Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Catholic
Politics and Religion
Atheism, morality, and social control (with apologies for the dorky post title)

Atheism, morality, and social control (with apologies for the dorky post title)

Last updated on: October 13, 2016 at 7:52 am by Jane the Actuary

Atheism, morality, and social control (with apologies for the dorky post title) 2016-10-13T07:52:32-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Here’s a post in which I try to assemble some ideas I’ve been thinking about for a while, but which are newly relevant in light of yesterday’s Supreme Court decision. As I tend to do in such posts, I’m writing without much reference to the literature on the topic, just trying out ideas. Yeah, amateur hour — but have at it in the comments.

First thought:

There’s a running debate over whether religion is necessary for morality — whether an individual can be sufficiently moral in the absence of (a) the belief that a deity will punish you for transgressing divinely-ordained rules or (b) even without acute fear of punishment, the belief that rules of proper behavior are divinely ordained in the first place. People who are atheists — not just indifferent to religion but the sort whose facebook wall is full of “shares” from atheist groups or individuals — claim it’s an insult to even suggest that their moral compass might not be in order.

But it occurs to me that we’re not being precise enough if we say something to the effect of “atheists are not moral” — it is (likely) quite appropriate to say that, in general, “atheists have a different set of moral principles than religious people do,” and to explore whether there are common threads to those different principles. Here are some thoughts:

Atheists, in general, are less interested in abstract, future harms to some group or individual that might result from your actions (or the collective actions of those who are so behaving) than in tangible, direct harms.

Atheists prioritize individual autonomy and freedom to act as you choose, and see unwarranted restrictions on that autonomy (whether by the government or by means of social disapproval) as a grave sin.

Because of the high value they place on individual autonomy/freedom, and the fact that they see great harm in restricting this, this tends to trump concerns about harm it might do to others.

And atheists take as their prime moral principle the neopagan “Do what you will, so long as it harms none” (or variants thereof; see wikipedia), which lacks that active call to help others which exists in the Christian “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (and I don’t mean to set up a Christian vs. atheist binary but can’t speak authoritatively about the extent to which other religions include that call to help others).

Hence:

the notion that gay marriage could cause anyone any harm is just not something that can fit in this values system. The deprivation of individual freedom is so clear that statements like “children need a mother and a father” can’t make any headway against it, let alone concerns about the long-term impact of gay men acquiring children by purchasing donor eggs and the services of a surrogate, or the effect of the commodification of children that we see in stories of angry sperm purchasers complaining about the defective purchase, or arguments about when a man is a “donor” with no responsibilities for a legally-fatherless child or a father who is obliged to pay child support. The clear tangible benefits of Social Security survivor’s benefits, estate tax exemption, etc., trump worries about what happens next if marriage is defined as a means of providing government benefits and recognition for romantically-linked pairs.

The increasing frequency with which CNN and other “news” sites profile polyamorous couples, swingers, open marriages, etc. : there’s no readily-visible and immediate harm to such relationships.

Likewise: assisted suicide gives every appearance of being voluntary, of furthering personal autonomy and freedom, and the harms are abstract and indirect: the risk that individuals will be pressured to kill themselves due to pressure from family, or out of a perception of lack of support; the risk that socially-acceptable suicide will expand from terminally-ill, dreadfully-suffering individuals to the “conventionally” suicidal; concerns that the “pain-relieving option” of suicide will lead to lack of provision (by the government or insurers) of other options.

Abortion, of course: the deprivation of personal autonomy on the part of a woman who doesn’t want to be pregnant is tangible, the harm done to the fetus by, well, killing it, is more abstract and literally invisible.

A while back, I looked at the Freedom From Religion Foundation, when they put their December display up in our local park, and they, in fact, cited assisted suicide and abortion as two instances of “moral progress” that they claimed to have been brought about by atheists.

Second thought:

The claim is often that even if individual atheists are moral people, they’re free riders of a sort, having often been brought up in religious homes and in any case being influenced by the social norms of a predominantly religious society. And it occurs to me that the two societies that came to mind as very non-religious were both societies with a high degree of social control: Japan (see my summary of a book) and Sweden (no link because the book I recently read, I haven’t gotten around to summarizing yet). So I hunted around and found a report on religious practice which listed the most secular societies (based on the smallest percentages of people responding “yes” to the question “are you a religious person?”):

Here are the lest religious societies, with the percent of people replying “yes” (other choices were “no, not religious”, “a convicted atheist” or “don’t know/no response”):

China – 14%

Japan – 16%

Czech Republic – 20%

Turkey – 23%

Sweden – 29%

Vietnam – 30%

For comparison: Ireland is 47%, the US is 60%, Poland 81%, and Ghana, the highest, is 96%.

So, yeah, China, Japan, Sweden – no surprise. Turkey’s a surprise (and this survey dates from 2012), though in another table, they don’t show up in the list of top atheist countries, so they must have largely been replying that they’re “not religious,” and perhaps there the definition of what it means to be “religious” is so narrowly drawn (headscarf, daily prayers, Sharia supporter, etc.) that more moderate believers feel compelled to reply that they’re not.

But the Czech Republic? Who knew? Well, maybe you did, but I didn’t. I found an article from The Guardian from 2010 and another from the National Catholic Reporter from 2009 that provide some context: basically Catholicism was so heavily connected with the Austro-Hungarian Empire that when they gained their independence after World War I, they threw off both the Empire and the Institutional Church. Nationalists envisioned replacing it with a “native” Protestantism but that didn’t “take”, and, unlike in Poland, the communists found fertile ground for state-sponsored atheism during the Warsaw Pact period.

So — well, it would be useful to know more. Is there a distinctively different set of moral principles in the Czech Republic due to being atheist/nonreligious? Is the fact that they’re unicultural (so far as I know) a glue that holds them together, or is there a strong degree of social control? Inquiring minds want to know.

Previous Post

June 26, 2015

10 thoughts on Obergefell v. Hodges

Next Post

June 27, 2015 Same-sex marriage and unmarriagable men

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What island was John on when he wrote Revelation?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Cyprus Patmos Crete Malta