Click here for this article in Dutch
A Prejudice as Old as Antiquity
Ever since human beings invented their first gods, the atheist has been marginalized.
Alienating themselves from their own innate moral sense by projecting it onto imaginary divinities, or onto the unique, despotic "God" of a monotheistic religion, humans convinced themselves that any individual who fails to recognize these divinities must be amoral and depraved.
Such individuals became targets of utter distrust, accursed and anathematized. This hatred for and antipathy towards atheists and for atheism is called atheophobia.
Plato was apparently the first to formulate and codify this hatred. In his Tenth Book of the Dialogue on Laws or Plato Against the Atheists (1), he advocates draconian measures against atheists, the impious and several other categories of individual (magicians, sorcerers) which he tends to lump together with atheists.
According to the historian Georges Minois (2), Plato thus invented, in one fell swoop, religious intolerance, the inquisition and concentration camps.
The bible asserts the moral degradation of atheists: "The depraved says in his heart, 'There is no God.' They are corrupt, their deeds are vile; there is no one who does good." (Psalms 14.1)
Throughout the long history of Christianity, miscreants, "buggers," heretics and Jews were condemned and often confused with each other in an attitude of all-encompassing intolerance.
During a papal audience in 1999, John-Paul II reminded his listeners that "The psalmist calls foolish" anyone who does not believe in god (3).
As for the coran, it declares: "the curse of Allah will be upon the disbelievers." (Surah 2.89) "And kill them wherever you find them, and turn them out from where they have turned you out. And Al-Fitnah [disbelief in Allah] is worse than killing. [...] Such is the recompense of the disbelievers." (Surah 2.191).
Few voices were raised against this monolithic hatred. One notable exception was that of Pierre Bayle, a dissident protestant Christian, who dared to write that "Atheism does not necessarily lead to the corruption of morals." (4) To us in the 21st century, such a sentence sounds banal, even timid, but in the 17th, it expressed exemplary courage.
The Enlightenment
In the 18th century, Enlightenment philosophers denounced religious intolerance and obscurantism, but not all broke with the old anti-atheist prejudice.
In his novella The Story of Johnny; or, The Atheist and the Sage (5), Voltaire writes: "Belief, then, in a God who rewards good actions, punishes the bad, and forgives lesser faults, is thus most useful to humanity. It is the only restraint on powerful men, who insolently commit public crimes, and on others who skillfully perpetrate secret offences."
It follows therefore that "The atheist is a monster," although less to be feared than the superstitious.
Thomas Jefferson, on the other hand, although a deist like Voltaire, belonged to a more recent generation and began to question this attitude of general mistrust. Observing that Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach and Condorcet were reputed to be both atheists and virtuous, it followed that their virtue must have some basis other than the love of god (6).
Atheophobia is founded on the belief that the divinity is the source and guarantor of all morality. This is probably the most widespread and the most dangerous of all religious beliefs. In The Sacred Contagion (7), D'Holbach succinctly explains this danger: "If it is divine will which decides what is just and what is not, then God is the master of all virtue; by his word, crime may become virtue, and virtue crime. Thus morality is subordinated to the whims of those who interpret that divine will. [...] Any man vain enough to believe himself to be chosen by his god must regard with contempt all those who do not benefit from such favour."
A consequence of atheophobia is the myth that religious believers are morally superior to nonbelievers. This notion is the sugar coating on the poison pill of irrational belief, making it easier to swallow.
Modern Atheophobia
In the modern era, expressions of blatant, explicit atheophobia have become rarer -- except of course among fundamentalists and creationists -- as the absurdity and injustice of this nasty old prejudice begin to be recognized. One exception is the priest Richard John Neuhaus, editor-in-chief of the American religious journal First Things, who in 1991 published an article baldly claiming that atheists cannot be good citizens (8). Furthermore, laws in several American states still forbid atheists to hold certain public offices.*
But in the 20th and 21st centuries, atheophobia normally manifests itself in a more subtle form; it has evolved under the corrosive effect of reason. It is transformed into a profound mistrust of atheist activism, associating its upfront criticism of religion with extreme repression -- a threat to freedom of conscience -- and with totalitarianism. To observe this, it is enough to read, for example, the words of the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor (9).
