Many people (including the students in my Journalism and Religion class) question the Atheist mindset about how one can posses a system of morals without belief in God within a religion. The response is one that may sound simple: God is not what creates morals; people create morals. The brain is fashioned to know what is right and wrong. Matt Dillahunty (President of the Austin Atheist community) explained that morals are a cultural and societal code. He explained that morals can be (and obviously are) incorporated into religions as a means to live by, but God and religion is not needed to obtain good morals. This way of thinking is rational and makes sense to me, but there is also another side to the argument. This angle questions whether “moral” views were cultivated so long ago, that an Atheist may think he knows what is right and wrong, but these so called “cultural or societal” views have actually been previously shaped by religions. It is an interesting concept to see how people of all religions view the reason for a moral code. Someone in our class asked Dillahunty if he as an Atheist did not believe in afterlife, what goals does he have to pursue a moral life. I thought this an interesting question, and even a more interesting answer. He said, “I only got one shot at this life…which makes this one life way more valuable to me than anyone who believes there is more after this. It is better to do things right the first time…because I would have an afterlife to make things up to people.” He says that the purpose of life is the meaning that each individual gives it, and not what is told to them by a clergyman. He says people should not need God to treat each other kindly. “Why would we want to live in a world where people do bad things to each other?” In a “Free Inquiry” magazine article, Theodore Schick explains that “although Plato demonstrated the logical independence of God and morality over 2,000 years ago in the Euthyphro, the belief that morality requires God remains a widely held moral maxim.” He goes onto explain the struggle with this concept even within Atheism. He says that the belief that morality is tied to God is not limited to theists, and sites the existentialist Jean-Paul saying that " ‘If God is dead, everything is permitted.’ In other words, if there is no supreme being to lay down the moral law, each individual is free to do as he or she pleases.” He says, however, that many Atheists find it straining to think that God created morality by using the example of the Ten Commandments. After Moses gave his followers God’s words of morality through the commandments, then people were moral. Schick argues, however, that this must mean that that “killing, raping, stealing, and torturing were not wrong before God made them so.” Although in my mind, this is a stretch, it is one viewpoint that I had never explored before. In my opinion, I have no problem with some people having faith that God bestowed morals upon them, and others thinking that morality is an idea that humans set for themselves. As long as each individual has a system of morals that is culturally acceptable (meaning they cannot just simply believe it is moral to kill or rape people for example), I don’t mind where that set of morals comes from. Some people don’t need a reason like an afterlife to be moral…and that is okay also. In the end, the truth is that we may study and guess and question all we want…but we won’t know what happens after death until we die. So until then, I see no point in constant battles over who is right and wrong about the way to find a moral lifestyle. Everyone technically just has different means to the same end.
