Science Quote by Richard Stallman

Stallman’s line reads like a programmer refusing to ship a fantasy spec: no “absolute certainty,” no immaculate proof, no divine API you can call for a guaranteed moral answer. It’s an argument aimed at two audiences at once. First, the religious moralist who treats ethics as a solved problem because a higher authority exists. Second, the technologist’s own tribe, prone to believing that with enough logic, enough cleverness, you can formalize morality into something as crisp as code.

The move is disarmingly blunt: even if gods exist, we still don’t get certainty. That “whether... or not” is a wedge between metaphysical belief and practical obligation. Stallman isn’t trying to win an atheism debate; he’s puncturing the excuse that moral paralysis is justified until the universe hands us a proof. The subtext is anti-perfectionism: waiting for moral certainty is a way to avoid making hard choices, taking responsibility, and accepting blame when outcomes are messy.

In context, it fits Stallman’s broader ethos in free software: ethics is not a decorative add-on to engineering, it’s the reason the work matters. “We do the best we can” sounds modest, but it’s also a demand. You don’t get to opt out because the philosophy is complicated. You act, you iterate, you accept fallibility, and you keep your values legible - not because you’re certain, but because refusing to try is its own moral decision.