In this comment thread Tommy, who strikes me a rather decent guy (and who, like me, can't resist getting a vague pun into a title), explains that he, as an atheist, has morals and behaves well because he feels there will be consequences to bad actions:
Let's pretend for a moment though that I do become what theists claim an atheist wants to be. I am going to do whatever I want. I am going to engage in frequent promiscuous sex, I am going to lie to everybody, not pay my bills, not show up on time for work, if I show up at all, I am going to drink alcohol and take drugs to excess. And the worst thing of all, I AM GOING TO PARK IN HANDICAPPED PARKING SPOTS!
Where will this likely lead me? I will be homeless, diseased, unwanted and untrusted...
Usually, atheists argue God doesn't exist because bad deeds are allowed to go unpunished. But, yes, we also hear that we don't need God because no bad deed goes unpunished. ;-)
I'm highlighting this argument because it exposes a rather difficult bind in which atheists find themselves concerning moral action. The question is not (as stated above) whether atheism allows one to ever behave well, especially when one feels bad behavior will almost certainly entail bad consequences, but rather whether it encourages good behavior in the many other circumstances in which we might otherwise get away with it.
One possible approach is to claim that no bad deed goes unpunished. Tom, for example, seems to go this route when he asserts:
Theists like to claim that atheists don't want to believe in a god because we do not want to be held accountable for our actions. That is nonsense, because in the absence of the existence of a god, or at least a god that cares about what we do, we are held accountable for our actions by each other.
The problem, as I see it, is that we are not held accountable by each other. To the contrary, the worse abuses in history (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot) are exactly those which have gone unpunished.
There are a whole host of actions which are broadly considered immoral but are either legal or extra-legal* (and there are many societies where behavior we'd consider grossly immoral is quite acceptable), and, it seems to me, that there are plenty of opportunities to get away with bad behavior and not get caught. One can certainly insist otherwise, but I think any attempt to do so would lose most the audience, who knows otherwise.
Further, it seems to me this(*) observation fuels demands for ever-more-powerful forms of government, in order to bring those cases to justice. It's not enough to believe that racism is wrong, and will be punished by God: instead, we have to get the government involved in trying to figure out people's inner beliefs. Conversely, it also seems to lead to the view that if it's not illegal, and doesn't seem likely to harm you physically, it also must not be immoral.
Another formulation of the same principle is "enlightened self-interest", where we believe, basically, that the universe always or generally rewards good behavior with good consequences, even in cases where "nobody's looking". But it seems to me this is another attempt to believe in God by pretending one is not believing in God.
How can the universe distinguish "good" behavior from "bad" behavior? How does it know to "reward" the good behavior? You've got all the mechanisms of a god there, without admitting you've done it.
The final answer, and the more usual one, is to claim that the atheist is more moral than the theist because he or she does "good" things even in cases where no reward is expected. I expect Tommy would be exactly such a person, in terms of behavior -- willing to do the right thing even if no one is watching.
That does indeed work for many individual atheists, who have already subconsciously imbibed the general Judeo-Christian ethic around them, but there's no reason to think that, writ large, most future atheists will draw the same conclusions or have the same propensities. The moral question isn't about that particular atheist (as most atheists seem to want it to be) but about the effects of atheism if it becomes more popular pervasive, if 'evangelists' like Dawkins and Harris see their wishes come true.
That argument needs to be answered candidly, not repeatedly ducked.
This argument also begs the question of how one identifies "good" behavior. Most Western atheists are actually Judeo-Christians, ethically, but do not realize or perhaps admit the source of their values: they've just always been immersed in them, much as a fish spends its whole life immersed in water and thinks nothing of it. But water is common and plentiful; Western values once were not, and might not be in the future, by the looks of it.
Finally, from the point of view of those talking about how society is structured, end results are what determine the goodness of a system, not motivation. If a man saves another from drowning, I care not whether he expected temporal fame, a reward in the afterlife, or just did it with no expectation of positive result at all. From that vantage point, what matters more is how likely something is to motivate person to do good, not how you feel about their motivations. And to determine how different belief systems work when applied broadly, we need to examine societies where they have been tried.
Hello Tim,
Perhaps I should have clarified my remarks somewhat. Unfortunately, we are not all held accountable for our misdeeds in our lifetimes. Yes, it is sad that Stalin or Mao were not brought to justice in their lifetimes. I hate to say it, but sometimes the bad guys get away with it. That is admittedly part of the appeal of belief in the idea of a just creator watching over us and judging us for our deeds. If Stalin and Mao did not meet justice for their crimes in this world, it is comforting to believe that they will pay for it in some hellish condition in the afterlife.
