Atheism And Amorality: Are The Consequences Of Adopting Atheism “Unlivable”?
Today’s article was written by Luis Dias, a blog subscriber.
Christians and other religious people often use the moral argument not only as evidence of a deity, but also as a philosophical weapon against atheism, and the argument, though never made explicit, implicitly goes as follows:
- God is the Creator of Morals
- Atheists deny existence of God, therefore
- The atheists’ utopia is an amoral society
They obviously cite Stalin and Pol Pot’s example to strengthen this idiocy. Further more, they say, without a divine reference, an infinite guardian of values of right and wrong, atheists are left dumbfounded and such a godless society eventually recedes to the stone age, and this is where they even bring the 2nd law of thermodynamics and equate it to the theology of the original sin (!)
Apart from the implicit circular reasoning of it which could be teleported to any kind of silly argument, like for instance:
- God is the Creator of milk
- Atheists deny the existence of God, therefore
- There’s nothing stopping “milk” of degenerating to a poison. (remember the 2nd law!!)
- Milk isn’t poison, therefore God exists, QED.
It’s a very popular fallacy. I’ll generalize it to make the mistake even clearer:
- God is the sole structure of all things
- Atheists deny the existence of God
- Absent the sole structure, the cosmos collapses instantly
This would only be true if, and only if, there wouldn’t be any other structure lying around unknown or just plainly ignored by theists that make sure that things don’t fall apart, but rather, thrive and evolve. In fact, there is nothing but hearsay to prove that God is indeed such structure.
In the fairy tale world, morals would exist apart from humans, eternally defined by God, and humans would only discover (not invent) a few bits about it from now and then because of God’s good will. Of course, there is no evidence whatsoever to the existence of these morals outside of human existence. It’s only perfectly reasonable to affirm that morals are man’s made, just like potatoes, lemons and cows are. The key word to all this is of course Evolution. There’s a reason why Dawkins is constantly evoking Darwin’s work as the most extraordinary idea ever made, and that’s because it works on almost every process that has time to generate new iterations and death to kill the bad ones. This is true in life’s evolution, it’s true on the artificial selection of the animals and vegetables that were evolved to fit our own tastes and biological needs, but it is also true in the ideas that mankind evolved.
Morality is among these ideas. The only ingredients you’ll ever need to generate morals are:
- A somewhat intelligent species
- Time
- Death
Natural Selection does the rest. It probably begins when people realize other people’s death and suffering and are able to understand that it isn’t exactly the kind of thing they desire for themselves. If they see a murder or a theft, they are able to think “what if it was against me?”, and the Golden Rule begins to generate and evolve by itself. People don’t kill because they recognize other’s as equals to them and don’t like the idea of being killed. Same as theft, treating others well, lying, etc. A society that foster these ideas thrives, the ones who don’t end up collapsing on their own.
Usually, people admire how well the world is aligned according to our needs, but the real reason isn’t obvious, due to our limited lifespan, which is that We live upon the shoulders of our ancestors’ hard work and struggle to build the structures of our world, and upon the failures of those seeking destruction, greed, and malice.
Natural Selection isn’t perfect and it won’t always choose the best option. It will choose what survives. No wonder then that irrational beliefs are just as common as the Golden Rule. One common trait is to define a certain “characteristic” of the perpetrator and generalize that people who share these characteristics are certainly just as bad, as in “The murderer killed because he was black, let’s get rid of blacks”. We can all recognize this racism, “This society suffers in the hands of the Jews”, or more subtle examples, as in “That for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”, from the Catholic Encyclopedia. The underlying message is clear, either you people bow down to God or you are eventually bound to become manic psychopaths.
Fortunately though, there is another idea that tries to really discern what’s better and what’s worse faster than Natural Selection or Religion will ever do. It’s called Reason. It dispenses with all the fairy tales and all the myths of our history. It fuels itself out of reality, to observe what is going on, to measure it, to hypothesize, test and conclude. It fuels itself from debate, battle of ideas, and a passion to discover the truth, humility and patience.
As a bonus, I leave you with other very interesting lines from the Catholic Encyclopedia, which I am sure will provoke a healthy discussion ;).
- “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
- “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”
- “Thus the Greeks of classical times were in moral questions influenced rather by non-religious conceptions such as that of aidos (natural shame) than by fear of the gods; while one great religious system, namely Buddhism, explicitly taught the entire independence of the moral code from any belief in God. To these arguments we reply, first: that the savages of today are not primitives, but degenerates. It is the merest superstition to suppose that these degraded races can enlighten us as to what were the beliefs of man in his primitive state. It is among civilized races, where man has developed normally, that we must seek for knowledge as to what is natural to man.”
- “that for a nation which has attained maturity, morality is essentially dependent on the religious sanction, and that when this is rejected, morality will soon decay.”
