Non-Belief, Pt. 5: Ethics

My post a week ago, about that discussion thread at Pharyngula, brought this to mind. Commonly, we're supposed to just assume that religious leaders are the experts in ethics and morality. I'll hear that science can't tell us anything about those things. And believers will wonder out loud how - and why - we atheists can be ethical without a god telling us what to do (and enforcing the rules with threats of damnation).

You may not know any atheists (we look like everyone else and often have reason to be discreet), but we all know Christians. Are they all good people? One of the reasons I was skeptical as a child was that church-going didn't seem to improve people. Some of the devout were very nice; some were quite nasty. But there didn't seem to be a correlation between belief and behavior. (As an adult, I still haven't seen one.)

If clerics are such moral leaders, shouldn't people who get more instruction be clearly better than the rest of us? Shouldn't the clerics themselves be the best of all? A look at the recent pedophile scandal in the Catholic Church should tell you that's not necessarily the case.

Oh, but that's not your religion, huh? Well, that's the other problem. How do you pick the right religion, then? The vast majority of us pick it by... being born into it. In other words, your religious belief is simply an accident of birth. If you'd been born in another nation, and especially in some other time, your belief would be completely different,... but just as firm as it is now.

How could we even consider that clerics are the experts in ethics and morality? Have you ever read the Bible? It supports slavery, genocide, child-beating, the killing of "witches" and heretics, and all manner of vile behavior we've risen above these days. To be even slightly moral today, you must ignore or rationalize away a good part of your holy book (whatever it is).

In fact, the progress we've made in ethical behavior has generally come despite the fierce resistance of religion. To be sure, believers have normally been on both sides of every important issue. But churches in the South - the Bible Belt even then - owned slaves, and even sold babies to raise money for spreading the good word. Congregations fought hard against racial integration and women's suffrage. And religious groups today lead the fight against gay rights.

It's true that science doesn't focus on proper behavior. That's not its purpose. But that doesn't mean it can't tell us anything about ethics and morality, either. We can recognize that we evolved certain characteristics because we're social animals, because cooperation has always been essential to our survival. And we can see similar traits in other primates, too - for the same reason. This helps to put things in perspective, so we can understand why we think and feel as we do.

But generally, ethical behavior isn't that difficult to identify. Unless you're a psychopath, you can normally just feel what's right and what's wrong. You may do what's wrong anyway, but it's rarely because you can't tell the difference. (Actively trying to help other people might indeed be difficult, since you must weigh short-term and long-term effects, but that's less a case of right vs wrong than just... trying to decide between two rights.)

If you really want a specific guideline, the Golden Rule works well enough: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." However, this isn't specifically Christian, or even specifically religious. It's been a common philosophy worldwide and throughout our history, in one form or another. But ordinarily, it's only been applied to "us" and not "them," and pretty much the entire advance of ethical thinking has basically been to enlarge the pool of "us" and shrink the number of people considered "them."

Note that another ethical guideline, "turn the other cheek," is often praised, but rarely practiced. And that's for very good reason. Pacifism works sometimes, in specific, very limited situations, but it's a poor philosophy in general. We all know that. We'll all fight to defend ourselves and our families, whatever lip-service we pay to Jesus. In fact, if you won't support a common defense, you'll be a burden on others who do need to defend the community. So I'd argue that "turn the other cheek" is seldom ethical.

So, do we really need god-given guidelines in order to tell ethical from unethical behavior? Let's look at the Ten Commandments. (There are different versions, but they're all similar enough for our purposes. For convenience, I'll use this list, which is near the top in a Google search.)

The first four are just religious observances - prohibitions against other gods, against making representational art, against blasphemy, and against working on the Sabbath. These are similar to biblical prohibitions against eating shellfish or wearing clothing of mixed fibers. If you're not a Christian, they're hardly a matter of ethics. And even Christians normally pick and choose which to obey.

"Honor your father and your mother" might seem like a good rule, but most of us don't need a rule like that. We naturally love our parents, just like they naturally love us. And if your parent did not deserve your love - if your father beat you or raped you, for example - you shouldn't honor him. So as an ethical guideline, this is either completely unnecessary or erroneous, depending on the circumstances.

The next four are quite reasonable guidelines, as far as they go, being prohibitions against murder, adultery, theft, and perjury. But, again, they're hardly necessary. Religious or not, we all know that these things are wrong. This doesn't help with the difficult questions, like whether or not capital punishment is "murder." And it doesn't include other kinds of behavior that are equally wrong, like rape.

And the last commandment is not to covet what belongs to someone else. (Yeah, rape isn't important enough to be a commandment, but envy is. Go figure!) Is this really a valid ethical rule? Well, that might depend on your definition of "covet." You might admire your neighbor's wife, envy his house, and lust after his ass (or his ox), but none of that is wrong if it's not taken too far. In fact, it might even be beneficial, if it causes you to work harder to get a similar house (or wife) yourself.

So how can we atheists be ethical without a god telling us that murder is wrong? Well, you know that rape is wrong, and there's nothing in your Bible about that. You know that raising hybrid cattle isn't wrong, despite biblical prohibitions. And you know that it's not right to beat your kid with a stick, even though the Bible says it is. Ordinarily, this isn't rocket-science. And for really difficult ethical questions, your religion is no help anyway.

OK, so much for the how. How about the why? Why would atheists behave themselves without the ever-present threat of hellfire (or the promise of heaven)? Well, I'm not a sociopath, so I don't like to cause suffering to other people. I've felt pain myself, physical and emotional, and it's not fun. Why would I want to inflict pain on someone else? I'd feel terrible about that!

When I've done something wrong, I've felt ashamed of myself. If I've hurt someone else, I've felt like a heel. I don't like that feeling. I have empathy. I recognize that others are people just like me. I can imagine their pain. When I was a child, maybe I needed the threat and the promise of Santa Claus to behave well, I don't know. But I certainly don't as an adult.

If I couldn't feel those things, as a natural consequence of being a normal human being, I would hope that I could still think my way into knowing what was wrong and what was right. And if I could tell right from wrong, why would I want to do what was wrong? Well, some people do (and the vast majority of them - like people in general - are religious believers). I'm no expert on why that happens, but I do know that religious belief doesn't seem to prevent it.

Traditionally, the mafia was a big supporter of the Catholic Church. (I don't know if that's still the case or not.) They certainly weren't atheists. So, why didn't they believe they were going to Hell? Why did they continue murder and theft, biggies in the Ten Commandments? Their religious beliefs certainly didn't stop them, so why would you think that atheists couldn't be moral without religion?

We do have secular laws, and at least part of the justification for them is as a deterrent. If I really wanted to murder someone, the consequences under our legal system might indeed deter me. Frankly, they almost certainly would. So the threat of Hell, in addition to that, would be completely immaterial.

Also, I strongly suspect if I really wanted to murder someone, I could probably convince myself that it was approved by my god. The Bible, for example, contains all sorts of justification for murder. You just have to pick and choose which parts  you want to obey. Certainly believers have had no problem killing people for centuries - witches, heretics, adulterers, abortion doctors, atheists, criminals, enemy soldiers,... the list goes on and on.

Atheists are at least as ethical as believers, and religious leaders are not experts in ethics or morality, despite their claims. And since there's no consensus in religion (unlike in science), even if they were, you'd have to first pick the right religion (and then, likely, the right denomination within it). I don't need any of that, and neither do you. It's rarely hard to tell right from wrong. And when you understand that you depend on a community of people, you'll understand why you should do the right thing.

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Note: The rest of this series is here.