Is there room for Objective Morality in an Atheistic Worldview?

Having recently been through a conversation with some atheists who insist that moral values are objective, but that God is not required to ground them, this article has been bumped to the top of the to-do list.
These atheists were convinced that objective moral values are just a fact of reality, and that the concepts of 'goodness' and 'sentient well-being' were identical. They seemed to think that either moral values are weaved into the fabric of space somehow, or that sentient beings just have the intrinsic value of being good, that is to say, sentient beings, i.e. humans, are valuable and good in themselves without any need for further explanation.

That to me is nonsense. The idea that humans are basically good, but get things wrong a lot of the time is common belief. History tells a different story. From gladiator games to the Stanford prison experiment, we've seen that apparently good people can be barbaric given the chance. That's not to say all people would devolve into savagery at any opportunity, but it very much undercuts the idea that humans at core are fundamentally good.
I tend to think it's more like the Native American parable: inside each of us there are two wolves fighting, one represents good, one represents evil. Which will win the battle? The one that we feed.

But atheists tend to go further. They will say that other things or behaviours are intrinsically good too. If you found a starving child, giving up your lunch and feeding it would be the good thing to do for its own sake. While I agree that in that case that would be the good thing to do, I don't think it can be claimed that the only details you need are a starving child and some food to offer. There are a number of questions that can be asked.

The Self-Contradicting Worldview of Atheism

That title alone is bound to set off some triggers. Which is a shame, because it would be nice to get into the meat of this without having to first lay down some grounding to explain where we're coming from.

That well-rehearsed scripted cry rings in my ears as I write, "Atheism isn't a worldview! It's just an answer to the God claim!"

I take this to mean that the atheist saying it is really an agnostic non-theist. As such, they are sat on the fence with an "I don't know if God exists or not and am withholding judgement until more evidence comes in".
An atheist on the proper definition either believes, or feels certain that the claim "God does not exist" is true.

Following from the belief in that claim is an obvious basis for a worldview. An atheist who believes there is no such thing as God, must necessarily believe that everything in existence operates without need for one. While a theist believes God created, moulded, designed, sustains, and has plans for the universe and everything in it, an atheist requires other explanations. Hence, worldview.

Going back to the agnostic non-theist for a moment. It would be smart for them to consider the logical implications of an atheistic worldview. Rather than solely look at the claim "God exists", they should study and apply similar scepticism to the alternative claim "God does not exist". Perhaps they'd then see a clearer picture of which worldview makes more sense.

So. The following will be going through various claims made by atheists about their worldview. These are common claims made by many. We will see that a number of them are incompatible. Fortunately not every atheist holds to all of the claims, and so not every atheist is living with incompatible beliefs, but for those who do spout these contradictory ideas, they should really re-examine their worldview, and at the very least, choose between the contradictions.
If you ever find that you believe two statements that are in contradiction with one another, you have no choice but to drop one.

Atheism Is Not The Null Hypothesis

I briefly covered my dismay at the phrase 'atheism is the null hypothesis' before, but I've decided to give it a brief revisit.

The null hypothesis is a term used in science to help weed out parts of theories that can be shaved by Ockam's Razor. When performing a scientific test, the null hypothesis refers to a specific variable that you can assume is not necessary to the success of the test. If it was removed, the test would work as well as it does when it is present. So when it comes to describing the test and its method, you needn't even mention the variable, because it has no effect whatsoever.

This is how atheists feel about the universe and God. They see atheism as the null hypothesis, with God as the useless variable, because they see that the universe runs just fine without him.

But isn't that quite clearly concluding atheism based on the presupposition of atheism? Yes. Yes it is.

What Is a Fundie Atheist?

Fundie Atheist, Militant Atheist, Village Atheist, Folk Atheist, Atheist Troll.

Unfortunately, I and many others sometimes fall into a trap of using the term 'atheist' as shorthand for any/all of the above. Mainly because these guys have the loudest voices, and the moderate, normal non-believers stay polite and respectable like the decent folk that they are.
It's always the minority who ruin it for the majority. But what is a fundie atheist anyway?

Reading The Bible With A Study Guide

It's surprising how often some atheists make this suggestion. (Or is it? A lot of them are trolls. I doubt a reasonable atheist would ever do this).

They tell you it's a good idea to just read the Bible from front to back, without any study aids, with the condition that you can put it down when you're sick of it and announce yourself an atheist.

They'll tell you it's so full of immorality and prejudice that you'd have to be crazy to think it deserves the nickname 'the good book'.

What they don't realise is that they're simply showing how weak their intellectual hand is.

