@edgarblythe,
2.1 Atheist religion
Let us consider the atheists from the 18th to the 21st centuries who express desires to establish an atheistic religion. Perhaps we should begin with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), who conceived of a civil religion:
“There is therefore a purely civil profession of faith of which the Sovereign should fix the articles, not exactly as religious dogmas, but as social sentiments without which a man cannot be a good citizen or a faithful subject. While it can compel no one to believe them, it can banish from the State whoever does not believe them. It can banish him, not for impiety, but as an anti-social being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, at need, his life to his duty. If any one, after publicly recognizing these dogmas, behaves as if he does not believe them, let him be punished by death: he has committed the worst of all crimes, that of lying before the law.”12
Two other notable 18th century attempts are Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760–1825) who conceived of a new “Christianity” which would be founded upon Humanism and scientific socialism. The secular priesthood would consist of scientists, philosophers and engineers. Lastly, Auguste Comte (1798–1857) conceived of a religion of humanity.
a bag of fertilizer: our ultimate fate according to atheism
In atheism, when we die we end up as mere fertilizer; plant food. Human life has no particular meaning or purpose and there is no real basis for ethics, love or even logical thought. Atheism provides no footing for a just, caring and secure society.
Forwarding to the 21st century we will consider Gary Wolf’s interview with Sam Harris:
“We discuss what it might look like, this world without God. ‘There would be a religion of reason’, Harris says. ‘We would have realized the rational means to maximize human happiness. We may all agree that we want to have a Sabbath that we take really seriously—a lot more seriously than most religious people take it. But it would be a rational decision, and it would not be just because it’s in the Bible. We would be able to invoke the power of poetry and ritual and silent contemplation and all the variables of happiness so that we could exploit them. Call it prayer, but we would have prayer without bull**** … At some point, there is going to be enough pressure that it is just going to be too embarrassing to believe in God.’”13 [italics in original]
Gary Wolf’s interview with Daniel Dennett:
“Dennett tells me that he takes very seriously the risk of over reliance on thought … It interests me that, though Dennett is an atheist, he does not see faith merely as a useless vestige of our primitive nature, something we can, with effort, intellectualize away. No rational creature, he says, would be able to do without unexamined, sacred things … This sounds to me a little like the religion of reason that Harris foresees. ‘Yes, there could be a rational religion’, Dennett says. ‘We could have a rational policy not even to think about certain things.’ He understands that this would create constant tension between prohibition and curiosity. But the borders of our sacred beliefs could be well guarded simply by acknowledging that it is pragmatic to refuse to change them. I ask Dennett if there might not be a contradiction in his scheme. On the one hand, he aggressively confronts the faithful, attacking their sacred beliefs. On the other hand, he proposes that our inherited defaults be put outside the limits of dispute. But this would make our defaults into a religion, unimpeachable and implacable gods. And besides, are we not atheists? Sacred prohibitions are anathema to us. Dennett replies that exceptions can be made. ‘Philosophers are the ones who refuse to accept the sacred values’, he says. For instance, Socrates. I find this answer supremely odd. The image of an atheist religion whose sacred objects, called defaults, are taboo for all except philosophers—this is the material of the cruelest parody. But that’s not what Dennett means. In his scenario, the philosophers are not revered authorities but mental risk-takers and scouts. Their adventures invite ridicule, or worse. ‘Philosophers should expect to be hooted at and reviled,’ Dennett says.”13
Sam Harris, Selfless Consciousness without Faith:
“As I sat and gazed upon the surrounding hills gently sloping to an inland sea, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self—an ‘I’ or a ‘me’—vanished. Everything was as it had been—the cloudless sky, the pilgrims clutching their bottles of water—but I no longer felt like I was separate from the scene, peering out at the world from behind my eyes. Only the world remained. As someone who is simply making his best effort to be a rational human being, I am very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions from experiences of this sort … There is no question that people have ‘spiritual’ experiences (I use words like ‘spiritual’ and ‘mystical’ in scare quotes, because they come to us trailing a long tail of metaphysical debris) … While most of us go through life feeling like we are the thinker of our thoughts and the experiencer of our experience, from the perspective of science we know that this is a false view. There is no discrete self or ego lurking like a minotaur in the labyrinth of the brain. There is no region of cortex or stream of neural processing that occupies a privileged position with respect to our personhood. There is no unchanging ‘center of narrative gravity’ … As a critic of religious faith, I am often asked what will replace organized religion. The answer is: many things and nothing … But what about ethics and spiritual experience? For many, religion still appears the only vehicle for what is most important in life—love, compassion, morality, and self-transcendence. To change this, we need a way of talking about human well-being that is as unconstrained by religious dogma as science is … I believe that most people are interested in spiritual life, whether they realize it or not. Every one of us has been born to seek happiness in a condition that is fundamentally unreliable … On the question of how to be most happy, the contemplative life has some important insights to offer.”
