Atheism For Dummies (For Dummies (Religion & Spirituality)) (71 page)

In other words, the general population is looking more nonreligious, and the nonreligious are looking more like the general population.

Like the presence of more women, the greater presence in recent years of African Americans, Hispanics, and other nonbelievers of color in organized atheism and humanism is another force increasing the focus on social justice and humanitarian work among atheists and humanists.

Creating a Satisfying Community for Nonbelievers of Every Stripe

As the human landscape of freethought changes, the focus of the freethought community changes as well. The greater presence of women, young people, families, and people of color is expanding the agenda of the nonreligious community and changing the very picture of who atheists are and what they do.

In addition to the traditional program of monthly meetings and discussions, the freethought movement is placing a greater emphasis on volunteering, social activities, social justice and human rights activism, family programming (including childcare and babysitting coops), and mutual support in times of need.

At the higher levels, atheists and humanists are asserting a stronger voice in social and political issues. National organizations like the Secular Coalition for America provide a unified voice with lobbyists and information campaigns on issues of importance to the nontheistic community. Experiments like the Humanist Community Project at Harvard University are helping nontheists build, grow, and improve mutually supportive freethinking communities that attend to the very human needs that churches have addressed for centuries — but without the need to claim belief in a God.

No social movement goes through changes this profound without internal struggles, and the freethought movement is no exception. Some atheists prefer the traditional movement focus of challenging religion and encouraging a secular society and worry that they’ll be shoved to the side. New movements like the social justice–oriented Atheism+ has brought some of these worries to the surface.

More than one person has observed that “we’re behaving like a bunch of Protestants,” splitting and arguing and pretty much excommunicating each other. (I joke about the excommunicating. I think.)

Similar struggles happened as the civil rights, women’s rights, and gay rights movements gradually came into their own. Call it growing pains. Getting everyone pulling together is easiest when you’re all storming the castle together. But after the goal begins to take shape around you, people within a movement are bound to fight amongst themselves about what to do after they get inside. When passionate people with different visions collide, it isn’t always pretty. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X — two people devoted to civil rights for African Americans, but with very different visions of how to get there. Though the challenges of nonbelievers don’t nearly rise to the struggles of African Americans in the 1960s, there’s no reason this movement should be immune to some of the difficulties that theirs endured.

Other efforts have focused on creating a more comfortable landing place for closeted atheists and others who share the worldview but haven’t embraced the identity. The Brights Network is an effort to offer a positive label for a naturalistic worldview using the noun “Bright” (as in “I am a Bright”). Billboard campaigns with simple text such as “Don’t believe in God? You are not alone” and the “Out Campaign” of the Richard Dawkins Foundation have invited atheists to help improve the public perception of atheism by letting those people who love them know that they’re atheists.

Like earlier movements, the freethought movement is likely to come through this growing process best if it’s responsive not only to the traditional atheist, but to the needs of nonbelievers of every kind. And every indication suggests that it’s headed that way — just not along a straight line.

Taking a Quick Look at Issues around the World

As atheists in the United States grapple with gender, race, and privilege, church-state separation, and a greater focus on social justice, atheists in other countries have their own concerns — sometimes similar, and sometimes quite different. As I write this:

Atheists in Egypt and Indonesia are in prison on charges of blasphemy.

The International Humanist and Ethical Union is urging the repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws after mob violence against Christians and the assassination of two politicians who supported the repeal.

After rescuing three kidnapped children accused of witchcraft in Ghana and being beaten and arrested in the process, Nigerian humanist Leo Igwe is now conducting a field investigation of “witch camps” holding thousands of women against their will in Northern Ghana.

Atheists in Ireland continue to challenge a blasphemy law there by posting online quotations critical of religion.

British humanists are working to keep creationism out of science classrooms and to oppose special protection for religion in politics.

Humanist organizations in Ghana and Uganda are fighting antigay legislation that’s backed by religious and political organizations.

The Atheist Centre in India continues its decades-long struggle against the caste system.

In some cases, atheists and humanists are alone in these efforts, or even fighting religious resistance to change. But in a growing number of cases, they’re finding common cause with progressive religious groups, working together on these key issues. The future is likely to have even more of these alliances between religious and nonreligious people of goodwill who share the same goals and human values.

Chapter 15

Being Good with or without God

In This Chapter

Getting a better idea what morality is

Being good — with no belief in God

Understanding how morality works

Researching moral development

M
illions of people around the world are walking away from religion every year. In
Chapter 14
, I describe how fast church attendance is dropping and religious belief is plummeting in dozens of countries. A billion people now walk the Earth without a single god in their heads.

If it were true that people need religious belief in order to behave themselves, all this secularizing would add up to a moral emergency. But be not afraid, for this chapter brings good news! Religion can be the source of moral principles, but religion is no more necessary to being a moral person than a high-fiber diet. As moral development researcher Larry Nucci puts it, people’s understanding of morality around the world is very much the same whether they’re of “one religion, another religion, or no religion at all.”

That’s good news all right — but it does make the work of understanding morality a little more challenging. You can’t just ask one question and figure out whether someone is likely to behave well. But whatever is true has always been true, and it’s better for people to really understand this crucial bit of human life than to only think they understand.

More reasons to be optimistic about human morality exist than we usually recognize, and there are just as many reasons not to worry about the growing presence of atheists, agnostics, and humanists in today’s culture. When it comes to being and doing good, atheists are more like their religious friends and neighbors — for better and worse — than either group often thinks.

By showing that people can be good with or without God, this chapter can make people less afraid of each other, and even of themselves. So a defense of morality without religion ends up really being a defense of human nature itself. That’s what most of this chapter is about: not atheist morality, but plain old natural human morality. Take a look at the research and focus the lens a bit better, and it turns out, surprisingly, that humans aren’t so bad after all.

Defining Morality

What is morality? What does it mean to be a moral person? The first question seems easy enough:
Morality
is about distinguishing between good and bad, or right and wrong. But that’s where it starts to get complicated, because people don’t always agree on what’s right and wrong.

Some people decide whether something is right based on a holy book or by a person in authority. Atheists (and many believers as well) see a problem with this approach. Because the various holy books and authorities say different things, having discussions about right and wrong is more difficult than it should be. And if a scripture instructs followers to harm others, people outside of that book’s influence should be permitted to say it’s a bad source of moral guidance.

(Not that any holy book would do that, of course. Ahem.)

The same is true for authority. I shouldn’t consider something good just because someone else, even a greatly admired person, suggested it, without also thinking independently about whether it makes sense. (See the nearby sidebar for one psychologist’s work in the way individuals define morality.)

For a chapter on morality without God, using a definition from an atheist makes sense. Neuroscientist Sam Harris says that morality is concerned with “the well-being of conscious creatures.” If something contributes to that well-being, it’s moral. If it detracts from it, it’s immoral.

Not all atheists agree with that definition — but that’s par for the course. For my purposes here, think of morality as an effort to strive as much as possible for the well-being of conscious creatures.