“Living a Lie? Are Atheists Building a Worldview on Christian Principles?”: A Rejoinder

Warning: I actually cuss in this post (which, you know, I do all the time – just not usually when I’m writing)…so be ye warned…

Also, I don’t apologize for the superfluous amount of rhetoric that I used.

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Son of a bitch!

I’m really tired of these types of arguments. The claim that atheists non-theists borrow metaphysical principles – most notably, their beliefs in morality – from Christianity is an infuriatingly frustrating claim. It’s the type of argument that is being used by more and more by theists because of its vague resemblance to intellectualism, but in fact is, upon examination, founded on a rather disjointed conception of what is actually believed believed.

Ironically, the charge can be levied against the Christian that their basis for morality can only be predicated on pure faith. [Note: There is a very good discussion currently going on in the comment thread of this post, so I encourage you to check it out!]

Anyway, this post will be a response to the “Christian Watchman’s” post in which two other sources are merely copy/pasted and assembled into one convenient location. The first source  is a brief article written by Roger Patterson (I don’t know who that is) for the AnswersInGenesis website, an article from which the title of the blog post is taken. The second source is a YouTube video by Matt Slick (I only know a little about him) from the CARM website, titled “The Failure of Atheism to Account for Morality”.

Roger Patterson

First, the post by Mr. Patterson:

If he is logically consistent, the atheist must ask why he should be good if the world he lives in is nothing more than a series of random accidents and if people are nothing more than animals with big brains. The atheist might also have trouble deciding whose standard of good should be endorsed. Does he become a follower of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Adolf Hitler, Charles Darwin, or does he start his own sect of atheism and borrow a bit from everyone.

Seriously?! I understand the necessity to write in such a way that engages your reader and, as such, the use of turgid rhetoric will inevitably ooze from the writer’s fingertips, but can we – theists and non-theists – finally come to the point in this ‘grand discussion’ where we don’t have the compulsory need to invoke Hitler’s name at every opportunity? Same can be said for Darwin: what does Darwin have to do with morality? If you want to be taken seriously by people with any sort of intellectual integrity, you will do well to stop writing complete bullshit for the mere sake of having ignorant readers go, “lulzyeahstupidatheists”. All that is accomplished is the successful incitement of vitriolic outrage, which also accomplishes nothing (case in point).

As to the point of why the atheist, “should be good if the world he lives in is nothing more than a series of random accidents and if people are nothing more than animals with big brains,” I’ll address this when I get to Matt Slick.

Unfortunately, aside from the topic which I’ll discuss in the Slick section, the rest of the article is merely the author extolling some great sermon which he doesn’t provide a link for, as well as articulating Christian tenets on morality. So, that’s all I really have to say with respect to the article.

 

Matt Slick

For the lazy, here’s the video:

Let me being by saying that I don’t – nor do most non-theists that I know of – claim there to be an objective morality, insofar as we conceptualize this objective morality as a prescribed mandate, or even as a claim to morality that is inherent to all. What I claim to is objective morals which are predicated on the subjective want and need to see the flourishing of society in such a way that promotes the welfare of our species. While this is a very broad definition, it will suffice for the purposes of this post.

“Atheists can be morally good and they can even be people of integrity.”

Well thank you for such a generous attribution, Mr. Slick…but I digress. Slick proffers, in his usual pedantic way, two scenarios: 1) a society in which it became the social norm to rob people and 2) a kind of utilitarian society in which he uses slavery as his example. In both scenarios, Slick challenges that the atheist would not be able to properly give an account as to why both of these scenarios would be wrong according to my philosophical beliefs.

Contra Scenario 1

Objective moral values, insofar as these values are predicated on the subjective valuation of society as mentioned above, are not contingent on societal conceptions of morality. While it is true that the valuation of the propagation of our species is indeed subjective – and, indeed, is the most pragmatic approach to morality which can be had given a naturalistic world view – it is objectively certain how best this propagation can be achieved. Therefore, to proffer a scenario in which robbery is the societal norm has no bearing on…anything, really.

What does it matter if society has devolved to such a decrepit state that robbery has become commonplace? I assume everyone will agree with me when I say that the wanton criminality of such a society would surely not be in the best interest of the society proper, insofar as that interest is in said society’s propagation. This ‘society’ would not be a ‘society’ in any traditionally conceived way. This ‘society’ is not considering the needs of the collective, of the group. The individuals within this ‘society’ have placed a greater import on their own survival while simultaneously failing to recognize that their greatest chance at survival would be to work in conjunction with the group in a vastly conjoined communal effort. Therefore, it would be nonsensical to say that the actions carried out by those within this scenario would be anything other than immoral.