But not all of them got away with it in their lifetimes. Mussolini was murdered and hung upside down from a meathook. Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in his bunker in Berlin, and a host of other Nazis and Hitler supporters met violent ends. Nicolai Ceaucescu (hope I spelled that right!) wound up in front of a firing squad. And while Stalin did not pay for his actions (though there is speculation that he was either poisoned or refused medical care in his final days) his henchman Lavrenti Beria was executed.
But what I specifically had in mind were ordinary folks like you and me. It is a lot easier to get away with evil acts when you have the coercive apparatus of the state at your beck and call. But for people like you and me, we of course don't have such power at our command. We can try to engage in violent acts against other people, but sooner or later we will pay the price for it. That was the whole point of the hypothetical example I provided for you.
And yes, it is certainly possible to commit immoral actions and not get caught. There have been times where it occurred to me "I could steal this and get away with it" but I didn't commit the theft. I extrapolate from my personal experience and consider what kind of world we would live in if everyone who had the opportunity to steal and did so. I certainly don't want to live in a world where people will steal from me. To take it further, a couple of years ago when I was going food shopping, I found a woman's wallet in a shopping cart. Not only did I not steal her money, I looked at her drivers license to get her home address and drove to her house to return it to her. Now why would I do that? Well, in part it made me feel good. But even more important, she will remember that a total stranger went out of her way to return something very valuable to her, and perhaps it might inspire her to do something similar if she ever finds herself in the same situation.
As for "the universe" rewarding us, I make no such claim and never did. The universe, I would argue, is indifferent to us. An asteroid could strike this planet twenty years from now and wipe out the human race. What I would argue is that doing good deeds helps contribute to a moral climate that encourages people to be good. You could call it an "enlightened self interest" if you like, though I would add that practicing enlightened self interest can become habit forming. But I do not expect any direct external reward for doing what I believe to be good. And I get that from the Analects of Confucius, which tells us that we shouldn't expect any reward for doing what is right. Doing what is right is its own reward.
I don't know where you are coming from with racism and "the government involved in trying to figure out people's inner beliefs", unless you are talking about hate crime laws. Please confirm.
But as for judging whether something is moral or immoral, I see nothing wrong with using harm or lack thereof as a criteria for determining whether an action is good or bad. A married man who becomes a coke addict and ends up dying in a hospital from an overdose, leaving his wife to raise his kids alone clearly harmed not only himself, but his family as well. Surely, both you and I have no disagreement on this. Now, allow me to present a hypothetical situation. A sterile man and a woman unable to conceive are attracted to each other sexually. They are both STD free. Over the course of a year, they meet up for one or two days a month at a nice hotel and spend that time engaging in a sexual marathon. During this time they are not involved in a relationship with anyone else.
Now, as you can probably expect, I would submit that there was nothing wrong with what this man and woman were doing. Granted, one could argue that maybe their time together would have been better spent volunteering at a soup kitchen for the homeless or some other altruistic endeavor. But heck, I am sure even devout Christians spend part of their free time engaging in leisurely pursuits instead of spending 100% of every waking hour actively helping their fellow men and women. On the other hand, I would expect that you as a Christian consider my hypothetical couple to be engaging in sinful and immoral behavior because you believe it upsets some all powerful deity. And that is where you and I part company.
Personally, I don't consider my doing a good deed to be better than your doing a good deed because I do it for the sheer sake of it while you might be motivated by your belief in the divine. All that matters to me is that a person does good regardless of whether it derives from a theistic or humanistic worldview.
I infer that you believe that whatever I do that is good and moral, at least by your standards, is because I have imbibed a general Judeo-Christian ethic. I don't disagree that there is some truth to it. Richard Dawkins tells some anecdote about a person in Northern Ireland telling another Northern Irelander that he is an atheist, and then the other person asks him "Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?" I don't know how much of my blog you have read, but in several posts I mentioned that during my teenage years I was deeply religious Catholic. Of course my moral outlook would be shaped to some degree by background.
That being said, when I lost my faith in Christianity, I opened myself up to the moral teachings of other faiths and ethical teachings. A lot of my morals and ethics are also derived from Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, among others. I did not derive anything from Islam though. I tried reading an English translation of the Quran and found it to be absolutely atrocious. I am sure you will agree with me on that one.