Whether explicit or subtle, atheophobia is behind all sorts of myths and distortions.
Some say that atheism is a question of blind faith, just like religions. Yet the atheist does nothing more than abstain from belief. If atheism is a religion, then health is a disease.
Those who disagree strongly with atheists accuse them of "fundamentalism"; this is nonsense, as the only fundamental principle of atheism is the simple affirmation of lack of belief in gods. This non-belief implies nothing about what attitude to adopt towards believers, nor what particular form of government to prefer. Some say atheists are arrogant, but how could one possibly attain even an infinitesimal fraction of the arrogance of a religious leader who claims to have detailed intimate knowledge of the will of "God"?
Some even make the gratuitous assertion that atheism is a cause of totalitarianism. But in order to begin the complex task of analysing, for example, the Soviet dictatorship, one must instead undertake a deconstruction of the pseudoscience known as "scientific socialism," a sort of final solution to all the ills of society, implemented by attempting to build a utopia through totalitarian means. Furthermore, totalitarian regimes have more often than not been theocracies or allies of a religion. The expressions "atheist fundamentalism" and "secular fundamentalism" are oxymorons, functionally identical to each other, invented and spread by the enemies of the Enlightenment and of modernity in order to distract from very real religious fundamentalisms.
Implications of atheophobia among nonbelievers themselves
Atheophobia is no less prevalent among nonbelievers. Even atheist spokespersons for secular organizations rarely dare to mention publicly their nonbelief in order not to offend the exaggerated sensibilities of believers, as if the mere mention of atheism constituted a threat to freedom of belief. The negative connotations of the word "atheism" are often invoked to justify its omission from the names and statements of principles of such associations. But given the fact that the stigmatization of atheism is founded on religious intolerance, this situation constitutes a very solid argument for the use of the word.
An individual who openly declares himself or herself an atheist is taking a stand against the suffocating silence which sustains atheophobia. If every non-religious humanist association changed it public discourse in order to promote "atheistic humanism" or "humanist atheism", they would be taking a major step to advance freedom of conscience, and not only for atheists.
Indeed, although atheists constitute a marginalized minority, atheism can be seen, paradoxically, as a universal value, because every person is an atheist with respect to the gods of others. To fight for the freedom of conscience of atheists is to defend that freedom for everyone.
Although the reluctance to identify oneself as an atheist is unhealthy, the decision whether or not to declare oneself nevertheless remains a question of personal choice. Similarly, the decision to include or not the word "atheism" in the name or mission statement of an organization obviously depends on the will of its members.
However, some humanist spokespersons occasionally go beyond merely remaining silent in the face of atheophobia: they in fact contribute actively to the stigmatization of atheism by adapting anti-atheist religious language to a secular context and repeating it in their own words. Now it is obvious that one of the first duties of a secular humanist activist is to fight against atheophobia. To do the opposite is a betrayal of the humanist's own principles.
It is a very common prejudice, widespread among both religious believers and non-believers. As this term is a neologism and the above definition is very literal, a more detailed description is in order:
This prejudice is widespread even among nonbelievers, where it takes one of the forms described by the third and fourth meanings given above. Atheophobia among those who are in fact atheists themselves can be described as internalized atheophobia. It becomes outright hypocrisy when it manifests itself as hostility towards open, unashamed atheists. Such antipathy is a smokescreen for a lack of courage in the face of religious social pressure.
(1) Plato, Plato Contra Atheos or Tenth Book of the Dialogue on Laws, Tayler LEWIS, New York, 1845.
(2) Minois, Georges, Histoire de l'athéisme, Fayard, 1998.
(3) Jean-Paul II, "Christian response to modern atheism", General Audience, 14th April 1999.
(4) Bayle, Pierre, Pensées sur l'athéisme, Paris, 2004.
