So says Allison Aldrich of the Collegiate Times. All Aldrich succeeds in doing is exposing her ignorance of and bigotry towards atheists/atheism, which is sadly all too common.
Lately this age-old question has become a topic brought up by those who have read Christopher Hitchens’ emotionally-charged book, “God is Not Great.” Perhaps they have addressed this subject in philosophy or religion classes. Rather than try to tackle the question of God’s existence in a thousand-word article, I’ll focus my attention on those atheists who try to defend the essence of morality in an atheist culture.
When asking an atheist what motive they have for choosing good over evil, for being nice to others, and/or for maintaining good character, I often hear one of two responses. Either it’s because they worry about consequences of the law (jail time, fines, etc.), or because it makes them “feel good” when they do the “right” thing. Where exactly does this idea of “right” come from? Who decides what the “right” thing is? Is it from societal norms and the government? Is it from an innate feeling in each individual?
The notion of doing what is right to avoid the consequences of the law is very much like doing good to avoid going to hell. Funny how Christians think atheists are evil for the former, but don’t consider themselves unworthy for the latter. Doing what is right to “feel good about oneself” is not specific to atheists. Religious people of all stripes do it too, and they do it to please their deity, or to look good in front of their church peers, to get tax exemptions, etc. So why are atheists being scorned for it?
I myself do what is right because it’s the right thing to do. How do we (whether we’re atheists or not) learn what is the right thing to do? The same way anybody else does. We’re taught it. We don’t need to be told that some spirit in the sky is going to punish us for doing evil, or reward us for doing good in order to get us to comply. What we need to learn is the Ethic of Reciprocity, which is found in nearly all religions and outside religion as well–in philosophy and in human nature.
Surely it can’t be societal norms or government regulation that determines whether behavior is acceptable. Those who believe in that line of reasoning would have to argue in favor of slavery during America’s founding and women’s limited rights up until recently. Also, it couldn’t possibly be one’s personal definition of what is acceptable. I for one wouldn’t want to give that privilege to people who might think it personally acceptable to steal or lie in order to improve their lot.
Actually, it was the Bible that was used to support slavery and subjugation of women. Until about 50 years ago it was used by those who fought against interracial marriage. There are those even today who use it to keep women subordinate to men and from being clergy in the church. How Aldrich can seriously suggest that atheists would be the ones arguing in favor of subjugating women and blacks is astounding to me given the clear evidence to the contrary.
Some human cultures of other parts of the globe suggest strongly that we do not come hard-wired from the factory with feelings of good will toward others. Mass murder has too often reared an ugly head with no apparent religion having been taught. It seems more likely that the suggestion of God causes deeper thinking in directions of wrong and right. Without a higher being, there could be no guarantee of consequences for our actions. No consequences would result in chaos and anarchy.
On the contrary, belief and religion have been used to justify some of the most heinous acts in history. The Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, slavery, hatred of LGBTs and more. Belief and religion allow people to behave horribly towards others in the name of doing God’s Work. They can feel self-righteous while engaging in the most abominable behavior towards their fellow man because a holy book or clergy person said it should be so.
Where do most people get this sense of right and wrong? I believe that it comes from a set of natural, universal standards that have been refined since the beginning of human existence. This set of standards, which is often called the “Laws of Human Nature,” has to have originated somewhere. These agreements between humans allow us to differentiate between what is right and wrong and it appears obvious that there is intelligent design behind these universally-held beliefs.
In my opinion, the idea of a moral compass, one that has been shown to surpass that which is merely “good for the community,” is also evidence that a higher power has provided us with that compass. In an example from Denish D’Souza’s book “What’s so Great about Christianity,” he describes the idea of morality based on evolution and natural selection. The problem with basing morality on this, however, is that it gives no explanation for truly altruistic acts. What good is it, evolutionary-wise, for men to give up their seats for older women on the bus?
There is no “intelligent designer” behind it, but again the ethic of reciprocity. Parents and other caregivers teach that we should do to others as we wish others to do to us. We also learn through experience that we don’t like to have bad things done to us and therefore (presumably) we decide that we won’t do such things to others. No spirit in the sky who will reward/punish us after death is necessary. Yes there is a legal system required for those who prove incapable of sticking to the rules, but the mystical one hasn’t proven any more effective considering how many religious people are (at least) as unethical as the ones they cast stones at.
As C.S. Lewis explained in his book “Mere Christianity,” the instincts we have for personal and group survival do not lead to the kind of morality our world holds as an ideal. If people are walking in their neighborhoods and come upon a house on fire, their first instincts might be to find safety. They might then think it important to try to save the people inside. However, it is only after a third voice enters their heads, their conscience, that they will probably conclude that it is their moral obligation to risk their personal safety in an attempt to save whoever might be in that house. A good question might be why would an atheist make any attempt to save a life if placed in such a circumstance?
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Besides, who would know if the passerby neglected the situation? Only the person who has failed to act would know to a level of certainty — and if there is no God watching, why would the atheist care? After all, there are no rules or laws that mandate that we must risk our own lives to save others, save those greater laws that seem to come from a belief in a higher being. If there is no God, then why bother to save lives at all? In such a god-free environment, humans would be seen as a dime a dozen — beans on a beanstalk, random creations of a chemical brew, accidental, often inconvenient, and nothing special. We could walk by a bleeding homeless man without a pause. We could even smile or laugh at a starving child. In a godless world, we could ask, “so what,” and “why not?”
