OPINION & EDITORIAL
Respecting Atheism in a religious world
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Also by Matthew Clausen:
- Respecting Atheism in a religious world (January 17, 2005)
- As the dollar falls (December 8, 2004)
- Material world of gifts (November 30, 2004)
- Reinvest in education (November 17, 2004)
- The freedom to err (November 10, 2004)
Related Stories:
- Lessons in Islam (September 18, 2001)
- Gifted alumni (September 27, 2004)
- Discovery highlights moral, scientific boundaries (November 27, 2007)
- Ten Commandments removal sparks counterpoint (September 10, 2003)
- A world of difference (January 19, 2004)
by Matthew Clausen
Monday, January 17, 2005
We are enjoying a period of growth and discovery in our lives, building ourselves into unique and informed human beings. Our progress often requires a reevaluation of learned behaviors and beliefs. Sometimes our conclusions require breaks from traditions, from our families.
Oftentimes, we return to our prior homes during school breaks not even realizing how different we’ve become, or not appreciating the strength of our opinions. Pre-election, many unsuspected political arguments began at dinner tables. Maybe you’d returned home with an “Ally” pin, or you came out to your friends at school, not realizing your parents had begun strongly denouncing the gay marriage movement while you were gone. Maybe instead you returned an ardent supporter of President Bush to find “Kerry” signs in your front yard.
We’re changing, developing our own set of beliefs, and learning to respect those of others. We’re learning that friends are not people who think exactly like ourselves, but rather people who challenge us. Respect is not camaraderie of opinion, it is learning from each other’s differences. Sometimes it is hard to find respect when we go back home.
Religious differences can be the worst.
I had my doubts about my Methodist upbringing before I came to UW-Madison. While here, I firmly decided on my atheism. My parents and I have had a variety of encounters on the issue, ranging from pleas to discussions to threats. I’m sure that my decision on religion is a key motivator when my father, in his more dramatic moments, mutters, “I rue the day I let you go to Madison.” My interpretations of and qualms with that statement aside, it illustrates a parent’s frustrations with confronting views different from his own in his child.
Our parents have been through this period of development themselves. They had their own unique experiences and reached their own conclusions. They’ve lived their lives based on a set of decisions they made at our age and also raised us based on those decisions. Quite naturally, parents will feel revulsion to their child’s assumption of a set of decisions different from their own: it implies that our parents made incorrect decisions. Perhaps one of the generations is wrong, or perhaps what was right in our parents’ hours of decision is different from what is right in ours.
Though I disagree with my parents on religion, I respect them as well as other people with religious beliefs different than my own. But why do several major faiths (perhaps having become “major” because of this) include in their doctrines an insistence on converting others to their religion?
My aunt knows I am an atheist. Believing it her duty, she attempted to “save” me at the family Christmas dinner by insisting that I behave like a proper young gentleman and lead the prayer. Thankfully, my uncle headed off the impending confrontation and someone else performed the task. Some individuals behave as though atheism is something in need of curing in a person, and they’re just the physicians for the task.
I remember visiting a Catholic church as a young child to attend a funeral. After part of the sermon was finished, the congregation knelt, and my mother told me to sit still: that was not a part of our faith. As part of the Christian education I received at my parents’ Methodist church, we had to visit a sermon at a synagogue. Our group was welcomed to the synagogue, seated in back, and not expected to participate. But as an atheist, I am expected to still observe my family’s Christian practices, including bowing my head and folding my hands for prayers.
Is a person without a god so threatening? Does this difference stem from beliefs that atheists are heathens, or individuals without law or reason and thus in particular need of saving? Atheists may actually be the strictest practitioners of reason. The assumption that a person who does not believe in a deity is a person who does not believe in law and rules is silly. Atheism is not a synonym for amorality. One doesn’t need a religious edict in order to include rule and law in their lives; one can behave quiet amiably based on reasoning instead of faith.