(5) Voltaire, The Story of Johnny; or, The Atheist and the Sage, 1775. (I have modified the quoted text somewhat in order to conform more closely to the original French.) See also his comments on the subject of atheism in his Treatise on Tolerance, On the Occasion of the Death of Jean Calas, 1763, in which Voltaire associates atheism with depravity and declares that "it is better [...] to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion."
(6) Jefferson, Thomas Letter to Thomas Law, 13th June 1814
(7) d'Holbach, Paul-Henri, La Contagion sacrée, 1768, Éditions coda 2006.
(8). Neuhaus, Richard John, "Can Atheists Be Good Citizens?" in First Things, Aug./Sept. 1991
(9). See, for example, Interview with Charles Taylor transcribed on the web site of the Templeton Foundation, or the analysis of Marie-Michelle Poisson in her article "Malaises avec Charles Taylor" in No. 10 of Cité laïque, humanist journal of the MLQ.
* In the United States, seven state constitutions officially include religious tests that would effectively prevent atheists from holding public office, and in some cases being a juror/witness, though these have not generally been enforced since the early nineteenth century.
Bron: http://livre-athee.com/14_eng/14_%20eng_atheophobia.htm
first published on http://atheisme.ca
_____
Atheism and Morality
The belief that atheists are morally inferior to religious believers is deeply rooted in many people’s minds and it plays an important part in atheophobic prejudices. Here are two articles that discuss this issue.
Is there moral grounding without God?
Staks Rosch
Often times when discussing religion with a Christian the issue of morality comes up. The claim of the Christian is almost always the same regardless of whether the Christian is a fundamentalist or more mainstream, “without God there can be no moral grounding.”
Personally, I find that to be a pretty arrogant and inaccurate statement. The way I see it, with God there can be no moral grounding. The sheer number of differing sects of Jews, Christians, and Muslims who have completely opposite opinions on so many moral issues certainly suggests that God hasn’t grounded morality at all. If he had, all believers in the Biblical God would have the same set of morals and as a point of fact they don’t.
It seems that God wasn’t so clear about his moral grounding after all since so many Christians disagree about God’s moral grounding. We really need to ask, how do we know what God commands? That is the real problem with believing in deities, you never really know what they want. From what I can tell by talking to so many Christians, God seems to communicate by one of two ways, either by divine revelations or through divine texts.
When it comes to divine revelation things get pretty problematic pretty quickly. This was a big problem early on for the Mormons when Joseph Smith declared that any Mormon could have a divine revelation. Very quickly people were getting some pretty opposing commands from God. It seemed to be impossible to know what a real divine revelation was and what thoughts were just people’s imagination, desires, or random thoughts and/or beliefs. And then of course mental illness is an issue with divine revelations too. You will find that there are often stories in the news of someone murdering their child because they had a divine revelation. How can you tell if someone had a divine revelation or is just crazy? There really is no objective way. Some Christians however claim that all divine revelations must match up with their holy book which brings us to the second God seems to communicate.
Divine texts like the Bible have a whole new set of problems. The Bible was written a long time ago and we don’t even have the original verses of the text. Over the years, the individual texts have been recopied over and over again complete with people’s deliberate and accidental changes. People seem to have revised the texts to fit their own personal philosophies, beliefs, or situations. Plus, people have also miscopied and mistranslated words as the text moved from language to language and copy to copy. One important piece of evidence of all the Biblical changes is the Sinaiticus Codex. As a result, people’s religious frameworks have become entirely dependent on their interpretation of inaccurate “Holy Scriptures.” With so many changes and translations and interpretations of the divine holy book, it is impossible to really know what God truly desire if God even had anything at all to do with the writing of the Holy Book in the first place.
The Sinaiticus Codex is said to be the oldest Bible ever found and is dated at about 350 to 400 AD/CE, that is to say 300 to 350 years after the alleged facts it relates.
