The newest fad among stylish Westerners is the atheist movement that is growing like gangbusters if one listens to the propaganda being spread by its newest and loudest adherents. On the other side, the optics of the religions are unfortunate. First, religions are denounced for being responsible for all the evil in the world. Certainly, the churches and religions have this problem regarding hypocritical aspects when one compares their idealism to their earthly explication. For the most part, people who would have said they believed in God or went to church very infrequently have changed their answer to the PEW polling on religion to “non-affiliated,” the famous “no’s” or “nones”. I look at this as a compilation of corrected data and the popular notion among many younger people not to proclaim they belong to some group or ideology lest they besmirch their gilded self-perception with something they cannot critique or disavow. One very vocal adherent had such strength of his convictions that he never spoke of it publicly while his mother was alive.
Why does God upset atheists? The issue is not that they fear the potential for there might be an afterlife in which they might be judged. And certainly, this is what they declare. There are probably many atheists who think very infrequently about their being atheist. That is frowned upon by the latest cadre of atheists who have decided to follow the example of LGBT people that they “come out” as atheists. Given family and societal pressures this will be a difficult statement to make. Most people in the world either do or say they do believe in God. Some religious people have problems with people who are atheists. This is understood to be such that their fervor of faith makes the idea of godless life fearsome. That is not the topic of this discussion today.
As of the latest world-wide data available on religious affiliation, most people live in countries where the majority are of their faith. For example, most Hindus live in India, or most Buddhists in the Asia-Pacific region. *
Interestingly, this population symmetry exists also in the non-affiliated group. While 16.3% of the world populations is unaffiliated (includes atheists) 76% of the religiously unaffiliated also live in the Asia-Pacific region. The number of religiously unaffiliated people in China (700M) is more than twice the total population of the US., which leaves 424,700,000 atheists spread around the globe.* Of course, discuss with modern militant atheists the issue of China ‘s people being atheists, it is dismissed because they are communists. But, of course, if one said that the other 4.2M atheists are atheists because they are capitalists, that doesn’t seem to be much to their liking either. Like other socialist groups, movement atheists tend to think in terms of increased stature of the socialist/atheistic movement rather than policies that a socialist/atheist nation/group might follow.
So, called “Modern” atheists must live down a very cruel, murderous and rapacious foundation of such great atheist countries as USSR, Eastern European “Soviet satellite” countries that were atheists and China during the time of Mao and afterwards. It is their contention that these people were not atheists because they were communists. Well, they were socialists, of which communism is a subset. And socialism has this entropic attraction to atheism. Karl Marx and Mr. Engels are truly the “begetters” of socialism and they were clear that religion and God were contraindicated in a world of socialism.
Of course, when challenged that religions ought to have a pass and focus only on the 21st century renditions, that is not permitted. No, atheism is resurrected from ashes of horror, torture, systematic death and genocide pure, but religions will always have their history of blood letting and monarchist tendencies shackled to them. Of course, this entire proposition is laughable, but atheists cannot accept their horror ridden past. Yet, it is there, and to keep the discussion real, one must always remind them of these important details. If past is prologue, something I am not totally on board with, one can only see a future of gulags and re-education camps in the world of the modern atheist.
Why can’t we all just get along? (Thank you Rodney King) Tolerance which has been absorbed by most modern apparitions of churches is not the fundamental virtue of atheists in practice. It is true without question that for certain groups of people, religion has done them wrong and seriously. Certainly women, LGBTQ+ people, black and other minorities and atheists of the past are among them. Just saying one was a disbeliever could get one severe corporal punishment including death. In some parts of the world, some religions more than others, the horrors of the past still persist, with those militant Muslims being of special notice. Cutting off people’s heads with a knife is not morally or physically easy. Something quite significant must motivate a person to do this. Murderous activity is done in the (false) name of Allah. The guarantee of many virgins attending a man at his entrance into heaven is not available to the fanatic unless they are the ones dying for the cause. Yet, this act of barbarism is a scene historic and righteous in many countries especially in the middle east and northern Africa.
The most important question facing the world of atheism is what constitutes their definition of morality. What are their basic human and civil rights values? How do most modern atheists view euthanasia, abortion, suicide and infanticide as well as the traditional types such as murder, coveting and adultery?
