Atheism and Morality
For the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Dale Reich writes, If You’re Going To Be An Atheist, At Least Get It Right.
A few days ago, I took off my religious beliefs and locked them in a closet.
Then, in a further act of mental gymnastics, I put on the robes of disbelief. I wanted to see how I looked and felt without my lifelong commitment to Christianity.
It was pretty chilling. I didn’t like the emptiness, the disconnectedness, the lack of direction and the prospect of it all ending when I die.
Life is a scary thing. Reality sucks. It’s hard, it’s painful, it’s full of suffering. It’s also lovely and wonderful, and full of good things and love. Sometimes it’s difficult for people to reconcile the two. Some people use religion as a core for dealing with life.
Some people don’t.
Being an atheist doesn’t make a person less of a human being, which is the undertone of Reich’s article. Reich writes, “What I meant to say is that God is the basis for good and evil, and once you reject him and his rules, you’re left with nothing but self-serving and self-preservation. In short, you’re left with being your own god.”
What he’s basically saying here is that if you don’t believe in a god (his God, too, probably), you can’t make moral decisions, and you can’t choose to simply be a kind and decent person. I find that kind of view offensive and simplistic in the extreme.
Our society, here in America, is loosely based on the original Christian morals. We’ve grown from that, I hope, to incorporate different ideas and concepts, and tolerance of those different concepts.
Societies grow and evolve. People grow and evolve. We have the ability to be rational, to think through a situation and come to a reasonable decision. As such, it is perfectly possibly for a society or individual to look at a situation and say, “You know, some of these morals are good, and some aren’t so good. We shouldn’t be murdering and raping and pillaging, and we should be tolerant and kind and helpful. That’s good stuff. But these bits here about homosexuals being sinners, and women being second-class citizens, and not eating shrimp or wearing polyester, these bits we should probably get rid of. They just don’t work anymore.” We grow to understand that the Bible, and the society that originally spawned it are ancient peoples and ancient texts, and that we’ve grown and evolved away from some of the beliefs and behaviors that led to a book like the Bible, and an idea like God. Maybe those ancient people needed something like God to keep them in line. I don’t know, but I’d like to think that we as a people and society are perfectly capable of coming to the decision that murdering people is bad, without a Big Bad Boogie Monster God hanging over our shoulders threatening us with Hell.
Well, alright, some of us have, anyhow. And then you have the Bush Administration. Who, I might like to point out, claim to be Christian.
I sent an email to Dale Reich about his editorial.
Mr. Reich,
I just read your editorial in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and I found it to be a bit too simple, and somewhat offensive. You seem to think that if a person is an atheist, then that means they must also be amoral. I don’t understand why that should be true.
You write: “For [an atheist], life should be merely an exercise in seeking personal pleasure, procreating and then dying.” This is what animals do. Do you think that because a human being chooses to be an atheist, they become an animal? Do you think that atheism strips away higher thought and rationality? Do you think that an intelligent human being loses the ability to see the difference between right and wrong when they stop believing in a god? Furthermore, you seem to think that because a human being chooses not to believe in a god, they lose the ability to be kind and helpful to other people.
Are you saying that in order for me to be nice to someone, I have to believe in God? That I must believe in God to know not to murder someone for their pocket money? That kind of view is incredibly simplistic.
It is my opinion that your “experiment” is a failure. You have failed to understand the true mindset of an atheist. You write, “I didn’t like the emptiness, the disconnectedness, the lack of direction and the prospect of it all ending when I die.” You felt “empty” and “disconnected”. You felt this way because you have found your connection and meaning in life through your God. Atheists find their connections and meanings in other places — not wrong places, but different places. You “took off [your] religious beliefs and locked them in a closet”, but you didn’t bother replacing them with anything else — your love of your family, taking meaning from your work, joy in your life . . . none of these things. You didn’t bother finding a new direction for yourself, a non-Christian-derived direction. Maybe you have a difficult time understanding that it is possible to find direction and meaning in life without the belief in a god. You didn’t like the prospect of “it all ending when [you] die”. To me, that is the most important thing, the fact that this time on Earth is all we get, and we had best make something good of it while we can.
The views expressed in your editorial are offensive and small-minded. You seem to think that not believing in a god removes the humanity from a person. An atheist is not less of a human being, only a human being who walks a different path than you, and finds meaning and joy in their lives in a different manner than you. An atheist is not amoral, they simply don’t need the carrot-and-stick aspects of religion to know right from wrong.
Thank-you for your time.
Small-mindedness comes in every flavor, Christian, atheist, and so on. A truly rational person understands that you don’t judge people based on their beliefs, or lack thereof, but how they carry them out.
And on that note, I need to go get some cigarettes.