Sam Harris, A Contemplative Science:
“I recently spent a week with one hundred fellow scientists at a retreat center in rural Massachusetts. The meeting attracted a diverse group: physicists, neuroscientists, psychologists, clinicians, and a philosopher or two; all devoted to the study of the human mind … We were on a silent meditation retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, engaged in a Buddhist practice known as vipassana (the Pali word for ‘seeing clearly’) … Of critical importance for the purposes of science: there are no unjustified beliefs or metaphysics that need be adopted at all … Research on the functional effects of meditation is still in its infancy, but there seems to be little question that the practice changes the brain.”
ABC Radio National, Stephen Crittenden interviews Sam Harris:
“ … mysticism is a real psychological phenomenon, that I have no doubt it genuinely transforms people. But it seems to me that we can promulgate that knowledge and pursue those experiences very much in a spirit of science, without presupposing anything on insufficient evidence.”
Sam Harris, Science Must Destroy Religion:
“Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe such propositions when reasons fail … scientists and other rational people will need to find new ways of talking about ethics and spiritual experience. The distinction between science and religion is not a matter of excluding our ethical intuitions and non-ordinary states of consciousness from our conversation about the world; it is a matter of our being rigorous about what is reasonable to conclude on their basis. We must find ways of meeting our emotional needs that do not require the abject embrace of the preposterous. We must learn to invoke the power of ritual and to mark those transitions in every human life that demand profundity—birth, marriage, death, etc.—without lying to ourselves about the nature of reality. I am hopeful that the necessary transformation in our thinking will come about as our scientific understanding of ourselves matures. When we find reliable ways to make human beings more loving, less fearful, and genuinely enraptured by the fact of our appearance in the cosmos, we will have no need for divisive religious myths.”
Sam Harris, Rational Mysticism:
[In The End of Faith] “I used the words spirituality and mysticism affirmatively, in an attempt to put the range of human experience signified by these terms on a rational footing … this enterprise is not a problem with my book, or merely with Flynn, but a larger problem with secularism itself … secularism, being nothing more than the totality of such criticism, can lead its practitioners to reject important features of human experience simply because they have been traditionally associated with religious practice. … Our conventional sense of ‘self’ is, in fact, nothing more than a cognitive illusion, and dispelling this illusion opens the mind to extraordinary experiences of happiness. This is not a proposition to be accepted on faith; it is an empirical observation … The only ‘faith’ required to get such a project off the ground is the faith of scientific hypothesis. The hypothesis is this: if I use my attention in the prescribed way, it may have a specific, reproducible effect. Needless to say, what happens (or fails to happen) along any path of ‘spiritual’ practice has to be interpreted in light of some conceptual scheme, and everything must remain open to rational discussion. How this discussion proceeds will ultimately be decided by contemplative scientists … [who will] develop a mature science of the mind … The problem, however, is that there is a kernel of truth in the grandiosity and otherworldly language of religion … Most atheists appear to be certain that consciousness is entirely dependent upon (and reducible to) the workings of the brain. In the last chapter of the book, I briefly argue that this certainty is unwarranted … the truth is that scientists still do not know what the relationship between consciousness and matter is. I am not in the least suggesting that we make a religion out of this uncertainty, or do anything else with it.”
