On Religion and Morality

When people first find out that I'm an atheist or an agnostic, or whatever the hell I'm calling myself at the moment, one topic that I really hope doesn't come up is morality. I've been asked how an atheist can be a moral person. I know for a fact that I try to be a good person, and being asked how it's even possible is insulting. I would argue that not only does one not need religion to be a good person, but being religious is likely to make you into an evil one.

Imagine this: A young woman was violently raped by her uncle when she was eleven years old. It went on for about a year, and her uncle scared her into silence by telling her that he would murder her entire family, but keep her alive so she would have to live with the thought that it was all her fault. The woman is now in college, and her uncle is going to be released from prison very soon. Her uncle claims to have found Christ while in prison, and would like to see his niece again to apologize for what he did. The woman has been suffering from night terrors throughout the time he's been locked away, and seeing her uncle again would be the worst thing that she could possibly imagine. Her childhood was destroyed. She will never forget what he did to her. She will never forgive him, and she will not see him. Her parents are religious nuts, and they want their daughter to forgive him. They believe that what she is doing is no different than turning her back on God.

This is not a hypothetical thought experiment. This happened. The woman poured her heart out to Reddit in three parts, here, here, and here. She's also a closet atheist and a closet lesbian. The unbelievable ignorance and thoughtlessness with which her parents are treating this situation is blood curdling.

[My mom] said "When you are ready to return to the lord you will be welcomed back with open arms but until then your dad and I have decided that we cannot allow you in this house so long as you hold sin in your heart." My dad nodded but said nothing and made himself scarce.

I got more angry right then than I have in a long time. I screamed at her that she cared more about her "imaginary friend in the sky" than she did about her own daughter, that she loved her child raping brother more than her own daughter, and that there was only one good person in the room and that was me.

Her face got white when I said the "imaginary friend" thing but when I finished my tirade she got angry and this is when I found out the real reason she thinks I should forgive my uncle. Paraphrased but essentially she said "You are such a drama queen and you always have been! You have spent the last eight years so embarrassed and ashamed of what you did that you have turned your own flesh and blood into a devil in your mind! I thought all that therapy we wasted our money on finally convinced you that you were just a curious child but you just can't accept any responsibility for anything, can you?!!! You can't forgive Steve because you can't forgive yourself!"

It all made sense right then. My mom didn't believe my uncle was completely at fault for what he did to me. Over the years her mind has revised the truth in a way that would allow her to accept her brother wasn't a complete villain. In her mind now I was a "curious little girl" who had willingly participated and the only reason I was mad at my uncle after all these years is because I'm embarrassed by what I "did".

I said to her "Mom, he raped me."

She rolled her eyes when I said that and it was enough to make me feel numb and she said "Yes technically he raped you and what he did was wrong because you are his niece and you were too young for that sort of behavior but if it really was all his fault why wouldn't you testify in court? I'll tell you why, because you didn't want to have to admit you played a role in it to."

I did have the chance to get my uncle locked up for life way back then but I would have had to go through a trail and I would have had to testify. At the time my mom was more than supportive of my choice not to do this because it was just too traumatizing. I am certain that back then she did not in any way see this as any sort of admission of guilt on my part. Back then she really did believe everything I had told her and she hated my uncle and cursed him as the devil. Over the years she has rationalized things so that now it wasn't entirely his fault.

That was the final straw when she said that. Surprisingly calm I said "Mom he raped me. He forced me, he hurt me repeatedly. He scared me and he terrified me and for you to think I'm just 'embarrassed' shows me you are more crazy than I ever thought. Good bye."

She followed me to the front door as I stormed off like she was going to say something but she never did. Before closing the door behind me I looked at her one last time and couldn't help from being a little vicious so I said "By the way I'm an atheist. Also, 'Jane' isn't just my friend, she's my lover." That made her do her melodramatic fall to the knees and start praying thing she's famous for.

I'm going to make an assumption. I would guess that her mother goes to church often. I'll also guess that she reads the Bible. She seems to be very religious. And yet, if religion is supposed to make you a good person, and if she's very religious, then why is she so fucking evil? She believes her child-raping brother to be a victim, and her eleven-year-old daughter seduced him. There are no words to describe this evil, and the biggest tragedy in all this is that there is no actual hell for these parents to go to.

We've assumed that the mother reads the Bible a lot. She goes to church a lot. We can't say that she doesn't know what the Bible would say for a situation like this, because I'm sure if any one of us would get into a debate with her, her knowledge of scripture would likely be unmatched. And we can't even say she's wrong in terms of scripture. The Bible says that any sin can be forgiven. It says that if anyone does any wrongdoing towards you, you should turn the other cheek. But this is simply wrong. Rape victims should not turn to the other cheek to their attackers (unless they enjoy the thought of even more people telling them it was their fault). Should we have turned the other cheek when terrorists slaughtered 3,000 people on 9/11? It would've made no difference if the Jews had turned the other cheek to the Nazis, because they'd have been slaughtered anyway. It doesn't fucking matter to psychopaths. They're not rational. People like terrorists and Nazis and rapists are completely and irrevocably insane. There is no turning the other cheek towards these people, they need to be either killed or imprisoned because that's the only way to stop them from doing what they do.

I'm sure that most Christians would find the behavior of these parents to be absolutely revolting. However, a good case can be argued that the parents are not wrong in terms of scripture. So this brings me to my main point: the fact that religious moderates even exist proves that morality does not come from the Bible.



It's very clear that the Bible endorses slavery. That cannot be debated. The only time the Bible ever condemns slavery outright is when God's "chosen people" are the victims of it. It gives very specific instructions on how slaves should be treated, how they should be obtained, and when you can have sex with them. When slavery was legal in the United States, slaveowners would use the Bible to defend their actions. And they'd be right.