- “We may see this wherever the great revolt from Christianity, which began in the eighteenth century, and which is so potent a factor today, has spread. It is naturally in France, where the revolt began, that the movement has attained its fullest development. There its effects are not disputed. The birth-rate has shrunk until the population, were it not for the immigration of Flemings and Italians, would be a diminishing quantity; Christian family life is disappearing; the number of divorces and of suicides multiplies annually; while one of the most ominous of all symptoms is the alarming increase of juvenile crime.”
- “Without God, an absolute duty is inconceivable, because there is nobody to impose obligation. I cannot oblige myself, because I cannot be my own superior; still less can I oblige the whole human race, and yet I feel myself obliged to many things, and cannot but feel myself absolutely obliged as man, and hence cannot but regard all those who share human nature with me as obliged likewise.”
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Wow I didn’t realise it was this big. I fear people won’t read it!
Luis Dias
5 Sep 08 at 9:07 am (GMT)
I’m sure they will. I did!
Adrian Hayter
5 Sep 08 at 9:10 am (GMT)
The atheists’ utopia is an amoral society
I think this is true - if, as many theists do, you define morality as your god’s “law”. If that’s the case then it’s obvious that atheism is dangerous, as we non-believers come up with our own rules of conduct which, leaving out a god, are naturally going to be inferior and therefore dangerous. We’re - in many theists’ eyes - little better than children, and can’t help but screw things up.
Pointing to other sources for morality isn’t going to cut the mustard with anyone who thinks in this way. (Especially if they also think that the natural world is corrupt - as any system derived from it must be likewise corrupted).
Matt M
5 Sep 08 at 10:06 am (GMT)
Good point Matt. But I’m not pointing this to theists. I’ve done so at the blog “Atheism is Dead” to no avail, so I have quite the notion of that stone wall they lifted. I wrote this first to wrap up my own ideas about it. I think it’s very important that we build on the precision of our own ideas so that we know what we are talking about when confronting other’s point of view. Evolution is indeed a very powerful idea, one that has blitzkried all over the christian’s terrain of the history of life of our own planet. The fact that it can explain so well and with so little ingredients how we came to be, how our mind works as it does, how our morals evolved, is so stunning that it is no surprise to see how theists either accept it but somehow raise a frontier between evolution and “the beginning” (which is a concession of massive size), or simply deny it and endorse creationism.
Ironically, to do the latter, they have to deny naturalism as well, which is something that should be regarded as insane in this day and age of the internet, science and technology.
Luis Dias
5 Sep 08 at 2:19 pm (GMT)
Ahhhh - I see.
I’d strongly recommend (if you haven’t already read them) JL Mackie’s ‘Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong’ and Matt Ridley’s ‘The Origin of Virtue’. Both really helped me sharpen up my thoughts on morality and where it comes from.
For me the origin of morality (or rules for dealing with others) is the fact that co-operation is often more beneficial than conflict. By living and working together in societies we’ve achieved far more and raised our standard of living far higher than would ever be possible in the Hobbsian war of all against all. Morality is a fundamental prerequisite for social living. Abandon it, and pretty soon you’ll see your life reduced to being “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” And very few people would be happy with that.
Matt M
5 Sep 08 at 2:35 pm (GMT)
I will, Matt, thanks for the advice. Your take on morality is exactly equal to my own. Co-op is better than conflict, and evolution takes care of the rest. If a society choses the latter, it will never thrive and will be overcome by more cooperative ones. Usually this was done by conquest, which can seem to be contradictory but it is not. History can be seen as a sum of thousands/millions of tribes/nations battling each others in terms of war, economic warfare, etc. The ones who fared better are our direct ancestors.
There is no coincidence in the fact that these thriving nations had generally the most humanistic ideals of them all.
Luis Dias
5 Sep 08 at 3:28 pm (GMT)
There’s a catch here. A very interesting one. Yes, co-op is in fact the best tool, but if a society doesn’t prepare for war, for conflict, it will disappear. A war mongering nation will thrive if its own constituency is very cooperative among themselves. Such nations are empires. And empires battle among themselves which has the better “co-op”, by war straining. It’s evolution in full speed! But of course that this paradox is only stable if citizens don’t regard foreigners as equals. I suspect this is the origin of racism. The moment that people realize that they are equals to the ones they are battling with, and recognize the pain and suffering, war support virtually ends. This happened in Vietnam and is happening in Iraq, to a degree.
Luis Dias
5 Sep 08 at 3:40 pm (GMT)
That’s true.
But I don’t think it really challenges the original idea. Knowledge of the other person is crucial for co-operation - as we can’t trust someone we don’t know. Early social groups (as I recall) often knew so little about others that they didn’t even regard them as people. They had no way of predicting their behaviour, which would have made co-operation too risky. So defensiveness and exploitation would’ve ruled until the two groups got to know each other a little better. You can see this even up to the present day - in wars which had popular support it was common to see the enemy dehumanised.
