50 Reasons People Give for Believing in a God (27 page)

Francisco Pizarro, Saddam Hussein, Ted Bundy, Omar al-Bashir
(Sudan's dictator responsible for genocide in Darfur), Hernando
Cortez, Pope Urban II (launched the Crusades), and Jeffrey Dahmer
were all believers. Do they prove that belief in a god motivates or
causes immoral behavior? Virtually all guards and officers who ran the
Nazi death camps in World War II were Christians. Does this mean
that Christianity inevitably leads all Christians to commit evil acts?
Osama bin Laden thinks that it is acceptable to murder accountants
and receptionists to further his political and religious agenda. Do evil
believers prove that gods are not real? Of course not. And evil atheists
do not prove that gods exist.

A minor technical point to add is that believers are wrong when
they attempt to cite the body counts of atheist dictators in the twentieth
century to show that they were more evil than religious leaders who
went astray. This claim fails to consider available technology. Imagine
if Europe's Christian crusaders had invaded the Middle East with
machine guns, tanks, and four-engine heavy bombers instead of chain
mail, horses, and swords. Imagine if Cortez and Pizarro had mortars
and napalm to help them conquer the Aztecs and Inca. What would
their body counts have been?

End of Faith author Sam Harris offers this stinging rebuttal to the
believers' claim that bad dictators prove something negative about
atheism and something positive about gods:

People of faith often claim that the crimes of Hitler, Stalin, Mao and
Pot Pot were the inevitable product of unbelief. The problem with
fascism and communism, however, is not that they are too critical of religion; the problem is that they are too much like religions. Such
regimes are dogmatic to the core and generally give rise to personality cults that are indistinguishable from cults of religious hero worship. Auschwitz, the gulag and the killing fields were not examples
of what happens when human beings reject religious dogma; they
are examples of political, racial and nationalistic dogma run amok.
There is no society in human history that ever suffered because its
people became too reasonable. (Harris 2006)

Harris is exactly right. None of these horrible atheist dictators
oppressed, imprisoned, murdered, or started wars to impose a philosophy of free thought, skepticism, and respect for truth upon their
nation and the world. I know of no mass murderer who ever had that
as his goal. However, I do know of many men who oppressed, imprisoned, murdered, or started wars to impose their religion on others.

It is important to stress that all the talk about bad atheists and good
believers does not directly have anything to do with the key question
of whether or not gods are real. It has never been shown to be true, but
even if believers really were better people than nonbelievers it
wouldn't necessarily tell us anything about the existence of gods. It
could be that religious belief simply helps to keep people in line
through fear and hope. Maybe bad people like Stalin and Pol Pot were
bad for reasons that had nothing to with gods. It could even be possible that atheism promotes bad behavior while belief promotes good
behavior and yet gods still do not exist. So when believers push this
"evil atheist" idea they are wasting their time because it proves
nothing about the existence of their gods.

Another problem with the "god gives us morals" claim is that it
doesn't make sense in light of what we know about morality. First of
all, it is hardly a stretch to imagine that we came up with positive rules
to live by on our own. I am pretty sure that humans, the most intelligent life-form that has ever existed on Earth, could have figured out
that bashing a neighbor's head in with a rock is disruptive to the smooth
running of a tribe, town, or nation. I don't think that rape is so
ambiguous an act that a mere mortal could not think of making it illegal. And somewhere along the way some people might have realized all on their own that stealing leads to arguments and problems.
Therefore, I can't believe that it was impossible for the species that was
smart enough to tame fire, domesticate animals, and invent agriculture
to also create a few rules that would help to limit self-destructive
behavior.

What if some moral instincts are in our DNA as part of the
package that comes with being human? Could natural selection over a
million years or so have left us with an innate moral awareness? This
is very likely true because we aren't the only primates who are moral.
Apes in the wild have been observed doing things that I would interpret as moral behavior, or at least the beginnings of moral behavior.
Chimpanzees, for example, are capable of quite nasty behavior but
they also share, help one another, protect one another, and show sympathy for one another. Where does this come from? Did a god give
them moral awareness too? More likely it was evolution, a process
that can shape behavior as much as it shapes fins and eyeballs. Individuals who tend to share food more-and as a result have more food
shared with them-might out-reproduce those individuals who only
look out for themselves. The end result, after a sufficient number of
generations, might be a species that is genetically programmed to
share.

Primatologist Frans de Waal writes in his book Primates and
Philosophers:

Natural selection has the capacity of producing an incredible range
of organisms, from the most asocial and competitive to the kindest
and gentlest. The same process may not have specified our moral
rules and values, but it has provided us with the psychological
makeup, tendencies and abilities to develop a compass for life's
choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account,
which is the essence of human morality. (de Waal 2006, 58)

In this same book, de Waal cites a fascinating study that shows that
what appears to be moral behavior is not exclusive to humans. Rhesus monkeys were trained to pull a chain in order to get their food and then
an experiment was set up so that when they pulled the chain a monkey
in a neighboring cage would get a severe electrical shock. This would
happen within view of the monkey pulling the chain. After learning
what pulling the chain would do to his neighbor, one of the monkeys
refused to pull the chain for five days. Another monkey went twelve
days without pulling! They chose to starve themselves rather than
shock their neighbor. Although it was not as dramatic as the monkeys,
the researchers even found that rats had this same reluctance to hurt a
fellow member of their species. These animals were willing to suffer
in order to prevent a stranger from feeling pain. Which is more likely,
that a god blessed these monkeys and rats with the gift of moral awareness or that evolution shaped them into social creatures with a strong
instinct to care about other members of their species?