First of all, atheists have consciences just like believers do. It’s obvious that some ignorant, bigoted believers think a person has to believe in God to have a conscience and that atheists don’t care about anybody but themselves. They’re dead wrong.
Second, the atheist has the same motivation for saving people from a burning building as does the believer–minus the desire to impress their deity. The atheist wishes to save fellow human beings from being harmed/killed. Again, it’s the ethic of reciprocity.
What continues to mystify me is the notion Aldrich puts forth, which I’ve seen before, that without belief in a deity humans are worthless collections of chemicals and matter. What a narrow and demeaning viewpoint some have that it’s only through a deity that humans have any kind of value. I’ve never met an atheist who thinks the way Aldrich suggests, and I myself think humans are inherently valuable and amazing, though entirely from natural origins.
Our tolerance for differences of opinion is established by God, not man. These rights are held high along with freedom of speech and the others articulated by our founders.
I think Aldrich misspoke there. It should be that intolerance for difference of opinion is established by God. Hence bigotry and hate-crimes toward those of different religions, atheists, LGBTs, and countless others both now and throughout history.
God help us if atheists ever get the upper hand because then our rights would be only as firm as one man’s opinion, or one mob’s passions, and we would be as likely to lose our rights forever, as to gain new ones.
Much like our Constitutional rights and laws seem to be in constant flux thanks to those who want to wage war over them based on their differing interpretations of the Bible and Christian dogma? Like the way discrimination was written into state constitutions for the first time in history over the past four years because of peoples’ “deeply held religious beliefs”? Yet Aldrich claims that under atheists peoples rights would be in constant danger?
I again contend Aldrich knows nothing of atheists or atheism and speaks from a position of pure bigotry. She’d be wise to educate herself before writing another article on the topic.
Addendum. A comment has arrived. Ezekiel said:
what the —-? Aldrich is clearly delusional. This is such a stupid repetitive trope among believers, I don’t even know what to do with it. Just a week ago, I told my father that I was atheist (and not agnostic) to which he said: “Too bad”. This is a man who has no religious dogma, but still felt as though “you can’t see the beauty of the world if you’re atheist” to which I replied to him that I felt that religious belief is selfish, needing to justify the beauty of the world with some over-arching force, needing to explain away all the precious precious randomness of it all. I’m not sure if I got through to him, but I definitely hope that he’ll think again before he says that atheists don’t see the beauty around them. At least he doesn’t think we’re all cannibalistic baby-eaters, as Aldrich apparently does.
I couldn’t agree with you more. I’ve heard it so many times I’ve tired of defending myself against it, but I continue to do it because I loathe the idea of people spreading such audacious falsehoods like that. Sadly I’ve heard your father’s belief that atheists are incapable of seeing beauty in things. Sometimes it’s a simple misperception, and others it appears to be quite malicious. In both cases it is very wrong. Can anybody look at this picture of the double rainbow that appeared outside my home last night and tell me it wasn’t beautiful?
Although atheists consider the source of the world and universe to be natural, they do indeed find great beauty and joy in it. And they tend to be just as ethical as their religious counterparts. It’s only because of the bigotries of others that it seems otherwise. Thank you for reading and commenting!
Another comment arrived. Ebon said:
Why is it, the people who talk about the Founders desire that Christianity get preferential treatment have never actually read what the Founders bloody wrote on the subject?
Ah, hold on, answered my own question there. It works like a sort of wish fulfillment. The would-be theocrat simply assumes that anyone they admire must have held the same views as themselves.
There’s that, of course. There’s also the notion that if the Founding Fathers formed the United States as a “Christian Nation” then nobody dare mess with that. They just assume that people will blindly accept their revisionist form of history, and sadly all too many people do.
There is a seemingly universal response from Christians, directed at atheism. It concerns the USSR and Stalin’s purges, often it also involves Nazi Germany and Hitler. Of course, the fact that the USSR was a totalitarian state and that Hitler made so many vague and contradictory statements that it’s impossible to say what, if anything, he actually believed, always escapes such people. They did evil because they were atheists, no other reason.
The irony, of course, is that by those standards, there has never been a Christian society anywhere ever. Those societies which loudly proclaimed their faith tended to act in ways that modern Christians would disavow.
I suspect that in the end, what caused the problems of those societies was less which faith, if any, they followed and more the attempt to impose their choice of faith (or lack thereof) on the masses.
Ah, yes. The Hitler/Stalin/Mao canard that gets thrown out in a knee-jerk fashion any time an atheist brings up the horrors perpetrated by people in the name of religion. What they never seem to realize is that Stalin and Mao, though atheists, committed their atrocities in the name of political ideologies and not in the name of atheism. Hitler was not even an atheist but a Catholic and he used many religious themes in his regime so it’s ludicrous to claim he acted in the name of atheism.
You’re absolutely right that there never has been a “Christian society”, and it’s likely there never will be. Even if an entire nation were comprised solely of Christians it would be impossible for it to be a truly Christian society thanks to the myriad Biblical interpretations, church sects, etc. Even now we have continual fighting amongst the various groups about which ones are and are not “real” Christians. There can only be a society that contains people who are Christians, not a Christian Society.
Thank you for reading and for your comments!
That is the question asked in the upcoming issue of 
