reintroduces normative claims about what ought to count as flourishing and why such norms are binding. The problem is not describing moral change, but justifying the claim that the change is objectively better.

Formal Argument

P1. Moral progress is intelligible only if there is an objective moral standard by which societies can be judged as better or worse.

P2. Atheistic naturalism, insofar as it reduces morality to preference, consensus, or evolutionary convenience, supplies no objective moral standard, only changing norms.

P3. Without an objective standard, “progress” collapses into “change I approve,” rather than objective improvement.

C. Therefore, atheistic naturalism cannot coherently affirm moral progress as objective; it must either abandon the claim or import objective morality inconsistent with its naturalism.

Analogy

Imagine a group hiking without a destination. They can walk north today and south tomorrow and call it “progress,” but the term has no content unless there is a fixed endpoint.

Saying “we are progressing” while refusing to specify any objective destination is indistinguishable from saying “we are moving.”

Moral progress functions the same way. Without an objective moral endpoint, claims of progress amount to applause for change one happens to like, not statements about genuine improvement.