freeinfidel

This is something an atheist hears a lot from believers. When I explain that, no, I’m not agnostic, I don’t believe in god at all, the response is likely to be, ‘How can you be so sure?’. It’s often accompanied by a patronising or pitying smile, as if to say, ‘You’ll be sorry if you’re wrong’.

This is, of course, tied to the old, rather solipsistic, argument that it’s better to play safe and believe in god - that way, if he does exist you won’t have pissed him off during your life and you’ll be safe after death. It’s rather like sucking up to the boss even if you secretly believe you’ll never get that promotion.

Atheists have nothing to gain during life and everything to lose after death, the argument runs. Aside from the fact that the first part of that assertion is so completely wrong (atheists gain an immense freedom of thought and action by not being dictated to and limited by religious dogma), the argument is fatally flawed - to a level that makes it idiotic - by the fact that it presupposes one god.

Of course, true believers are certain that there is only one god - theirs. A Roman Catholic knows that Muslims, Jews - in fact, everyone but Roman Catholics - are backing the wrong horse. What they don’t seem to acknowledge, or are too afraid to consider, is that maybe they are wrong - that even if they spend their lives in deep devotion, regularly flagellate and abase themselves, give up any pretense at rational or free thought, they might still go to hell for having picked on the wrong deity.

Indeed, the question - ‘how can you be so sure?’ - is revealing. Believers are people who need certainties. That is why they will accept an entire system of belief even though it contains many palpable absurdities. A rigid system of thought helps exclude the scary possibilities that life, before and after death, is uncertain. Just recite the catechism, perform the rituals and whatever you do, don’t think for yourself.

How can I be so sure? Simple. There is no need to believe in god, there is no evidence for god, there is no rational line of thought that leads to god and his existence is so profoundly improbable.

The hopeless dreams of anarchists aside, it seems a given that societies need rules. To live communally, and to mutually benefit from that proximity, we have to know what is and is not permissible. It’s not an easy decision, that’s why society sustains, in grand style, an entire section of its population that it otherwise despises — lawyers!

Some of the rules we call law. Others are encoded at a deeper level. These we call morals. A common accusation levelled at atheists by the religious is that atheism offers no basis for morality. Clearly, this is nonsense. Atheism is a broad term that embraces many philosophies, providing a rich foundation on which to build a good, worthwhile and moral life.

At the same time, it would be worth asking where religions obtain their oft-claimed moral superiority. Did they invent the concept of being ‘good’, or did they simply usurp concepts already in common currency?

There must have been rules in operation among the members of social groups long before there were written languages to record them. As we’ve said, groups cannot function without them. But whenever a new religion appears — Judaism, for example, or Christianity — what we hear is how everyone who does not conform to that religion is somehow evil and condemned to be ostracised, at best, or even to suffer for all eternity.

Each religion claims its superiority based on its written rules and the proclamations or sayings of its prophets. None of these religions makes any effort to prove that these ideas were in any way original. That has to be taken for granted, part of blind faith, because otherwise the faithful would have to acknowledge that others — the heathens and infidels — might actually be, in some way, right.

So let’s have a quick look at the most famous set of rules — the Ten Commandments. How many times are we told that these form a solid foundation for morality and even law? Remember the battle to have them displayed in a US courthouse? Are they really that good?

Let’s leave aside the fact that these 10 rules were not intended for everyone, but only the Jews. If we want to employ them in some general fashion, it’s actually just six commandments. The reason is that four of them are specific to protecting and honouring god and the faith. As a foundation for society and its laws, they have no relevance at all.

The six remaining commandments tell us not to kill, steal, commit adultery, make false accusations or desire what other people have, and to honour our parents.

Pretty basic, aren’t they? I mean, did we really need burning bushes, scary voices and all that drama on a mountainside to come up with this lot? I can’t help feeling that most civilisations would have had those six rules on their statute books for centuries, even millennia, before Moses came by.

In fact, to create a functioning society you’re going to need a lot more than that (cue the lawyers). In his book, God: a Guide for the Perplexed, theologian Keith Ward claims that these six rules “are fairly good ground rules for any healthy society”, but even he goes on to admit that:

…if you take them literally they are rather minimal. You can keep all of them simply by sitting still and minding your own business. More to the point, you can keep all of them in a society which is hugely unequal, which has slavery, violence and harshly punitive laws.

Ward expands on this to point out that the morality of a religion is based not just on easily quoted lists of rules, like the Ten Commandments, but on the totality of the teaching and guidance provided by, say, the Torah or the New Testament.

Alas, that makes a religion’s position on any given subject vulnerable to interpretation — just look at the varieties of opinion within the Christian church on homosexuality, abortion, birth control et al. Even more recent faiths, such as Islam, contain wildly opposing views based on different interpretations of the scriptures.

So any given belief — Roman Catholicism, say — constructs its rules (and therefore its decisions on who and what are ‘good’ and ‘bad’) based on interpretations of the texts it considers worthy and the ideas it considers authoritative and trustworthy.

Atheists do exactly the same. Only we benefit from a much wider choice of sources. We don’t have to stick to a narrow selection of texts. Nor are we dictated to by popes or rabbis and their own, perhaps rather blinkered, reading of the texts. We can pick the good bits from Judaism and Christianity (and ignore the bad bits, like instructions to murder adulterers). We can also adopt the best of Buddhism and the massive array of secular philosophies. We suffer none of the limitations believers face when it comes to being moral people. We are truly free to be good.

Religion has a pernicious effect on our lives partly because it is immune from truth and reason. To understand what I mean, take a look at the forces that affect us.

The laws of the land describe and circumscribe what is regarded as acceptable behaviour. We may think the law an ass - it often seems arbitrary and inflexible. But laws get changed. Evolving social ideas and morals put a constant pressure on our legal frameworks forcing them to adapt. For example, most people find capital punishment abhorrent, and its use is now confined mainly to the more backward corners of the world.

The actions of politicians are similarly subject to social pressure. Few people think of politicians as bastions of truth, but they have to be elected and that means that any divergence from truthfulness or socially acceptable behaviour puts politicians in danger of losing their grip on power. Politics may not be built on truth, but it is vulnerable to it.

Not so religion. In fact, religion openly disdains truth. It prefers belief. If facts or experience contradict the dogma, the dogma is always ‘right’.

So why is it, exactly, that we are supposed to respect religion? Personally, I prefer truth every time.

Faith kills. If you are in any doubt, read the story ‘Killer law‘ in the Guardian.

There was a time when Nicaragua stood as a beacon of hope in Latin America. When the continent seemed gripped by the horrors of right-wing regimes and death squads, Nicaragua threw off its parasitic dictator. The left-wing revolution might not have been to everyone’s political taste, but no-one could deny many of the benefits that followed, such as the massive increase in literacy.

Alas, like so many countries in that region, the country was unable to rid itself of another parasite - the Catholic church. A year ago, abortion became illegal in Nicaragua for all but a tiny handful of cases. Women have died. Lives have been ruined. The law is contributing to poverty and misery. And for what? To comply with the bizarre and irrational beliefs of men born centuries ago, thousands of miles away.