De Waal writes in another book, Our Inner Ape:

Modern religions are only a few thousand years old. It's hard to
imagine that human psychology was radically different before religions arose. It's not that religions and culture don't have a role to
play, but the building blocks of morality clearly predate humanity.
We recognize them in our primate relatives, with empathy being
most conspicuous in the bonobo [an ape species] and reciprocity in
the chimpanzee. Moral rules tell us when and how to apply these
tendencies, but the tendencies themselves have been in the works
since time immemorial. (de Waal 2005, 214)

Why must we view the inclination to do the good and right thing
as something magical anyway? Why do we feel the need to credit gods
for our sense of right and wrong? Isn't basic decency sort of, well,
basic? What about just plain empathy? Why would a god have to give
moral instincts to us, anyway? We are smart, we can think. We can
imagine how others feel. If a clerk is rude to me at a store I don't go
get a gun, come back, and kill him. I am pretty sure that I refrain from
doing this not because a god embedded a rulebook into my subconscious mind. I don't even think that I have made it this far in life without killing anyone because I fear a long prison sentence. I don't
kill people who upset me because I can imagine the terror they would
feel if I pointed a gun at them. I can imagine the pain they would feel
if a bullet ripped through their body and shredded one of their internal
organs. I can imagine the tragedy of them dying younger than they
otherwise would have. I can imagine their family and friends crying at
the funeral. I am pretty sure that these are the primary reasons I
haven't killed anyone to date. I don't hurt other people because it hurts
them. No god had to tell me that and I didn't need to have it engraved
on a stone tablet.

In 2006, one of the world's richest people, Warren Buffett, pledged
to give thirty-seven billion dollars to another very rich person named
Bill Gates. Buffett promised the donation to the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation. Gates started that organization with his wife in
2000 to attack many of the most serious problems the world's poorest
people face. It is nice to see that two of the wealthiest humans who
have ever lived care about things other than yachts and mansions. Oh,
by the way, Gates and Buffett are atheists. Apparently they were able
to find the inspiration and the compassion to try and do some good in
the world without a god prodding them.

This is not unusual, according to Marc Hauser, author of Moral
Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and
Wrong. "There are an awful lot of people who are atheists who do
very, very wonderful things. As an objective question, do people who
have religious backgrounds show different patterns of moral judgments than people who are atheists? So far, the answer is a resounding
no" (Glausiusz, May 2007).

Ellerbe, Helen. The Dark Side of Christian History. San Rafael, CA: Morningstar Books, 1995.

Glausiusz, Josie. "The Discover Interview: Marc Hauser." Discover, May
2007. http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/the-discover-interview
-marc-hauser.

Harris, Sam. "10 Myths-and 10 Truths-About Atheism." Los Angeles
Times, December 24, 2006. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op
-harris24dec24,0,3994298.story?track=tothtml.

. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New
York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

Hauser, Marc D. Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense
of Right and Wrong. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

Joyce, Richard. The Evolution of Morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2006.

de Waal, Frans. Our Inner Ape: A Leading Primatologist Explains Why We
Are Who We Are. New York: Riverhead Books, 2005.

Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2006.

any believers say they are energized and empowered by
their religion. I don't doubt it. Belonging to a group made up
of like-minded people with shared goals can be uplifting. Young people
who feel unimportant and powerless, for example, might be able to find
comfort by joining a criminal gang. Earning a place on a high school
sports team can be a huge boost to a teenager's self-confidence. When
an individual joins a group, especially a religious organization that has
millions of members, many centuries of tradition behind it, and
believes the creator of the universe is at the helm, there is a good
chance that she or he will feel more powerful and perhaps even realize
a new sense of purpose for her or his life. I don't know if it is a need or
merely a desire, but we all seem to enjoy feeling that we are a part of
something bigger than ourselves. An anthropologist or psychologist
might just say we are social creatures and leave it at that. Some
believers, however, cite this phenomenon as evidence of their god's
existence. What else but a god could explain the sad individual who
enters a church, mosque, or temple only to reemerge happy and
vibrant? But maybe there is another explanation, a much simpler one.

I have had personal experiences that seem very similar to what
believers say they feel when "connected" to their god. When I visit a good science, art, or history museum, I get a charge out of it that is difficult to put into words. Just being near giant dinosaur fossils, ancient
Greek sculptures, and an Apollo command module that once orbited
the moon excites me and stirs my emotions in ways that I cannot fully
explain. Wandering among the trinkets and treasures of science and
history can give me immense joy and, yes, it can even make me feel
empowered and connected to something bigger than myself.

Whenever anyone asks me to name my favorite museum, I
stammer and stumble because I can never do it. Chicago's Field
Museum, the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the American
Museum of Natural History, the British Museum, the British Museum
of Natural History, the Louvre, the Smithsonian Natural History
Museum, the Cairo Museum, the tiny but unforgettable Luxor
Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art-how could I ever choose
just one? Like my children, I love them all with equal, maximum
intensity. I think my museum obsession helps me to understand a little
about what believers feel when they are joyfully consumed by their
religions. I know it's not exactly the same but it is similar. My heart
rate literally rises when I walk up the steps to enter a great museum.
Museums are my cathedrals. Artifacts in glass cases are my sacred
relics. I truly believe I have felt something close to religious fervor
inside some of these buildings. I even feel that I have experienced the
occasional transcendent moment inside a museum.