Here is what I am reading from you and others like you Tim. Like me, you know that we as humans are flawed creatures. We are prone to anger, jealousy and greed. Because we are imperfect, theists feel that we need something greater than us to set the rules for us otherwise our world will be in chaos. So, you embrace a particular religious worldview that you believe provides the standard that we all must live by.
I, on the otherhand, believe it is entirely possible to create a standard of morals and ethics that are beneficial from studying the human experience. We know what works and what doesn't. For the most part, and I am sure you would agree with me, that your morals and my morals overlap. I would guess it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 90%, give or take a few.
You worry about the effects on the future if atheism becomes more popular and pervasive. But can't I have the same worries about Christians? What if in the future a substantial number of Christians in this country, including those with access to the levers of power in our government, come to believe that we are living in "the End Times" and they decide to commit our nation to war because they see it as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy?
Throughout much of the history of Christian Europe, Jews were victims of frequent and vicious pogroms. I am sure you know this. The pagans of the Baltic regions found themselves under attack by Christian warriors who believed that all their sins would be forgiven for killing the heathen. Were these actions moral by your Judeo-Christian values? I would venture you would answer no. And in the 4th century C.E. when Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, it is likely that no one would have predicted these future atrocities. We can't predict our future either, though it is possible to extrapolate from present trends to create a number of plausible scenarios.
As to future propensities, we can't control what people in the future will think. But we can instill in ourselves and our immediate descendants a simple premise, and that is that people have the right not to be harmed. Whether the grounds for doing so have a theistic or humanistic basis, it lays the groundwork for acting as a curb on tyranny and to promote a virtuous society. I would point out that the countries where the worst excesses of communist tyranny occurred, Russia and China, were autocratic monarchies where there was no concept of the rights of the individual.
Sadly, it is getting late now, and though I did not cover everything I wanted to, I will have to continue this later in the week.
It seems I dropped the ball here. Thank you, Bill & Ryan, for bringing it to my attention.
Tim~you got your ass kicked in reasoning abilities again. Right on Tommy
I don't really consider these a "contest" (it's the arguments themselves which are in question, not the people behind him -- being a skilled demagogue doesn't make your answers true), but I'm nonetheless curious where the "again" part comes in here.
Tommy didn't seem to do to well here, not having answered the main arguments in the article, and also not having responded to some of the key points I raised in answer to his comments. And it seems to me that this response here (as you'll see below) actually makes my point for me, but so be it.
But perhaps he (as I did here) just got busy with other more important things, and would have had something more substantial to say if he'd had the time. Or perhaps he just preferred to focus on the one thread being raised here.
I've done the "contest"-type debate, to have a "winner". It's great fun, but I respect Tommy too much to take that approach. Unlike so many others, he hasn't been "rhetorical" with me so far (going for cheap shots which usually end up hurting those who use them), so I'm certainly not to treat him in that fashion.
(But if you'd like such a debate with me, by all means, bring it on. I don't think people who need to see the world in such "black and white" terms ("we're all smart! they're all stupid!") actually tend to learn anything, in such a context, but it can be educational for onlookers. And I find it touching that the only time I hear I got my "ass kicked" was when I was actually completely absent from the debate in question! Heh, well, I guess some will declare a "win" any way they can get it. ;-))
Religious bigotry should be educated out of society.
When I notice that atheists have stopped making frequent assertions along the lines of "anyone who doesn't share my beliefs is stupid", I'll stop being convinced that atheism generally increases religious bigotry rather than reducing it. As it is, you've got "enlightened" people like Sam Harris arguing that non-atheists should be killed. Frankly, I don't see how you can get more bigoted than that, Bill.
Ryan: So it's kind of hard for me to believe that his views differ from yours because he isn't sufficiently educated.
And how much "education" does it take? A high percentage of MD's believe in God -- and they receive a tremendous amount of schooling. Francis Collins is the head of the human genome project, and a PhD -- and believes in God. And this whole thread started in response to Rodney Stark -- who started as an atheist, migrated to being agnostic, and now, according to Tommy, has come to some sort of belief. Stark is probably the top sociologist of religion in the nation. It seems his "education" and continued learning and research had the opposite effect you imagine.
On the other hand, I meet people who don't know the most basic facts about their history and the world around them, who are ardent atheists. Evidently didn't seem to take much "education" to convince 'em.