Sure you could read the Bible without a study aid. That would be fine. You'd just have to figure out the bits you didn't quite understand for yourself, which might be fairly difficult without any knowledge of things like ancient Hebrew cultural history, or how to recognise literary differences between poetry, prose, and historical texts, or to take notice of contexts and references.

Before diving any further into this, I'd also simply have to question whether or not the atheist making this suggestion had read the Bible themselves. My initial suspicion would be that they had been visiting an atheist-infidel type website who enjoyed taking Biblical quotes, pointing, and saying "Haha, look how bad and stupid this stuff is". Precisely the kind of people that study guides are for! Not that I'm exempt from that. There's been plenty of passages I haven't understood and needed someone with more training and expertise to explain for me.

If Bad Things Happen To Good People Then God Does Not Exist

You might have heard something like this being said by non-believers. Something like it, I haven't actually heard it put the way it is in the title, but it amounts to about the same.

I'll sketch out the basics here as to why 'the problem of evil' is one of the worst objections to believing in God. (Aside from it having been covered to death by loads of philosophers all through the ages, starting with debate in the Book of Job).

The classic Problem of Evil goes a little like this:
P1) If an all-loving, all powerful being exists, it would destroy evil.
P2) Evil exists.
C) Therefore an all-loving, all powerful being doesn't exist.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Some atheists seem to love the following phrase:

Carl Sagan said "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence"

I'm going to ignore the "Carl Sagan said" bit. Let's not bother with the obvious appeal to authority there and pretend it didn't happen.
The bit I really want to look at is the catchphrasy sound bite.

This appears on the list of Atheist Clichés That Need To Stop Being Said. Anything on that list is something we hear a lot, and tells us that the person saying it hasn't really thought it through.

Not saying Carl Sagan is a moron. Just that when he came up with this particular often-shared phrase, he was having a lax day. Probably watching some daytime TV and was a bit hungry but couldn't be bothered to get up.

Now, if you can figure out for yourself why the phrase "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence" is nonsense, good on you! You have no need to read on.
If you can't see the problem, go ahead with the next bit. We won't tell anyone and you can kick yourself later.

Why Do Atheists Evangelise?

Yeah all right. Evangelising isn't exactly the right word, but it gets the point across.

This is something I wonder about. A lot of atheists seem to want to spread the message that God isn't real and are pretty aggressive about it too. Beyond their own feeling of self satisfaction about being right, I don't know what the point is. I'm sure plenty of other atheists feel this way too as they simply get on with their lives and let religious people believe what they want.

Does everyone know about Pascal's Wager? It's something like this:
If you feel that the weight of evidence for the existence of God and the non-existence of God is balanced, then why not gamble on the safe bet? If he exists you win eternity in heaven, if he doesn't you just die and that's the end of it and you lose nothing. If you decide he doesn't exist, but he does, then you're risking eternity in hell. So betting on his non-existence is a lose-lose situation.

Some people see Pascal's Wager as an argument that should convince people to believe. I don't think it works that well on that front. Plus Christianity isn't just about believing, it's about lifestyle and a relationship with God, so the Wager doesn't cover the more important things.
Essentially, this post is an extended Pascal's Wager, and I've already said I don't think much of it, but this stuff is worth considering when it comes thinking about what it is that atheists are trying to get people to accept.

Atheism Is A Lack Of Belief

As William Lane Craig puts it "the definition that will not die!"

Because it should.. because it's wrong!

Mr Tree offers the extremely common misconception:

There's a reason that this is on our list of Atheist Clichés That Need To Stop Being Said. It's so plainly dumb it shouldn't need explaining.

Is Atheism A Religion?

I'm a bit wary of Christians who say that Atheism is a religion, but to give them their due, a lot of atheists aren't helping the case against the claim.

Symbols

All faiths have a symbol to represent them. Christians have the cross or the fish, Jews have the star of David, and so on.
Atheists inspired by their dedication to 'science' have come up with a few of their own badges.

You'll notice that most of them look a bit like atoms, which are bit like the poster child for science. Shoving an 'A' into an atom just cements the atheist relationship with scientific discovery and thought.

It's maybe a bit arrogant to assume that atheists have the only claim to science. Considering facts like Joseph J. Thomson, the founder of atomic physics was a devout Christian. Or that Charles Darwin, whose theory of evolution inspires the atheist fish, was a Christian for most of his life. Or Isaac Newton, Galileo, or even modern day leaders of science like Francis Collins were also Christian.

So, as atheists have a number of symbols to choose from, it's only natural that they would want to display their faith for all to see.

Or if clothing and accessories aren't enough, why not permanently seal the deal and have the symbol of your belief inked?

And they say atheism is just "a lack of belief"... Sure...

