An Atheist Manifesto

[GoddessWhispers]

An Atheist Manifesto

A Dig led by Sam Harris

Sam Harris argues against irrational faith and its adherents

Editor’s Note: At a time when fundamentalist religion has an unparalleled influence in the highest government levels in the United States, and religion-based terror dominates the world stage, Sam Harris argues that progressive tolerance of faith-based unreason is as great a menace as religion itself. Harris, a philosophy graduate of Stanford who has studied eastern and western religions, won the 2005 PEN Award for nonfiction for The End of Faith, which powerfully examines and explodes the absurdities of organized religion. Truthdig asked Harris to write a charter document for his thesis that belief in God, and appeasement of religious extremists of all faiths by moderates, has been and continues to be the greatest threat to world peace and a sustained assault on reason.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An Atheist Manifesto

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious. Unfortunately, we live in a world in which the obvious is overlooked as a matter of principle. The obvious must be observed and re-observed and argued for. This is a thankless job. It carries with it an aura of petulance and insensitivity. It is, moreover, a job that the atheist does not want.

It is worth noting that no one ever needs to identify himself as a non-astrologer or a non-alchemist. Consequently, we do not have words for people who deny the validity of these pseudo-disciplines. Likewise, atheism is a term that should not even exist. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make when in the presence of religious dogma. The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day. Only the atheist appreciates just how uncanny our situation is: Most of us believe in a God that is every bit as specious as the gods of Mount Olympus; no person, whatever his or her qualifications, can seek public office in the United States without pretending to be certain that such a God exists; and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy. Our circumstance is abject, indefensible and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

We live in a world where all things, good and bad, are finally destroyed by change. Parents lose their children and children their parents. Husbands and wives are separated in an instant, never to meet again. Friends part company in haste, without knowing that it will be for the last time. This life, when surveyed with a broad glance, presents little more than a vast spectacle of loss. Most people in this world, however, imagine that there is a cure for this. If we live rightly—not necessarily ethically, but within the framework of certain ancient beliefs and stereotyped behaviors—we will get everything we want after we die. When our bodies finally fail us, we just shed our corporeal ballast and travel to a land where we are reunited with everyone we loved while alive. Of course, overly rational people and other rabble will be kept out of this happy place, and those who suspended their disbelief while alive will be free to enjoy themselves for all eternity.

We live in a world of unimaginable surprises--from the fusion energy that lights the sun to the genetic and evolutionary consequences of this lights dancing for eons upon the Earth--and yet Paradise conforms to our most superficial concerns with all the fidelity of a Caribbean cruise. This is wondrously strange. If one didn’t know better, one would think that man, in his fear of losing all that he loves, had created heaven, along with its gatekeeper God, in his own image.

Consider the destruction that Hurricane Katrina leveled on New Orleans. More than a thousand people died, tens of thousands lost all their earthly possessions, and nearly a million were displaced. It is safe to say that almost every person living in New Orleans at the moment Katrina struck believed in an omnipotent, omniscient and compassionate God. But what was God doing while a hurricane laid waste to their city? Surely he heard the prayers of those elderly men and women who fled the rising waters for the safety of their attics, only to be slowly drowned there. These were people of faith. These were good men and women who had prayed throughout their lives. Only the atheist has the courage to admit the obvious: These poor people died talking to an imaginary friend.

Of course, there had been ample warning that a storm of biblical proportions would strike New Orleans, and the human response to the ensuing disaster was tragically inept. But it was inept only by the light of science. Advance warning of Katrina’s path was wrested from mute Nature by meteorological calculations and satellite imagery. God told no one of his plans. Had the residents of New Orleans been content to rely on the beneficence of the Lord, they wouldn’t have known that a killer hurricane was bearing down upon them until they felt the first gusts of wind on their faces. Nevertheless, a poll conducted by The Washington Post found that 80% of Katrina’s survivors claim that the event has only strengthened their faith in God.

