El orden de las palabras: el juego de las palabras y la implicatura

Probably the most extreme of the four Christian-based theories is the idea that atheists are simply selfish and have succumbed to their desire to live an immoral life.

For example, Lee Stroebel, author of the bestselling book The Case for Christ (Stroebel, 1998), claims that he was an atheist before becoming a Christian and that what held him back from becoming a Christian for many years was the, “self-serving and immoral lifestyle that I would be compelled to abandon if I were ever to change my views and become a follower of Jesus” (p. 13). Another Christian author (Vitz, 2008) writes, “through reflection on my own experience it is now clear to me that my reasons for becoming and for remaining an atheist-skeptic from about age 18 to 38 were superficial, irrational, and largely without intellectual or moral integrity” (p. 35).

He goes on to say,

The fact is that it is quite inconvenient to be a serious believer in today’s powerful secular and neo-pagan world. I would have had to give up many pleasures and a good deal of time. Without going into details it is not hard to imagine the sexual pleasures that would have to be rejected if I became a serious believer. And then I also knew it would cost me time and some money.

There would be church services, church groups, time for prayer and scripture reading, time spent helping others. I was already too busy. Obviously,

becoming religious would be a real inconvenience (p. 36).

Comments like these have led many Christians to assume that most atheists become or remain so simply because they want the freedom to do whatever they want without having to answer to God.

Other conservative Christian authors use even stronger language. Spiegel (2010) writes, “Atheism is not at all a consequence of intellectual doubts. Such doubts are mere symptoms of the root cause—moral rebellion. For the atheist, the missing ingredient is not evidence but obedience” (p. 11). He even goes as far as to say that atheism, “does not arise from the careful application of reason but from willful rebellion. Atheism is the suppression of truth by wickedness, the cognitive

consequence of immorality” (p. 18). R. C. Sproul uses similar arguments in his 1974 book The Psychology of Atheism. He writes, “the problem is not that there is

insufficient evidence to convince rational beings that there is a God, but that rational beings have a natural antipathy toward the being of God” (pp. 56-57). He concludes that the “problem” with the atheist is, “not a lack of knowledge or a lack of cognitive equipment but is a moral deficiency” (p. 62). Later in the book he goes on to describe God as the “unviewed viewer” who sees our every thought and deed, thus making us feel rather uncomfortable and exposed—a feeling that some people just can’t handle and thus become atheists to avoid.

The association between atheism and selfish immorality has a long history, going back at least as far as the psalmist who writes, “Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God.’ They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good” (Psalm 14:1, NRSV). In fact, the American Heritage dictionary still includes immorality as part of its definition for atheism (American Heritage dictionary, 2009, online). The connection is also often associated with Fyodor Dostoevsky and his novel The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky, 1984). Although the oft-quoted phrase,

“Without God, all is permitted” does not actually appear in the English translation of the novel, the general idea certainly does come up in the book several times (Beit-Hallahmi, 2010, pp. 114-115). It echoes the idea from the early modern period that a belief in God is necessary in order to maintain social order. The philosopher John Locke writes that, “promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist” (Locke, 1689/1983, p. 51) and Voltaire writes, “I want my attorney, my tailor, my servants, even my wife to believe in God;

and I think I shall then be robbed and cuckholded less often” (quoted in Beit-Hallahmi, 2010, p. 114). According to Horwitz (1986), even George Washington

made it a point in his farewell address to remind citizens that morality cannot exist without religion.

These sentiments still linger among the general population today. According to Edgell, Gerteis and Hartmann (2006), atheists are still one of the least trusted minority groups in America. They found that atheists ranked even lower than Muslims and homosexuals when it came to groups Americans said share their vision of American society. They also found that atheists ranked lowest in terms of presidential

candidates people would vote for and individuals that they would approve of their children marrying. The authors concluded that the main reason for this mistrust was the association in most people’s minds of religious belief with morality, and hence non-belief with immorality.

Atheists, of course, argue that the connection between atheism and immorality is unfounded. They reply that morality can exist apart from God, and in fact, that morality does not come from religion at all. In his article, “10 myths—and 10 truths

—about atheism,” Sam Harris writes, “We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness” (2006, online).

Michael Shermer (2004) expounds this idea in his book The Science of Good and Evil, where he writes:

Religion evolved as a social structure to enforce the rules of human

interactions before there were such institutions as the state or such concepts as laws and rights... the religious foundation of human virtues and vices, saints and sinners, in fact, is a codification of an informal psychology of moral and immoral behaviour. Humans are a hierarchical social primate specific, and as such we need rules and morals and a social structure to enforce them (p. 7).

The relationship between religious belief and morality, and thus atheism and immortality, is a particularly hard one for researchers to measure empirically since there are differing opinions about what is moral and what is not. For example, The Barna Group (2008) found that young atheists and agnostics were more likely than young evangelical Christians to engage in behaviours such as the use of profanity, viewing pornography, or getting drunk. However, this is not at all surprising

considering that most evangelical Christians view these activities as immoral whereas many atheists and agnostics do not.

Studies that have taken a fairer approach have been divided in their results, thus demonstrating that the relationship between religiosity and morality is complex.

For example, on one hand, religious individuals have been found to cheat less on their taxes and to give more to charity, but on the other hand, non-religious individuals have been found to be more tolerant and kind (Beit-Hallahmi, 2010). However, according to Beit-Hallahmi and Argyle (1997), no connection was found between religiosity and the likelihood of an individual cheating on a test or helping a person in need.

One explanation for these varied results is that morality has less to do with religiosity and more to do with being a member of a group. Bibby (2007) measured values that both atheists and theists agree on as being an important part of their morality, such as honesty, kindness, and patience. He found that theists did tend to score higher on most values but reasoned that this had more to do with the fact that people tend to get their values from groups and that theists are much more likely than atheists to be part of a value-instilling group. He concluded that, “people who don't believe in God can be good. But people who believe in God are more likely to value being good, enhancing the chances that they will be good” (p. 1). Manning (2010) agrees that the correlation between religiosity and morality has more to do with being

a part of a group than with belief or non-belief in God. In reference to the moral benefits gained from religion, she writes, “a close look at all of these benefits, however, shows they are tied to the organizational aspects of religion, the fact that church or synagogue is a community of caring adults that guides children and

provides support for a shared moral order. This suggests that those benefits could also be had from affiliation with a secular organization” (p. 25).

Another way to approach the issue is to look at a national level, as opposed to an individual level. Paul (2005) did just that and found that a lack of belief in God might actually lead to a better society. He compared the level of belief in God in developed countries with overall societal health. One of the things he concluded was that, “higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies” (p. 7). The U.S. stood out as being highly exceptional in this study, both in terms of belief in God and lower societal health so it is hard to know whether the results were actually related to belief of God or some other aspect in U.S. society.

The above summary demonstrates that the connection between atheism and selfishness/immorality remains controversial and unclear. Section 8.1.1 of this paper will outline how the present project further tested the possible connection and the results.