Churches

Do I need to go further than this point? Atheists have churches now, They meet up on Sundays and share their faith and learn how they can use it to make the world a better place. Come on!

Answering an Australian (or Spanish I'm not sure) Atheist

It's a bit of a long one, but it's not that heavy. Almost all aspects of Christian apologetics is touched on.

No Atheist Lives Consistently With Their World-view

First up, I can already hear the cries of "atheism is not a world-view, it's just a position on the question of the existence of God".

Right... atheists believe that God does not exist. Theists who believe that God exists see the world with the knowledge that he has an effect on things and there are consequences to his being around. An atheist would have to be the opposite of that and so (whether they realise it or not) believing that God is not real or not accepting his existence is going to shape their world-view.

So having dealt with that, let's get to the point: no atheists live consistently with their world-view.

Without God there is no objective moral standard. There's no thing that is defined as 'good' that we can compare other things to beyond our own opinions. Which actually means that doing the washing up is morally equal to torturing people.
No one believes that. No one behaves that way. Everyone agrees that some actions are morally better than others.

Most Atheists Are Actually Agnostics

This rough conversation (or parts of it) happens far too often...

Believer: What would you call yourself?
Non-believer: I'm an atheist.
Believer: A strong atheist or weak atheist?
Non-believer: What's the difference?
Believer: A strong atheist says they know that there is no god with 100% certainty. A weak atheist believes there is no god but there's room for doubt.
Non-believer: I'm a strong atheist.
Believer: Really? How do you know for certain there's no god?
Non-believer: There's no evidence for it.
Believer: You mean you haven't seen any evidence. There could be some hidden under a rock on Pluto. Have you checked there?
Non-believer: No.

I Believe In Evolution, So I Don't Believe In God

"I Believe In Evolution, So I Don't Believe In God"

This (or a paraphrase of this) is heard really really often when asking atheists why they don't believe.

It seems simple, but there's so so soooo much wrong with it, that it gets embarrassing for the person who said it when the mistakes are explained to them.
There's so much wrong with it, that it's difficult to know where to start.

So ok. First let's ask 'what do you mean by evolution?'
That word could refer to a few things, or all of those things as a bundle. It could mean stuff like how birds wings might get a little bigger, or their beaks might change shape a bit, or they might get a little faster. It could include natural selection or 'survival of the fittest', where the creatures best suited to environments will survive while the rest die out. It could (and I think most often does) refer to Darwinian evolution i.e. the theory that all life today gradually grew and mutated from a single celled organism over several million/billion years.

If we're talking small changes and natural selection (which is sometimes referred to as micro-evolution) then we're all good. That stuff has been observed, proven, and has to be accepted as factual.
If we're talking Darwinian evolution, then the evidence for that is on pretty shaky ground. Essentially what's been done by scientists who hold to it is they have seen the small changes and from that concluded it must go all the way back to the big changes that have to happen to make something like a lizard mutate into a dog. Unfortunately, the fossil record doesn't back them up. The oldest known relative of modern dogs is an ancient dog. The oldest known relative of modern horses is an ancient horse. It's the same for everything we have today. There aren't any cat/wolf hybrids or anything else that's split into two different things.
Trouble is, atheists have to believe in evolution, because they have nothing else. If Darwinian evolution was disproved, then it would be the final nail in the coffin for atheism.

The Atheist Lead In 'Orange Is The New Black'

'Orange is the New Black' may sound like some sort of 'Sex and the City' in prison type of show, but it's actually really good!


It's great to see a show where men are the minority, dealing with real issues and things anybody can relate to - not just stuff that's 'by women, for women'. It's not a chick flick. It's a normal show that just happens to mainly star women, just like every normal show where most of the cast are men.

Religion plays a part in the show and for the most part is handled well. There's a chapel in the prison that has to be shared between the various faiths and denominations, so time allowed for its use is split up evenly. There's a preacher who seems to be a rock of compassion for those who need her, the Spanish community pray at mealtimes and it's left at that, there's a Buddhist yoga instructor, and there are a couple of extremist nuts that give faith a bad name.

That's all fine. It reflects reality. It's OK to show the messed up side of religion. It's good even. This stuff needs to be highlighted so it can be dealt with. All the while the moderate and compassionate normal people of faith are also on screen to show that they aren't all nutcases, there should be no reason for viewers to complain.

I don't know the beliefs of the shows writers and producers, although episode 12 seemed to be an example of the main character Piper acting as a voice for their views.
As I say, for the bulk of the series, they've been respectful and handled faith well. The cast includes Kate Mulgrew, who is well known to be a devout Catholic, and also Laura Prepon who is a Scientologist, as well as a number of other people of various faiths, so the producers probably are sympathetic to the belief systems of other people.

