Читать книгу What It Means to Be Moral - Phil Zuckerman - Страница 9

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Isms

Back in 2010, leading social scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard University Robert Putnam, along with his colleague David Campbell, published a massive empirical analysis of religious life in America. The tome was called American Grace, and it was chock-full of findings that shed light upon numerous facets of religious belief, behavior, and belonging.

Putnam and Campbell reported that, on average, religious people are more charitable than their secular peers. When it comes to things like generosity and volunteering, frequent churchgoers give and do more than non-churchgoers. For example, among the most religious segment of their national sample, the average amount of annual donations to charitable causes per household was $3,000, but among the most secular segment, the average amount was $1,000. And among the most religious swath of Americans, only 6 percent said that they had made no charitable contributions in the previous year, but among the most secular swath of their sample, 32 percent reported as much. The secular, it seems, are stingier. And not only are highly religious individuals more likely to donate to both religious and nonreligious causes, and not only are they more likely to do volunteer work, but they are also more likely to give blood and donate money to homeless people than their secular peers.¹ In short, Putnam and Campbell’s research revealed that “religiously observant Americans are more generous with time and treasure than demographically similar secular Americans.”²

We’ve actually known this for quite a while; numerous studies over the years have attested to religious Americans’ higher than average charitable tendencies.³ So doesn’t this then mean that God-believers (theists) are more moral than those who lack such a belief (atheists)?

Before such a conclusion can be made, we need to look a bit more closely at what is going on here. A most valuable element of Putnam and Campbell’s research was that they were able to discover just why it is that religious people donate more in terms of charity and volunteering than secular people—and it actually has nothing to do with God. Rather, it has everything to do with people.

Simply put: charitable giving increases when people actively gather with others in communal, congregational environments. And when people don’t gather with others in such ways, their generosity dwindles, in terms of both time and money. Belief in God simply doesn’t matter. How do we know? Because Putnam and Campbell found that people who believe in God but are not members of a religious congregation do not donate time and money in higher than average amounts, and conversely, people who don’t believe in God but are members of a religious congregation—for whatever reason—do. Put another way: when people are more isolated from others, with fewer friends and fewer moments of social interaction, their proclivity to engage in charitable and voluntary activities decreases. But when they hang out with others on a regular basis at church or synagogue or mosque or temple, their pro-sociality increases, along with their interest and willingness to be more altruistic.

As Putnam and Campbell explain, while “it is tempting to think that religious people are better neighbors because of their fear of God or their hope of salvation . . . we find no evidence for those conjectures.”⁴ The “secret ingredient” of religious charity, their data reveal, is not faith in God but rather church attendance. It is the getting together with people on a regular basis, the routinized rituals, the singing and announcements, the sharing of cake and coffee after the service, the conversing and schmoozing, the taking field trips and joining groups—and other such social-bonding activities—that actually increase the likelihood of charitable donating and volunteering. Not a fervent faith in God. “When it comes to the religious edge in good neighborliness,” Putnam and Campbell conclude, “it is belonging that matters, not believing,”⁵ and “although many devoutly religious people might explain their own civic virtues as manifestations of God’s will . . . theology is not the core explanation . . . rather, communities of faith seem more important than faith itself.”⁶

It bears repeating: community is more important than faith. Belonging is more important than belief. Gathering is more important than God. As the similar findings of American social psychologists Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt have confirmed, bonding with other humans is the driving engine of increased charity and generosity, not believing in a deity.⁷

But what all of the above illustrates is an extremely important distinction that we must set forth and fully understand: the difference between religion and theism.

Theism

“Religion” is a notoriously multifaceted concept encompassing a plethora of ideologies, identities, associations, and activities. “Theism,” however, is an extremely narrow term that refers to just one specific thing: belief in God. That’s it. A theist is simply someone who believes in God.

What’s the difference? Doesn’t being religious mean that you believe in God? And doesn’t believing in God make you religious? Yes to the latter, but no to the former.

