Guy Harrison on "Where Are the Moral Believers?"
Guy P. Harrison is the author of the soon to be released book, 50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God. He submitted the following essay to DC which was originally published in Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 25, No. 1:
Where Are the Moral Believers?
Satan exists, say hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. But he is evil, so they reject him as a supernatural being worthy of worship. They do not pray to him for help in landing a new job or overcoming an illness, and they do not follow his instructions. Because of moral failings, this god of sorts is denied their love and obedience. But why do they only judge the devil? Why don’t believers scrutinize all gods in this way?
Pointing out examples of the Jewish/Christian god committing, commanding, or condoning slavery, violence, and sexism—as described in the Torah and Bible—is a favorite pastime for many atheists. Yes, it may be no better than a grown-up version of pulling the wings off of flies, but it is undeniably fun to watch a believer squirm trying to explain how slavery and stoning were somehow OK in “Bible times.” It is even more entertaining to watch smoke rise from the ears of the devout as they attempt to defend the “God of love” for his genocidal rampages.
Some atheists ridicule such exchanges, and they have a valid point. Arguing over a god’s moral character is a lot like debating the aerodynamic qualities of Santa’s sleigh. Still, there may be a real benefit to enlightening believers about the character of their gods. If pursued, it should be done only to challenge a believer’s loyalty to a god, however, not to make the case for nonexistence. After all, a god does not have to be nice in order to be real. Strangely, this pattern of belief coupled with morally based disobedience is virtually nonexistent when it comes to the popular gods. We just don’t see millions of believers in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic god, for example, shunning him solely for his moral crimes. There are no large organizations campaigning against religion from the moral high ground rather than the perspective of disbelief. There are few, if any, anti-god books written by theologians who still believe in a god. Rebellion need not be tied to nonbelief, so where are the righteous rebels who stand against gods who have done great evil? Where are the moral believers?
Fear of hell or some other divine punishment for refusing to follow a god does not seem to be an adequate explanation, not when one considers history’s long roll call of courageous heroes. Across cultures and across centuries, good people have suffered banishment, imprisonment, torture, and execution because they refused to bow down before evil human leaders. It seems likely that a significant number of believers would rebel in the same way, if they faced up to the serious faults and crimes attributed to their gods. Fear of torture and execution in the present (in reality) must be at least somewhat comparable to fear of a god’s wrath in some vague afterlife to come (in belief).
Most Christians are probably good people with a reasonable grasp of right and wrong. They know, for example, that it is wrong to kill children. (“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon . . . there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead” [Exodus 12:29, New International Version].) They also are likely to agree that it is wrong to punish children for the crimes of their fathers. (“He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” [Exodus 34:7, NIV].) But they are loyal to a god who has done these things.
Why aren’t millions of believers saying, “Yes, I know my god is real because the universe is intelligently designed and I believe that the [Bible, Koran, or Torah] describes him accurately. However, based on the actions of this god. I cannot follow or worship him because I am a decent human being.”
I have long believed that religion will be educated out of humankind eventually. It may take many centuries, but it seems probable. After all, polls show that belief goes down as education goes up. And most of the extremely smart and educated people (such as elite scientists) already don’t believe in gods. But what if it never happens? What if educational levels do not continue to rise as they have over the last few thousand years? Or what if the cosmos is just too big, too complex, and too scary for most people to ever accept rational explanations and lingering mysteries? If so, eroding believers’ loyalty to their gods and encouraging greater respect for basic morality may be the way to go.
Militant atheists who are concerned with the proliferation of RMDs (Religions of Mass Destruction) may be missing an important point here. After all, it is not gods who inflict so much ignorance, hate, and violence upon the world. (Gods almost surely do not exist, remember?) The source of trouble, indeed, may be belief itself, but the direct cause of the many problems we are all burdened with is that so many people try to please gods by following their orders and their example. Consider the fact that millions of people believe in ghosts, but no one worships them in tax-free buildings under the guidance of trained professionals. Ghosts are just not respected in the way gods are. Therefore, the concept of ghosts is not pushing evolution out of classrooms or motivating people to strap bombs around their torsos. With ghosts, it’s mostly just a case of gullible people wasting a bit of space in their skulls with nonsense and causing relatively little harm to the world.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the gods lost their grip on humankind and fell to the status of mere ghosts, no longer able to command vast armies of believers? Even if millions still believed them to be real, it would be a vast improvement. Imagine if the gods were condemned to roam forever in fantasyland with no one willing to follow them. While this might not make for an atheist’s paradise, it would at least be a far better world, one where believers no longer work to please divisive and violent gods at the expense of all humanity.
Where Are the Moral Believers?