The first issue to clarify is what is the basis for human law and politics. Is there good and evil involved in political decisions? Who is the person or group which determines the manner in which needs can or will be met; who will have certain privileges and higher levels of authority? Are these leaders picked from the tribe in some democratic fashion with a priority placed on mercy, compassion, equanimity and what is generally understood to be good governing concepts? Without first accepting that people compete for power in society, (as Nietzsche stated), government, business and other arenas of human endeavor one can never come to an honest answer concerning what is moral and what not.. What occurs in power enhancing situations is that the leadership, individual or group, acquires more and more power, and in doing so are the ones who impose a structure on society.
Fred Williams, in an article entitled The Human Basis of Law and Ethics posted on the American Humanist Association website says this as his third element of how human beings interact with one another:
“3) Most normal human beings respond with similar feelings of compassion to like events. Our values are not all based on simple individual self-interest or egoism.”
americanhumanist.org/...
We have the initial irony of the writer imposing his values on the process when he states “most normal human beings” are compassionate. But who determines what the normal is when society is in the throws of revolution and change? Let’s pick out a recent example (given the hundreds of thousands of years of human existence): the French Revolution. If there was a word that would define the most important values of this “normal” group of humans, compassion would not be it. Murderous revenge was the principle motivation that allowed for many tests of the guillotine which were done daily. People who were stars at the beginning of the Revolution ended up cut by the guillotine. Kings, princes, priests, cardinals, rich people generally were the group singled out for this pleasurable and crowd-pleasing event. In some places this vice is described generally as “hardness of heart.”
Many who may be less familiar with the history of Uganda might be interested to learn of the famous leader Idi Amin:
“In 1971, General Idi Amin overthrew the elected government of Milton Obote and declared himself president of Uganda, launching a ruthless eight-year regime in which an estimated 300,000 civilians were massacred. His expulsion of all Indian and Pakistani citizens in 1972—along with increasing military expenditures—brought about the country’s economic decline, the impact of which lasted decades. In 1979 his reign of terror came to an end as Ugandan exiles and Tanzanians took control of the capital of Kampala, forcing Amin to flee. Never brought to justice for his heinous crimes, Amin lived out the remainder of his life in Saudi Arabia.”
www.history.com/...
There we have a modern example of a “compassionate” natured murderer who as it mentions above, was responsible for 300,000 deaths. All justified by the dictator, no? We can recall Mr.
Josef Stalin and his compassionate nature as well as Hitler and Mao Zedong. Now we certainly could quibble with the appellation of normalcy to this crowd, and to some degree they are best described as probably not …well, this is something that might need more study. In terms of leaders, how many from the time of Zoroaster to the present can we determine fit the category of normal, and whose first and most important value was compassion?
If we could simply look at the most modern present and not find dictatorships in Venezuela, Cuba, Sudan and the others again, we would rely on this idea that we share so much of our earthly understandings of each other as human beings that compassion would be a principal upon which a society would base its laws.
This is not to say that belief in God does not itself have a rough row to hoe. One could say that we are hard wired to believe in an all-powerful being who can protect, explain and save us from the conditions on earth that are for some most grave. Once we have accepted that mathematics proves that coincidences are better explanations for that sense we have that something we thought about yesterday comes to pass tomorrow we have come a long way from this religious explanation of divine intervention. The metaphysical has been strained to its limits as philosophers and theologians try their darnedest to define Being, being, Essence, essence, First Cause, potentiality vs reality in a cold sweat hoping that someone does not call them out for the condition this has left for philosophy.
There are those pseudo-religious some known to be fanatics who will fill you with anxiety when they indicate that something bad is going to happen to you because you did not fulfill the required prayers or rituals. The point is, that bad things were going to happen to you without believing that God exists. Good things as well.
So, what happens to the questions of morality that have been discussed already? How will people determine a universal or at least national set of agreed morality under which to live and to see as something greater than one’s own thoughts about what is good? Can each one of us determine the morality they will live by? What is necessary for morality, or are laws managing behavior sufficient?
The problem is the same one that is had with God. Someone, some written instrument, some tradition or authority Is needed. Although I consider people to be good by default, I do see like all of us, the incipient movements toward evil control over others, be it a revolution by a dictator or a socialist approach to managing the hoi poloi. Eventually a question will be raised that is disputed and feelings so strong involved that there is no consensus or agreement. Will morality to be subject to a ballot question or legislated by Congress or settled by the Supreme Court? Essentially, we are left with one person in most countries anyway, who signs the bills that make the laws that are based on a decision about the popularity or legality of the bill. There are variations to this system of government throughout the world. Within each ethnic group, or country or state will there be any choice eventually aside from following the dicta of a dictator or the state?
*www.pewforum.org/...
www.pewforum.org/...