We theists must have missed the course where atheists offer those non-fallacious evidence-based arguments for their position. Nor do they seem to be available on the 'net -- as Ryan points out, every couple weeks I take a whack at a few more stupid arguments from atheists -- take a look around.
Maybe I'm just wrong -- or maybe I'm missing the better ones. Feel free to correct me. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding.
Now, belatedly, on to Tommy's response -- with apologies for the long delay.
Perhaps I should have clarified my remarks somewhat. Unfortunately, we are not all held accountable for our misdeeds in our lifetimes.
Great, then! So I misunderstood (perhaps reasonably, given your phrasing here) your position. Good enough. We both agree that many evil acts in history go unpunished.
But what I specifically had in mind were ordinary folks like you and me. It is a lot easier to get away with evil acts when you have the coercive apparatus of the state at your beck and call... We can try to engage in violent acts against other people, but sooner or later we will pay the price for it.
Two responses:
(1) In the West, "ordinary people" are mainly repaid for evil by the surrounding state or culture. What kinds of misdeeds get punished (and how often) then, is a feature of the kind of society in which we find ourselves.
In some countries, a man can be praised and rewarded for brutally killing a child. Did his daughter marry against his wishes? Did a son convert to another religion? Societal pressure will be brought to bear to murder that child, and he will be praised and rewarded for doing so.
In Russia, for years, killing one's enemies was important to getting ahead. Does Putin get away with it? He does so not because he controls the state but because there is already exists a societal acceptance for such acts. (In fact, we might say his power arises directly from societal tolerance (or even affinity) for political thuggery.)
There are lots of societies where petty and grand corruptions (and even violence) are rewarded and praised rather than punished. You seem to be taking our wonderful Western society and governmental ethic and extrapolating the rest of the world as being similar. It isn't.
To the extent you agree with this point, you must also then ask why our society is different than others, what influenced it to be so just that you think evil is generally rewarded on earth.
If you agree other societies aren't as just, you're inadvertently arguing that atheism, which provides no motives for doing the right thing when nobody's looking, isn't harmful here in the West because we live in a particular kind of society -- one, I'd point out, which is mostly based on Judeo-Christian values.
To the extent you disagree, you'll have to make the cases that societies in general punish most bad behavior, or make the case that atheism itself actually encourages good behavior -- even (or especially) when the surrounding society or state offers no incentives for morality or (more importantly) when the incentives are perverse.
(2) You focus on "violence". Yet since when is evil only a matter of "violence"? Sure, violence is the worst, but there's a lot more evil behavior out than than mere "violence". Cheating, lying, verbal cruelty, apathy, belief the state should run your life, etc. -- individually each can be small, but together they make life truly ugly. Violence may certainly be punished in the majority of cases -- but the majority of wrongdoing which makes a society suck isn't necessarily violent.
I certainly don't want to live in a world where people will steal from me. To take it further, a couple of years ago when I was going food shopping, I found a woman's wallet in a shopping cart. Not only did I not steal her money, I looked at her drivers license to get her home address and drove to her house to return it to her...
You are exactly the kind of good guy I thought you were, Tommy. But, as you say, you yourself probably absorbed those values from the religion of your youth or the culture around you.
I don't have a problem with, or anything against "atheists" as individuals. Many are wonderful people, some are better than their religious counterparts. But it's a separate question what happens when a society, as a whole, more deeply imbibes atheistic precepts.
I don't mean to be blunt -- and I'm not diminishing you personally at all -- but good atheists, in my experience, seem often good in spite of or aside from their atheism, not because of. If I had to make a case based on your own words, I'd point to the way you suggest society or human reason to encourage moral behavior*, and the way you inadvertently appeal (in the last section below) to a religious idea to safeguard liberty.
(* And my other not-so-subtle point here is that the vast accumulation of evidence shows these alternatives don't work.)
As for "the universe" rewarding us, I make no such claim and never did.
I don't recall saying you did. Sometimes I raise issues because I suspect they may come up -- either in the reader's mind, or possibly in a future discussion. Or because I otherwise feel it's related. It doesn't mean I'm attributing the argument to you. I would have done so explicitly.
I opened myself up to the moral teachings of other faiths and ethical teachings. A lot of my morals and ethics are also derived from Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism...