Humanist Manifesto I (1933) states,
“In order that religious humanism may be better understood we, the undersigned, desire to make certain affirmations which we believe the facts of our contemporary life demonstrate … which requires a new statement of the means and purposes of religion. Such a vital, fearless, and frank religion capable of furnishing adequate social goals and personal satisfactions may appear to many people as a complete break with the past … To establish such a religion is a major necessity of the present. It is a responsibility which rests upon this generation.”14
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3 Why Atheism is chosen
There may be as many reasons that people choose atheism as there are individuals who make that choice. These range from philosophy or science to emotion or rebellion and various combinations of such factors.
Prominent Argentinean hyperrealism artist, Helmut Ditsch, retells part of his upbringing:
“Until my twenties, I was an atheist. Although I felt the spiritual world, I used atheism as a reaction to a very difficult childhood. My mother died when I was 8 years old. Although my father was concerned with giving us a comfortable childhood, it was … sad.”15 [emphasis added]
Joe Orso, writing on the origin of beliefs, interviewed atheist Ira Glass, who said:
“I find that I don’t seem to have a choice over whether or not I believe in God, I simply find that I do not. Either you have faith or you don’t. Either you believe or you don’t.”
Orso: “I was once talking with a Chinese friend. She asked whether I believed in God. I told her I did. I returned the question. She said ‘no,’ and I asked her why not. Her father, she explained, had told her there was no God when she was a child. She hadn’t really thought about it much since then.”16 [emphasis added]
Note carefully the words of Thomas Nagel (B.Phil., Oxford; Ph.D., Harvard), Professor of Philosophy and Law, University Professor, and Fiorello La Guardia Professor of Law. He specializes in Political Philosophy, Ethics, Epistemology, and Philosophy of Mind. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the British Academy, and has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities:
‘I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers’—Thomas Nagel
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.”17 [emphasis added]
Consider the following words of Isaac Asimov, one of the most prolific scientific writers of the last century:
“I am an atheist, out and out. It took me a long time to say it. I’ve been an atheist for years and years, but somehow I felt it was intellectually unrespectable to say one was an atheist, because it assumed knowledge that one didn’t have. Somehow it was better to say one was a humanist or an agnostic. I finally decided that I’m a creature of emotion as well as of reason. Emotionally I am an atheist. I don’t have the evidence to prove that God doesn’t exist, but I so strongly suspect he doesn’t that I don’t want to waste my time.”18 [emphasis added]
Gary Wolf , contributing editor to Wired magazine, includes himself in the following description: “we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth.” He wrote:
“At dinner parties or over drinks, I ask people to declare themselves. ‘Who here is an atheist?’ I ask.
Usually, the first response is silence, accompanied by glances all around in the hope that somebody else will speak first. Then, after a moment, somebody does, almost always a man, almost always with a defiant smile and a tone of enthusiasm. He says happily, ‘I am!’
“But it is the next comment that is telling. Somebody turns to him and says: ‘You would be.’
‘Why?’ ‘Because you enjoy [irritating] people ....’ ‘Well, that’s true.’
“This type of conversation takes place not in central Ohio, where I was born, or in Utah, where I was a teenager, but on the West Coast, among technical and scientific people, possibly the social group that is least likely among all Americans to be religious.”13
Thus, we find various motivating factors which lead to atheism and have absolutely nothing to do with science or intellect.
Thus, we find various motivating factors which lead to atheism and have absolutely nothing to do with science or intellect.
