Am I Moral?
In this entry, I'd like to address the second issue that I brought up in my last post about the premise on which most of the discrimination against atheists is based. This is the issue of centuries of scapegoating and lies perpetuated by churches around the world. The basis of the claims are usually along the lines of atheists being, by definition, immoral, evil Satan worshipers. The implication is that without a god, without a holy book, without the fear of hell, people have no reason to act morally, and instead will only act in a manner that best suits them, no matter how it may hurt anyone else. I plan on addressing this two ways. The first is by showing that morality is not something inherent only to the Bible, but is a trait that we as humans, along with other species, have gained through evolution. The second will be to address the Bible's version of morality, which is outdated, confusing, and often contradictory.
First, we need a working definition of morality. The American Heritage Dictionary defines morality as "The quality of being in accord with standards of right or good conduct." For the purposes of this post, I will provide a broad, but more specific definition. Morality is the quality of choosing one's actions in a way that is honest and fair, and avoids causing harm to others. I admit that this definition is slightly utilitarian in nature, but from my experience, these are the traits someone people consider to be moral exudes, and generally follows from the Golden Rule, which many cultures hold to be one of, if not the highest tenant of their moral standard.
Altruistic behavior has been observed in many different species of animals. In some animals, it presents as a structured system by which tasks are divided; some members of species hunt or forage for food while others stand guard. Those who find food come back and share that food with the rest of the group. In other species (including humans), older siblings take on the task of caring for younger siblings, even when it is clearly not in their best interest. For these animals, including humans, altruistic, moral behavior is ingrained by thousands of years of evolution, because a group of selfish, immoral individuals will have a much harder time surviving.
Moreover, humans are a social species, and what we require for survival quickly becomes too much for one person or even a small group to handle. For this reason, we have developed complex social and economic structures that reward what we regard as moral behavior so that we can depend on each other. The fact is, we would still be living in caves if we could never trust that our fellow humans would not rob or kill us at the first chance they get. And it is clear from historical records that there were centuries of civilized society before the Bible came about or was widely taught. From this, and observations of other, non-Judeo-Christian cultures which exhibit the same moral precepts, it is obvious that knowledge of the Bible or weekly church attendance is completely unnecessary for moral behavior.
The second, and perhaps more important point, is that while the Bible has a number of good lessons on morality, it has even more contradictory, outdated lessons. This is the problem with the Bible as moral guide, it claims to be the source for absolute morality. But morality is not an absolute thing. The fact that people no longer consider large parts of the Bible, like a lot of the Old Testament, to be valid is proof of that. For example, it used to be considered ok to own slaves. Since then, we have realized that clearly that is immoral on many, many different levels. It also used to be considered moral to seek out "blasphemers" and torture them to make them convert, or burn them alive if they wouldn't. Again, we know better now, we know that is not moral.
The Bible is missing the built-in editorial feedback loop of society. So far, the best that mainstream Christianity has done is to say that some parts of the Bible are not meant to be taken literally, that they are metaphors of some sort. The right thing to do is to admit that we do not know everything, and more importantly, that a 2000 year old fairy tail knows even less than we do now. The Bible does not and will not deal with many of the moral and ethical dilemmas we face today, such as abortion. Abortions did not exist when the Bible was written, so how could the writers have anything to say about it? We have learned incredible things in the past 2000 years, and a lot of it has to do with ethics and morality. Why should we ever think that it would be a good idea to shun all of that knowledge in favor of the ancient myth scrawled on the gilded pages we find in the nightstand of our hotels? We shouldn't.
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