Atheists don't go on more killing sprees
posted by Liberal Eagle at 10:33 AM
So Atrios got his hackles up when Mara Vanderslice, Kerry's director of religious outreach, said in this interview that:
Atrios:
I want to second that. I'm tired of the idea that religion is inherently a better guide to moral behavior than anything us unbelievers can possibly offer up.
I mean, just to be clear, I believe (and Atrios says he believes) that when believers and nonbelievers can unite to pursue shared progressive goals, that's a great thing. And while I personally have no use for the idea of God, I believe in other people's right to feel differently, just as I expect them to believe in my right not to believe.
That said, though, I am very suspicious of religion as a guide to morality. I mean, the argument that religion is inherently the best source for morality seems to hinge on something like this: "if morality isn't set down by God, where does it come from? Then you could just run around and murder people."
Well, look, morality to an atheist like me is something more like a community objective. I, like all humans, need for the community I live in and the natural world I live in to be able to function. I will be better off if everyone behaves in a certain way toward those entities. So, I have a moral imperative to my community and my world, not to dump toxic waste in rivers, rob banks, or go on killing sprees, because those things are damaging to the community and world, and if everyone did them civilization and the natural order would collapse.
That might seem like thin gruel to someone who's used to the idea that morality is set in stone by a sky dude who can cast you into eternal torture if you step out of line, but it seems to work; atheists do not behave more antisocially than religious people.
In fact, I would say that atheists can be trusted on moral matters better than people who take bronze-age texts literally and act on that. I am not especially familiar with the actual content of the Koran, but I did study the Bible in school. The Bible endorses slavery in a lot of places. It never once opposes slavery. The Bible is also very soft on rape. It mandates the killing of disobedient children--multiple times. It instructs men who find their wives not to be virgins to beat them to death. Actually, the Bible is pretty much cover-to-cover appallingly anti-female.
Taken at its word, the Bible would seem to endorse killing heretics--in both the Old and New Testaments. Certainly this is what some of the church's greatest minds got from a careful reading of it--Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine both endorsed this reading.
I would say we who have the benefit of the last 2000 years of civilization and philosophy are a damn sight better at the whole morality thing than anyone who had anything to do with the Bible, including Jesus of Nazareth.
Ah, but my religious liberal friends (and I am using the word "friends" sincerely; a number of my dearest friends are believers of some sort) will correctly point out that they don't take the Bible literally, that their faith guides them in moral matters but they don't take every word as, well, gospel truth.
To which I would ask, well, how do you decide? What is it that tells you that, say, the golden rule is a noble moral principle (and it is, which is why it turns up in so many different religions) and the death penalty for working on the Sabbath is not? When Jesus waxes about how obedient a good slave should be, how do you know he's wrong?
You know because you are a modern person, with modern moral ideas. And, using those ideas and your modern eyes, you are able to be morally right where the Bible is wrong. To me, this suggests--maybe even proves--that the kind of morality that is free of religion is superior to the kind of morality that is tied to it. At the very least, it would seem to demonstrate that the followers of that very, very flawed bronze-age text have no more claim to being the "conscience" of the Democratic party than anyone else does.
I'd love to be involved in continuing to build up the voices of faith in the party and providing the training and infrastructure on the ground to state parties, to future candidates, to reach out to these constituencies, because I just believe that the religious community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic Party, and the more we bring that back in, I believe, the stronger our party will be, the better we'll be able to represent our positive vision for the future, and I think it'll help us start winning elections again.
Atrios:
So, "the religious community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic party." Presumably, and if I'm misunderstanding correct me, she's suggesting that basic moral grounding must come from the religious community. Now, this is part and parcel with the basic messages people like me get regularly from people all over the spectrum, that atheists and agnostics lack a conscience and a sense of values, and these things only come from religion and the religious.
I'd never write that "the atheist community can be the conscience and the soul of the Democratic party," though I imagine if I did Bill Donohue would send out a press release. It'd be a highly exclusionary statement, and it would suggest an inherent moral superiority of the godless over the faithful.
I want to second that. I'm tired of the idea that religion is inherently a better guide to moral behavior than anything us unbelievers can possibly offer up.
I mean, just to be clear, I believe (and Atrios says he believes) that when believers and nonbelievers can unite to pursue shared progressive goals, that's a great thing. And while I personally have no use for the idea of God, I believe in other people's right to feel differently, just as I expect them to believe in my right not to believe.
That said, though, I am very suspicious of religion as a guide to morality. I mean, the argument that religion is inherently the best source for morality seems to hinge on something like this: "if morality isn't set down by God, where does it come from? Then you could just run around and murder people."
Well, look, morality to an atheist like me is something more like a community objective. I, like all humans, need for the community I live in and the natural world I live in to be able to function. I will be better off if everyone behaves in a certain way toward those entities. So, I have a moral imperative to my community and my world, not to dump toxic waste in rivers, rob banks, or go on killing sprees, because those things are damaging to the community and world, and if everyone did them civilization and the natural order would collapse.
That might seem like thin gruel to someone who's used to the idea that morality is set in stone by a sky dude who can cast you into eternal torture if you step out of line, but it seems to work; atheists do not behave more antisocially than religious people.
In fact, I would say that atheists can be trusted on moral matters better than people who take bronze-age texts literally and act on that. I am not especially familiar with the actual content of the Koran, but I did study the Bible in school. The Bible endorses slavery in a lot of places. It never once opposes slavery. The Bible is also very soft on rape. It mandates the killing of disobedient children--multiple times. It instructs men who find their wives not to be virgins to beat them to death. Actually, the Bible is pretty much cover-to-cover appallingly anti-female.
Taken at its word, the Bible would seem to endorse killing heretics--in both the Old and New Testaments. Certainly this is what some of the church's greatest minds got from a careful reading of it--Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine both endorsed this reading.
I would say we who have the benefit of the last 2000 years of civilization and philosophy are a damn sight better at the whole morality thing than anyone who had anything to do with the Bible, including Jesus of Nazareth.
Ah, but my religious liberal friends (and I am using the word "friends" sincerely; a number of my dearest friends are believers of some sort) will correctly point out that they don't take the Bible literally, that their faith guides them in moral matters but they don't take every word as, well, gospel truth.
To which I would ask, well, how do you decide? What is it that tells you that, say, the golden rule is a noble moral principle (and it is, which is why it turns up in so many different religions) and the death penalty for working on the Sabbath is not? When Jesus waxes about how obedient a good slave should be, how do you know he's wrong?
You know because you are a modern person, with modern moral ideas. And, using those ideas and your modern eyes, you are able to be morally right where the Bible is wrong. To me, this suggests--maybe even proves--that the kind of morality that is free of religion is superior to the kind of morality that is tied to it. At the very least, it would seem to demonstrate that the followers of that very, very flawed bronze-age text have no more claim to being the "conscience" of the Democratic party than anyone else does.
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