Paul Vitz, Professor of Psychology at New York University, made a fascinating study of the lives of some of the most influential atheists. In his book Faith of the Fatherless: the Psychology of Atheism he concluded that these persons rejected God because they rejected their own fathers. This was due to their poor relationships with their fathers, or due to their father’s absence, or due to their rebellion against their fathers.20 Along this line of research, it would be interesting to consider the effect that the death of friends and family has had on the rejection of God. From Charles Darwin to Ted Turner the death of friends and family has played a part.
Gary Wolf noted,
“contrary to myth, Darwin did not become an atheist because of evolution. Instead, his growing resistance to Christianity came from his moral criticism of 19th-century doctrine, compounded by the tragedy of his daughter’s death.”13,21
The Associated Press reported on an interview with Ted Turner published in The New Yorker: 22
“CNN founder Ted Turner was suicidal after the breakup of his marriage to Jane Fonda and his loss of control of Turner Broadcasting … his marriage to Fonda broke up partly because of her decision to become a practicing Christian …22
“Turner is a strident non-believer, having lost his faith after his sister, Mary Jane, died of a painful disease called systemic lupus erythematosus. ‘I was taught that God was love and God was powerful’, Turner said. ‘And I couldn’t understand how someone so innocent should be made or allowed to suffer so.’ …
“He told The New Yorker ‘his father was often drunk, beat him and sent him to military school’ and committed suicide when Turner was 24 years of age.”
Tony Snow, who was the White House Press Secretary in 2006/2007, and was a Christian, died of cancer in July 2008. He wrote an essay entitled, “Cancer’s Unexpected Blessings.”23 Consider, in contrast, how a God-centered person dealt with his own impending death:
“ … we shouldn’t spend too much time trying to answer the ‘why’ questions: Why me? Why must people suffer? Why can’t someone else get sick? We can’t answer such things, and the questions themselves often are designed more to express our anguish than to solicit an answer. The natural reaction is to turn to God and ask him to serve as a cosmic Santa. ‘Dear God, make it all go away. Make everything simpler.’ But another voice whispers: ‘You have been called.’ Your quandary has drawn you closer to God, closer to those you love, closer to the issues that matter, —and has dragged into insignificance the banal concerns that occupy our ‘normal time’. There’s another kind of response, although usually short-lived an inexplicable shudder of excitement, as if a clarifying moment of calamity has swept away everything trivial and tiny, and placed before us the challenge of important questions … even though God doesn’t promise us tomorrow, he does promise us eternity … This is love of a very special order. But so is the ability to sit back and appreciate the wonder of every created thing. The mere thought of death somehow makes every blessing vivid, every happiness more luminous and intense. We may not know how our contest with sickness will end, but we have felt the ineluctable touch of God.”
In contrast, consider the words of atheist William Provine, professor of the history of science at Cornell University:
“Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us, loud and clear, and I must say that these are basically Darwin’s views: there are no gods, no purposive forces of any kind, no life after death (when I die I am absolutely certain that I’m gonna be completely dead, that’s just all, that’s gonna be the end of me), there is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans either … The question is, ‘Can atheistic humanism offer us very much?’ Well sure, it can give you intellectual satisfaction, and I’m a heck of a lot more intellectually satisfied now that I don’t have to cling to the fairytales that I believed when I was a kid. So life may have no ultimate meaning but I sure think it can have lots of proximate meaning.”24
With regards to his own cancer, a brain tumor, Provine has stated that he would shoot himself in the head if his brain tumor returned.25 Apparently, one less bio-organism is irrelevant in an absolutely materialistic world.
3.1 Natural born Atheist
Satanic and self-deception
Another reason for rejecting God (choosing atheism), is a willing acceptance of satanic deception.
The angel Lucifer (“luminous one”) fell and became Satan (“adversary”) due to his desire to supplant God. This was Lucifer’s single-minded obsession.
He not only rejected God by attempting to supplant Him, but he urged humans to do likewise. Satan urged Eve to choose against God for her own self-fulfilment:
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:1-5 ESV).