As Hurricane Katrina was devouring New Orleans, nearly a thousand Shiite pilgrims were trampled to death on a bridge in Iraq. There can be no doubt that these pilgrims believed mightily in the God of the Koran: Their lives were organized around the indisputable fact of his existence; their women walked veiled before him; their men regularly murdered one another over rival interpretations of his word. It would be remarkable if a single survivor of this tragedy lost his faith. More likely, the survivors imagine that they were spared through God’s grace.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved. Only the atheist realizes how morally objectionable it is for survivors of a catastrophe to believe themselves spared by a loving God while this same God drowned infants in their cribs. Because he refuses to cloak the reality of the world’s suffering in a cloying fantasy of eternal life, the atheist feels in his bones just how precious life is--and, indeed, how unfortunate it is that millions of human beings suffer the most harrowing abridgements of their happiness for no good reason at all.

One wonders just how vast and gratuitous a catastrophe would have to be to shake the world’s faith. The Holocaust did not do it. Neither did the genocide in Rwanda, even with machete-wielding priests among the perpetrators. Five hundred million people died of smallpox in the 20th Century, many of them infants. God’s ways are, indeed, inscrutable. It seems that any fact, no matter how infelicitous, can be rendered compatible with religious faith. In matters of faith, we have kicked ourselves loose of the Earth.

Of course, people of faith regularly assure one another that God is not responsible for human suffering. But how else can we understand the claim that God is both omniscient and omnipotent? There is no other way, and it is time for sane human beings to own up to this. This is the age-old problem of theodicy, of course, and we should consider it solved. If God exists, either he can do nothing to stop the most egregious calamities or he does not care to. God, therefore, is either impotent or evil. Pious readers will now execute the following pirouette: God cannot be judged by merely human standards of morality. But, of course, human standards of morality are precisely what the faithful use to establish God’s goodness in the first place. And any God who could concern himself with something as trivial as gay marriage, or the name by which he is addressed in prayer, is not as inscrutable as all that. If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

There is another possibility, of course, and it is both the most reasonable and least odious: The biblical God is a fiction. As Richard Dawkins has observed, we are all atheists with respect to Zeus and Thor. Only the atheist has realized that the biblical god is no different. Consequently, only the atheist is compassionate enough to take the profundity of the world’s suffering at face value. It is terrible that we all die and lose everything we love; it is doubly terrible that so many human beings suffer needlessly while alive. That so much of this suffering can be directly attributed to religion--to religious hatreds, religious wars, religious delusions and religious diversions of scarce resources--is what makes atheism a moral and intellectual necessity. It is a necessity, however, that places the atheist at the margins of society. The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors. (Continued "The Nature of Belief" Page 2+)

[chaoszerg]

Somewhere in the world a man has abducted a little girl. Soon he will rape, torture and kill her. If an atrocity of this kind is not occurring at precisely this moment, it will happen in a few hours, or days at most. Such is the confidence we can draw from the statistical laws that govern the lives of 6 billion human beings. The same statistics also suggest that this girl s parents believe at this very moment that an all-powerful and all-loving God is watching over them and their family. Are they right to believe this? Is it good that they believe this?

No.

There is nothing wrong with believing that some sort of powerful force may be watching over us. But if the girl had been kidnapped and the parents knew but instead of contacting the police decided to just pray that the all powerful force will save the girl then that would be silly. The thought of having something powerful watching over us that cares about us and will protect us is a nice comforting thought and can make us feel secure there is nothing wrong with that. If a girl was kidnapped and the police and the family were looking for her and the parents decided to sometimes pray to ask God to protect the girl or help her there is nothing wrong with that.

Edited March 21, 2007 by chaoszerg

[IamsSon]

He never actually answered why it was wrong that the girl's parents believe that God is watching over her and their family.

[GoddessWhispers]

I see this article as one Atheists opinion. Hence the title, "An" Atheists Manifesto.

I see nothing wrong with their praying either, if that's what get's them by in such a horrific time. I think what Mr.Harris main point in that analogy was communicating, with respect to the whole of his thought on Atheism, is this that appears after. The entirety of atheism is contained in this response. Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world; it is simply a refusal to deny the obvious.

