Mon, 14 Jan 2008
What does it mean to be “moral”?
I’m going to add my voice to the choir.
There are several very dangerous memes circulating the nation. The one I want to address today is “Atheist have no basis for morality since they don’t believe in a higher power.”
First of all, the stupidity of that comment is so blatant that it makes you wonder if the person saying it has spent even a fraction of a second thinking critcally about it. Usually they haven’t. Most likely they’re simply parroting what they’ve been told by their preacher or, even worse, by Bill O’Reilly. I get my morality from the same place all of you do. And it’s not from religion.
Put your religious brain in park for the moment and get that old dusty rational brain of yours out and think about this: If one of the Ten Commandments didn’t tell you “Thall shall not kill” would you be unaware that killing somebody is wrong? If the bible didn’t tell you “Thall shall not steal” would you be breaking into people homes to get their new plasma screen TV?
Let’s try that another way. Is the fear of eternal hell the only thing that keeps you from killing the guy that cuts you off on the freeway? Or do you let him live because you have a certain amount of empathy for your fellow man? If so then guess what, you didn’t get your “Thall shall not kill” morality from the Bible.
If we put just a few more seconds of critical thought and a bit of research to the subject we might discover that Aristotle was discussing ethics hundreds of years before Jesus was suppose to have lived. Where did he get his morality? We may also look upon some of the less savory passages of the bible and realize that it’s certainly not moral to, for example, kill a man for working on Sunday or to stone a disobedient child to death. And no matter how kindly Jesus said you should treat your slaves haven’t we moved beyond the whole idea that slavery itself is a moral endeavor?
Religion is like a buffet table where you get to pick the dishes that you like and ignore the rest. Religious people consistently ignore rules that they don’t want to live with such as “don’t eat pork”, “don’t cut your hair”, and “don’t wear clothing made of mixed fibers” while holding onto the rules that they agree with: “Don’t kill”, “Don’t steal”, “Go ahead and hate gay people”. The problem is that most religious people don’t even look at what’s on the buffet table. They simply consume what’s fed to them by their preachers and nod their heads saying “Yes, this is good, this is right. God said so and I must believe it.”
I, however, choose my morality because of an empathy for my fellow human beings rather than out of fear of a vengeful god. And be honest with yourself, if you’re a Christian then the fear of hell is a much bigger motivator than the reward of heaven isn’t it? I certainly know that when I say something as simple as “no thank you, I don’t believe in god” I’m usually rebuked with a lecture on how my heathen soul will burn in hell as opposed to how wonderful it would be if I did believe and could go to heaven. Christians just love to tell other people what the mind of god is and how anyone who doesn’t share their delusions will burn in hell. Religion is a fear based initiative.
As Richard Dawkins put it in “The God Delusion”: “Which is ultimately the more moral person? The person who does good out of fear that the great camera in the sky might catch them doing something wrong? Or the person who does good because it’s what’s best for humanity and society?”
That’s why I have such a problem with the religious right and the republicans telling us we have to “Save Marriage” by denying gay people their civil rights. The only reason a religious person can give as to why we should ban gay marriage is because the bible says so. They can show absolutely no evidence how allowing two committed gay people to have the same legal rights as heterosexuals hurts society. They simply start spewing the same hateful platitudes of “It’s not natural” and “marriage is between a man and a woman.” If you’re using your rational brain you may notice that neither of those arguments state why allowing gay marriage hurts society. They’re simply parroting the dogma that they’ve been preached in church.
From my godless point of view I look at the 14th amendment which states “no state shall deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
The Constitution is a great document. You should read it some time.
You see, I think that treating everyone with the same respect and having the same laws apply to everyone is the moral choice. But many Christians have twisted this anti-gay hatred and renamed it “family values”. How grotesque is that to label organized bigotry as “family values”? Only 50 years ago there were an awful lot of people who felt the same way about interracial marriage. And many of those people used the bible to justify their racism and bigotry. Today we call that “racism.”
