According to theists, the whole concept of a world without religion (beter put, without God) would be disastrous and is a concept idiotic from conception. Those same theists attribute basic nihilism to be equal to society-wide atheism, greatly exaggerating the importance of religion in defining moral principles for the community.
Nihilism is attributable to atheism in some of its characteristics, I cannot deny that bare fact of life. Atheism, in its purest form, obviously rejects the authority of any religious principle, as religion, to an atheist, is nothing more than the organised concept of supreme beings (God in Abrahamic religions), and an atheist does not consider religion to be the backbone of society (or moral law). But does this also mean that atheists reject all moral principles, that they believe life is meaningless and that, philosophically speaking, nothing in the world really exists?
Without any doubt, the answer to that question is no. This of course saying without taking into account those individual atheists who independently take on the case of nihilism — but then they wouldn’t be atheists, they would be nihilists. In arguing that a nonbelieving society would not be restrained by moral laws, the theists show ignorance. Firstly, they cannot keep apart the separate concepts of nihilism and atheism. While atheism follows from the definite belief that there is no God (or any other supreme being), while nihilism follows, not from the concept that religious and moral principles are wrong, but from the concept that they account to nothing — as life is meaningless, everything that governs it (and follows from it) is also meaningless. The atheist will never argue this.
Secondly, they assume that human beings are not capable of keeping moral laws without fear of retribution. Theists often claim that the basic principle that there could be some afterlife, and in that afterlife you could either go to Heaven or Hell, that this concept keeps people on the right track. But strip it down to its bare (as should be done always), and you will discover the theist does not assume that moral principle comes from God, or religion, but that it follows from plain fear of something unknown.
Before Moses received the Ten Commandments from God on Mount Sinai, if the theists’ claim is to be believed, society had killing sprees at random, and nobody took any form of responsibility, not for themselves and not for others. By giving the society he created, a few basic moral laws to abide by, all of a sudden things changed and all went the way of peace, happiness and tranquility. Is this how history went, or is the theist just blowing smoke with their defense?
Let’s look at the definition of nihilism again. Those who accept nihilism, reject all religious and moral principle. It does not say that they reject the belief that there is a God, though in Abrahamic religious fashion it does follow from that, but even if it would, they do not begin by rejecting God and then rejecting all religious principles. No, the nihilist firstly rejects all the institutionalised and organised principles, thought up by religion and pushed unto society; and by rejecting those principles, they then also deny the existence of God of course (but not per se). Does the atheist reject all religious principles? No, for some might have followed from society first, and may have been incorporated into religious law after its in-existence springing.
Those will then return to be moral laws, as they originally were. But then, no longer will they be governed by institutions whose intentions are not always clear, but responsibility would then fall back onto society, and for the serious cases, the justice system of course.
Often, theists will present the cases of Soviet militant atheism and Nazi atheism as good representations of historical occurrences when atheistic societies went wrong. The question here is, if the same political choices would’ve been made if Stalin and Hitler had been theists. In my opinion they would have been, as they weren’t so much atheistic choices, but decisions made by atheists.
The theist needs to remember that atheism as bare concept is not a way of life, or system to live by, as religion is. The opposites are not religion and atheism, but religion and a self-responsible society (self-responsability), and belief in a supreme being and atheism — just like theism isn’t the same as religion, atheism isn’t the same as non-religion.
Stalin’s genocide of theists had little to do with the fact that he himself did not believe in God (or classical religion), but with his (paranoid) belief that those believing in God were a risk to communism and, most important to Stalin, his own position. A Christian leader would have just been as able to make those decisions, and Christian leaders have throughout history, though modern theists will then claim that when it comes to those leaders, their stance on religion all of a sudden doesn’t matter anymore.
Even if the theists’ claims about Soviet and Nazi atheism being good representations were true (and I stress, they are not), it would not be able to save their opposition to atheistic societies. These are only two historical cases, and also specific manifestations which overlap in time period. The twelve-year rule of Hitler and the thirty-one year rule of Stalin, are still greatly contrasted by the atrocities made in the name of God (and religion in general) throughout all of history. The Spanish Inquisition alone held up from 1478 till the early nineteenth century — over three hundred years of religious prosecution. But theists will then go on to claim, as I have emphasised before, that those were not actually done in the name of God, and that political and social pressure was behind it, not religion. This selectiveness when it comes to determining what part of history is attributable to (non-)religion and what not, is a character trait innate to theism. (As they also claim the bad parts of the Bible are not actually part of the Word of God, even though the Bible is the Word of God.)