So, with respect to the analogy of the abducted daughter, the obvious is she's missing. Ergo, working with police, staying by the phones, pro-actively seeking her out , etc... is more effective than simply praying to something one hopes is listening, to bring her home. When, as he says, if something benevolent were attuned to the anguish of grieving terrified parents in this scenario, it would not have let their precious treasure to be abducted in the first place. That's that double edged sword that is spoken about so often in matters of deific allegiance. Why does benevolence that listens to prayers, give it's believers so much to pray for it to give them? Does benevolence allow a daughter to be abducted, raped, murdered!? Is that the free will? Is that a mystery? Or is it called a mystery because the truth is there's nothing super natural, there is no thing that empathizes with the human condition, called god(s)!? How far does faith stretch, when there is clearly so much people hold faith in and so little that which is held in faith, gives back. Else a world populated by believers in the vast majority, wouldn't be like this, after so much worship and so many prayers.

I think that's what this article is communicating. That we need to have faith in us first and foremost, before we defer anything we can do to something we hope is there to do it for us.

[chaoszerg]

He never actually answered why it was wrong that the girl's parents believe that God is watching over her and their family.

I was wondering why it would be wrong. Like i said if the parents knew the girl had been kidnapped and did nothing but just pray then to me that would seem silly and wrong in my opinion but if the did everything in their power to try and save the girl including praying then I don't see what's wrong with that.

[truethat]

He's arrogant. Like Dawkins. He mocks people praying to God in Katrina and the parents praying over their child.

I agree with all his political statements, like the way its wrong that you can't get elected to a public office unless you admit you believe in God.

But his comments that "only an atheist has the courage to admit" Give me a frickin' break.

Most atheists are not atheists by "courage' if you need "courage" to admit that God isn't there then you have taken an academic topic and turned it into your own personal psychodrama.

And frankly that's what I see a lot with atheists. Psychodrama.

How is it courageous to go "Oh shoot, he's not there after all." Not.

It is only if you have something to lose that you would have courage. Its only if you are intimidated that you need courage. And so it shows me that the atheist who needs courage to be an atheist is one of these victimized children of parents that dragged them to church and spanked them for being bad and said God is watching you.

I'm tired of Atheist extremists rolling in with their personal stories of torture at the hands of the evil ones and how they finally had the courage to say "ENOUGH" (Its like a bad Jlo movie all over again, get out the boxing gloves and beat the crap out of your oppressor)

Once you are an adult it is up to you to decide what you want to believe.

Only the atheist recognizes the boundless narcissism and self-deceit of the saved.

What a jack wad statement to make. You know. I don't agree with this. I think if you are approaching religious people like this you are a total jerk.

To me the narcissistic self deceit lies in the Atheist who consoles himself and makes himself feel superior by trashing the belief system of someone else with the intention of showing how sophisticated he is.

There is a "reason" that all cultures have God theories. Believers obviously think its because God is true.

But what do Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have to say about this idea? NOTHING.

There is an evolutionary reason that God believers survived and flourished and I think this is what needs to be thought about.

Not the beliefs themselves. The beliefs are meaningless. Its the purpose behind them that interests me.

Edited March 21, 2007 by truethat

[Bee Eff]

An Atheist Manifesto

A Dig led by Sam Harris

Sam Harris argues against irrational faith and its adherents

It is the same argument heard repetitively, "Life sucks and since God doesn't step in he doesn't exist or doesn't care."

This argument can be looked at similarly by stating, "Bill Gates has billions of dollars, he doesn't want people to suffer, he could alleviate all the homelessness and poverty in the state of his choosing, he has not, he does not exist or at the very least doesn't really care."

Here is a reference to a good paper on "the ethics of helping people" :

Skinner, B. F. (1978). The ethics of helping people. In Reflections on Behaviorism and Society (pp. 33-47). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Sometimes what seems like an appropriate action from one perspective is not, in reality, the best action.

Edited March 21, 2007 by Bee Eff

[brave_new_world]

The atheist is merely a person who believes that the 260 million Americans (87% of the population) who claim to never doubt the existence of God should be obliged to present evidence for his existence and, indeed, for his benevolence, given the relentless destruction of innocent human beings we witness in the world each day.

So much for atheists not having any "beliefs"

[brave_new_world]

I think that's what this article is communicating. That we need to have faith in us first and foremost, before we defer anything we can do to something we hope is there to do it for us.

