Morality from the Bottom Up
(Continued)

Of course, this example only works if by morality what we are talking about is how we treat one another—what I would consider ethical behavior. If, on the other hand, we are talking about social hot-button issues (and I suspect that, in fact, that is really what theists who believe that non-theists should not be moral are talking about) then they have a slightly more firm ground to stand on. This is not to say that they become any closer to being correct, simply that within that framework immorality is really being defined as 'anything I don't like or understand or wouldn't do myself'. So within that frame homosexuality, abortion and, in certain circles, interracial marriage are considered immoral just to take a few examples. Well, if you are a believer in some Great Celestial Sky Daddy and you aren't homosexual and you don't understand how anyone could be homosexual, it's terribly convenient that your divine being happens to line up with you on that issue isn't it? So if one then encounters an atheist who also happens to be homosexual, you then have an easy explanation. Of course, that person must be an atheist because it allows them to be homosexual guilt-free. To see how patently absurd this is, one need only take it out of its original context and substitute something else value-neutral in its place. I'll take my least favorite vegetable, okra. I hate the stuff. In fact, that's an understatement! I loathe it. Now, if I were a theist I might look at an atheist who thought that fried okra was the best thing ever to come out of a kitchen and might then suggest that the only reason why she was an atheist is so that she could eat her evil okra when it's clear in the holy book that okra is an abomination before the Lord. Now, my atheist friend is going to say that the question of her atheism is separate from the question of her loving fried okra because, in fact, in a rational mind they are separate.

But are issues like homosexuality really moral issues? I would submit that they are not. Homosexuality qua homosexuality has no moral content. It is value neutral in the same way that okra is value neutral. One may not understand why others are homosexual but that does not infuse homosexuality itself with moral content. So when we're talking about morality, what kinds of things are we really talking about? The 'stranger on the side of the road' is a better model of morality than just about any of the things that Christians who claim that non-theists should be amoral are actually talking about. Morality, in this definition, has to do with our ethics and how we treat others. An action is moral if, at its very worst, it has only a neutral effect on another or the intentions behind the action were not to cause harm. Since the morality as personal preference pretty much does require a divine being to not sound ridiculous, does it follow that real morality—what our ethical behavior is—also requires it? Absolutely not.

All a person needs in order to have a moral code that is strong is for three things to exist: a sense of empathy (in other words the person must be capable of imagining what someone else might feel), a theory of mind (in other words, the person needs to be able to see other people as people and not objects), and an imagination (in other words, the person needs to be able to run scenarios in their head). That's it. Every psychologically healthy adult possesses all three of these traits in some combination of strengths. Now, that isn't some kind of insurance policy that everyone will always behave morally, but then, neither is Christianity. The critique, however, wasn't that bottom-up moral system wasn't perfect, the argument was that anyone who doesn't believe in God shouldn't have a morality at all. That argument has, I believe, been utterly demolished as false.

< 1 2 3 >