Here\u2019s a post in which I try to assemble some ideas I\u2019ve been thinking about for a while, but which are newly relevant in light of yesterday\u2019s Supreme Court decision. \u00a0As I tend to do in such posts, I\u2019m writing without much reference to the literature on the topic, just trying out ideas. \u00a0Yeah, amateur hour \u2014 but have at it in the comments.<\/p>\n
First thought:<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s a running debate over whether religion is necessary for morality \u2014 whether an individual can be sufficiently moral in the absence of (a) the belief that a deity will punish you for transgressing divinely-ordained rules or (b) even without acute fear of punishment, the belief that rules of proper behavior are divinely ordained in the first place. \u00a0People who are atheists \u2014 not just indifferent to religion but the sort whose facebook wall is full of \u201cshares\u201d from atheist groups or individuals \u2014 claim it\u2019s an insult to even suggest that their moral compass might not be in order.<\/p>\n But it occurs to me that we\u2019re not being precise enough if we say something to the effect of \u201catheists are not moral\u201d \u2014 it is (likely) quite appropriate to say that, in general, \u201catheists have a different set of moral principles<\/strong> than religious people do,\u201d and to explore whether there are common threads to those different principles. \u00a0Here are some thoughts:<\/p>\n Atheists, in general, are less interested in abstract, future harms to some group or individual that might result from your actions (or \u00a0the collective actions of those who are so behaving) than in tangible, direct harms.<\/p>\n Atheists prioritize individual autonomy and freedom to act as you choose, and see unwarranted restrictions on that autonomy (whether by the government or by means of social disapproval) as a grave sin.<\/p>\n Because of the high value they place on individual autonomy\/freedom, and the fact that they see great harm in restricting this, this tends to trump concerns about harm it might do to others.<\/p>\n And atheists take as their prime moral principle the neopagan \u201cDo what you will, so long as it harms none\u201d<\/i> (or variants thereof; see wikipedia<\/a>), which lacks that active call to help others which exists in the Christian \u201cdo unto others as you would have them do unto you\u201d (and I don\u2019t mean to set up a Christian vs. atheist binary but can\u2019t speak authoritatively about the extent to which other religions include that call to help others).<\/p>\n Hence:<\/p>\n the notion that gay marriage could cause anyone any harm is just not something that can fit in this values system. \u00a0The deprivation of individual freedom is so clear that statements like \u201cchildren need a mother and a father\u201d can\u2019t make any headway against it, let alone concerns about the long-term impact of gay men acquiring children by purchasing donor eggs and the services of a surrogate, or the effect of the commodification of children that we see in stories of angry sperm purchasers complaining about the defective purchase, or arguments about when a man is a \u201cdonor\u201d with no responsibilities for a legally-fatherless child or a father who is obliged to pay child support. \u00a0The clear tangible benefits of Social Security survivor\u2019s benefits, estate tax exemption, etc., trump worries about what happens next if marriage is defined as a means of providing government benefits and recognition for romantically-linked pairs.<\/p>\n The increasing frequency with which CNN and other \u201cnews\u201d sites profile polyamorous couples, swingers, open marriages, etc. : \u00a0there\u2019s no readily-visible and immediate harm to such relationships.<\/p>\n Likewise: \u00a0assisted suicide gives every appearance of being voluntary, of furthering personal autonomy and freedom, and the harms are abstract and indirect: \u00a0the risk that individuals will be pressured to kill themselves due to pressure from family, or out of a perception of lack of support; the risk that socially-acceptable suicide will expand from terminally-ill, dreadfully-suffering individuals to the \u201cconventionally\u201d suicidal; concerns that the \u201cpain-relieving option\u201d of suicide will lead to lack of provision (by the government or insurers) of other options.<\/p>\n Abortion, of course: \u00a0the deprivation of personal autonomy on the part of a woman who doesn\u2019t want to be pregnant is tangible, the harm done to the fetus by, well, killing it, is more abstract and literally invisible.<\/p>\n A while back, I looked at<\/a> the Freedom From Religion Foundation, when they put their December display up in our local park, and they, in fact, cited assisted suicide and abortion as two instances of \u201cmoral progress\u201d that they claimed to have been brought about by atheists.<\/p>\n Second thought:<\/strong><\/p>\n The claim is often that even if individual atheists are moral people, they\u2019re free riders of a sort, having often been brought up in religious homes and in any case being influenced by the social norms of a predominantly religious society. \u00a0And it occurs to me that the two societies that came to mind as very non-religious were both societies with a high degree of social control: \u00a0Japan (see my summary of a book<\/a>) and Sweden (no link because the book I recently read, I haven\u2019t gotten around to summarizing yet). \u00a0So I hunted around and found a report<\/a> on religious practice which listed the most secular societies (based on the smallest percentages of people responding \u201cyes\u201d to the question \u201care you a religious person?\u201d):<\/p>\n Here are the lest religious societies, with the percent of people replying \u201cyes\u201d (other choices were \u201cno, not religious\u201d, \u201ca convicted atheist\u201d or \u201cdon\u2019t know\/no response\u201d):<\/p>\n China \u2013 14%<\/p>\n Japan \u2013 16%<\/p>\n Czech Republic \u2013 20%<\/p>\n Turkey \u2013 23%<\/p>\n Sweden \u2013 29%<\/p>\n Vietnam \u2013 30%<\/p>\n For comparison: \u00a0Ireland is 47%, the US is 60%, Poland 81%, and Ghana, the highest, is 96%.<\/p>\n So, yeah, China, Japan, Sweden \u2013 no surprise. \u00a0Turkey\u2019s a surprise (and this survey dates from 2012), though in another table, they don\u2019t show up in the list of top atheist countries, so they must have largely been replying that they\u2019re \u201cnot religious,\u201d and perhaps there the definition of what it means to be \u201creligious\u201d is so narrowly drawn (headscarf, daily prayers, Sharia supporter, etc.) that more moderate believers feel compelled to reply that they\u2019re not.<\/p>\n But the Czech Republic? \u00a0Who knew? \u00a0Well, maybe you did, but I didn\u2019t. \u00a0I found an article from The Guardian<\/a> from \u00a02010 and another from the National Catholic Reporter<\/a> from 2009 that provide some context: \u00a0basically Catholicism was so heavily connected with the Austro-Hungarian Empire that when they gained their independence after World War I, they threw off both the Empire and the Institutional Church. \u00a0Nationalists envisioned replacing it with a \u201cnative\u201d Protestantism but that didn\u2019t \u201ctake\u201d, and, unlike in Poland, the communists found fertile ground for state-sponsored atheism during the Warsaw Pact period.<\/p>\n So \u2014 well, it would be useful to know more. \u00a0Is there a distinctively different set of moral principles in the Czech Republic due to being atheist\/nonreligious? \u00a0Is the fact that they\u2019re unicultural (so far as I know) a glue that holds them together, or is there a strong degree of social control? \u00a0Inquiring minds want to know.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here\u2019s a post in which I try to assemble some ideas I\u2019ve been thinking about for a while, but which are newly relevant in light of yesterday\u2019s Supreme Court decision. \u00a0As I tend to do in such posts, I\u2019m writing without much reference to the literature on the topic, just trying out ideas. \u00a0Yeah, amateur […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2209,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[478,479,91],"class_list":["post-2266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atheism","tag-morality","tag-secularism"],"yoast_head":"\n