It's interesting, because the study of these exact same beliefs has driven home to me why I'm not, and don't wish to be, a Buddhist, Hindu, or Confucian -- and why I have no yearning for a society strongly shaped by such. All beliefs contain truths, and all truths are worth knowing (and we often take what we have for granted) -- so I strongly agree that people should get to know other belief systems -- both for their good and bad points.
But the question isn't whether each belief contains any truth (each does), but whether, on the whole, it is more helpful, or more true, or creates a better society than another.
If you want to understand what actual, historical Hinduism implies, writ large, then study the history of Indian society. Have you done so? I have, and thus see how a few basic assumptions (reincarnation, no personal God) can lead directly, if taken seriously, to Castism (which makes western-style racism look tame by comparison), Sutee (wife-burning), and tremendous poverty in which India found herself.
The same can be said of Buddhism: study India again, parts of China, and also take a look at critical (not popular, which are generally fictional) accounts of Tibetan history. Have you done so?
And if you want to compare Chinese Confucianism to Western Judeo-Christian beliefs, (and Greco-Roman paganism, and the heyday of Islamic civilization) I'd recommend Stark's trilogy of books on the middle ages, as well as many of the references he suggests therein. (I studied Chinese history in college, but Stark points out things I had to pull out of the professor myself.)
I'm glad to hear that you study other beliefs -- but it's not just enough to read the beliefs alone (or worse, read primarily westernized ("Christianized") versions of them) -- you have to study what they actually mean (and meant) in context. Societies are great ways of running experiments ("what happens if?") over hundred or thousands of years to see what happens. I'd sure you'd agree that we harm ourselves, and our future, if we don't do that research.
And on that note...
I, on the otherhand, believe it is entirely possible to create a standard of morals and ethics that are beneficial from studying the human experience. We know what works and what doesn't.
But do we? I see Oprah on TV pushing the exact same beliefs which led to fatalistic complacency in India. I see people clamoring for the same kinds of social and governmental experiments which have already been run in Europe and Asia -- and failed. Most people in the West don't even understand their own society's history: They think the middle ages was a step backwards, rather than a time of unheard-of technological and social progress, they believe (incorrectly) we thought the world was flat in the time of Columbus, and they believe science arose from the enlightenment (which was, to the contrary, a bloodbath and time of economic regress). Most people don't realize that pagan societies in general had a low, not a high view of women, and tended to (as a direct result of their values) discard unwanted children. To name just a few.
In my view, most people know precious little about actual history.
For the most part, and I am sure you would agree with me, that your morals and my morals overlap. I would guess it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 90%, give or take a few.
I agree! But you have already admitted that you and I were raised, not only in the same society, but even with the same religious assumptions. Today we have different "theological" views, but those values still remain -- as the story about you returning the purse demonstrates.
By using our values as a kind of criteria for what works, we're just appealing, circularly, to the values we've already absorbed.
To demonstrate, just pick a value -- the more obvious the better. Do we agree rape is bad? We do. But if we were raised in another culture, we might believe it was just fine to rape a woman for having dressed a bit too revealingly. Do we agree it's wrong to throw people in jail for having dissenting ideas? We do. But if we lived during the time of the French Revolution (the so-called "Age of Reason"), we might have been just fine with the idea. The Greeks were certainly learned, but they thought slavery was just fine, and the natural order of things. Until it was abolished, everything in history said exactly so.
I'm sorry, I see no evidence for the proposition that people are good at examining history, and, laying aside their pre-existing cultural and religious values, can then just derive "values" from it. And to the extent it's possible, I don't think most people bother doing so.
Look at our own discussion: Can an atheist and a Christian -- raised with even the same values and culture -- look at history and draw the same lessons about "what works" and doesn't? One person might look at the enlightenment and sees the "Age of Reason", another sees a bloodbath which heralded the beginning of modern state-worship and fascism. Is either so obviously wrong?
Sorry, but you seem to believe (on faith) something for which I see no evidence: that people are good at naturally deriving sensible values from history.
You worry about the effects on the future if atheism becomes more popular and pervasive. But can't I have the same worries about Christians?
You should indeed have concerns, and I'd advise you look to sources you might disagree with to learn about the answers. The most Christian society in the world was Europe in the middle ages. I've read both accounts: both these were horrible times, plagued with witch-burning and religious wars (the view I was taught) and a more enlightened view, which debunked many of the fabrications about these times, and put them into perspective against other available worldviews.
Again, I'd recommend reading one of Stark's histories of the middle ages. I found the evidence there much stronger that from the other side.
