Atheism and moral relativism lead to tolerance, not immorality
April 24th, 2008 by Riley FirthI was recently told by a Christian that I, being an atheist, am intrinsically immoral, having nothing on which to base my morality. I think with the Pope’s recent visit to our fair shores, this is a great statement for me to sink my teeth into. For all you Christians who think atheists lack a moral compass, I’ve got the real good news: belief in an imaginary father-figure is not necessary to define your morals, and, in fact, religious moral authority often prevents tolerance of other systems of morality.
This theory hinges on a few concepts I’ll discuss: moral relativism, the subjective nature of human life, and the flawed philosophy of Plato.
The Problem with Plato
Let’s start with the groundwork. For those of you unfamiliar with Platonic idealism, here’s the real short version: Plato believed that there was an objective reality out there, and truth is an accurate representation of this objective reality. Now, this sounds good – it’s easy to digest, and wraps everything up in a happy black and white picture. If reality is objective, then good is good, bad is bad, and ugly is ugly.
There are, however, some serious problems with Plato. Richard Rorty, a postmodern philosopher, argues in Contingency, Irony and Solidarity that big-T Truth is a problem because man interprets everything through language. Don’t buy it? How are your thoughts organized? BINGO! Language. Language is seen by Rorty as nothing but a series of metaphors; the word tree is not, in fact, a tree, but merely a verbal image representing a tree. He thus comes to the conclusion that language must be subjective, since we all have slightly differing interpretations of these metaphors. You may see an oak tree, while I envision a pine tree, for instance. Rorty and other postmodernists believe, rather than in Truth, in truths. To the postmodern philosophers, there is no objective reality – or, rather, mankind can never find objective reality because we are limited by the subjectivity of the language with which we interpret the world. This leads to some interesting concepts regarding morality…
Moral Relativism
Moral relativism is a concept espoused by existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre, who believed a human being’s morals are subjective and based on cultural and societal norms rather than some objective morality given to us by God. This hinges on the above-expressed idea that reality itself is subjective, of course. Moral relativists often argue that someone’s morality is only applicable within their own culture, and can’t be applied to other, conflicting cultures. There are some problems with this theory as well; moral relativism implies that we can each create our own morals, and since we each create our own moral code, no one is immoral. I tend to subscribe to a more practical view: morals are socially constructed. Individual cultures come to a consensus of what is considered immoral.
Conclusion
“So what the heck is your point, Riley?” you might be asking. My point is, atheists are perfectly able to be moral, righteous individuals. If morals are relative to the culture, my morality is based on the same Western ideals as the morality of any Christian. The idea that an atheist cannot be moral is based on a concept I just don’t buy into: that we have some Truth handed down to us by a nonexistent God.
Kavan pointed out in an earlier article that the Ten Commandments are missing some very important rules; for instance, rape is wrong, despite not being in the Ten Commandments. I think we can all agree that a rapist is not a moral individual; where does this come from, if the Bible does not command it as part of your moral foundation? It’s because rape is damaging to society, and thus goes against our collective, cultural moral foundation.
Now here’s the leap: atheism and moral relativism actually breed more tolerance than mainstream, Christian ideology. Christians’ belief that morals and Truth are handed down by God (not any god, but their God), has led many (not all) Christians to believe those of other belief systems are wrong, going to hell, and generally bad and immoral people. Because I do not follow the Word of God, I must be an immoral person. Worse than individual persecution, religious morality breeds systemic intolerance.
Ex.:The Bible says in Leviticus 20:13, “And if a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.” There are vast armies of Christians who argue that this is the way we actually ought to treat homosexuality. Because their religion is a system of rules given to them by a divine, infallible Creator, His words make it okay to persecute and even put to death those who go against His divine morality.
Moral relativism and a belief that the world itself is subjective allows one to gain a better appreciation for why other cultures do the things they do, and allows for a more tolerant view of them. That being said, this problem is not unique to Christianity – this kind of superiority complex is pervasive in almost all organized religions. Each one thinks they have the Ultimate Truth, and the others are all wrong.
Not to sound too much like a Beatles song, but imagine if people worldwide accepted the notion that morality is a societal invention. Since it is no longer something given to us by some infallible source, and is, in fact, a creation of mankind, the other religions of the world are no longer immoral and wrong. They’ve just got a different view of the truth. After all, they’re all shooting for the same target, right? “Do unto others…”
May 2nd, 2008 at 11:14 am
Interesting. I’ve never been much of a fan of moral relativism, because I think it treats individualsociety conflicts poorly. If the individual asserts one thing, and the society asserts another, you have somewhat of a stalemate if there’s no objectively right answer. In the end society wins both in reality (by brute force) and in theory (by being on the side of the prevailing culture).
Also, I disbelieve that thoughts are based on language. In fact, I’ve heard of many stories where anthropologists or sociologists just made shit up to support this assertion (such as that the Hopi have a radically different sense of time because they have no past tense; if you wanted to be generous you could call this an exaggeration, but it’s simply not true). Rather, I think that certain forms of thought are common to all people, and that languages have to map on to these processes and concepts. Not that language isn’t important; it both reflects what people talk about and influences how easy it is for them to talk about it. But people who, due to brain damage or childhood neglect, do not have a native language learned during childhood (or in some cases, who have no language at all and never learn to understand speech), are generally still capable of solving many types of problems, as are animals, especially our primate cousins. And the fact that certain things are very hard to communicate in words I think is a testament to non-verbal processing. I especially see it in my work as a physicist.
Really, I don’t think that the Big Problem in establishing a Truth in society has much to do with language (realistically we don’t take the time to understand each other, but I think most things can be communicated quite well with enough time and effort from both ). I think it has much more to do with the problem of induction. We can all agree on whether huge classes of actions are right or wrong, but no matter how refined our principles we can’t cover every case. Getting every instance we can think of doesn’t mean we know all the principles. And principles don’t help if we don’t have strict logical definitions of all the words that comprise them.
I think it is interesting that your dichotomy is moral relativism vs. theism. My own belief is that there is some sort of objective morality embedded in the nature of things, in information theory if you like, having nothing to do with Dad-in-the-Sky. But that the application to human psychology is /hard/ (and our understanding of humanity itself limited), so you can’t figure out every case, even if theoretically there was some calculus that would solve it all. For practical purposes, it’s much the same as relativism, but I think the attitude that you are discovering something objectively real and not “just made up” can be crucial. Otherwise, the question of whether or not I should be moral seems to be contingent on what I think of all the people who tell me what’s moral. Or put another way, the good v. evil dichotomy gets tangled with the social v. antisocial dichotomy, which seems much more like practical legislation than good philosophy.
May 6th, 2008 at 11:15 am
@Sean
Only one reply here, but definately worth responding. Some very good points you make, and I really only disagree on a few things.
When I say thought is based in language, I think your definition of ‘language’ may be more restrictive than mine. Language here does not refer only to written and spoken communication, and I probably should have made that clearer. Language is any system of metaphors to represent reality. With that definition in mind, how can thought be anything but language? Even if it’s pictures, memories, etc. This is a very typical postmodern view of ‘language.’
I admit there are problems with moral relativism. I lean more toward the _social_ construction of rights and wrongs, social norms, and perceptions of reality. Individual societies construct their own morals and values which are commonly understood throughout their society. It creates an outlook where there are understood, common morals, but they are only applicable within your moral system/culture/society. I don’t think there is any single moral or value that has been shared by every society that has ever lived.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:20 am
One thing which I think the argument lacks. You have not illustrated what makes tolerance “good’ and intolerance “bad.”