Yeah to believe in one self is actually the fundamental rule( the perennial philosophy) of all major religions. Cause that is where God, Tao, Brahman, Great Spirit or whatever you wish to call it exists because that is who we are according to religion.

Know thyself --- Socrates

God is nothing but the Self. ---Ramana Maharshi

I searched for God and found only myself.

I searched for myself and found only God.

---Sufi Quote.

I went from God to God, until they cried from me in me, "O thou I!" ---Bayazid (muslim mystic)

The knower and the known are one. Simple people imagine that they should see God, as if He stood there and they here. This is not so. God and I, we are one in knowledge. --Eckhart

I and my Father are one. --Jesus Christ

You are the Self, the infinite Being, the pure, unchanging Consciousness, which pervades everything. Your nature is bliss and your glory is without stain. Because you identify yourself with the ego, you are tied to birth and death. Your bondage has no other cause.

--Shankara

..The real God is not to be sought in idols and symbols, in temples or churches.

The truth of the matter is that the purified man is God himself, for he has become one with universal life. The purified man is the self-realised man. He has not to await answers from God, for he has no questions to ask. He himself is the answer to all questions; his life itself is a benediction. (Sudhakar S.D, 1988.

p55)

True religion is always about discovering and trusting oneself.............

Edited March 21, 2007 by brave_new_world

[eqgumby]

More propaganda designed to belittle and paint believers as uneducated fools. That's right, believers are narcissists. They all hate everyone that's not exactly like them. Obviously atheists have the market cornered on intellect. If you believe in any higher power, you're an idiot.

If he exists, the God of Abraham is not merely unworthy of the immensity of creation; he is unworthy even of man.

Here goes a man giving us a clue to exactly how conceited he really is.

The atheist, by merely being in touch with reality, appears shamefully out of touch with the fantasy life of his neighbors.

If you believe, you are deluded. Only atheists know the TRUTH.

...and much of what passes for public policy in our country conforms to religious taboos and superstitions appropriate to a medieval theocracy.

Atheists would surely do away with silly rules like not killing, stealing, having multiple spouses. You know, those religious taboos that are so medieval and out of touch with reality.

This is the kind of fluff that makes so many atheists look like self absorbed new age poofers caught up in their own attempt at intellectualism, trying to get "in" with the elitist left wing culture that should have gone the way of free love and beaded curtains in VW buses.

[MissMelsWell]

and I think you are exactly right Eggumby... until:

This is the kind of fluff that makes so many atheists look like self absorbed new age poofers caught up in their own attempt at intellectualism, trying to get "in" with the elitist left wing culture that should have gone the way of free love and beaded curtains in VW buses.

That gave me pause and I don't think I agree necessarily with that or I didn't understand it.

[MissMelsWell]

Out of curiousity, is this Manifesto an excepted belief of Atheists? Is this something that Atheists would refer to as somewhat authoratative?

[chaoszerg]

Out of curiousity, is this Manifesto an excepted belief of Atheists? Is this something that Atheists would refer to as somewhat authoratative?

For me I just don't believe in a God/God's.

[MissMelsWell]

For me I just don't believe in a God/God's.

Understood and absolutely respected chaoszerg. I like your simple statement, I like that you keep it easy and to the point, I like that the posts of yours I've seen are objective and rational.

I am just having a really hard time trying to figure where GW is coming from... it's coming across as fanatical and anything but objective and rational. I have always thought of Atheists as being curious, learned, and objective, but not fanatic, not dancing around telling people who choose religion that they're irrational and delluded. It's just so bizarre that GW is coming off as a fanatical Atheist, I can't figure out what the goal or end result is suppose to be, or even what the point is.

Edited March 21, 2007 by MissMelsWell

[eqgumby]

and I think you are exactly right Eggumby... until:

That gave me pause and I don't think I agree necessarily with that or I didn't understand it.

I guess that was my personal rant at the hypocritical ex-hippies I know that now drive BMW's and spend their winters at the Gulf in their beach front homes.

This is the kind of fluff that makes so many atheists look like self absorbed new age poofers caught up in their own attempt at intellectualism, trying to get "in" with the elitist left wing culture that should have gone the way of free love and beaded curtains in VW buses.