The way I see it there are 3 aspects to marriage. First, there is the love and commitment that my wife and I feel for each other. Can gay people have that love and commitment? Of course they can.
The 2nd aspect of marriage is the legal rights and responsibilities given to a couple by the government. I see no reason why allowing gay people to have the same right to community property, the same right to mutual health care and having the same right to make medical decisions for each other in an emergency harms America in any way. It certain doesn’t harm my marriage.
The 3rd aspect of marriage, for some people, is the belief that God somehow sanctions the marriage. And you know what? If that’s what you believe then that fine with me. Being a secular nation doesn’t mean you can’t have your personal wacko beliefs. It just means that you can’t force your dogma on me by force of law. And isn’t that the real meaning of religious freedom?
My wife and I re-wrote not just our vows, but our entire ceremony to exclude any reference to god or Jesus. Does that mean we’re not actually married? Some Christians may think so but I bet the state of California would disagree with you. If we got divorced do you think we’d be able to walk away from the marriage and the responsibility for the community property by saying “Yeah, but when we got married we never said ‘God’ so it didn’t really count”? I don’t think so.
The thing that the democrats have been utter terrible at is telling the believers that the first amendment works both ways. No, it’s not right for you religious folks to deny gay people their civil rights. But at the same time the government cannot and should not ever force any church to officiate a gay wedding.
You see, church and state, they’re separate that way. That’s the difference between aspect #2 and #3. You can have that whole “married in the eyes of the lord” stuff if you want. But it doesn’t apply to me so stop trying to force the government to push me into your religious beliefs.
As for my part, well, I’ll tell you what. You don’t have to marry a gay guy if you don’t want to. Fair enough?
But let’s get back to this issue of faith based morality. Do you remember our original premise? “Atheist have no basis for morality since they don’t believe in a higher power.” We’ve attacked it logically and shown that this statement makes no logical sense. But can we attack it with evidence?
Let’s assume the premise that atheist have no morals to be true. What would we expect the effect of that to be? Well, we could look at places where bad people hang out and see if most of them are atheist. How about prison? Well guess what? Data from America’s federal prision system says otherwise:
The per capita percentage of Christians [77%] in the general population produces a 6% higher per capita percentage of Christians [83%] in prison. The opposite is true for atheists by a wide margin. There’s a significantly lower percentage of atheist offenders in US Federal prisons [0.21%] than the per capita percentage of atheists [anywhere from 4%-14% averaging 9%] found in the general population. This would seem to prove that a Christian is far more likely to commit and be convicted of a crime in America than an atheist.
Yes, that’s 0.21% or less than one quarter of one percent. Now let me jump in here and say that these numbers should not be used to show that Christians are less moral than average. There are other factors for why a person ends up in prison. If you’re born into poverty then crime may appear to be your only option to survive. We should be aware that religion also targets the poor. Religion does give downtrodden people the feeling that they are still loved and gives them a sense of community. So we need to realize that the increase in the percentage of Christians in the prison population is very likely due to this sort of intersection.
The other end of this scale is also telling. Over 40 studies have shown a correlation between IQ and atheism. Other studies show a correlation between level of education and atheism. The more intelligent you are and the more education you have, the more likely you are not to believe in god. These highly educated people are generally not the ones robbing liquor stores and dealing drugs so they tend not to end up in prison. This also points to the economic link between crime and religion. Religion doesn’t cause the crime, it’s just that the two trends tend to correlate.
But what we can take from this data is that there isn’t a drastic drop in the percentage of Christians in prison vs. the general population. So the premise that “Atheist have no basis for morality since they don’t believe in a higher power” fails on evidence as well as via pure logic.
If you take with you only one concept from this article then let it be this: Morality doesn’t come from religion. Religious people select which part of their holy book matches the morality they already have. Morality stems from empathy for other human beings. And isn’t that a better solution to the moral question than a blind devotion to bronze age mythology?
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