Satan exists, say hundreds of millions of Christians around the world. But he is evil, so they reject him as a supernatural being worthy of worship. They do not pray to him for help in landing a new job or overcoming an illness, and they do not follow his instructions. Because of moral failings, this god of sorts is denied their love and obedience. But why do they only judge the devil? Why don’t believers scrutinize all gods in this way?
Pointing out examples of the Jewish/Christian god committing, commanding, or condoning slavery, violence, and sexism—as described in the Torah and Bible—is a favorite pastime for many atheists. Yes, it may be no better than a grown-up version of pulling the wings off of flies, but it is undeniably fun to watch a believer squirm trying to explain how slavery and stoning were somehow OK in “Bible times.” It is even more entertaining to watch smoke rise from the ears of the devout as they attempt to defend the “God of love” for his genocidal rampages.
Some atheists ridicule such exchanges, and they have a valid point. Arguing over a god’s moral character is a lot like debating the aerodynamic qualities of Santa’s sleigh. Still, there may be a real benefit to enlightening believers about the character of their gods. If pursued, it should be done only to challenge a believer’s loyalty to a god, however, not to make the case for nonexistence. After all, a god does not have to be nice in order to be real. Strangely, this pattern of belief coupled with morally based disobedience is virtually nonexistent when it comes to the popular gods. We just don’t see millions of believers in the Jewish/Christian/Islamic god, for example, shunning him solely for his moral crimes. There are no large organizations campaigning against religion from the moral high ground rather than the perspective of disbelief. There are few, if any, anti-god books written by theologians who still believe in a god. Rebellion need not be tied to nonbelief, so where are the righteous rebels who stand against gods who have done great evil? Where are the moral believers?
Fear of hell or some other divine punishment for refusing to follow a god does not seem to be an adequate explanation, not when one considers history’s long roll call of courageous heroes. Across cultures and across centuries, good people have suffered banishment, imprisonment, torture, and execution because they refused to bow down before evil human leaders. It seems likely that a significant number of believers would rebel in the same way, if they faced up to the serious faults and crimes attributed to their gods. Fear of torture and execution in the present (in reality) must be at least somewhat comparable to fear of a god’s wrath in some vague afterlife to come (in belief).
Most Christians are probably good people with a reasonable grasp of right and wrong. They know, for example, that it is wrong to kill children. (“At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon . . . there was a loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead” [Exodus 12:29, New International Version].) They also are likely to agree that it is wrong to punish children for the crimes of their fathers. (“He punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation” [Exodus 34:7, NIV].) But they are loyal to a god who has done these things.
Why aren’t millions of believers saying, “Yes, I know my god is real because the universe is intelligently designed and I believe that the [Bible, Koran, or Torah] describes him accurately. However, based on the actions of this god. I cannot follow or worship him because I am a decent human being.”
I have long believed that religion will be educated out of humankind eventually. It may take many centuries, but it seems probable. After all, polls show that belief goes down as education goes up. And most of the extremely smart and educated people (such as elite scientists) already don’t believe in gods. But what if it never happens? What if educational levels do not continue to rise as they have over the last few thousand years? Or what if the cosmos is just too big, too complex, and too scary for most people to ever accept rational explanations and lingering mysteries? If so, eroding believers’ loyalty to their gods and encouraging greater respect for basic morality may be the way to go.
Militant atheists who are concerned with the proliferation of RMDs (Religions of Mass Destruction) may be missing an important point here. After all, it is not gods who inflict so much ignorance, hate, and violence upon the world. (Gods almost surely do not exist, remember?) The source of trouble, indeed, may be belief itself, but the direct cause of the many problems we are all burdened with is that so many people try to please gods by following their orders and their example. Consider the fact that millions of people believe in ghosts, but no one worships them in tax-free buildings under the guidance of trained professionals. Ghosts are just not respected in the way gods are. Therefore, the concept of ghosts is not pushing evolution out of classrooms or motivating people to strap bombs around their torsos. With ghosts, it’s mostly just a case of gullible people wasting a bit of space in their skulls with nonsense and causing relatively little harm to the world.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the gods lost their grip on humankind and fell to the status of mere ghosts, no longer able to command vast armies of believers? Even if millions still believed them to be real, it would be a vast improvement. Imagine if the gods were condemned to roam forever in fantasyland with no one willing to follow them. While this might not make for an atheist’s paradise, it would at least be a far better world, one where believers no longer work to please divisive and violent gods at the expense of all humanity.
11 comments:
I welcome other submissions from other authors as well. Thanks Guy!
This was beautifully written.