If you believe in God, then you are certainly religious. But many people are religious without believing in God. For example, there are millions of people who attend religious services, engage in religious rituals, and even identify with a religion—but don’t believe in God. Then why are they religiously involved? For a host of nontheistic reasons: they like the music at church, or they want to keep a spouse happy, or they think it is good for their kids, or they enjoy the rituals and celebrations, or they like taking time for quiet contemplation, or they want to maintain a tradition, or it links them to their heritage, or it increases ties to their ethnic community, and so on. As my father used to like to joke: “Yaacov goes to synagogue to talk to God. I go to synagogue to talk to Yaacov.” The bottom line is that there are many, many reasons that people can be religiously active, and it can have nothing to do with belief in God.

Remember that there are a lot of religions out there that don’t even contain a god in their cosmology. Many animistic indigenous religions all over the world lack any concept of a god, but instead are focused on nature spirits, dead ancestors, and/or other supernatural forces.⁸ Additionally, some Eastern religions, such as Jainism and Zen Buddhism, do not contain any beliefs in a god at all. But they are still religions. As philosopher André Comte-Sponville notes, “all theisms are religious, but not all religions are theistic.”⁹

Again, religion and theism are not one and the same. And it is theism—rather than religion, in all its varied manifestations—that comprises the true target of this book. For it is theism’s relationship to morality that will be deconstructed in the chapters ahead. And at the heart of that deconstruction is theism’s obverse: atheism.

Atheism

Atheism refers to the lack or absence of a belief in God. That’s it. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a god; according to the latest tallies, there are over one hundred million atheists in the world today.¹⁰

Of course, various individuals have defined atheism more grandly and effusively. For example, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists, defined atheism as “the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.”¹¹ While these are strong and impassioned sentiments, they go well beyond the limited confines of the term “atheism.” After all, a- is a prefix meaning “without” or “lacking,” and theos is the Greek term for “god”; so again, atheism refers to nothing more than lacking belief in a god.¹² Perhaps this is a god you have heard of or know a lot about, such as the God of Christianity or Allah of Islam, and you have chosen not to believe in this god—an atheism predicated upon dismissal or rejection. Or perhaps it is a god you have never even heard of, such as Perkunas (the Baltic god of thunder) or Mawu (goddess of the Fon people of West Africa) and, given your utter lack of knowledge or even awareness of these gods, you don’t believe in them—an atheism predicated on ignorance. But either way, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in any gods.

Even though the meaning of atheism is quite simple, things get more complex in the real world; while atheism describes an orientation involving belief (or lack thereof), the term “atheist” is quite a bit more loaded at home, at school, at work, and at the grocery store or softball field. That is, in contemporary society, the designation “atheist” can be, for many people, about identity—and a negative, stigmatized identity at that. For example, according to a 2014 Pew study, when Americans were asked about their feelings about people from various religions on a one-hundred-point “feeling thermometer”—with one hundred being the most warm/positive and zero being the most cold/negative—Jews, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians all rated an average of above sixty, Buddhists came in at fifty-three, Mormons at forty-eight, but atheists were down at forty-one, with only Muslims scoring slightly lower at forty.¹³ And according to another Pew study from 2014, when Americans were asked how they would feel if a family member were to marry someone with a given trait or identity (would it make them happy, unhappy, or would it not matter?), only 7 percent said that they would be unhappy if a family member married someone who had been born outside of the United States, 9 percent said that they would be unhappy if the marriage was to an Evangelical Christian, 11 percent would be unhappy if the marriage was to someone of a different race, 14 percent would be unhappy if a family member married someone who had not gone to college, 19 percent would be unhappy if the new spouse was a gun owner—but 49 percent of Americans said that they would be unhappy if a family member married someone who did not believe in God, making atheist the worst possibility, by a long shot.¹⁴

Certainly, many people who lack a belief in God resist identifying as atheists so as to avoid the negative stigma that comes with the identity.

But there is also the dogmatic nature of atheism at play, which many people find off-putting. Atheists can sometimes come off as closed-minded haters of religion, curmudgeonly types who go out of their way to mock and deride other people’s beliefs.

For those folks who do not believe in God, or rather doubt God’s existence and are simultaneously less staunch in their nontheism, agnosticism is a more comfortable, intellectually sound option.

Agnosticism

Is there a God? Who knows?

Why are we here? Who can say?

What happens after we die? Who knows?

Why does the universe exist? Who can say?