In all their inaccuracy, theists do present a genuine case against atheistic societies — one they don’t even know they are presenting. While we have centuries-long knowledge of societies based upon religion, there is little that we know about the effectiveness of atheistic societies. This does not mean that the whole concept should be out of the question, but that caution should be taken to introduce it into the world — yet, this is a non-issue, considering that it is something atheists already know.
Before I end this article, let us go back to Soviet atheism. Now that Soviet communism has fallen out of use within Russia, according to theists, a complete nihilistic pit of fire would be left behind. But, if one would look at Russian society after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, there is only to conclude that atheism has changed little of people’s moral principles. In fact, many young people who now disbelieve in God (because they grew up in the militant atheism program), take on the moral principles used by the Russian Orthodox Church — without taking on the cause of that Abrahamic institution. This again solidifies my point: atheism is not generally opposed to anything religious, as much of religion had been a general social understanding before it became church law. Society will always control itself, even without the fear of God’s damnation.
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— alex[...] theists and theologians make against society-wide atheism. I already discussed it in “Atheism is not nihilism“, and I think it’s an awful argument to make. Like I said then (and in “I felt a [...]
— All About Remy » Archive » The God Question is not benign
— StreetmakarovHi, I am an atheist, I know beyond every possible doubt that there is neither God nor afterlife.
I completely agree with the author of this website that belief in God can not provide us with an objective morality, as shown clearly by these examples, which more generally illustrates the Euthyphro dilemma g : is something good just because God stipulated it is (in which case it is arbitrary, for God could state one ought to love ones foes as well as ordering the slaughter of the folks of Canaan. ) or did God ordered it because it is good (in which case there exists an objective standard of goodness independent of God) ?
However, I believe that the same challenge could be posed to any form of atheistic moral realism.
Over the past decades, numerous discoveries in neurology and evolutionary psychology have shown beyond any reasonable doubt that our moral intuitions ultimately stem from the shaping of our brain by evolution and that WITHOUT any such emotional intuition, no moral system can be built from reason alone.
This is well illustrated by the study of the brains of psychopaths: since they lack the moral emotions, they don’t consider as true most fundamental moral principles (like avoiding to create suffering, trying to promote the happiness of others) although they are quite able to reason well.
This shows the truth of David Hume’s famous principle that moral truths are the projection of our gut’s feelings on an indifferent and cruel reality : since one can not derive an “ought” from an “is”, moral truths are the expression of our emotions which we mistakenly consider as features of the objective reality.
No moral system can be created without the appeal to at least one kind of intuitions, the brute facts of nature never lead to moral duties and obligations.
Now, I want to state a version of the Euthyphro dilemma which shows the impossibility of defining an objective atheistic morality: is something good just because Evolution hardwired this conviction into us (in which case it is arbitrary, for Evolution could have lead us to believe that murder and torture are right ) or did Evolution produce our current beliefs because they are good (in which case there exists an objective standard of goodness independent of Evolution) ?
Let me now develop the first point: there is an extremely great number (perhaps even an infinity) of planets where intelligent beings like us could have evolved. Given the huge dimension of the sample, it is more than likely that many such intelligent beings have evolved conceptions of morality which would appear completely disgusting to us.
who were shaped by natural selection to value power, violence , selfishness in so far that it remains compatible with the interests of the group. When invading a city and killing or enslaving all its inhabitants, their brain generate a warm feeling of happiness, satisfaction.
Imagine for example a species of giant lizards ( or whatever else if you’ve more imagination than I
When however confronted with weakness among their own folk, they feel an overwhelming indignation, anger, rage which lead them to kill the individual guilty of failure , and after having done that, their brain awards them with an intense feeling of pleasure.
Now imagine such beings arrive at our earth and conclude based on their evolutionary intuitions that it would be moral and perfectly good to enslave all human beings capable of working and to kill all others.
What would an human atheist and moral realist say to these lizards? Do they ought to behave in a way coherent with the moral intuitions they have and slaughter or enslave all humans ?
My contention is that it would be completely impossible to show to these creatures that killing innocent beings is wrong: all moral systems developed by humans which would justify this conclusion can not be deduced from the mere consideration of natural facts , they all crucially depend on one or several moral intuitions , which are not shared by the intelligent lizards, so there would be no common ground upon which one could argue that something is right or wrong.
