SOURCE: “Ethics and the Science of Legislation,” in Secular Utilitarianism: Social Science and the Critique of Religion in the Thought of Jeremy Bentham, Clarendon Press, 1990, pp. 66-98.

In the following excerpt, Crimmins views the scientific basis of Bentham's utility principle and its hostility toward religious ethics.

Weak reasoners in morals, by a kind of instinct, take shelter behind the altar. Yet not even this shall save [them]. Mankind is too deeply interested in the display of those truths which [they] would keep concealed … to make it pardonable to desist from the pursuit. The Sanctuary is in its own nature common ground, unless where fenced about by Intolerance which it can never be but by the help of Usurpation … No foreign arguments are needed to set against [their] doctrines: to expound is to expose them: to confront them is to confute.

‘Preparatory Principles’, headed ‘Divine Law’, UC 69/107

Bentham's religious...