Even if we could deal with those issues, the problem doesn’t get any better. According to the moral grounding argument, God defines morality and this causes a host of other problems. What if God changed his mind? Some Christians will argue that God wouldn’t change his mind because God is perfect or God is his character or some such nonsense. But the Bible claims in numerous places that God does change his mind. But that too is beside the point. The real issue isn’t whether he will change his mind, but rather whether he could change his mind if he so desired? If God did change his mind, then morality would change with God. This doesn’t seem like moral grounding to me. In fact, it sounds a lot like moral relativism. If God declared tomorrow that rape was now morally good, I really don’t think it would be so, but if God is indeed the moral grounder, than all morality is relative to God’s whim.
Many Christians will then typically argue that, “either all morality is absolute or all morality is subjective.” This line of thinking is a very problematic one which deals with a limiting of options and a kind of absolutism all its own. When we look at the philosophy of ethics and morality, we see that some of the greatest minds in human history have been working on this problem and have come up with some very complicated solutions which still don’t fully make morality clear to us. Some of the greatest of moral thinkers include, Plato, Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, John Stewart Mill, and John Rawls. There are of course many more, but these thinkers in particular have helped to shape modern concepts of morality.
As difficult as it may be for God-believers to understand, morality just isn’t as simple as a rulebook of do’s and don’ts. Morality isn’t all absolute nor is it all subjective. Morality is part principle based and part situational based. Personally, I think Kant and Aristotle have helped me better understand morality in that morality is more about the means than the ends as Kant viewed it and it is more about learning from moral role models or “men of practical wisdom” as Aristotle had suggested.
Currently, work is being done in the field of neuroscience to explain mirroring synapses and how that relates to compassion and empathy, which may help to teach us more about human morality from a biological standpoint. But until more study is done, we are left in the philosophical realm and from what we can gather through our understanding of the philosophy of ethics; morality is in no small part linked to two key aspects of human life, empathy and compassion. So what is an atheist’s moral grounding? Right now, there isn’t any. There is no moral grounding for atheists and no moral grounding for Christians either or for anyone else for that matter. Morality is not completely absolute nor is it completely subjective. There is a delicate balance and we are all trying our best to navigate these often-difficult moral paths. As human society has progressed, we have learned more and more about how best to treat each other in a moral way but our moral journey is far from over and as we as a people continue to learn, we will no doubt refine our moral compasses. If you would like to learn more about morality I would suggest you spend some time in the Philosophy Section of your local bookstore.
from http://www.dangeroustalk.net/
_____
OK, For The 50th Time, Morality Is Hardwired In Us
Atheist Jew
I've made a few posts on this topic previously, but I keep reading blog posts and articles by theists who keep on repeating the same garbage, that without God's word, or God's laws, humanity would become Sodom and Gomorrah like and even worse.
There are many theists out there who believe that the only thing stopping them from raping, murdering at random, and pillaging is the bible or the fear of God. They think that nothing holds atheists back from being "evil."
The reality is that morality is hardwired in our brains. And it developed long before we became humans. In fact, moral behavior is found all over the animal kingdom within like species at least. If social animals were only selfish and not hardwired to take a bullet for the group now and again, extinction would be the end result.
This morning I saw a mother sparrow feeding three near-adult offspring on my driveway (me and my wife always make sure there is birdseed and bread crumbs on the driveway, evil atheists that we are), I mentioned to my wife that this mother bird didn't need a bible to do the right thing.
The reason I'm bringing this up now is that more research has come out verifying the fact we are hardwired when it comes to morality:
“You gotta see this!” Jorge Moll had written. Moll and Jordan Grafman, neuroscientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md., had been scanning the brains of volunteers as they were asked to think about a scenario involving either donating a sum of money to charity or keeping it for themselves.
As Grafman read the e-mail, Moll came bursting in. The scientists stared at each other.
The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
The only thing I will argue about this is the idea of altruism. If doing good things for others gives us a positive brain rush, then it really isn't altruism. It becomes an act out of selfishness in a sense.
The reality is that the 10 Commandments for example, are just the result of writing down what was already hardwired in our brains, and we can easily substitute God with "nature" too, of course, to make sense of the Commandments by doing this, poetic allegorical analysis would be required.
_____