Atheism does not pose a malicious threat to humanity. When considering religious tolerance, when talking about your respect for other people’s religions, please extend that respect beyond those who believe in a different deity than you. Please also respect those who do not believe in a god.
Matthew Clausen (mgclausen@wisc.edu) is a junior majoring in English.
Anonymous (January 17, 2005 @ 10:51am):
Matthew, you may be a Bright!
http://www.the-brights.net/index.html
A bright is a person who has a naturalistic worldview
A bright's worldview is free of
supernatural and mystical elements
The ethics and actions of a bright
are based on a naturalistic worldview
Anonymous (January 17, 2005 @ 6:37pm):
Congratulations, you graduated from the University of athiesm! Where do you get your values from now? What values can our society unite under your athiestic worldview? Reason? The NY Times? Our professors? Nature? What book sums up your values? What's that? Many books! What ones? I fear a god-less society so much more than I fear an God-believing society. You can think and live the life you do because fortunately the society you live in does not think like you. If it did, I would bet you would not favor it. By the way, Canada holds your "values". Just go North.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 10:13am):
Pretty neat values those Religions(tm) have, like killing everybody that doesn't believe exactly what they should.
And don't forget the "benefit" of thinking that you'll be re-united with your loved ones in Heaven(tm) after dying in your "Holy War(tm)" of choice, be it Catholic vs. Protestant, Moslem vs Jew, Christian vs Moslem, Shite vs Sunni, Hindu vs Moslem, and other combinations much too numerous to mention.
Did you ever realy listen to "Imagine"?
Imagine there's no heaven,
It's easy if you try,
No hell below us,
Above us only sky,
Imagine all the people
living for today...
Imagine there's no countries,
It isnt hard to do,
Nothing to kill or die for,
No religion too,
Imagine all the people
living life in peace...
Imagine no possesions,
I wonder if you can,
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man,
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...
You may say Im a dreamer,
but Im not the only one,
I hope some day you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 10:55am):
You had to quote Imagine? What an overrated, sappy song. I don't even believe in religion and I hate that song. If you want to listen to a good post-Beatles John Lennon song, try Instant Karma.
To the point at hand, though, I believe the religion makes most people who practice it better people. And atheism is a religion, technically, so people who really adhere to its belief of rational law are better people because of it, typically. Of course, there are exceptions. And people just need to respect others more, over all.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 2:33pm):
Those who do not believe that moral values must come from the Bible or be based upon God's moral instruction argue that they have a better source for values: human reason.
In fact, the era that began the modern Western assault on Judeo-Christian values is known as the Age of Reason. That age ushered in the modern secular era, a time when the men of "the Enlightenment" hoped they would be liberated from the superstitious shackles of religious faith and rely on reason alone. Reason, without God or the Bible, would guide them into an age of unprecedented moral greatness.
As it happened, the era following the decline of religion in Europe led not to unprecedented moral greatness, but to unprecedented cruelty, superstition, mass murder and genocide. But believers in reason without God remain unfazed. Secularists have ignored the vast amount of evidence showing that evil on a grand scale follows the decline of Judeo-Christian religion.
There are four primary problems with reason divorced from God as a guide to morality.
The first is that reason is amoral. Reason is only a tool and, therefore, can just as easily argue for evil as for good. If you want to achieve good, reason is immensely helpful; if you want to do evil, reason is immensely helpful. But reason alone cannot determine which you choose. It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong and sometimes rational to do what is right.
It is sheer nonsense -- nonsense believed by the godless -- that reason always suggests the good. Mother Teresa devoted her life to feeding and clothing the dying in Calcutta. Was this decision derived entirely from reason? To argue that it was derived from reason alone is to argue that every person whose actions are guided by reason will engage in similar self-sacrifice, and that anyone who doesn't live a Mother Teresa-like life is acting irrationally.