Yeah, maybe it is over the top. But that type of post and sentiment reminds me of this kind of person I guess. You know, the college professor with the long hair, in his 50's, smokes weed and bangs a new student every year, has a "cult" following of students that think he is the smartest man on the planet, usually teaches some type of history or literature. The kind of guy that leads his students along, and chastises those that don't fall in line with his/her ideas.

Thats the kind of person that the OP's original post reminds me of.

[chaoszerg]

Understood and absolutely respected chaoszerg. I like your simple statement, I like that you keep it easy and to the point, I like that the posts of yours I've seen are objective and rational.

Thank you and i enjoy you're and many other's post's also

I am just having a really hard time trying to figure where GW is coming from... it's coming across as fanatical and anything but objective and rational. I have always thought of Atheists as being curious, learned, and objective, but not fanatic, not dancing around telling people who choose religion that they're irrational and deluded. It's just so bizarre that GW is coming off as a fanatical Atheist, I can't figure out what the goal or end result is suppose to be, or even what the point is.

I think everyone including myself at times have made post's or threads that rile or bother others. I don't think GW is a bad person i enjoy reading her post's and sometimes she makes me laugh and other times she makes me wince and cringe LOL. There are threads all over this site with little word wars it is unfortunate but I don't think it will ever end unless all beliefs and non beliefs decide to just accept each other and not try to shove past mistakes into each other's noses. I never could understand why people would worship the Christian God when it seemed like it would let suffering happen to innocent people then I did the Ant test and then understood how people could worship a God like the Christian God, and now Im trying my best to be more polite and understanding.

Edited March 21, 2007 by chaoszerg

[truethat]

ooooh what's the ANT TEST!!!

[chaoszerg]

ooooh what's the ANT TEST!!!

Lol I will PM you with it since I think the thread will get closed down for going way off track.

[Jor-el]

He's arrogant. Like Dawkins. He mocks people praying to God in Katrina and the parents praying over their child.

I agree with all his political statements, like the way its wrong that you can't get elected to a public office unless you admit you believe in God.

But his comments that "only an atheist has the courage to admit" Give me a frickin' break.

Most atheists are not atheists by "courage' if you need "courage" to admit that God isn't there then you have taken an academic topic and turned it into your own personal psychodrama.

And frankly that's what I see a lot with atheists. Psychodrama.

How is it courageous to go "Oh shoot, he's not there after all." Not.

It is only if you have something to lose that you would have courage. Its only if you are intimidated that you need courage. And so it shows me that the atheist who needs courage to be an atheist is one of these victimized children of parents that dragged them to church and spanked them for being bad and said God is watching you.

I'm tired of Atheist extremists rolling in with their personal stories of torture at the hands of the evil ones and how they finally had the courage to say "ENOUGH" (Its like a bad Jlo movie all over again, get out the boxing gloves and beat the crap out of your oppressor)

Once you are an adult it is up to you to decide what you want to believe.

What a jack wad statement to make. You know. I don't agree with this. I think if you are approaching religious people like this you are a total jerk.

To me the narcissistic self deceit lies in the Atheist who consoles himself and makes himself feel superior by trashing the belief system of someone else with the intention of showing how sophisticated he is.

There is a "reason" that all cultures have God theories. Believers obviously think its because God is true.

But what do Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins have to say about this idea? NOTHING.

There is an evolutionary reason that God believers survived and flourished and I think this is what needs to be thought about.

Not the beliefs themselves. The beliefs are meaningless. Its the purpose behind them that interests me.

I agree with you my friend, even though we see things differently. You have hit on some hard truths.

[GoddessWhispers]

Bump

Since a great deal has been said as to the motives of the OP authors opinion of his personal Atheism, I thought it fair that he respond to critics of it.

(Source) While ԓAn Atheist Manifesto received considerable support from readers of Truthdig, a variety of criticisms surfaced in the reader commentary. I summarize and respond to some of these below:

1. Just because you havenԒt seen God doesnt mean He doesnҒt exist. Atheism, therefore, is as much an act of faith as theism is.

Bertrand Russell demolished this fallacy nearly a century ago with his famous teapot argument. As his response appears to me to be perfect, I simply offer it here:

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.

