Hey, as an atheist, I’m asked this question a lot, and don’t know how to answer it properly: how do you answer the greyer moral questions if you don’t believe in god? (Examples of stuff people have asked me about: polygamy, sacrifice for the greater good, non-harmful and harmful fetishes) (I have a lot of weird conversations)
I would start off by asking them whether they think slavery is a “grey area.” Because bible-god’s book doesn’t even declare it “grey”, it declares it to be the done thing: owning people as property, beating them (it’s fine if they die after 48 hours, as long as they don’t before), handing them down to your descendants, and owning their offspring also as your property.
EDIT: bible-god also says that divorce and re-marriage constitutes adultery, one of the Ten Commandments, and very much not a “grey area.”
Do they think that being forced to marry your rapist, and spend the rest of your life with them is a “grey area”? Or that date-raping your father to get pregnant is a “grey area”? The former was the law to be obeyed, and the latter was the adventures of the only “just and righteous” family in Sodom, whom “god” chose to save.
I don’t know why we would seek advice about the nuances and complexities of human life from an entity that didn’t know any of the above would be considered a Bad Thing™.
I’m curious what they think “god” and scripture is going to bring to “greyer” areas such as wearing a latex onesie and being spanked with a rubber chicken while the “Hokey Pokey” plays on repeat… y’know… for example (#AskingForAFriend). How do they plan to use “god” to determine the moral position here? Will god help them determine whether eliminating the “Hokey Pokey” from the equation makes it more of a grey area or less, and most importantly, how?
I’m also wondering if they think homosexuality still occupies a moral “grey” area. If it doesn’t, what exactly did “god” do to correct this, and when? If they think it is still a “grey” area, with the steady rise in acceptance of gay people and marriage equality, is it “god” who will catch up to humans, and at what point?
We do know that bible-god condoned polygamy (Solomon, who was regarded as a righteous prophet and king had 700 wives and 300 concubines), and was quite content with the ideas of not just sacrificing oneself, but sacrificing someone else “for the greater good.” Or even sacrificing someone just because one is asked to, for no reason whatsoever.
Let’s face it: as far as “god” is concerned, in terms of the “greater good”, “god” is priority number one on that “greater good” list and everyone else can drop dead where they stand, with all human life being expendable in aid of preserving this, above every other edict and law.
Putting aside the gross scripture, the Old Testament of which is shared by Xtianity, Judaism and Islam, if you want to dig down into the logical arguments, it may be useful to look into the moral argument for gods and why it fails, and particularly the Euthyphro dilemma. In brief terms, things are either moral because god declares them so, or they’re moral regardless.
If they’re moral only because god declares them so, god could therefore at any time declare slavery to be moral once again (well, technically, it never declared it isn’t moral, but let’s be super-generous). Genocide becomes moral because “god” commanded it… again. This means that from the perspective of “god,” there’s no difference between right and wrong, no gold moral standard, only its whim.
If they’re moral regardless, then god is a useless messenger, telling us nothing we can’t figure out without it. If god can change its mind, then it can get things wrong, making it no better than human judgement. It becomes worthless as a moral compass.
How can we even determine that “god” itself is good, if “god” is the source of our judgement of good and bad? Do we simply take the word of “god” (conveniently available only via its human prophets) that it’s the good guy? It’s doing most of the killing in the bible, and it’s only the second-hand word of humans that it’s the word of this god that this self-same “god” is self-declared to be the good guy. Wow.
And the thing is, “god” should have gotten it right from the start. But didn’t.
The religious regularly make their own moral judgements about their god to determine what’s a metaphor and what’s true; give them any of the above scripture references for why god is not a good moral compass, and they’ll demonstrate this exactly. “It’s a metaphor”, “you’re taking it out of context” and “oh, that no longer applies” are classic, quotable tropes of this.
The reality is that morality - that is, what is in our best interests, supporting our health, wellbeing and success as a cooperative species - is a combination of both objectivity and subjectivity, powered by our evolved empathy, our desire for survival, and recorded throughout history for thousands of years, all around the world. Objectively, stealing, harming or outright stabbing other people dead goes against that goal. There are very simple assessments that underpin daily life. We figured that out long ago. Animals did too, by the way.
“Grey areas” exist because some things are situational and subjective, requiring a choice between two bad outcomes. And that’s about trying to weigh up best interests and wellbeing based on more complicated factors and considerations. Starting with the black-and-white “thou shalt not kill”, all it requires is to change a variable at a time to get to euthanasia, and a group of people who were very certain at the beginning, one variable at a time can become more and more uncomfortable and less certain, trying to weigh up suffering and dignity with the value we place on the preservation of human life.
What invoking “god”, or any other faith-based belief, attempts to do is to summon a sort of appeal to authority, to avoid the conversation of justifying why their position is more moral, more correct… in real terms, rather than in terms of declarations from magical cloud imps or other imaginary entities. And worse, listening to a response they might not be comfortable with, and which might necessitate rethinking their position. It’s a lazy shortcut for why they should get their way instead of having to do the work of being convincing and thorough. Returning to the euthanasia example, I’m no less justified than the religious if I invoke the tradition of Hegh’bat, or cite Logan’s Run.
Everything we know about “god” (which occupies the same factual domain as everything we know about Frodo and everything we know about Dora the Explorer) is contradictory and self-refuting prose and can be used to justify any position (e.g. here’s a bible verse supporting euthanasia). There’s no avenue to find out the “real” view of “god” (and I say that like finding out the “real” opinions of Fred Flintstone), even if I gave the merest shit what this creature thought. There’s only everybody who claims to speak on its behalf. Two people can pray to their god for the answer to a dilemma and come back with different answers, equally justified. To nobody’s surprise.
Religion and “god” uniquely justify acts we deem objectively immoral, by claiming divine righteousness that supersedes human morality. We see this all the time. I don’t have a magical invisible sky wizard I can claim as the justification for why I should get my way, why i was justified in killing someone, why certain people shouldn’t get married, why certain people should get fewer rights. But the religious do. If “god” doesn’t uniquely lead to morality, and can lead to immoral actions, it becomes wholly unclear why we would use it at all, especially for the complicated stuff.
So, when it comes to the greyer moral questions, why not simply cut the god-crap and discuss, human-to-human, what we’re concerned about and, most importantly, why. This is one of the reasons gods are worthless to me. They and their thousand-years-ago pronouncements - that are second-hand, at best, if they happened at all - are removed from the complicated realities of day-to-day life as a human, where you’re usually just making the best choice you can with the information available.
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