What if in the future a substantial number of Christians in this country, including those with access to the levers of power in our government...
First, throughout our nation's history "a substantial number of Christians" have had control of the government. Look to our nation's history -- good points and bad (and compare it to others' -- say, Europe, Russia, or Asia) -- to see what that means. Unless you feel we've been living in a fascist nation until recently, that seems like it's been a good thing, to me.
[What if they c]ome to believe that we are living in "the End Times" and they decide to commit our nation to war because they see it as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy?
This oft-heard argument demonstrates the importance of learning things in context, and on their own terms -- not just believing the "popular" accounts we're told to believe.
Other than a few very tiny fringe groups, the vast majority of Christians don't believe they can bring about God's kingdom on earth through the use of governmental power. (And those that do are generally Democrats.) I should know something about this: I've attended, for significant times, many different types of churches: from stuffy Liberal Protestant (Presbyterian and Episcopalian) to far-out flavors of Pentecostal. I see no such (meaningful) belief-trend out there. So we're kind of talking about a fantasy scenario here, Tommy.
But, just playing along: Yes, I'd agree. If someone thought that and started a war for only such a reason, that would clearly be bad. If I were confronted with such a group, as a Christian, I'd oppose it, and point out they were blatantly opposing the bible's actual teachings. (The biblical "End Times" is depicted as a time of persecution against Christians, and general lack of faith -- not a time when Christians start wars against unbelievers.)
But you can't just do the trick where you look at one danger obsessively (particularly one highly unlikely danger) and pretend it isn't counterbalanced by other more likely ones coming from other directions.
The precise scenario you spell out above has never happened in Christian history -- but the scenarios where powerful, ardent secularists tend to be want to do away with everyone who disagrees is quite real, and quite substantiated -- from the French Revolution right on up to contemporary quotes from Harris or Dawkins (who implies religious people are the equivalent of people who commit violence against children!).
Throughout much of the history of Christian Europe, Jews were victims of frequent and vicious pogroms. I am sure you know this. The pagans of the Baltic regions found themselves under attack by Christian warriors who believed that all their sins would be forgiven for killing the heathen.
Agree: every belief (and non-belief) in the world has had a adherents who have done bad or violent things in the name of that belief. The question is of relative numbers and frequency (as well as whether those actions are favored or opposed by each belief) -- not whether they ever happen.
And in the 4th century C.E. when Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, it is likely that no one would have predicted these future atrocities.
Nor would they have predicted the rise of the university system, the prevalence of the Christian overthrow of Aristotelean philosophy (and thus) the development of scientific inquiry, the discovery of America the elimination of slavery (which first happened in Europe in the 800s), and the resulting technological developments.
Or perhaps they would have, at least in part: Just as factions (foreshadowing religious splits and wars) were already developing among Christians, so also the precursors to Christian hospitals and institutions of learning (as well as growing opposition to slavery) were already appearing.
I've tried to earnestly weight the good against the bad in that entire equation, as best I have been able to trace it out. It doesn't result in this simple-minded "religion bad, atheism good" view which Harris, Dawkins and others seem to promote. To the contrary, it seems to indicate a unique and positive role for certain positive forms of religious practice and belief -- and serious harm from other options.
(Atheism still ranks as the worst in my assessment -- currently one notch below Islam, going by the numbers. No offense to you: if all atheists were like you, I wouldn't be saying that, and those things wouldn't have happened. And yes, a similar argument could be made for Christians. But my point regards frequency and numbers, not the best or worst individuals.)
I agree entirely we should try to extrapolate (that is the basis of my argument to you) -- but would add that we should do so from the fullest picture possible (warts and good points), not from a narrow tendentious view which forgets large segments of the picture. Yet many atheists (I'm not saying you) in their own intellectual jihad, paint a picture of Medieval Europe as one of the worst places on earth. But the truth is you need to compare it against every other place on earth -- against Atheistic China, against Buddhist Tibet, against Pagan Greece and Rome, against Animist Africa.
And, unfortunately, we have to sift through a lot of the academic "urban legends" we've been taught. That's why its' valuable to read from sources we might disagree with.
But we can instill in ourselves and our immediate descendants a simple premise, and that is that people have the right not to be harmed.
We have "the right" not to be harmed? If your child asks you, from where will you say this "right" comes? And thus when can it also be taken away?