If a valid retort to Russell has ever seen the light of day, Im not aware of it. As I tried to make clear in my essay, the atheist is not in the business of making claims on insufficient evidence, he merely resists such claims whenever they appear on the lips of the faithful. I donҒt think it can be pointed out too often that the faithful do this as well. Every Christian knows what it is like to find the claims of Muslimsthat the Holy Koran is the perfect word of God, that Muhammad flew to heaven on a winged horse, etc.חto be utterly incredible. Everyone who is not a Mormon knows at a glance that Mormonism is bogus. And everyone of every religious denomination knows what it is like not to believe in Zeus. Everyone has rejected an infinite number of spurious claims about God. The atheist rejects infinity plus one.

2. You will never get rid of religion, so criticizing it is just a waste of time.

I would be the first to admit that the prospects for eradicating religious dogmatism in our world do not seem good. Still, the same could have been said about efforts to abolish slavery at the beginning of the 19th century. Anyone who spoke about eradicating slavery in the United States around 1810 surely appeared to be wasting his time, and wasting it dangerously. The analogy is not perfect, but it is suggestive. If we ever do transcend our religious bewilderment, we will look back upon this period in human history with absolute astonishment. How could it have been possible for people to believe such things in the 21st century? How could it be that they allowed their world to become so dangerously fragmented by empty notions about God and Paradise? The answers to these questions are as embarrassing as those that sent the last slave ship sailing to America as late as 1859 (the same year that Darwin published “The Origin of Species").

3. Religion is our only source of morality. Without it, we would be plunged into a secular moral chaos.

This concern is so widespread that I have responded to it at some length. A version of this response will soon be published in the magazine Free Inquiry (www.secularhumanism.org) as The Myth of Secular Moral Chaos.Ӕ

One cannot criticize religious dogmatism for long without encountering the following claim, advanced as though it were a self-evident fact of nature: there is no secular basis for morality. Raping and killing children can only be really wrong, the thinking goes, if there is a God who says it is. Otherwise, right and wrong would be mere matters of social construction, and any society will be at liberty to decide that raping and killing children is actually a wholesome form of family fun. In the absence of God, John Wayne Gacy would be a better person than Albert Schweitzer, if only more people agreed with him.

It is simply amazing how widespread this fear of secular moral chaos is, given how many misconceptions about morality and human nature are required to set it whirling in a persons brain. There is undoubtedly much to be said against the spurious linkage between faith and morality, but the following three points should suffice.

If a book like the bible were the only reliable blueprint for human decency that we have, it would be impossible (both practically and logically) to criticize it in moral terms. But it is extraordinarily easy to criticize the morality one finds in bible, as most of it is simply odious and incompatible with a civil society.

The notion that the bible is a perfect guide to morality is really quite amazing, given the contents of the book. Human sacrifice, genocide, slaveholding, and misogyny are consistently celebrated. Of course, GodҒs counsel to parents is refreshingly straightforward: whenever children get out of line, we should beat them with a rod (Proverbs 13: 24, 20:30, and 23:13-14). If they are shameless enough to talk back to us, we should kill them (Exodus 21:15, Leviticus 20:9, Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Mark.7:9-13 and Matthew 15:4-7). We must also stone people to death for heresy, adultery, homosexuality, working on the Sabbath, worshipping graven images, practicing sorcery, and for a wide variety of other imaginary crimes. Most Christians imagine that Jesus did away with all this barbarism and delivered a doctrine of pure love and toleration. He didnt (Matthew 5:18-19, Luke 16:17, 2 Timothy 3:16, 2 Peter 20-21, John 7:19). Anyone who believes that Jesus only taught the Golden Rule and love of oneҒs neighbor should go back and read the New Testament. And pay particular attention to the morality that will be on display if he ever returns to Earth trailing clouds of glory (e.g. 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9, 2:8; Hebrews 10:28-29; 2 Peter 3:7; and all of Revelation). It is not an accident that St. Thomas Aquinas thought heretics should be killed and that St. Augustine thought they should be tortured. (Ask yourself, what are the chances that these good doctors of the Church hadnt read the New Testament closely enough to discover the error of their ways?) As a source of objective morality, the bible is one of the worst books we have. It might have been the very worst, in fact, if we didnҒt also happen to have the Koran.