The tactic is clear: firstly, question God’s statements, then, contradict God’s statements and, finally, urge rebellion in seeking equality with God.
This manifests in atheists as
1.Questioning whether there is a God to make statements in the first place, so God did not say anything.
2.Contradicting the statements said to have been spoken by God.
3.Seeking equality with God by replacing God with the self.
This satanic deception appeals strongly to atheists as it bolsters two of their desired delusions: 1) absolute autonomy—being free to do as they please, and 2) the lack of ultimate accountability—there are no eternal consequences for doing as they please.
A subset of the question of why some people choose atheism is the atheist claim that we are all natural born atheists. In part this is incumbent upon which definition of atheism we are employing. Obviously, we are not born positively asserting God’s non-existence. Thus, the claim is that we are all born lacking a belief in God. Logically, this claim is accurate only at this point and is actually not successfully applicable beyond this point.
Atheists who make this argument claim that this argument demonstrates that man is not God-made but that God is man-made. In other words, they claim that we only believe in God because someone taught us to believe in God, often during childhood before we were able to consider the claim rationally. Yet, this claim is faulty on many levels, for example:
We are born knowing nothing at all and must be taught, and later take it upon ourselves to learn, anything and everything that we will ever know or believe, including atheism.
We are natural-born bed wetters but that does not mean that we should remain that way.
This is ultimately a form of the logically fallacious ad hominem (“to the man”). This fallacy occurs when what is supposed to be a counterargument attacks the person, the source of the original argument, while leaving the argument unanswered. Thus, just because belief in God is something that is taught does not discredit belief in God. It would be fallacious to claim that God does not exist because human beings invented the idea of God’s existence—God wants us to discover His existence: “you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13).
Furthermore, this claim does not consider that many people came to believe in God in adulthood and having come from a completely secular (atheistic) upbringing.
Although, perhaps we could grant the claim: if atheists want to argue that atheism requires no more intellect than that which an infant can muster, why should we argue?
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4 Atheism and ethics/morality
Here is a video debate between an atheist and the author of this article: Morality: natural or supernatural?
Technically, ethics refers to what should be and morals to what is or; prescription and description. Atheists differ on the issue of ethics and morality; some claim that there are absolutes and some do not. As to the question of whether atheists can make absolute moral statements, this is tantamount to the first year theology student who, when asked, “Do you believe in infant baptism?” responded, “Sure I do; I’ve seen it done.” Yes, atheists can make any statements about anything at all—the question is: are the statements viable?
Atheists make epistemic statements about morality but do not provide an ontological premise for ethics.26 That is to say that they can muse upon issues of morality and come to any conclusion that they please. However, these turn out to be arbitrary personal preferences that are expressed as dogmatic assertions.
Some atheists do make attempts at providing an ontological basis for ethics. These range quite widely—from considering the behavior of apes to Game Theory.
In the first case, it is, of course, being presupposed that we share a common evolutionary lineage with apes and that their behavior tells us something about ours. Even when such observations successfully correlate their behaviors to ours, it is merely a description. Moreover, from such correlations it is inferred that morality is part of our overall evolution. This amounts to intuition or urges which we are free to act upon or disregard.
In the second case investigators concoct games that they claim dissect human behavior. With regards to Game Theory, Benjamin Wiker notes,
“By using games with fewer rules than Candy Land, the Darwinian game theorists are claiming ‘to uncover the fundamental principles governing our decision-making mechanisms.’ We’d better take a closer look, starting with their presuppositions … The answer seems to be that whatever has survived must be the most fit; therefore whatever exists must have been the result of natural selection. Fairness exists; therefore, it must be the result of natural selection. Q.E.D. It is always convenient to have a theory that cannot possibly be proved wrong.”27
Another supposed basis for ethics is that “an action is unethical/immoral if it causes harm to others.” Thus, it is the nature of the consequence caused by the action that determines whether an action is ethical or unethical. The fundamental problem with this definition of ethical behavior is that an action ceases to be unethical if no adverse consequences are experienced. As such, nothing is inherently wrong; an action is only wrong if it causes harm to another.