Welcome to agnosticism: the secular orientation that replaces the Christian crucifix, the Jewish star of David, and the Islamic crescent with a hallowed question mark. Like their atheist cousins, agnostics today number over one hundred million globally.¹⁵

In its most common usage, agnosticism asserts that maybe there is God, maybe there isn’t, and no one can really say for sure one way or another. Thus, while the theist believes there is a God and the atheist believes there is not, the agnostic isn’t completely convinced by either position.¹⁶ As the ancient Greek philosopher Protagoras—perhaps the world’s first known agnostic—remarked back in the fifth century B.C.E.: “Concerning the gods, I am unable to discover whether they exist or not . . . for there are many hindrances to knowledge, the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”¹⁷ Or as contemporary philosopher Julian Baggini explains, an agnostic “claims we cannot know whether God exists and so the only rational option is to reserve judgment.”¹⁸

The term “agnostic” was famously coined by English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley back in the 1860s. Huxley offered up the term—which literally means “without knowledge”—to capture an ideological position expressing the limits of knowledge, and the limits of our ability to know, with empirical certainty. This underlying feel for—and steady sentiment of—existential unknowingness pervades agnosticism. As the American orator Robert Ingersoll, known in the ninteenth century as “The Great Agnostic,” wrote, “Many people . . . have tried to guess the riddle—tried to know the absolute—to find origin—to know destiny. They have all failed. These things are beyond our intellectual horizon—beyond the ‘reaches of our souls.’ Our life is a little journey from mystery to mystery.”¹⁹ Or as nineteenth-century British scholar Leslie Stephen expressed it: “we are a company of ignorant beings, feeling our way through mists and darkness . . . dimly discerning light enough for our daily needs, but hopelessly differing whenever we attempt to describe ultimate origin . . . [and thus] we shall be content to admit openly . . . that man knows nothing of the Infinite and Absolute.”²⁰

Embracing mystery, and letting that mystery be, is at the heart of agnosticism. Agnostics are thus happily down with Hamlet, who said to Horatio that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in his philosophy—or any and every possible philosophy stemming from human consciousness.

It’s a pretty humble position. After all, it’s hard to be dogmatic, truculent, or fanatical when you are admitting a lack of knowledge.

Naturalism

Theism, atheism, and agnosticism all revolve around the God question: the first says there is a God, the second says there isn’t, and the third says, well, no one can really ever know. But the secular orientation that transcends the God question and attempts to encapsulate all of reality is naturalism. And to understand naturalism, you need go no further than Scooby-Doo.

Scooby-Doo—the TV cartoon that started in 1969 and has never let up—presents the antics of Scooby and his human friends: Shaggy, Fred, Velma, and Daphne. But here’s the funny thing about that show: every episode is the exact same. In every single installment, the main characters stumble upon a spooky mystery—a ghost haunting an old mine, a monster terrorizing a popular beach, a witch bewitching a remote hotel, an alien unnerving a summer camp—and in every episode, the four protagonists and their dog Scooby come to reveal that it was all a hoax. Through basic sleuthing and intrepid skepticism, the heroes show that it is all smoke and mirrors—or silly costumes and fancy lighting, or chemical reactions and audio trickery, and so forth. And the message is thus always the same: there is nothing supernatural out there, only natural phenomena.

Naturalism takes this very position to the extreme: that which can’t be observed or proven empirically does not exist. Whatever is out there, it is natural. As the Carvaka thinkers of the ancient Indian school of Lokayata philosophy pronounced over twenty-six hundred years ago: “Only the perceived exists; the unperceivable does not exist by reason of its never having been perceived.”²¹ But who paints the peacocks such delightful colors? Who causes the birds to sing so sweetly? The Carvaka were adamant: “There exists no cause here excepting nature.”²² Or as contemporary naturalist philosopher Kerry Walters affirms, “there is nothing apart from nature, and nature is self-originating, self-explanatory, and without overall purpose.”²³

For theists—and many other religious people of various traditions—there are essentially two realms of existence: the this-worldly and the otherworldly. Or to use terms already employed: the natural and the supernatural. Religious believers accept that there is a natural world, but they also insist that in addition to this natural world, there exist other realms or planes of existence: heavens, hells, purgatories, etc. And they will claim that in addition to the plentiful beings of nature—such as people, plants, animals, etc.—there are other beings out there: angels, demons, gods, ancestral souls, spirits, imps, jinn, ghosts, etc., etc. Naturalism denies the existence of these otherworldly, supernatural places and things. According to Professor Tom Clark, director of the Center for Naturalism, “what science reveals . . . is a vast, interconnected, multilayered, diversely populated, and yet single realm in which all phenomena partake of the same basic constituents. This realm we simply call nature. There seems no reason to suppose, given scientific observations thus far, that there exists another, supernatural realm that operates according to different laws or that contains radically different phenomena.”²⁴

