Taking Inventory of the Irony Stuart Pivar v. Seed Media Group, LLC and Paul Z. Myers » The Morality of the Atheist - Same as it Ever Was A familiar pattern arises in every atheism v. religion debate (which arises in a host of contexts, but I’m generalizing a great deal here so I’ll not restrict myself to one); reduced to its essentials, the argument looks like this: Christian: Because atheists believe don’t believe in God, they believe in nothing. They owe no allegiance to a higher power and therefore do not subscribe to a universal morality. Morality is entirely relative to the atheist — he makes his own rules. I could go on, but it’s a tired exercise. The argument is easily countered a number of ways: regions where atheism predominates (like Western Europe) share the greatest concern for human rights; science is beginning to strongly suggest that we each have, to varying degrees, an ingrained moral sensibility, and studies have routinely demonstrated that the outcomes of moral hypotheticals given to test subjects have no correlation to whether the test subject is religious or non-religious. Brian Tamahana delves deeper into this subject here, but I want to extract a simple thought experiment that demonstrates his larger point more succinctly: Imagine that your longstanding belief in God is destroyed owing to some precipitating event (say, an inexplicable, arbitrary, unjust, tragedy happens to a family member). In the dark of the night, you come to the conclusion that you no longer believe in God. The next day, when you venture into the world, will you suddenly feel tempted to freeload off your friends, cheat strangers, stop taking care of your children, or steal from, rob, rape, or kill someone? Of course not. You considered all of these things immoral the day before, and you will still see them as such. You may well experience the throes of an existential crisis (asking yourself what matters in life), but that will not of itself penetrate or dissolve your routine moral beliefs. I bring this up because it seems insane to me that we’re still having this debate, especially since we’ve had this debate before. Up until around the Civil War, most states prohibited atheists from testifying in court. The reasoning then is remarkably similar to the present-day musings of modern Fundamentalists: The theory held that, since they did not fear the retribution of any god at all, they could not be trusted to tell the truth. Thus, in the early common law, the atheist was excluded because he did not fear the judgment of God, and the defendant was excluded because everyone feared the judgment of man. - Paul W. Kaufman, Disbelieving Nonbelievers: Atheism, Competence, and Credibility in the Turn of the Century American Courtroom, 15 Yale J.L. & Human. 395 (2003). Comments are closed.

Recent Posts Is Scientology a Religion?

Laura DeCrescenzo’s Motion to Compel Scientology & The Priest-Penitent Privilege

The NHL Lockout and Heroin Economics

Free Speech in Burning Theaters

THE MASTER & SCIENTOLOGY Old Posts Select Month June 2013 (1) March 2013 (1) September 2012 (5) August 2012 (4) July 2012 (2) April 2012 (1) March 2012 (1) January 2012 (1) November 2011 (3) October 2011 (1) August 2011 (2) June 2011 (7) March 2011 (3) February 2010 (1) May 2009 (2) April 2009 (1) March 2009 (1) February 2009 (1) January 2009 (6) December 2008 (2) November 2008 (1) October 2008 (1) September 2008 (1) August 2008 (2) July 2008 (2) June 2008 (7) May 2008 (5) April 2008 (1) March 2008 (1) February 2008 (4) January 2008 (3) December 2007 (1) October 2007 (1) September 2007 (1) August 2007 (4) July 2007 (7) June 2007 (2) April 2007 (2) March 2007 (2) February 2007 (1) December 2006 (1) November 2006 (1) September 2006 (1) August 2006 (2) July 2006 (2) June 2006 (1) May 2006 (5) January 2006 (4) December 2005 (2) November 2005 (1) October 2005 (1) September 2005 (4) August 2005 (4) July 2005 (1) June 2005 (6) May 2005 (1) April 2005 (5) March 2005 (11) February 2005 (4) January 2005 (10) December 2004 (4) November 2004 (16) October 2004 (4) Categories Select Category Art (7) Books (3) Google+ (10) Law (123) Church/State (83) Copyright (8) Criminal Law (9) Matrimonial (1) Media (12) Patent (1) Trademark (11) Meta (6) Politics (61) Religion a/o Cults (118) Scientology (36) Science (28) Sports (3) Hockey (1) Uncategorized (1)