Consider the example of adulterous behavior: under the “do no harm” definition of ethical behavior, adultery is wrong because it harms the other party in the marriage (i.e., the faithful spouse). This harm can include mental anguish, the spread of disease to the faithful party and the loss of affection from the adulterous party. An additional adverse consequence includes unwanted pregnancies outside of the marriage. However, what if an adulterous act did not lead to those outcomes (e.g., a husband, who has had a vasectomy, occasionally has sexual relations with women free from sexually transmitted diseases while on trips to foreign cities)? In such an instance would adultery cease being unethical? Would the husband’s behavior turn from ethically neutral to unethical only if he were to confess his adultery to his wife, or if he was otherwise caught, thus causing her mental anguish?
It seems that there is something else behind, or beyond, the consideration of causing harm. In fact, there must be something else. Why must there be something else? Because it is precisely by knowing that which causes others harm that I may come to know how to push their buttons, how to manipulate them, how to take advantage of them, how to suppress them, etc. I may find that I can assist my survival by causing such harm to others and so, on this view, their harm is for my benefit. There must be something beyond that which makes causing harm itself unethical.
An ethical code based on God is determined by God’s communication to man of what is ethical and unethical. This is because God’s ethical code to us is derived from God’s very triune, relational, ethical nature. This nature is ethical and relational as it is unified by virtue of God consisting of one in being and yet, diverse as it is experienced and enjoyed amongst the three persons of the Trinity. Under such an ethical code, and in contrast to any Godless moral code, a given action such as adultery is still wrong even in absence of adverse consequences to another party. Thus, under a God-authored ethical code some actions are inherently wrong.
Furthermore, the atheist has no basis for saying that it is wrong to harm others anyway. Why should it be wrong to harm others? This supposed basis for ethics fails at this very point.
Let us consider some atheist’s statements about morality:
Dan Barker, co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, claims that, “Darwin has bequeathed what is good” and refers to Jesus as “a moral monster”.28 He includes the following within his understanding of Darwinian goodness,
“I support a woman’s right to choose an abortion. I think it’s a good thing. I think abortion is actually a good thing for society. If I can borrow a religious word, a word that my mother-in-law uses, I think abortion is a blessing for many, many, many women.”29
This appears to be in keeping with his general view on human worth, value and dignity, “a fetus that’s the size of a thumb that has—what? What? Would you put it in a little locket and hang it around your neck?”30
Dan Barker has also stated, “There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares” and he bases his humanistic morality upon his reasoning whether, it will ultimately matter what happens to us or a vegetable: “ … what happens to me or a piece of broccoli, it won’t. The Sun is going to explode, we’re all gonna be gone. No one’s gonna care.”31
He does not seem to consider that the fact that the concept which holds that “There is no moral interpreter in the cosmos, nothing cares and nobody cares … we’re all gonna be gone. No one’s gonna care”, quite logically and easily, leads to inhumane immorality.
Dan Barker has further stated:
“Atheism and Freethought and true humanistic morality are, are so much more clear, so much more useful, so much more reasonable so, you know, without all the negative baggage of theology and judgment and hell and, and you know, and the supernatural. My goodness, you know, I used to believe in the supernatural and, and now to realize I don’t have to try to prop up this phony supernatural system in, in reality it’s very freeing, very relaxing. I’m not afraid of being judged and going to hell anymore. I’m responsible for my own actions, the consequences are natural and I live with them and, and it actually turns out that most atheists and agnostics are more accountable; they are more moral they, they have more responsibility in their lives because they realize that it, it’s what matters is this world not an imaginary supernatural world … true humanistic morality which is much superior to Christian morality.”32
Dan Barker has also offered motivating factors for moral actions that are quite common within atheist thought—these are self-serving motivations, whereby one should be good not for goodness’ sake but in order to benefit oneself, for example,
“if you wish to be … a healthy person” (meaning mentally healthy).