Contra Scenario 2

The second scenario is even more laughable and pathetic than the first. Slick prefaces this scenario with the paradigm that atheists believe morality should be predicated on a system that, “brings the greatest happiness, the least amount of suffering, and the greatest freedom for as many people as possible.” While there can surely be difficulties within this paradigm, I’ll use it for the mere sake that it was just used to give a rough intimation of the system (nothing wrong with that).

But, given this paradigm, in what perverted system would slavery bring happiness to the enslaved, would reduce the suffering of the enslaved, and the greatest freedom for the enslaved. Even within this rather generalized system, we are still working within a paradigm that is striving to bring the “greatest freedom for as many people as possible”. Clearly, not having slaves would be a step in the right direction. I admit to failing miserably when I try to imagine what was going through Slick’s head when he says that having slaves would “ensure the happiness of the majority”. Let us just suppose that, demographically speaking, there was 1 slave to every 10 ‘white men’. Now, let us say that the 10 white men are considered free and the 1 slave is not free. If we were then to release the slave from bondage, from a life of servility, would this not raise the number of ‘the free’ to 11? Am I missing something here or is Slick merely incapable of basic arithmetic?

Moreover, what is this majority that Slick is referring to? The only explanation is that he was conceptualizing society in an antiquated system of classification in which society considered non-white-people as different, as inferior. Only a delusional mind would fail to recognize that using ‘minority’ in this way would render slaves as non-human or, at the very least, an inferior form of human; which indeed was the conception in an antebellum society. But, Mr. Slick, society does not function this way. Yes, there are instances in which it is proper to refer to a set as a majority: the majority of people in my apartment building are Chicago Bears fans, the majority of students at my school would be considered nerds (I am proud to call myself one), the majority of people in America purport to adhere to some sort of religious belief, etc. Notice a trend? All of these can be said to be a majority because there was a conscious choice, there was not someone making an arbitrary distinction between this and that group. Whenever we deal with a majority-minority paradigm in which there are moral implications, each and every time the majority and minority are in their respective sets because of a conscious choice. We do not impart moral judgments on sets of people by such arbitrary standards as skin color.

Mr. Slick, society is not relegated into a caste system in which the delineations are made on arbitrary attributions such as skin color. When we do make proclamations on delineations that are non-conscious, that are arbitrary, such as the majority of the people in America are Caucasian, it is proffered merely as a dubious fact. It is an insult to every minority – not just African-Americans – to distinguish society in the way that you did, Mr. Slick, when we are discussing moral judgments. It is a shameful tactic and, unfortunately, remains unnoticed by most of your adherents because of their ignorance and, quite frankly, it’s pathetic that such a point was even used.

“Remember the love bit.”

Of the few readers that I have, the majority of them will undoubtedly know that I have quite a profound admiration for Christopher Hitchens. While he was not instrumental in shaping the philosophical beliefs that I currently adhere to, he was the greatest influence during my de-conversion process. I will forever regret the fact that I was not able to meet Hitch while he was still with us and I have no problem saying that his death has left a gaping hole in my heathen heart.

In a truly tender moment, Hitchens – a man who, at the time of this taping, looks ravaged by his battle with cancer – has a brief interaction with an 8-year old girl, to which he concludes their conversation with:

“Remember the love bit.”

Words we should all strive to live by.

A Free Pass for the Religious (read: Christian)

I’ll say right now that this post will be more pointed towards Christians specifically; this is done on purpose.

I’ve always been bothered by the fact that there are many legal exclusionary provisions that allows owners of private businesses to discriminate against who they can hire based on anything other than necessary qualification. Most notably, my perturbation has been directed against religious business owners who discriminate hiring potential applicants because they, for whatever reason, don’t mesh with their religious beliefs. But, despite my not liking the situation, I haven’t made too big a deal of it for one reason: If a religious business owner runs a business that caters to a specific clientele – namely, other religious people – then it is in their best interest to think first about their business, their clients. If the potential clientele doesn’t like who’s working in the store, this will drive business away, thus running the risk of the business failing. After all, this act of discrimination for the purpose of appeasing clientele is practiced by business owners of every inclination: a corporate executive who doesn’t want to hire someone who has a bolt through their nose because it might make their clients uncomfortable, a NPO that works with abused women doesn’t hire someone who has a history of domestic abuse, etc. And for that reason, I’ve bit my tongue while religious business owners discriminated in hiring non-heterosexuals; because this hire would simply be bad for business.

But this news story that ran in the Anchorage Daily News has confirmed what I have suspected all along, thus causing me to no longer appease such blatant discrimination. The story recounts the initiative taken by gay rights activists who are trying to extend the legal provisions that prohibit business owners from discriminating based on certain criteria:

The initiative up for public vote would extend legal protections against discrimination to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Anchorage. Current law already prohibits discrimination in employment, loans, rentals, real estate deals and other activities on the basis of race, color, marital status, sex, religion, disabilities and the like. The initiative would add sexual orientation and transgender identity to the list.