Did those non-Jews in Europe who risked their lives to save a Jew during the Holocaust act on the dictates of reason? In a lifetime of studying those rescuers' motives, I have never come across a single instance of an individual who saved Jews because of reason. In fact, it was irrational for any non-Jews to risk their lives to save Jews.
Another example of reason's incapacity to lead to moral conclusions: On virtually any vexing moral question, there is no such a thing as a [missing] purely rational viewpoint. What is the purely rational view on the morality of abortion? Of public nudity? Of the value of an animal versus that of a human? Of the war in Iraq? Of capital punishment for murder? On any of these issues, reason alone can argue effectively for almost any position. Therefore, what determines anyone's moral views are, among other things, his values -- and values are beyond reason alone (though one should be able to rationally explain and defend those values). If you value the human fetus, most abortions are immoral; if you only value the woman's view of the value of the fetus, all abortions are moral.
The second problem with reason alone as a moral guide is that we are incapable of morally functioning on the basis of reason alone. Our passions, psychology, values, beliefs, emotions and experiences all influence the ways in which even the most rational person determines what is moral and whether to act on it.
Third, the belief in reason alone is itself based on an irrational belief -- that people are basically good. You have to believe that people are basically good in order to believe that human reason will necessarily lead to moral conclusions.
Fourth, even when reason does lead to a moral conclusion, it in no way compels acting on that conclusion. Let's return to the example of the non-Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe. Imagine that a Jewish family knocks on his door, asking to be hidden. Imagine further that on rational grounds alone (though I cannot think of any), the non-Jew decides that the moral thing to do is hide the Jews. Will he act on this decision at the risk of his life? Not if reason alone guides him. People don't risk their lives for strangers on the basis of reason. They do so on the basis of faith -- faith in something that far transcends reason alone.
Does all this mean that reason is useless? God forbid. Reason and rational thought are among the hallmarks of humanity's potential greatness. But alone, reason is largely worthless in the greatest quest of all -- making human beings kinder and more decent. To accomplish that, God, a divinely revealed manual and reason are all necessary. And even then there are no guarantees.
But if you want a quick evaluation of where godless reason leads, look at the irrationality and moral confusion that permeate the embodiment of reason without God -- your local university.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 2:33pm):
Those who do not believe that moral values must come from the Bible or be based upon God's moral instruction argue that they have a better source for values: human reason.
In fact, the era that began the modern Western assault on Judeo-Christian values is known as the Age of Reason. That age ushered in the modern secular era, a time when the men of "the Enlightenment" hoped they would be liberated from the superstitious shackles of religious faith and rely on reason alone. Reason, without God or the Bible, would guide them into an age of unprecedented moral greatness.
As it happened, the era following the decline of religion in Europe led not to unprecedented moral greatness, but to unprecedented cruelty, superstition, mass murder and genocide. But believers in reason without God remain unfazed. Secularists have ignored the vast amount of evidence showing that evil on a grand scale follows the decline of Judeo-Christian religion.
There are four primary problems with reason divorced from God as a guide to morality.
The first is that reason is amoral. Reason is only a tool and, therefore, can just as easily argue for evil as for good. If you want to achieve good, reason is immensely helpful; if you want to do evil, reason is immensely helpful. But reason alone cannot determine which you choose. It is sometimes rational to do what is wrong and sometimes rational to do what is right.
It is sheer nonsense -- nonsense believed by the godless -- that reason always suggests the good. Mother Teresa devoted her life to feeding and clothing the dying in Calcutta. Was this decision derived entirely from reason? To argue that it was derived from reason alone is to argue that every person whose actions are guided by reason will engage in similar self-sacrifice, and that anyone who doesn't live a Mother Teresa-like life is acting irrationally.
Did those non-Jews in Europe who risked their lives to save a Jew during the Holocaust act on the dictates of reason? In a lifetime of studying those rescuers' motives, I have never come across a single instance of an individual who saved Jews because of reason. In fact, it was irrational for any non-Jews to risk their lives to save Jews.
