I suppose I am an atheist. I say ‘suppose’ because I don’t really think of myself as an atheist. I just regard myself as… well… ordinary. Up until quite recently I always assumed that people of well, let’s say the post-WWII generations would quite naturally be non-believers in any and all the religions. So it used to come as quite a surprise to me to come across young god-botherers. That is until I came across the (mainly Americans) I met on this new-fangled internet thing, especially it seems in more recent years.
Of course, there are exceptions.
It often seems as though Dawkins et al, keep going on about the absurdity of the existence of a God, which to my mind is quite right but somewhat beside the point. Religions have somehow managed to appropriate ethics and morality, so that when ordinary people think of religion, they think of something that is in a vague and generally undefined way ‘good’: good as in morally on the right side, good as in generally good for people, and a ‘good’ thing to be. That is why they tend to see religion in a person as a ’good thing’ and have suspicions about atheism.
Our (atheists – for want of a better word) time would, I think, be therefore better spent pointing out that religion and morality, religion and ethics are not ‘the same thing’ at all. Not only that, blindly following the religious strictures can often turn out to be one of, if not the, more immoral choices available. Of course, there are some good moral points in religions ‘thou shalt not kill’ is a fine and splendid example, of course. However, to blindly follow the writings of some desert dwelling tribes from thousands of years ago (actually even longer as we know the ‘modern’ religions are just adaptations of previous forms.*) is not just silly, but dangerous as times, knowledge and understanding all change, and morality must take on board these changes or become irrelevant.
*In fact, it is interesting to speculate whether the religions we have would have stayed so frozen in form if they too had belonged to a far more pre-literate age. In other words, has having them ‘written in stone’ in the holy books prevented them from adapting to changes in morality and society?
2 comments:
Actually, this is not a new question, it is just that it has been carefully ignored or sidelined by the relgious, for obvious reasons.
It goes back (at least) to Socrates, with the still-unanswered question:
is something "good" because it is intrinsically good, or is it "good" because (Insert name(s) of imaginary friend(s) here) god says so?
I note that you are also skirting around another problem, which has always interested me - does technology affect morality?
Yes, it still surprises me how few people ask themselves this question. I don't regard myself as particularly precocious but it is something that occurred to me when I first heard of 'the slaughter of the innocents' at around the age of six.
As for morality and technology - a very interesting point - I think that morality MUST change along with changing circumstances, or become irrelevant. I suppose examples would be around medical technology and things like comas, abortions and suchlike, or longer range weapons or weapons of mass destruction in warfare. Which - of course - leads to problems for religions who base their morality on texts from thousands of years ago.
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