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Friday, August 23, 2013

Atheist Billboards, Commitment to Ethics, and Personal Choice

We missed the South Dakota Coalition of Reason's new non-believers billboards in Rapid City and Spearfish on our trip west this week. However, I did hear Southern Baptist theologian (wait: they have those?) Russell Moore promulgate the American Christian persecution complex with the absurd claim that being a Christian is no longer "culturally helpful" in our country.

As a South Dakota atheist, let me say that if Moore's contention were true, there'd be no such billboards, or at least no news reports about them. We also would not see "Christian" in the first sentence of any Senate candidate's bio. (Rhoden waits until paragraph 4 to establish his Baptist cred; Rounds doesn't mention his Catholicism in his current Web bio).

The Coalition of Reason makes a declaration of moral intent that should be culturally helpful for any candidate or citizen of any religious persuasion:
Members of our community and student organizations self identify as atheist, agnostic, humanist, freethinker, secular, skeptic, non-religious, rationalist, empiricist, and more. Like everyone else, we also benefit from a supportive community of friends and family. South Dakota CoR strives to foster a better understanding of our secular values with our neighbors, and to promote and defend those values in our government. No matter how you self identify, we affirm that all have the ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity [emphasis mine; South Dakota Coalition of Reason, "Welcome," downloaded 2013.08.23].
I can hear my theist friends and even my own skeptical soul asking, "But where does that responsibility come from? Why bother with the 'greater good of humanity' if there is no God?"

I lost little sleep over that question when I was younger; I lose no sleep over that question now. If I didn't behave ethically, my daughter would be sad and my wife would be mad. If no one behaved ethically, life would suck. That response is selfish, sentimental, and sloppily utilitarian, but it works.

Some Christians I know will still declare the Coalition of Reason's commitment to ethical living empty and flimsy: how can we rely on a secularist's professed principles when they are rooted in nothing more than personal choice?

I do not doubt that atheists may make mistakes and fall away from their principles. But in that fallibility, do atheists differ at all from Christians? My Christian friends choose, with the same faculty of free will exercised by me and my secular friends, to follow the teachings of an ancient tribe that caught heck from Pharaoh and walked around the desert a lot, with amendments by a carpenter and convicted criminal from Nazareth. Prominent in those teachings is the idea that all people are fallible. We all suffer weakness. We all make mistakes. Are Christians not by definition as prone to waver and err in their convictions as everyone else we meet in the street?

I'm not big on joining clubs. I've never gotten the sense that joining a Christian club would help me make wiser, more humane, more effective decisions. I don't think joining an atheist club will bolster my decision-making ability.

But I do hope that the South Dakota Coalition of Reason can build on these new billboards to open lengthy conversations between people of all faiths—in God, in Wakan Tanka, in human dignity—that will help us all understand our common abilities and responsibilities to build a better world for all of our relations.

22 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  2. joseph g thompson8/23/2013 10:36 AM

    Cori,

    Where do your ethical values come from?

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  3. (Reminder, everyone: I generally delete Anonymous comments. As I say below, I prefer to see names with comments.)

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  4. Joseph, if you're asking for a scientific explanation, I'd say they come from a great variety of environmental influences—parents, community, experiences, literature (including Star Trek!), study—and probably some far-from-understood combination of brain chemistry. Is that the question you're asking?

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  5. Yup, that would be pretty close to how I would have answered. Are one society's ethics better than another society's, if so who makes the determination that one is better than the other? Are moral values the same as ethical standards?

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  6. joseph g thompson8/23/2013 1:56 PM

    the anon is joseph g thompson

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    1. Joseph, my atheism does not drag me into cultural relativism. Men who oppress women don't get a pass from me just because they were born in Afghanistan. Table etiquette, taste in ice cream... stuff like that isn't worth quibbling about. But bigger principles of justice and equality, the principles that guide the functioning of society, require more universality.

      Morals vs. ethics? Tricky: this guy says morals are more personal and immediate, while ethics are more general, the kind of principles with which we build society. Do you use the words differently?

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    2. joseph g thompson8/24/2013 3:23 PM

      yes,I do use them differently

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    3. Does that difference change our discussion much?

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  7. Empathy is a trait that has major survival benefits for individuals and is directly driven by our evolved chemical processes (oxytocin just being one example). All existing morality is derived from this trait. The part of the brain that drives empathy has been shown to be damaged or non-functioning in sociopaths.

    In the Theist world view, non-believers must be sociopaths b/c that is the only route to morality. This is objectively not true. Science has shown that sociopathic behavior occurs b/c of a brain that operates physically differently (piece of brain does not function/is damaged).

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  8. In regards to 'joining a club' - I'm sure you meant your comments are from your own personal perspective, and not necessarily meant to diminish or discredit those that DO join a club (no matter the faith). I'm probably just over thinking it. No biggie.

    You are correct. It doesn't help or change your current moral standing one way or the other. However, for us Atheists, finding a common community in the middle of Jesus land is rather helpful, in terms of self perception.

    I had that feeling in my gut for decades, but when you're pretty much isolated from larger communities, you start to think you're either weird, or just an asshole.

    Turns out, i'm not alone....

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    1. You are correct, Shawn: I do not offer my preference not to join clubs to dissuade others from joining the theist or atheist clubs of their choice. And SDCoR can serve a valuable function in giving non-believers a greater sense of community and in helping believers replace their sense of dominant entitlement with a sense of empathy and inclusion.

      Of course, there's nothing wrong with being weird. :-)

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  9. You're main site down?

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    1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    2. (Alas, yes! I'm working on it! Sorry about the delay!)

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    3. You're, your, ur... damn it!

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    4. Fortunately, there is no God to damn our hasty errors... just grammar teachers. ;-)

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  10. My late grandpa always said it wasn't how often you went to church, but how you lived your life.

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    1. Joan, if there is a God, I will be curious to find out whether She agrees with your grandpa.

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  11. I have no problem with people of any/no faith. I do have a big problem with people who use their 'faith' to do harm. That can range from Taliban attempting to assassinate a young girl who wants to go to school, to a Christian (?) using false biblical readings to drive a homosexual young girl or boy to suicide.

    I find a false dichotomy between Faith or Reason. Coexistence of both are not only entirely possible, but common. In fact, most Christians are practioners of Faith AND Reason. It's the extremists on the far right who get the press, as is true of all religions.

    All Muslims are not terrorists any more than all Christians are Fred Phelps followers picketing military funerals.

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    1. Deb, I find my wife both faithful and reasonable. She rejects dualism of all sorts.

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  12. Could we please spell Cory's name correctly. It's not Cori or Corey. Just sayin! John Hess: Not anonymous!

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