de-conversion

16 Comments Add your own

• 1. mysteryofiniquity  |  April 4, 2007 at 7:05 am

  Well said, Mary!! I found that as a Christian I had a very dim view of humanity. After all, we are taught that humankind is fallen and cannot redeem itself without the help of deity. Therefore, if humanity is so fallen, I expected them to act their worst towards me and everyone else. It was self-fulfilling prophecy, especially during morning and evening commute!

  Now, I realize that such a dim view of humanity perpetuates injustice and lack of compassion and there is no reason to help people, except to try to get them “saved” if only God is capable of changing human hearts. Now that I no longer believe in humankind’s innate sinfulness, I am free to act compassionately in hopes that this spurs compassion in others. I understand that they are waiting for it to come to them just as much as I am. Ultimately, it’s a rationally selfish motive for improving the world. There’s nothing wrong with that.

• 2. Doris Tracey  |  April 4, 2007 at 7:29 am

  You shouldn’t force yourself to be good it should be naturally within us. Your right Mary the action of goodness is enlightened self interest.

• 3. agnosticatheist  |  April 4, 2007 at 7:39 am

  Mary,

  My struggle centered on the schizophrenia of Christianity. On one hand, Jesus said to be compassionate then on the other hand he (and those after him) encouraged followers to be mean and nasty. There are those, like you, who used Christianity as a motivation to be good. However, there are those who use it to be intolerant, condescending, and just plain mean.

  I think the humanist view of compassion (whether or not the root is in selfishness or survival of our species), is a more consistent and reliable motivation.

  aA

• 4. mysteryofiniquity  |  April 4, 2007 at 8:27 am

  Doris,
  You shouldn’t have to force yourself to be good, no, but when others kill your spirit at an early age, are cruel to you, beat you, and tell you that you are a piece of shit every day of your life, then it’s easy to see that humanity is fallen and easy to fall for Christianity’s message. If it comes naturally to us, I didn’t know it. It takes great effort for me to see that other human beings have good natures innately and that others began where I must have once begun. I’m still working on my nature and I’m still trying to think well of people. It ain’t easy. People with good upbringings don’t understand the cruelty and harm humans do to other humans and everybody’s got a quick solution, but quick solutions are usually poor substitutes for lifetimes of learning.

• 5. amandalaine  |  April 4, 2007 at 9:14 am

  I like your blog a lot - it is very thought provoking.

  “We are all biologically programmed to want to continue the human race for as long as possible and to increase it as much as possible.” Why do you think we’re programmed to do anything? It seems that I have no direct or rational cause to make me want to continue living. If I don’t want to continue living, or see value of life for anyone, I may be “happier” killing other people and/or myself.

• 6. Wolterkabolter  |  April 4, 2007 at 11:34 am

  “This post is partly in response to a comment I read asking why agnostic atheists should aim to love, be compassionate and what you might call general goodness. ”

  Thanks for the response, I feel honoured!

  A few remarks: the implications of your suggestions that you are ‘acting moral’ just because it makes you feel good, which is result of evolutionary process are far reaching. It makes me wonder why you blame conservative christians to be ‘immoral’. It thát is what makes thém feel good?

  About the evolutionary argumentation: I did not find any satisfactory theory about the development of the universal moral disposition of humankind. What would seem logical is that people would act morally for their close family or clan, but till now it is inexplicable why this disposition is so universal. Dawkins would say it is a ‘mistake’ of the evolutionary process.

  As I see it, the broad moral framework on which we are relying now in let’s say, the western, christian, enlighted culture does not sound logical outside a theistic woldview. Nietzsche was the first one who realised which enormous implications the death of God would have, especially on morality. He offered an alternative, which in my view is not very attractive. There are other’s, like MacIntyre who suggests to ‘return’ to an Aristotelian-Thomistic virtue ethics.

  (I am sorry for my poor english…I feel a bit disabled)

• 7. marymyk  |  April 5, 2007 at 4:52 am

  amandalaine: Perhaps ‘programmed’ makes us sound too much like robots, we are highly intelligent beings and therefore are able to weigh up a number of variables when deciding to live or die. I think the motivation to continue living is simply to contribute to the human race, I see your point that if a person cannot see any reason or benefit to life he/she may consider suicide and/or murder and this is often what happens for people with depression. I know this isn’t a very good answer to your comment, but my theory is only very loosely formed, so I’m a bit confused myself!

  Wolterkabolter: Firstly, you’re welcome, it was an interesting question. I don’t actually blame Christians whether conservative or otherwise for being ‘immoral’. In fact I can see that their motivation to be moral is similar to an atheist’s, in being ‘good’ they feel that they are obeying God and this make’s them feel happy and therefore they continue to be good. However I do think that the atheist’s motivation for goodness is more direct and it could be argued ‘purer’ than a theist’s because they do good good’s sake if you see what I mean, they want to do good for goodness alone rather than because someone else told them to.

  I accept that the motivation to act morally for family and friends is stronger however I do not see why humans should not also wish that human kind as a whole should continue and therefore we have a motivation to care for all the human race.