Here’s the sole reason (that’s in the report) cited by those opposed as to why this initiative is bad:

The main problem as the Alliance Defense Fund sees it is that private business owners could be forced to hire or do business with people whose sexual orientation doesn’t match their religious beliefs, said Holly Carmichael, a lawyer for the fund.

As has been my suspicion, this specific type of discrimination has nothing to do with sustaining clientele . Many religious private business owners discriminate in this way simply because they think gays are icky. The religious, by virtue of their simply being religious, have a free pass to legally discriminate against a certain group of people simply because said group of people make them uncomfortable; or, as is probably most often the case, the religious owners are just blindly prejudiced against such people.

I ask you, other than for religious purposes, does anyone get such special treatment for such blatant bigotry? More interestingly, do you think those who are opposed to such an initiative would be so adamant in their discrimination if they were at the receiving end? Let me proffer a couple of scenarios that would all still be, according to the Alliance Defense Fund, allowed since prohibition of any of the following would still be infringing on the owner’s religious beliefs:

1) A Muslim, who owns a successful chain of jewelry stores across the nation, refuses to hire Christians because the Christian doesn’t match the Muslim’s religious beliefs.

2) A Hindu, who owns  his own mortgage company, refuses to hire Christians because the Christian doesn’t match the Hindu’s religious beliefs.

3) A Jew, who owns a music production company, refuses to hire Christians because the Christian doesn’t match the Jew’s religious beliefs.

4) The owner of Google refuses to hire Christians because the Christian doesn’t match his religious beliefs. (Grant for the sake of argument the previous sentence to be true.)

Let’s be serious, I doubt anyone opposed to such an initiative would protest against it with such verve if they thought, for just one second, that Christians would be at the receiving end of such bigoted business practices. The Christian who counter such initiative proclaim their worn-out motto of “religious freedom”, so long one remembers that the only religious freedom that actually matters is that of the Christian and anyone who says otherwise will simply be accused of starting a war on religion.

One must also consider how big a company would be able to partake in these systematic exclusions. What makes this scenario even more terrifying is the possibility of said business owners being not of the liberal Christian ilk, but of the more prejudiced homophobic, racist ilk. Not allowing such discriminatory business practices may infringe on libertarian rights of the individual, but one must question if such hateful practices should be allowed in a society that constantly strives for progressive acceptance, especially when such country was founded on the notion of accepting every member of our species – irrespective of race, culture, sexual orientation, or religious beliefs. When considering what practices be permissible in society, one must run the risk of imposing on individual rights and beliefs if said individual rights beliefs are bred out of a system that has a long-standing – and continued – history of bigoted antagonism against anyone who dare disagree or will not succumb to the antiquated practices  of a system historically known for discrimination, among other things. Rest assured, I am not talking about imposing on the beliefs of the individual for the sake of stamping out unwanted beliefs. By all means, let the misguided individual hold any delusion he so choose. But when it comes to practices that intentionally and explicitly impact society in a negative way – as is the case when not hiring an individual simply because your religion teaches you that homosexuality is of the devil – we as a society also have the right to say that such unjust discriminations will not be encouraged simply because those who promote such practices cling to traditionalism as if their life depended on it (indeed, they believe their eternal life actually does depend on it).

 

Indonesian Atheist Faces Jailtime

As numerous news sources are now reporting, an Indonesian atheist could be sentenced up to 5 years jail time for simply being atheist. Here’s an excerpt from an article found in the Telegraph:

The atheist identified as Alexander, who goes by just one name [The BBC reports that his full name is Alexander Aan], now faces five years imprisonment for blasphemy after police officially arrested and charged him on Friday.

The Indonesian Council of Ulema, the Islamic religious authority, reported him over his remarks on a Facebook page he moderated which said: “God does not exist” Mr Alexander, 31, turned up at his government planning offices in Dharmasraya, western Sumatra, on Wednesday to be confronted by a group of men who beat him and then took him to the police.

This brutality for simply being an atheist takes place in the purported moderate Muslim nation. Moderation is functional, I suppose…

What A Relief: A Response

This will be my second response to fellow blogger John’s two posts For Goodness Sake and What A Relief (note: these two posts were  not necessarily written as a two-part series. I just decided to conjoin my responses with these two posts as I felt that they were related.) (Also of note, I won’t be addressing the main point of the What A Relief post, but will be addressing something that I think is much more important.) To read my first response to For Goodness Sake, just click here.

Well, let’s get started…

Like in the first response, I won’t be recapping John’s post, so I suggest clicking the link above if you would like some context.

John wrote:

Presuming atheistic naturalism to be true, the Christians would represent the disappointed students, in that for all their efforts and self-sacrifice believing they were being piously obedient to a God they believed existed; all was in vain.  All the passed up opportunities to indulge in fun things the Bible has placed on the don’t list: sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll.  Just like the students who took the time to study and focus on the test at hand, the Christians forewent life’s “sinful” distractions.  But all the effort was for nothing…suckers.