“if you wish to be labeled ‘ethical’ by other people.”
“if you wish to be viewed by your society as ‘a good person’.”
“if that’s something you wish.”33
Likewise, examples include the following statement by The Humanist Society of Scotland:
“It’s best to be honest because … I’m happier and feel better about myself if I’m honest.”34 [emphasis and ellipses in original]
However, why being honest should make us happy remains a mystery.
Reginald Finley (aka The Infidel Guy) and Matthew Davis put forth the following reason for moral behavior:
“if one does horrible things to people, that person will eventually have horrible things happen to him.”35
This is hip My Name Is Earl36 watered-down karma, but is obviously pseudo-morality based on self-preservation (perhaps aptly Darwinian).
With regards to Dan Barker, let us lastly note that he also argues that rape is not absolutely immoral. His “reasoning” involves a hypothetical scenario in which malevolent aliens from outer space attack Earth.37 He and other atheists have made some very troubling statements about rape. Further examples include Sam Harris:
“If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, Harris explains, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion.”38
He also believes that rape is not only perfectly natural (contrary to contemporary morality) but that rape played a beneficial role in our evolution,
“there are many things about us for which we are naturally selected, which we repudiate in moral terms. For instance, there’s nothing more natural than rape. Human beings rape, chimpanzees rape, orangutans rape, rape clearly is part of an evolutionary strategy to get your genes into the next generation if you’re a male. You can’t move from that Darwinian fact about us to defend rape as a good practice. I mean no-one would be tempted to do that; we have transcended that part of our evolutionary history in repudiating it.”39
www.expelledthemovie.com
atheist Richard Dawkins
Atheists such as Richard Dawkins have trouble finding logical reasons to denounce rape as unacceptable behavior
Richard Dawkins was asked about rape during an interview:
Justin Brierley (JB): If we had evolved into a society where rape was considered fine, would that mean that rape is fine?
Richard Dawkins (RD): I, I wouldn’t, I don’t want to answer that question. It, it, it’s enough for me to say that we live in a society where it’s not considered fine. We live in a society where uhm, selfishness, where failure to pay your debts, failure to reciprocate favors is, is, is regarded askance. That is the society in which we live. I’m very glad, that’s a value judgment, I’m very glad that I live in such a society.
JB: When you make a value judgment don’t you immediately step yourself outside of this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good is that it’s good. And you don’t have any way to stand on that statement.
RD: My value judgment itself could come from my evolutionary past.
JB: So therefore it’s just as random in a sense as any product of evolution.
RD: You could say that, it doesn’t in any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural.
JB: Ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we’ve evolved five fingers rather than six.
RD: You could say that, yeah.40
Professor of the philosophy of science, Michael Ruse, makes similar statements:
“Morality is a biological adaptation, no less than are hands and feet and teeth … Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction.”41
Apparently, having feet and hands was not predetermined, nor that we have five fingers rather than six, nor that rape is immoral versus it being moral.
Furthermore, two evolutionists wrote a book claiming that rape was a device for men to perpetuate their genes42—one of the authors tied himself in knots trying to explain why rape was still wrong under his own philosophy.43
Richard Dawkins urges us to rebel against Darwinism with regards to morality, based upon his personal and societal preferences. His premise for prescribing rebellion is that,
“nature is not cruel, only pitilessly indifferent. This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous—indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose.”44
the atheist really does not have much of a basis for moral decisions, other than the atheist’s own preferences, which ‘should’ go against the Darwinist conception of nature because … well, because it is morally better to do so!
Overall, the atheist really does not have much of a basis for moral decisions, other than the atheist’s own preferences, which “should” go against the Darwinist conception of nature because … well, because it is morally better to do so!