So I don't want to come down too hard on the show for the things that were said in Episode 12. It might have been the writers speaking through Piper, or it might have been just another character expressing a poorly thought out world-view. Piper is hardly the beacon of reason and morality anyway - being involved with drug dealers and cheating on her fiancé.

Whichever it is, I'm just a little concerned that what she said might be taken by viewers as good rational sense. So I'm gonna go over it and try to clear up the mess. WARNING: MINOR EPISODE SPOILERS

Not All Dogs Go to Heaven - Family Guy's Atheism Episode

I used to be a big fan of 'Family Guy'. When it first aired I was one of the few people I knew who gave it a look. The next day I was telling all of my school friends about this amazing new show that was a bit like 'The Simpsons' but better now that the quality of that show had considerably dropped. It had a super genius baby who wanted to kill his mother, a wise cracking talking dog, and wacky flashback scenes that meant gags could come through even faster.

Like 'The Simpsons' though, the quality of 'Family Guy' dropped after a few seasons. although it took nowhere near as long. The show became a string of self-references, repeating old jokes, drawing out gags for a lot longer than they were funny, plagiarising obscure musicals and viral videos hoping to pass them off as original, and random insertions of Conway Twitty. It got to a stage where the only decent episodes were the ones where Brian (the dog) and Stewie (the baby) had some crazy adventure together (e.g. Road to the Multiverse).

I recently discovered that the quality of 'The Simpsons' has actually picked up again in the most recent few seasons and was surprised to be enjoying the show again. So, I figured maybe 'Family Guy' might have done the same thing.

Flicking through the options I found an episode with the synopsis "After a day at the Quahog Star Trek convention, Stewie builds a transporter and beams the cast of 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' into his room".
I didn't take much notice of the episode title 'Not All Dogs Go to Heaven'. It didn't seem to tie up with the exciting plot summary.

So thinking this crossover episode would be a great place to catch up on an old favourite I settled in.
I was pretty surprised with what I got. BEWARE EPISODE SPOILERS COMING UP.

It started out pretty well, despite Stewie saying he preferred Picard to Kirk, but that's not a big deal. I've always said Kirk is a better captain, but I'd rather be on Picard's crew.

So when Meg catches the mumps, and after some of the tired trope of unnecessarily mistreating her, she watches Kirk Cameron speaking on The Religion Channel and becomes a born again Christian.

It Doesn't Matter To Me If God Exists

When not talking to the internet infidel type of atheist - the one who stereotypically has a neckbeard, a fedora, and alternating posters of My Little Pony and Richard Dawkins - you quite often find the run-of-the-mill atheist who simply says stuff like: "I haven't really put much thought into it, but I haven't seen God anywhere so I don't believe in him. I don't need him in my life. I'm quite happy as I am so why bother? I'm just not interested."

This to me seems amazingly short-sighted. I just don't get how anyone could think like that.

What Label Do You Fit Under?

It's a mixture of frustrating, tiresome, and embarrassing that a lot of people don't seem to know what to call themselves when they're talking about the subject of God's existence.

Use this simple flowchart to clear it up for yourself!

You'll probably notice that each result has two parts to it. To keep it simple, you can stick to the lower part when you refer to yourself. The upper part is basically a clarifier to make it absolutely obvious what you think and can be helpful in some situations.

There's some tricky words in there for newbies, so I'll tell you what they mean here.

Is atheism the null hypothesis?

I've heard this one a few times. "Atheists don't have to prove anything because atheism is the null hypothesis. You disbelieve something until it is proven."

This is the kind of thing I want to record and play back to people so they can see how dumb they sound.

Let's all go back in time four hundred years.
I'll go up to a local and say "Hey, in a few hundred years we will all have glowing boxes that we put onto desks and send each other pictures of cats doing silly things to people all around the world."

If the person says "Sounds great." then that's fine, though you have to wonder if you can test their gullibility somehow.

If the person says "Prove it.", then I've got some work to do, and that's absolutely reasonable.

If they person says "I don't believe you." they would be absolutely wrong and they'd have to explain their reasons to me.

The best, most honest, and truly neutral position to take about the unknown is simply saying "I don't know, but I'm open to it."
If you start saying the person making a claim is wrong, then you need to have a reason to think so.

When it comes to belief in God, the "I don't know, but I'm open to it." position is agnosticism, not atheism.

This 'null hypothesis' stuff about believing the negative until the positive is proven is absolute nonsense. When there are only two options for truth, you don't believe one just because there's no evidence for the other (especially if there's no evidence for either!).