The scientific method, empiricism, rationalism, materialism, evidence-based beliefs, and accepting what actually is true, rather than what we wish were true—these are the smooth, strong pillars of a naturalistic worldview. And while some may find such a naturalistic worldview less enchanting than a world filled with poltergeists, angels, shamans, healing crystals, amazing miracles, and gods and goddesses, others find it replete with endless opportunities to marvel and gaze in awe at the intricate, chaotic, beautiful, terrible wonder of nature, in all of its majesty and vastness. And while some may find a magicless, indifferent cosmos lonely or dull, most secular men and women find such a reality not only true but comforting and affirming.

OK, well, then if there is no God (as atheism maintains), or if there might be a God, or perhaps something else out there, but we can’t be sure and no one can really know (as agnosticism maintains), and if, ultimately, whatever may be out there is nonetheless natural and not supernatural (as naturalism maintains), then to whom or what are we to look for to help us or guide us as we flail around on this all-too-natural, godless planet? Whom or what are we to rely upon to help us fight injustice, cure disease, and ensure moral progress?

Ourselves.

Humanism

Humanism begins with denial or doubt concerning the existence of God, and the concomitant embracing of naturalism—but then goes well beyond that by positively affirming and valuing the potential of human beings to solve problems and make the world a better, safer, and more just place. Humanism rests firmly upon the recognition that people have the capacity to do great things, to solve problems, and to act ethically. Thus, a humanist is someone who does not believe in the otherworldly tenets of religion—and soundly rejects both theism and supernaturalism—but who does believe in many things of this world, such as family, friendship, cooperation, reason, art, science, humor, love, rational inquiry, ingenuity, democracy, compassion, tolerance, imagination, open debate, human rights—and then some.

According to British humanist philosopher Stephen Law,²⁵ humanism is a comprehensive worldview that rests upon these key premises: there are no gods or supernatural beings out there, science and reason are the best tools available for discovering what is true, this is the only life we will ever have, moral values and ethical frameworks should be strongly shaped and informed by an empirically grounded understanding of the human condition, every individual is responsible for making his or her own moral decisions and cannot hand over this responsibility to someone or something else, democratic societies with a clear separation of church and state are ideal, and finally, life can be quite meaningful—in fact, can be more meaningful—without the existence of God.

According to the American Humanist Association (which has nearly 650,000 likes on Facebook and counting), humanism is “a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism and other supernatural beliefs, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the greater good of humanity.”²⁶

Humanism is what makes atheism and agnosticism actively moral.²⁷ After all, simply lacking a belief in God does not ensure any sort of ethical orientation—the godless butchers Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot and the godless advocate of selfishness Ayn Rand make that perfectly clear. But humanist principles—especially those that emphasize human worth and dignity, the imperative to respect human rights, reverence for life, and the intrinsic ability of humans to be caring and just—provide the foundations of secular moral orientations.

Of course, the secular humanist can often be met with pessimism and doubt. Whenever I find myself discussing religion and humanism with a group of friends, some individual will express strong skepticism concerning humanity’s ultimate goodness. And interestingly, one thing I’ve noticed from such discussions on this topic is that it is almost always a person of faith—a theist—who takes the position that humans are not intrinsically good but rather intrinsically wicked. And this is to be expected, given Christianity’s underlying premise that we are all fallen beings, tainted by sin and in need of salvation that can only be attained through God’s grace—oh, and the murder of his Son. Such is the message at the traditional heart of the most successful religion ever concocted.

I don’t buy it. I do not believe that all children are born with an evil disposition, that sin is some hereditary toxin passed down from one generation to the next, and that the intransigent, default position of humanity is one of malevolence. Rather, like my fellow humanists, I remain convinced that while some humans sometimes do horrible things, most human beings are—most of the time—good. Sure, we are capable of all kinds of unspeakable barbarity, sadism, and savagery. But those are aberrant, atypical, and sporadic expressions of an otherwise—and obviously—overriding moral nature.