  As for the broad moral framework that we have in western civilisation, I accept that most of it comes from a Judeo-Christian set of rules and therefore many moral laws are cultural but most people’s aversion to things like murder and rape are so strong, even from an early age that it must also be from something within us and I believe that it is the desire to protect humanity as a whole.

• 8. epiphanist  |  April 5, 2007 at 5:11 am

  Forgiveness requires practice, patience and discipline.

• 9. Wolterkabolter  |  April 5, 2007 at 5:11 am

  Thanks for the comment. My point is actually that from an evolutionairy atheists point of view, morality doesn’t make any sense:

  Evolutionairy: it is inexplicable why we are inherited with a universal moral disposition. Maybe we as humans now wish that human race should continue, but that is not an evolutionairy explanation.

  Atheistic: if you admit most of our moral framework comes from a theistic judeo-christian worlview, than this moral standard does not make any sense outside of that worldview. This is the actual point made by Nietzsche in for example his Genealogy of Morals. What is the meaning of ‘good’ if you don’ believe in an universal standard?

• 10. Wolterkabolter  |  April 5, 2007 at 5:18 am

  P.s.: this is not an attempt to give an apology of the christian faith. Of course, also the christian worldview has many rational problems with morality (just think about the Euyphro Dilemma).
  I just wonder how on earth morality makes sense to an atheist, and if not, why they are blaming conservative christians to be ‘immoral’?

• 11. marymyk  |  April 5, 2007 at 6:01 am

  Wolterkabolter: I think it depends on how you look at morality as to whether it is inexplicable or not. For example, murdering your children is universally considered immoral but you can see the scientific reason behind this, scientists agree that we all want to continue our own blood line, clearly killing your own children is directly preventing this, therefore we ‘feel’ it is wrong and we call this feeling a sense of morality.

  This is why I think a lot (but not all) of the Judeo-Christian view of morality does make sense to atheists because the Judeo-Christian morality itself originated in that instinctive ‘feeling’ that all humans have, religious or not. Therefore Christians and atheists alike can sympathise with “Do not murder”. Therefore, there is a meaning to the word ‘good’ as there is a universal standard and it is our wish to preserve human life, any action that contributes to that goal is I believe, universally considered ‘good’.

• 12. Atheist Observer  |  April 5, 2007 at 1:29 pm

  Wolterkabolter wrote: Atheistic: if you admit most of our moral framework comes from a theistic judeo-christian worlview, than this moral standard does not make any sense outside of that worldview.
  I utterly reject any significant part, let alone most, of our moral framework comes from a theistic judeo-christian worldview. Virtually all the general applicable principles of what we consider morality pre-date the development of judeo-christian theism, and are found as readily in other societies as our own.
  Only a sociopath or psychopath can truly find no reason to act morally either internally or externally.
  We didn’t decide the world is a better place to live in if people act morally because some god told us so. We invented a god and put those instructions in his mouth because we already knew it was true.
  The positive results of people treating people the way they want to be treated is evident both personally and generally utterly irrespective of it’s supposed utterance by some Jew named Jesus.

• 13. Lenoxus  |  April 7, 2007 at 9:17 pm

  I would add that to tie morality and religion so tightly together, and declare that you cannot have the first without the second, is to do a disservice to morality, saying, in a sense, that it doesn’t really exist in its own right, or that it doesn’t quite “matter” when it occurs in a non-religious context.

  Meanwhile, does altruism make perfect sense in an evolutionary model? Maybe not, but since when was natural selection an ethical command? The reason to do good is because other people’s thoughts and feelings matter; occasionally, bridging that gap is a sort of defiance of our own genes — but that shouldn’t bring us down too much. We haven’t had to depend on evolution to correct for our deficiencies for several thousand years now. Instead, we have culture and society, aspects of life into which religion is certainly closely tied but not absolutely necessary.

  Anyway, keep up the good work, people!

• 14. nicks  |  April 12, 2007 at 1:48 am

  nice one…very informative

• 15. Survey: Is there a "Robin&hellip  |  April 12, 2007 at 6:17 am

  [...] Hood impulse” in human nature to do good? Do you agree with Mary’s blog, “Why should we be good?” where she attributes our goodness “to good old evolution and survival of the [...]

• 16. William H  |  March 14, 2008 at 4:05 am

  “We are all biologically programmed to want to continue the human race for as long as possible and to increase it as much as possible. ”

  Richard Dawkins argued in his famous book “The Selfish Gene” that human are merely a survival machine for our Genes.

  Yes, Christians hate the idea that we’re merely the result of our genetic programming. But to some large extent, it is true.

  “I’m not related to monkeys, it is up to you if you want to believe that you are” is the most common response I got from my devoutly Christians family members.

  But I’d like to believe in what is true, not to believe in something that has no basic in fact (i.e. the world is created in 7 days), just to make me feel better.

  Contrary to your statement, we are not programmed to be good. Yes, there are evolutionary benefits for society who acts kindly towards their kin - namely they tend to survive and pass on their genes to the next generation.

  But for human being to do good, it takes our intelligence and free will to overcome our genetic programming that only cares about breeding and survival.

  We are the only animal (yes, we’re part of the animal kingdom) that has the intelligence, and therefore the ability to refute our genetical programming.

  To say we need God to act decently and do the right thing is an insult to any self respecting, educated intelligent being.

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