I disagree, however, with the second paragraph. I don't find that entertaining at all, but it is necessary.
www.kellygorski.com
Frankly I myself have no problem understanding why the bible condones certain types of slavery or military actions because I dont believe it is inerrant or what not. We'll let that pass however.
"Yes, it may be no better than a grown-up version of pulling the wings off of flies, but it is undeniably fun to watch a believer squirm trying to explain how slavery and stoning were somehow OK in “Bible times.”
Should I really take seriously the moral musings of a man who enjoys watching people struggle with their beliefs in a way that is clearly unpleasurable? I think not. Besides, a Christian could just as easily comment on how many an atheist "squirms" when trying to explain how you get morality at all out of a naturalistic world-view. (im not saying you cant, though I believe that, but I think most non-theists would believe it to be "tough".
Gordon are you reading the blog regularly?
I wrote a whole post about this where I thought I handled the problem quite effortlessly.
You really think you handled it effortlessly? With less than 5 lines of writing Sacred... you know the rest... had you readily admitting that morality is purely a cultural agreement, so far as I understand your position. But if that is the case you cant criticize past groups for establishing their own moral rules. I fear when you are utilizing the term "objective" you are creating a very neat (and erroneous) equivocation.
Gordon of course I agree with the idea that the objective morals in a brain vary from place to place and time to time, but they are still objective.
Just as objective traffic laws vary from road to road and jurisdiction to jurisdiction, there are also some that don't vary much at all. For example, it is illegal to run over a pedestrian in a crosswalk who is following the rules of the intersection in all jurisdictions.
Therefore the objective morality lies in the instantiated facts of culture that exist in the brain of the person who is part of that traffic system or moral system and that there is broad general agreement about what those rules are.
In what way does this make a person with a given objective set of morals unable to criticize other people?
Does the food critic really need an objective standard outside his brain to comment on the quality of food he's eating? Does the film critic really need an objective standard to comment on the quality of film he reviews?
Does the blog critic need an objective standard of what makes a great blog to criticize a blog?
It seems to me that you are simply playing with what most people on the street (and, indeed, this blog) mean by the term objective. When one society says it is acceptable to mutilate female genitals and another says that such actions should not be done they cannot both be "correct" if objectivity is applied to the situation. Now perhaps relativism is true and there is no real moral difference between eating candy and raping children, but that seems very... unnerving. I would note that there are plenty of other systems that can be seen to provide for objective morality that are not theist, Platonism springs instantly to mind.
Gordon you fail to answer my fundamental question. I admit there are morals and that the morals that exist within one brain can be completely objective.
I also admit that morals in societies broadly are congruent, and that variation is the norm between societies but there are some actions that are not considered moral by almost any society. You seem to think this is not sophisticated but you don't seem to offer any alternative hypothesis.
Then I go on to ask you about the very basis of your complaint -- the idea that you can't criticize something without an objective standard. You seem to just wave the red flag past my horns and step away gloriously while the crowd cheers.
But my horns are still there and I don't see how you can avoid them.
So again -- do you believe all criticism to be invalid without some objective standard which the critic holds as the criteria of her critique?
When one society says it is acceptable to mutilate female genitals and another says that such actions should not be done they cannot both be "correct" if objectivity is applied to the situation.
This is false unless one assumes that the context of each action is identical. Morality based on contextual placement is nothing new for theologists and philosophers alike. Almost everyone will agree that there are certain contexts in which it is acceptable for me to kill you, and certain contexts in which it is not.
That said, what makes you think that I am unable to criticize subjective standards? I think anyone who likes country music post-1990 is tone-deaf, yet I will readily admit that taste in music is a subjective measure. So it is quite clear that I can criticize subjective judgements.
Additionally, those who claim there is an objective moral standard are not free of the moral relativity quagmire (although they love to think they are). The reason is, they cannot objectively determine what the "objective moral standard" is. There is no moral that is universally accepted, and no metaphysical "objective standard" that can be independently measured. All you can do is survey subjective ideas of what people think the objective morality is. This leaves you in the same conundrum; you are basing your morality on a purely subjective interpretation of a supposed objective morality, and your subjective interpretation has no discernable greater or lesser inherent worth than another person's, as you cannot objectively determine the objective standard for morality.
In other words, you have just kicked the can down the road...instead of admitting a subjective morality, you must admit a subjective interpretation of a supposed objective morality. Your morality is still wholely subjective until someone can come up with an objective way to measure the standard.
If watching believers "squirm" while trying to defend those ideas is entertaining, which I'm sure it is, then you should try watching an atheist "squirm" and rationalize when they are presented with legitimate historical research that defeats their time-worn arguments about slavery, sexism, and "genocide." It's quite grand, actually.
go ahead, patrick - for example? have some fun with us.
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