What Atheism Answers

Michael Gerson, an elegant writer for the Washington Post, has made yet another of those ironically unsuccessful attempts to the claim that “atheism” must fail to provide a rational motivation for Good behavior amongst us silly humans.

In today’s column, titled “What Atheists Can’t Answer”, Gerson has a question to ask of those of us who see no reason to believe in a creator of the universe. “If the atheists are right, what would be the effect on human morality?” In his attempt to frame our response, he reuses an ancient claim that because theism offers an ideal of Good in the form of “God”, it necessarily supersedes any merely rational explanation for the phenomenon of our species’ more benevolent, magnanimous or even altruistic activities. He does so using the most absurd of the many canards typically used by the faithful: that it’s absurd to imagine there are rational reasons to be Good.

Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests -- a fear of bad consequences -- will constrain our selfishness. But this is particularly absurd. Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others. Many get away with it their whole lives. By exercising the will to power, they are maximizing one element of their human nature. In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.

{BIG_SIGH}

And there-in lies the irony. THE argument against religion or the very existence of a god, the one which is most Noticed by believers, is that such self-centered exploitation takes place All The Time in the name of deities, whether of the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim variety or from any other regionally evolved conceptualization of deific pantheons. It is never reasonable to resort to violence against thinking beings except as a Last Resort which immediacy recommends in order to stave off death.

There have always been rational explanations for monstrously abominable actions, both personal and political. Their problem has always been that of being based upon a False Premise. The Germans loved and heiled Hitler because they believed that “expelling” Jewery from der Faterland was a Good thing and moral. The Roman Catholic Pope’s occasionally utilized such Good methods of rooting out Evil as the auto de fey, and the oh so holy Inquisitions for the “good of the Church” because they believed that their God would approve and even require them to go to any lengths in order to cleanse His flock of infidels and blasphemers.

If we now accept those premises as truly Good and Desirable for the whole of our species and our planet, would we not have to admit that the only tragedy is that neither of them succeeded in their goals?

But of course we reject those premises as the self-serving and disingenuous lies and ignoramia which they empirically are.

At least he didn’t trivialize the possibility of a universe without a sentient, much less anthropomorphic, creator or stoop to running out the ol’ “Founding Fathers were theists” gamb... Oops…

The death of God has greater consequences than expanded golf time on Sunday mornings. And it is not simply religious fundamentalists who have recognized it. America's Founders embraced public neutrality on matters of religion, but they were not indifferent to the existence of religious faith. George Washington warned against the "supposition that morality can be maintained without religion." The Founders generally believed that the virtues necessary for self-government -- self-sacrifice, honesty, public spirit -- were strengthened by religious beliefs and institutions.

Well, if anything can be said about Washington’s attitude towards religion, the most likely thing is that he felt that whatever worked for an individual in order to live their life well, even should they be atheist, was all that was important. Old George may indeed have counted himself amongst the deists of his day, though even that bit of biographical information about our first President’s beliefs is unavailable to us today. Why? Because Washington apparently practiced precisely what today’s leading atheist voices espouse and recommend; One’s Beliefs mean NOTHING to anyone but that one, unless, of course, that one wishes to proselytize in order to gain a following, i.e., for Political reasons.

Here is the bottom-line failure of Gerson and the theists’ argument that belief in Gods provides the only true motivation to Good Behavior for human beings: As with every horrific act ever committed in the name of “Good”, such belief requires a false premise. At BEST, and this is ironic part, it requires a proposition supported by only the word of someone who claims to have Good intentions. It is a premise which can not be tested.

Atheism as a concept shares this drawback of being, ultimately, untestable. The difference between Theists and Atheists, where the former claim supernatural knowledge to be their proof, is that the latter point to the complete lack of any evidence for a creator. Evidence which is the Only thing which every individual, theist and atheist alike, can look at in the same light, from the same perspective, and with the same tools and all see the same thing.

In the final analysis, Reason will always have one major advantage over Faith. Faith requires that the original premise, no matter how faulty and devastatingly wrong it turns out to be, must always be maintained and adhered to.

Reason is always self-checking, reevaluating and asserting updated premises. This is the only way to ascertain the actual, empirical truth of an idea, and it is the bane of religion and at the core of all Good behavior.