Do you "harm" a criminal if you put in him jail? What about a dissenting minority? And who is to define "harm" -- does it include mere bad feelings, as so many campus speech codes imply? Again, you must also teach that child a whole set of values about what is "right" and "wrong" (and thus "harmful") -- as well as some justification for those values. Is it just because "Dad said so?" Or because "Society says so?" What happens when society goes off the rails, then? Does the child follow along?
Indeed, in the worst atrocities of the twentieth century, "harm" was defined collectively, not individually, (as were "rights"); atheism offered, and offers, nothing intellectually to discourage that trend, and a great deal to encourage it.
No offense to you personally, but I find it more than a tiny bit amusing that -- repeatedly in my experience -- atheists think the way to safeguard our society is to speak of "rights" -- a concept which arose directly from Christian Theism and Deism, and has no coherent meaning outside that context. (And worse, is often thus corrupted to mean societal, governmental, or positive rights, which necessarily imply an authoritarian state.)
So to summarize, we agree that history doesn't show that wrong doing is punished. But you say that ordinary wrongdoing is punished by society -- implying atheism doesn't have to provide that incentive for us mere mortals. (So are you then implying I have a valid point regarding rulers?)
I point out there are profoundly unpleasant societies, where good is punished and evil is rewarded. (In some of these atheism has even played a crucial enabling role.) I argue that humans are no good at deriving morals from history. I point out that your appeals to society and rights re-enforce my thesis above: that atheism itself is does nothing to encourage these things. Further, I point to the short but bloody history of atheism to suggest that, in the worst cases, it does far more harm than Christianity has done.
But I'm not here to hang the behavior of others (atheists in other societies) on every atheist I know. Not at all. My point is simply that atheism, writ large, leads to the diminution of values that we Westerners cherish, and can lead to far, far worse. Atheists frequently mislead themselves about this trend, and don't realize the extent to which our culture differs from others, and don't realize the extent to which their own values were derived from religion.
Thanks for the dialog! Best to you and your family!
Hello Tim,
Perhaps I should have clarified my remarks somewhat. Unfortunately, we are not all held accountable for our misdeeds in our lifetimes. Yes, it is sad that Stalin or Mao were not brought to justice in their lifetimes. I hate to say it, but sometimes the bad guys get away with it. That is admittedly part of the appeal of belief in the idea of a just creator watching over us and judging us for our deeds. If Stalin and Mao did not meet justice for their crimes in this world, it is comforting to believe that they will pay for it in some hellish condition in the afterlife.
But not all of them got away with it in their lifetimes. Mussolini was murdered and hung upside down from a meathook. Adolf Hitler blew his brains out in his bunker in Berlin, and a host of other Nazis and Hitler supporters met violent ends. Nicolai Ceaucescu (hope I spelled that right!) wound up in front of a firing squad. And while Stalin did not pay for his actions (though there is speculation that he was either poisoned or refused medical care in his final days) his henchman Lavrenti Beria was executed.
But what I specifically had in mind were ordinary folks like you and me. It is a lot easier to get away with evil acts when you have the coercive apparatus of the state at your beck and call. But for people like you and me, we of course don't have such power at our command. We can try to engage in violent acts against other people, but sooner or later we will pay the price for it. That was the whole point of the hypothetical example I provided for you.
And yes, it is certainly possible to commit immoral actions and not get caught. There have been times where it occurred to me "I could steal this and get away with it" but I didn't commit the theft. I extrapolate from my personal experience and consider what kind of world we would live in if everyone who had the opportunity to steal and did so. I certainly don't want to live in a world where people will steal from me. To take it further, a couple of years ago when I was going food shopping, I found a woman's wallet in a shopping cart. Not only did I not steal her money, I looked at her drivers license to get her home address and drove to her house to return it to her. Now why would I do that? Well, in part it made me feel good. But even more important, she will remember that a total stranger went out of her way to return something very valuable to her, and perhaps it might inspire her to do something similar if she ever finds herself in the same situation.
As for "the universe" rewarding us, I make no such claim and never did. The universe, I would argue, is indifferent to us. An asteroid could strike this planet twenty years from now and wipe out the human race. What I would argue is that doing good deeds helps contribute to a moral climate that encourages people to be good. You could call it an "enlightened self interest" if you like, though I would add that practicing enlightened self interest can become habit forming. But I do not expect any direct external reward for doing what I believe to be good. And I get that from the Analects of Confucius, which tells us that we shouldn't expect any reward for doing what is right. Doing what is right is its own reward.