Now, a defender of godless moral realism could agree with me it is fallacious to rely on evolution to define an objective morality in the same way it would be fallacious to rely on the commandments of a deity. But he could then argue that there exists a moral standard independent of Evolution upon which moral realism would be based.
The problem of this argument is the following:
As I have said, no moral system can be grounded by mere logic or factual analysis alone, at some point moral intuitions (due to Evolution) are always going to come into play.
— dumb_houndTake for example the possibility of torturing a baby just for fun: almost every human being would react with disgust and say it is wrong. Neuroscience has proven that such reaction does not stem from a rational consideration of all facts but rather from instinctive gut feelings.
Afterwards, people try to rationalize their belief by backing them up with arguments and mistakenly think they feel this disgust because of their reasoning although it is the other way around.
Based on rigorous experiments in the field of neuroscience, Jonathan Haidt shows that in the case of moral reasoning, people always begin by getting a strong emotional reaction, and only seek a posteriori to justify this reaction. He has named this phenomenon ‘the emotional dog and its rational tail’: http://faculty.virginia.edu/haidtlab/articles/haidt.emotionaldog.manuscript.pdf
And since one can not derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, there is no way to prove that ‘one ought to not torture a baby for the fun’ by a reasoning based on fact alone, at one moment or an other , one is forced to appeal to emotions.
For example, saying to a intelligent lizard they ought no to do that because the baby is cute, because he is innocent, because he has an entire life before him would completely beg the question for our intelligent alien, which would then ask: “why does the baby’s beauty, innocence, or the fact he has still many years to live implies one ought not to kill the baby ?”. After one or two hours of circular reasoning, the honest human would be coerced to recognize it is so because these things sounds intuitively bad for him.
Concerning the objectivity of morality, I am neither a moral relativist nor a moral subjectivist but a proponent of an error theory: moral statements and truths are in fact nothing more than the products of our emotional intuitions , but because of the hard-wiring of our brain, we erroneously believe they correspond to some external facts of the objective reality and try to derive them from pure natural facts, committing the is/ought fallacy.
For those interested in the line of thinking presented here, I highly recommend you to read Joshua Greene’s dissertation, where he clearly demonstrates the true nature of morality and develops a coherent error-theory.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~jgreene/GreeneWJH/Greene-Dissertation.pdf
To conclude, although I am not a moral realist, I do think there is a place for ethic in each human life.
But instead of using moral absolutes such as “good”, “evil”, “right”, “wrong”, “ought”, “ought not”, referring to spooky concepts whose existence is as likely as the presence of an invisible yellow unicorn on the surface of Mars, I prefer to employ the language of desires, which correspond to indisputable facts:
We, as human being, love infant life and desire baby to growth and become happy, therefore if we want our desires to be fulfilled, then we ought not to torture babies for the fun. Contrarily to moral realism, the ‘ought’ I have used here is hypothetical and not categorical.
In the same way, I can not say the atrocities we find in the Old Testament are objectively wrong, because I don’t believe in the existence of such moral absolutes, but I can express my convictions in the following manner: if we want our intuitive feelings of love, justice and charity to be respected, then we ought to reject many books of the Old Testament as being pieces of barbaric non-senses.
The traditional moral discourse “The God of the Bible is morally wrong, we ought to fight Christianity, we are morally good whereas religious people are wicked and so on and so forth” seems to me to be completely flawed because it involves the existence of spooky moral absolutes which have no place in a scientific view of the world.
I really appreciate the critical thinking of my fellow atheists when applied to religion but I am really sad to remark they fail to apply it to their own cherished beliefs like the existence of an objective morality.
Thank you for having reading me until here !
Hey dumb_hound,
First of all, wow. Not only is this an awesome comment, it is informing, well-thought out, researched, and every academic’s dream. Seriously; wow.
I will have to reread it a few times to be able to fully grasp everything, I have to admit, though I can already say that I somewhat must agree with you that moral absolutes are somewhat vague, and perhaps non-existent. Somewhat related, I do not think most atheists think in that traditional moral discourse you end with; I myself, for example, do not believe I am morally good, as I am human. There’s no such thing as morally good, which you yourself have explained. Well, all right, there’s no absolute moral good—or, in your expression, there’s no absolute moral desire, I guess. … Wait, what? Like I said, I have to reread it a few times before I can really comment on your comment’s comment.
But: THANKS.
— Remy Overkempe