If we truly got our morality from the Bible, then there's nothing wrong the with enslavement of human beings. There's nothing wrong with stoning disobedient children to death. There's nothing wrong with sentencing homosexuals to death. Mahatma Gandhi is currently enjoying eternal torment. It is a good thing that Christians have taken it upon themselves to disregard these passages today. It is a good thing that Christians today block out all the evil things the Bible has to say, and only focus on the good things. But doing this means that the Bible is not the ultimate source of morality. Every human being decides what is and what is not moral for himself. And civilization has not imploded.

I've heard Christians say that atheism has been responsible for some of the worst crimes of the 20th century. Hitler and Stalin and Mao were all atheists, and that's why atheists are immoral. First of all, Hitler was not an atheist. He referenced God many times in his speeches. The Nazi Party was extraordinarily close to the Papacy. But that's irrelevant, because the important thing to remember is that Hitler did not commit his crimes because he was a Christian. There were countless other political factors in play, and his religion really had nothing to do with it. It's the same for Stalin and Mao. They committed atrocities, but it was not because of their atheism. There were way too many variables going on to blame what they did on any single thing. Atheism has no doctrine except for skepticism. If anything, the biggest problem in these societies is that they behaved too much like a religion. There wasn't enough skepticism going on, and people paid unrelenting loyalty to their leaders and accepted whatever they said as gospel, without ever questioning a thing.

And if we want to lower ourselves a numbers game, then why do proponents of this argument only limit themselves to the atrocities "of the 20th century"? Would they like to pretend that the Inquisition never happened? Or the cultural genocide of the American peoples, thought by the Spanish to be the spawn of Satan? And the thousands upon thousands of innocent people burned at the stake for witchcraft? And the rampant sexual abuse of children that has been going on in the church throughout its entire existence? I could write an entire entry on just the atrocities Christians have committed specifically in the name of Christianity, and it still wouldn't be enough.

From The End of Faith by Sam Harris:

Without warning you are seized and brought before a judge. Did you create a thunderstorm and destroy a village? Did you kill your neighbor with the evil eye? Do you doubt that Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist? You will soon learn that questions of this sort admit of no exculpatory reply.

You are not told the names of your accusers. But their identities are of little account, for even if, at this late hour, they were to recant their charges against you, they would merely be punished as false witnesses, while their original accusations would retain their full weight as evidence of your guilt. The machinery of justice has been so well oiled by faith that it can no longer be influenced.

But you have a choice, of sorts: you can concede your guilt and name your accomplices. Yes, you must have had accomplices. No confession will be accepted unless other men and women can be implicated in your crimes. Perhaps you and three acquaintances of your choosing did change into hares and consort with the devil himself. The sight of iron boots designed to crush you feet seems to refresh your memory. Yes, Friedrich, Arthur, and Otto are sorcerers too. Their wives? Witches all.

[...]

Or you can maintain your innocence, which is almost certainly truth (after all, it is the rare person who can create a thunderstorm). In response, your jailers will be happy to lead you to the furthest reaches of human suffering, before burning you at the stake. You may be imprisoned in total darkness for months or years at a time, repeatedly beaten and starved, or stretched upon the rack. Thumbscrews may be applied, or toe screws, or a pear-shaped vise may be inserted into your mouth, vagina, or anus, and forced open until your misery admits of no possible increase. You may be hoisted to the ceiling on a stappado (with your arms bound behind your back and attached to a pulley,and weights tied to your feet), dislocating your shoulders. To this torment squassation might be added, which, being often sufficient to cause your death, may yet spare you the agony of the stake. If you are unlucky enough to be in Spain, where judicial torture has achieved a transcendent level of cruelty, you may be placed in the "Spanish chair": a throne of iron, complete with iron stocks to secure your neck and limbs. In the interest of saving your soul, a coal brazier will be placed beneath your bare feet, slowly roasting them. Because the stain of heresy runs deep, your flesh will be continually larded with fat to keep it from burning too quickly. Or you may be bound to a bench, with a cauldron filled with mice placed upside-down upon your bare abdomen. With the requisite application of heat to the iron, the mice will begin to burrow into your belly in search of an exit.

Should you, while in extremis, admit to your torturers that you are indeed a heretic, a sorcerer, or a witch, you will be made to confirm you story before a judge--and and attempt to recant, to claim that your confession has been coerced through torture, will deliver you either to your tormentors once again or directly to the stake. If, once condemned, you repent of your sins, these compassionate and learned men--whose concern for the fate of your eternal soul really knows no bounds--will do you kindess of strangling you before lighting your pyre.

And so we're left with the one question that's at the heart of all this: where does morality come from? It's certainly not the Bible, because a literal reading of the Old Testament requires that heretics be put to death, and I'm sure the Christians of the Middle Ages would've had a very special place for me on their racks if they could read this.

I don't know for certain where morality comes from. Nobody knows for certain, and anyone who claims to is a liar. Many Christians often say that if we did not have the Bible to guide us, then there would be rampant anarchy. No one is to say that murder or rape should be wrong, so those things would be going on willy nilly. The fact that I am neither a murderer nor a rapist should be enough to convince them that this is wrong. Let me turn the question around: are they not committing murder or rape for the single reason that the Bible says it's wrong? Do they have urges to take part in these things, with only their fear of eternal punishment holding them back? That didn't stop the Inquisition. BOOM.

Neurologists are beginning to have an idea of where morality comes from: being moral simply makes us feel good. Acting good towards other people releases dopamine into your brain -- the very same chemical released during sex or drug use. We may have evolved this tendency because others typically treat us in the same way we treat them. If we look out for others, others will look out for us, and our chance of survivability increases. We are unselfish for selfish reasons.

This explanation is shaky, and very well may be wrong. But it's something that, at least for the time being, makes sense.