It is important to point out that we decide what is good in the Good Book. We read the Golden and Rule and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses; we read that a woman found not to be a virgin on her wedding night should be stoned to death, and we (if we are civilized) decide that this is the most vile lunacy imaginable. Our own ethical intuitions are, therefore, primary. So the choice before us is simple: we can either have a 21st century conversation about ethicsavailing ourselves of all the arguments and scientific insights that have accumulated in the last 2,000 years of human discourseחor we can confine ourselves to a first century conversation as it is preserved in the bible.

If religion were necessary for morality, there should some evidence that atheists are less moral than believers. But evidence for this is in short supply, and there is much evidence to the contrary.

People of faith regularly allege that atheism is responsible for some of the most appalling crimes of the 20th century. Are atheists really less moral than believers? While it is true that the regimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot were irreligious to varying degrees, they were not especially rational. In fact, their public pronouncements were little more than litanies of delusion--delusions about race, economics, national identity, the march of history or the moral dangers of intellectualism. In many respects, religion was directly culpable even here. Consider the Holocaust: the anti-Semitism that built the Nazi crematoria brick by brick was a direct inheritance from medieval Christianity. For centuries, Christian Europeans had viewed the Jews as the worst species of heretics and attributed every societal ill to their continued presence among the faithful. While the hatred of Jews in Germany expressed itself in a predominately secular way, its roots were undoubtedly religiousand the explicitly religious demonization of the Jews of Europe continued throughout the period. (The Vatican itself perpetuated the blood libel in its newspapers as late as 1914.) Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields are not examples of what happens when people become too critical of unjustified beliefs; to the contrary, these horrors testify to the dangers of not thinking critically enough about specific secular ideologies. Needless to say, a rational argument against religious faith is not an argument for the blind embrace of atheism as a dogma. The problem that the atheist exposes is none other than the problem of dogma itself--of which every religion has more than its fair share. I know of no society in recorded history that ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.

According the United Nationsג Human Development Report (2005), the most atheistic societies--countries like Norway, Iceland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark and the United Kingdomare actually the healthiest, as indicated by measures of life expectancy, adult literacy, per capita income, educational attainment, gender equality, homicide rate and infant mortality. Conversely, the 50 nations now ranked lowest by the U.N. in terms of human development are unwaveringly religious. Of course, correlational data of this sort do not resolve questions of causalityחbelief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God; each factor may enable the other; or both may spring from some deeper source of mischief. Leaving aside the issue of cause and effect, these facts prove that atheism is perfectly compatible with the basic aspirations of a civil society; they also prove, conclusively, that religious faith does nothing to ensure a societys health.

If religion really provided the only conceivable, objective basis for morality, it should be impossible to posit a non-theistic, objective basis for morality. But it is not impossible; it is rather easy.

Clearly, we can think of objective sources of moral order that do not require the existence of a law-giving God. In “The End of Faith,” I argued that questions of morality are really questions about happiness and suffering. If there are objectively better and worse ways to live so as to maximize happiness in this world, these would be objective moral truths worth knowing. Whether we will ever be in a position to discover these truths and agree about them cannot be known in advance (and this is the case for all questions of scientific fact). But if there are psychophysical laws that underwrite human well-beingҗand why wouldnt there be?җthen these laws are potentially discoverable. Knowledge of these laws would provide an enduring basis for an objective morality. In the meantime, everything about human experience suggests that love is better than hate for the purposes of living happily in this world. This is an objective claim about the human mind, the dynamics of social relations, and the moral order of our world. While we do not have anything like a final, scientific approach to maximizing human happiness, it seems safe to say that raping and killing children will not be one of its primary constituents.

One of the greatest challenges facing civilization in the 21st century is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns--about ethics, spiritual experience and the inevitability of human suffering--in ways that are not flagrantly irrational. Nothing stands in the way of this project more than the respect we accord religious faith. Incompatible religious doctrines have balkanized our world into separate moral communities, and these divisions have become a continuous source of human conflict. The idea that there is a necessary link between religious faith and morality is one of the principal myths keeping religion in good standing among otherwise reasonable men and women. And yet, it is a myth that is easily dispelled.

Edited March 25, 2007 by GoddessWhispers