I don't know where you are coming from with racism and "the government involved in trying to figure out people's inner beliefs", unless you are talking about hate crime laws. Please confirm.
But as for judging whether something is moral or immoral, I see nothing wrong with using harm or lack thereof as a criteria for determining whether an action is good or bad. A married man who becomes a coke addict and ends up dying in a hospital from an overdose, leaving his wife to raise his kids alone clearly harmed not only himself, but his family as well. Surely, both you and I have no disagreement on this. Now, allow me to present a hypothetical situation. A sterile man and a woman unable to conceive are attracted to each other sexually. They are both STD free. Over the course of a year, they meet up for one or two days a month at a nice hotel and spend that time engaging in a sexual marathon. During this time they are not involved in a relationship with anyone else.
Now, as you can probably expect, I would submit that there was nothing wrong with what this man and woman were doing. Granted, one could argue that maybe their time together would have been better spent volunteering at a soup kitchen for the homeless or some other altruistic endeavor. But heck, I am sure even devout Christians spend part of their free time engaging in leisurely pursuits instead of spending 100% of every waking hour actively helping their fellow men and women. On the other hand, I would expect that you as a Christian consider my hypothetical couple to be engaging in sinful and immoral behavior because you believe it upsets some all powerful deity. And that is where you and I part company.
Personally, I don't consider my doing a good deed to be better than your doing a good deed because I do it for the sheer sake of it while you might be motivated by your belief in the divine. All that matters to me is that a person does good regardless of whether it derives from a theistic or humanistic worldview.
I infer that you believe that whatever I do that is good and moral, at least by your standards, is because I have imbibed a general Judeo-Christian ethic. I don't disagree that there is some truth to it. Richard Dawkins tells some anecdote about a person in Northern Ireland telling another Northern Irelander that he is an atheist, and then the other person asks him "Yes, but are you a Catholic atheist or a Protestant atheist?" I don't know how much of my blog you have read, but in several posts I mentioned that during my teenage years I was deeply religious Catholic. Of course my moral outlook would be shaped to some degree by background.
That being said, when I lost my faith in Christianity, I opened myself up to the moral teachings of other faiths and ethical teachings. A lot of my morals and ethics are also derived from Buddhism, Hinduism and Confucianism, among others. I did not derive anything from Islam though. I tried reading an English translation of the Quran and found it to be absolutely atrocious. I am sure you will agree with me on that one.
Here is what I am reading from you and others like you Tim. Like me, you know that we as humans are flawed creatures. We are prone to anger, jealousy and greed. Because we are imperfect, theists feel that we need something greater than us to set the rules for us otherwise our world will be in chaos. So, you embrace a particular religious worldview that you believe provides the standard that we all must live by.
I, on the otherhand, believe it is entirely possible to create a standard of morals and ethics that are beneficial from studying the human experience. We know what works and what doesn't. For the most part, and I am sure you would agree with me, that your morals and my morals overlap. I would guess it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 90%, give or take a few.
You worry about the effects on the future if atheism becomes more popular and pervasive. But can't I have the same worries about Christians? What if in the future a substantial number of Christians in this country, including those with access to the levers of power in our government, come to believe that we are living in "the End Times" and they decide to commit our nation to war because they see it as a fulfillment of Biblical prophecy?
Throughout much of the history of Christian Europe, Jews were victims of frequent and vicious pogroms. I am sure you know this. The pagans of the Baltic regions found themselves under attack by Christian warriors who believed that all their sins would be forgiven for killing the heathen. Were these actions moral by your Judeo-Christian values? I would venture you would answer no. And in the 4th century C.E. when Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire, it is likely that no one would have predicted these future atrocities. We can't predict our future either, though it is possible to extrapolate from present trends to create a number of plausible scenarios.
As to future propensities, we can't control what people in the future will think. But we can instill in ourselves and our immediate descendants a simple premise, and that is that people have the right not to be harmed. Whether the grounds for doing so have a theistic or humanistic basis, it lays the groundwork for acting as a curb on tyranny and to promote a virtuous society. I would point out that the countries where the worst excesses of communist tyranny occurred, Russia and China, were autocratic monarchies where there was no concept of the rights of the individual.
Sadly, it is getting late now, and though I did not cover everything I wanted to, I will have to continue this later in the week.
Posted by: Tommy on November 14, 2007 11:27 PM