Just consider the daily news. CNN. The New York Times. Fox News. Whatever news source you prefer. Now, to be sure, someone who doubts the innate goodness of human beings will invariably say something like: “How can you say that humans are good? Just look at the news! It is full of rape and murder! Every single day the news reports on the most horrific things. Clearly, one look at the newspaper must convince you that people are rotten.” It’s a potent argument. In fact, just to see it through, I’m going to look at the newspaper right now and see what humans are up to. According to my local city paper, a driver hit a bicyclist and then drove off without caring for the victim, who subsequently died; a man was shot in his apartment; a man attempted to kill his wife during a domestic dispute; two college students were stabbed near their fraternity; a mother and her two children were killed by a drunk driver; the owner of a hair-removal clinic was arrested for inappropriately touching female clients; burglaries at local storage unit facilities are on the rise—and so on. There’s a lot of badness going on out there, just this morning, as reported in the Los Angeles Times.²⁸

But guess what? Daily news reports of various crimes actually affirm and support the humanistic insistence that humans are essentially good. It is, paradoxically, the fact that we read of horrific things in the news on a daily basis that bolsters an abiding faith in humanity. Indeed, there is no greater evidence for the veracity of humanism than the daily news. How so? Simple: it is because the news reports on what is rare, what is unusual, what is out of the ordinary. That’s why murder and rape are headlines: because they are notable exceptions to otherwise decent, everyday human behavior.

If humanity were naturally, intrinsically evil—if people’s default position were bad, immoral, unethical—then the newspaper would look very different. It would be replete with shocking, unbelievable headlines such as: “Fifth Grade Class Visits Local Quilt Museum—All Survive!”; “Candy Store Not Robbed for Seventh Straight Year!”; “Couple Takes Morning Walk Every Day Around Their Neighborhood Without Incident!”; “Sorority Organizes a Picnic at Local Park—No One Maimed!”; “Hospital Staff Delivers a Baby!”—and so on.²⁹ But we don’t see such headlines, because they are the mundane, all-too-expected stuff of cooperative, communal, daily human life.

As anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy points out, about 1.6 billion people get on airplanes every year, flying here and there.³⁰ They deal with long lines, delayed departures, cramped seats, and tiny bathrooms. And yet, on how many of these flights do people beat up or kill one another? Less than .001 percent. And while the news occasionally reports on a brawl that breaks out on an airplane, the fact that such a brawl makes the news, going viral online, only speaks to its true rarity; if humans were naturally inclined to be nasty and brutish, then the news and viral videos would be about flights that don’t experience brawls. The bottom line is that when it comes to air travel, people from all walks of life, from all races, ethnicities, and nationalities, people from all different religions and no religions at all, of varying ages and personality types—the vast majority—experience their flights with virtually no violence, aside from perhaps some mild elbow boxing with the stranger sitting next to them. That’s some strong evidence that most people can and do behave well, even within less than comfortable conditions. As American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observes, “our ability to work together, divide labor, help each other, and function as a team is so all-pervasive that we don’t even notice it.”³¹

Admittedly, there have always been parts of the world wracked by war. There are neighborhoods right now where gunfire is heard on a nightly basis. There are people caught up in an international web of human trafficking. There are millions of people who lie, steal, cheat, rape, and murder. There are periodic genocides. No doubt: human life is perpetually pocked with misery and malfeasance. But for most people, most of the time, this is not the norm; everyday reality in most societies is characterized by people getting along, cooperating, taking care of one another, and living in peace. If this were not the case, our species would have killed itself off a long, long time ago. But we haven’t. Our underlying humaneness reigns, and it is never snuffed out, and it persistently prods the majority of us, most of the time, to do and be good.

And that moral goodness has nothing to do with any god. In fact, morality can’t depend on God, for such a situation simply does not work—which is why a long line of skeptics, doubters, and secularists have been debunking and deconstructing religious morality based on belief in God ever since Greek philosopher Critias, back in the fifth century B.C.E., noted that the gods were purposely invented by rulers to keep people in line through fear.³²

In the next few chapters, we’ll delve into the most basic, fundamental, and intractable problems with God-based religious morality—for it is only after unpacking and revealing the flagrant flaws and fallacies of this traditional religious approach to ethics that we can then move on to the underlying sources and promises of secular morality.