Where the possibility of co-operation is realised, wars tend to be quite rare. You run the danger of severe losses, even if you win. And trade is often the cheaper route than occupation in the long-run.
Not to mention the fact that aggression makes you a less inviting partner for others to deal with.
Consequently, empires tend to be quite unstable - sure you get some benefits, but you end up making enemies both abroad and at home.
The world seems to be moving towards an “evolutionarily stable strategy” - no country wants to be taken advantage of, but most see the long-term benefits of co-operation (and remember what tends to happen to those that don’t play nice). Just like people.
Matt M
5 Sep 08 at 5:37 pm (GMT)
The irony is that our ability to fight war comes from our ability to cooperate with others.
As it is, large scale world wars are unlikely, if only because the countries capable of doing them would take too much damage. Small scale wars on the other hand will continue.
Samuel Skinner
6 Sep 08 at 1:01 am (GMT)
I just realized something. Both the first and second world wars were net resource drains. Modern total warfare is always that destructive. In fact looking at European histroy, they go through cycles of peace and brutal war, which makes them return to peace, etc.
Of course, the fact they have no internal oil supply means they can’t fight :). Essentially, you can’t go to war because without trade you die. Similar to Germany in 18, but worse.
Samuel Skinner
6 Sep 08 at 6:53 am (GMT)
Religion is just organised fraud. Used to control the basically ignorant from anarchy. To suggest only christians are moral is reprehensible given that most atheists live moral lives , yet they do not need a god to decide what is moral and what isnt.
By the christians version every atheist is the most immoral, untrustworthy person around. This just does’t stand up to scrutiny.
To give credence to their own lies they feel a need to degrade someone else.
Yet historically religions all are amongst the most perverse group within our society. One only has to watch them at work, view any of the various court cases against churches or their members for the most distasteful of crimes, or just watch how they prey upon the needy to recruit new members.
Jason
8 Sep 08 at 4:48 am (GMT)
Samuel Skinner, good thoughts. It seems that we are living in a convergence approach, where full blown wars simply do not work anymore.
Jason, you may be right, but you’ll never win a debate against religious based on that. They’ll shoot you with the no true scotman fallacy quicker than you can even blink your own eye, “but that’s not a true christian!”. One wonders what that even means…
Luis Dias
8 Sep 08 at 4:11 pm (GMT)
If a person believes that morality stems from religion, and they believe the old book/talmud, then we really ought to imprison them immediately.
Their god is a narcissistic mysogenistic genocidal bastard responsible for the annihilation of almost everyone on earth and later went after entire civilizations of survivors. The very same who killed more than dozen children for making fun of a bald man, ordered a man to kill his child, chose for his prophets incestuous rapists and murderers.
If that’s the deity guiding their morals, then we’re all at great risk. I suggest we work immediately to lock them all away.
Dan
9 Sep 08 at 12:35 am (GMT)
@Dan: Wow. That’s pretty scary… :O
But what about us NON-Judeo-Christian-Islamic theists who believe in a moral, kind God? :D Surely we shouldn’t deserve to meet the same terrible fate :D
SK♥
9 Sep 08 at 3:06 am (GMT)
@Jason:I tend to disagree about religion as anarchy, but I’m not Christian either, so go figure. I am a theist though, and I’d like to stress the (HUGE) difference between the Judeo-Christian(-Islamic?) deity and the generic concept of God as a moral figure - there is, from what I’ve heard in the Bible, a HUGE difference
SK♥
9 Sep 08 at 3:09 am (GMT)
@sk i think you misread my words. i am saying religion was used as a tool to prevent anarchy, not that religion is anarchy.
Oh yes i agree 100% about the moral argument. I find it absolutely disataseful any religion purports to be more moralistic than a person who lives a moral life with no need for the so called moral controls of a deity.
Jason
9 Sep 08 at 5:06 am (GMT)
Why would such an idea persist? If the people putting it forth believe their religion (which is only a few thousand years old) is the only correct one are they suggesting that everyone who lived before the creation of the “one true religion” was amoral? Also, why are they only leveling this accusation at atheists rather than at everyone who doesn’t share their particular flavor of religion?
I’ve been accused of being amoral because I don’t believe in God many times. Finally, I decided to write down a theory of how people could be moral without being religious. Basically, I explained that we would have needed to evolve concern for members of our troop or tribe to survive and that empathy is a natural offshoot of this. I believe empathy is all that is needed for morality, not some system including a belief in the supernatural.
You can read my article about morality without religion at this web address - http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/480619/where_morality_comes_from_one_atheists.html?cat=47
Kylyssa Shay
5 Oct 08 at 8:45 pm (GMT)