Another example of reason's incapacity to lead to moral conclusions: On virtually any vexing moral question, there is no such a thing as a [missing] purely rational viewpoint. What is the purely rational view on the morality of abortion? Of public nudity? Of the value of an animal versus that of a human? Of the war in Iraq? Of capital punishment for murder? On any of these issues, reason alone can argue effectively for almost any position. Therefore, what determines anyone's moral views are, among other things, his values -- and values are beyond reason alone (though one should be able to rationally explain and defend those values). If you value the human fetus, most abortions are immoral; if you only value the woman's view of the value of the fetus, all abortions are moral.
The second problem with reason alone as a moral guide is that we are incapable of morally functioning on the basis of reason alone. Our passions, psychology, values, beliefs, emotions and experiences all influence the ways in which even the most rational person determines what is moral and whether to act on it.
Third, the belief in reason alone is itself based on an irrational belief -- that people are basically good. You have to believe that people are basically good in order to believe that human reason will necessarily lead to moral conclusions.
Fourth, even when reason does lead to a moral conclusion, it in no way compels acting on that conclusion. Let's return to the example of the non-Jew in Nazi-occupied Europe. Imagine that a Jewish family knocks on his door, asking to be hidden. Imagine further that on rational grounds alone (though I cannot think of any), the non-Jew decides that the moral thing to do is hide the Jews. Will he act on this decision at the risk of his life? Not if reason alone guides him. People don't risk their lives for strangers on the basis of reason. They do so on the basis of faith -- faith in something that far transcends reason alone.
Does all this mean that reason is useless? God forbid. Reason and rational thought are among the hallmarks of humanity's potential greatness. But alone, reason is largely worthless in the greatest quest of all -- making human beings kinder and more decent. To accomplish that, God, a divinely revealed manual and reason are all necessary. And even then there are no guarantees.
But if you want a quick evaluation of where godless reason leads, look at the irrationality and moral confusion that permeate the embodiment of reason without God -- your local university.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 3:31pm):
You can believe in all the best things that religion preaches (justice, compassion, mercy, etc.) without believing in religion. And you can leave out many of the worst things that religion can teach, such as intolerance for those who are different.
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 6:43pm):
Mother Teresa, a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.
MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been--she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself--and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2090083
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 7:13pm):
"Secularists have ignored the vast amount of evidence showing that evil on a grand scale follows the decline of Judeo-Christian religion."
As opposed to, say, the evil of recurring Pogroms (and expulsion of the Jews from France, England and Spain), the Crusades (against both heritics and Moslems), the Inquisition, Protestant Revolt, Thirty Years War, the institution of slavery in the new world, etc., etc., etc.
Religion has been the cause of most of the really irrational evil in the world, especially since the rise of monotheism.
Remember that the founder of "Judeo-Christian religion" was going to kill his son (the one he had with his wife - not the bastard he earlier had with his slave) based on hearing a voice in his head.
Oh God said to Abraham 'kill me a son'
Abe said 'man you must be puttin me on'
God said 'no', Abe said 'what'
God say 'you can do what you wanna but
The next time you see me comin you better run'
Well abe said 'where d'you want this killin done'
God said 'out on Highway 61'
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 7:25pm):
"She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction."
Excuse me?
I'm all for feminism, but empowering women is hardly the only known cure for poverty. Using your logic, any single woman with no children should not be poor, but there are lots of single, childless women who live in poverty. And even if there weren't, you're still ignoring the large proportion of the poor who are men.
How about education as a cure for poverty? How about job training? How about setting a minimum wage above the poverty line?
Anonymous (January 18, 2005 @ 10:25pm):
Gosh, even more left-wing anti-Semitism, just like over on Julie Isen's "Stingy states of America" column!
And neither opinion piece even has anything to do with Jews and Judaism. For Madison liberals to claim that none of their intentions are anti-Jewish would be preposterous from this point on. I will no longer support a liberal cause if liberals can't leave irrelevant issues out of it. Nazi assholes!