On the other hand, the students who represent the Atheists weren’t prepared for the test and so is quite relieved the score will not count.  They did whatever they were inclined to do, hindered only by their own conscience.  Now, I wonder what would happen to the study habits of a student if he knew none of the scores on any test or assignment were going to count for anything?  Studying would be optional.  No more worries about failing, no more worries about discipline for non-participation, no more worries about getting sent to the principal’s office for mischief.

As I eluded to in my previous response, and as these two paragraphs validate, there is a fundamental difference as to how theists and non-theists approach the issue of morality. First, if we are to accept John’s initial paradigm and assume an atheistic naturalism (which I gladly will), the above cited passage connotes that non-theists indulge in morally bad habits. This is an entirely incorrect way to approach the moral actions of a non-theist. Rest assured, if I consider an action to be morally wrong, I would not commit said morally wrong act  because I actually believe it to be morally wrong. In other words, if I considered ‘studying’ to be the morally correct thing to do, then I would study! (Shocker, I know.) The reason why I do certain acts which the typical theist would find morally wrong is because I don’t think these actions are wrong. John’s ‘student analogy’  fails for the simple reason that the paradigm is still constructed within a theistic framework, which is just a no-no given his presumption of an “atheistic-naturalism” for the purposes of his argument. If ‘studying’ was to be morally good within a naturalistic framework, then the non-theist would have studied. To extend the analogy, the problem that arises is that non-theists are not thoroughly convinced that studying is the morally correct thing to do. We, as non-theists, ask ‘why’ studying is the morally correct thing to do before we actually study. If it is shown to us that studying is moral, then we study. If not, then we don’t. It’s as simple as that. Therefore, it is nonsensical to assert that the non-theist would be relieved for having committed all the actions that we did, given that we don’t consider our actions to be immoral in the first place. The theist (I’ll just refer to Christianity from now on since this is the religion that John is defending), on the other hand, simply trusts the teacher when he says, “Studying is good.” The difference in approach to studying, to morality, is the fundamental difference between the morality of theists and non-theists, which brings me to my second point:

I pose the following to my theistic readers: Why is studying good? Why is “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll” bad? What are the reasons why (G) is good and (B) is bad? In essence, the theistic reformation of the Euthyphro dilemma (ED): “Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?” If the former, then there must be a source of morality other than God. If the latter, then morality is arbitrary and is subjectively dependent on the capricious whims of a bored god. Today’s favorite response by the theist is that this “dilemma” is, in fact, a false dilemma. There is actually a third horn: “God wills something because He is good.” In the  video I just linked to, in which popular Christian apologist William Lane Craig talks about the ED, there is a moment (at about the 9:00 minute mark) where a non-theist asserts that the theistic response to the ED does not actually answer the dilemma, but merely pushes the question back. I agree with him in that the response merely pushes the question back, but I don’t agree with him in the manner that it does.

Why is God’s nature the way that it is? How do we know if this nature is morally “good”? Now, a quick theistic response to this second question (I fear this may be the only response that I know of that is worthy of mention) would be to say that, “God’s nature is such that it is necessarily perfectly good.” But what does “perfectly good” mean? By what standard can we determine what it means to be “perfectly good”? Let’s use an example to help me make my point clear:

God commands, “Thou shalt not murder.” But what makes murder bad? If we are being consistent, God commanded this because His nature is perfectly good and His edicts therefore reflect that nature. As such, his edict would reflect this perfectly good nature. But how do we know that “perfectly good” = “do not murder”? We certainly think that murder is bad, but how do we know that murder is necessarily bad and that “do not murder” is in-keeping with what is “perfectly good”?

“Why is murder bad?”
“Because God commanded us not to murder.”
“Why did God command us not to murder?”
“Because He has a perfectly good nature and His edicts reflect that nature.”
“What makes it so that God’s perfectly good nature is one that necessarily states that it is bad to murder?”
“Because not murdering someone is obviously morally superior to not murdering someone.”

You see, in order to say that God’s edicts are morally good, we must already know – without appealing to God – what it means to be “perfectly good”. ”Good”, according to Christian doctrine, is merely what God is, thus rendering the term meaningless. The Christian cannot answer what and why something is good without falling back on a meaningless – ultimately circular – tautology. The answer to why murder is bad would therefore, according to Christian doctrine, simply be because God’s nature is such that it renders murder “bad”, without actually explaining why it is bad. The Christian cannot answer why it is morally good to study rather than to not study.

Now, the Christian can always fall back on ‘old faithful’: faith. Without question (ideally), the Christian will have to assume by faith that it is morally good if God were to, say, command someone to slay their first-born child. And without even asking, “Why?”, this, my friends, is a very dangerous game to play.