Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence

Carl Sagan popularized the phrase “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” (ECREE), in his 1979 book “Broca’s Brain” and the Cosmos television mini-series in 1980.  Sagan was drawing on previous use of the concept by Marcello Truzzi in the 1970s, Thomas Jefferson and Pierre-Simon LaPlace in the early 1800s, and ultimately by philosopher David Hume in his 1748 essay “On Miracles”. 

 

“Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence”
Carl Sagan, 1979

To make sense of the aphorism, we should first ask what qualifies as an extraordinary claim.  There are three classes of extraordinary claims:

• Statistically improbable claims.
• Claims outside the range of prior experience, with unknown probability.
• Claims contrary to the body of established scientific knowledge or preponderance of existing evidence.

Religious ideas are of the third kind, assertions that are contrary to established scientific knowledge.  (I will discuss other kinds of extraordinary claims and evidence in my science blog.)  Religious or spiritual claims are closer to Hume’s original idea about extraordinary claims in 1748 than the other kinds of extraordinary claims.  

                        “What is a miracle?”
                        “A miracle is something that happens contrawise to the will of nature.”
                                            Source is forgotten, likely to be Robert Heinlein or A.C. Clarke

Social scientist Marcello Truzzi, who founded an organization to investigate paranormal claims, coined a similar wording of the ECREE aphorism that Sagan later used.  In 1978, Truzzi wrote, “extraordinariness must be measured against theoretical expectations provided by the general body of scientific knowledge at the time...claims require extraordinary evidence if they entail the falsehood of established scientific results that are themselves extensively tested and well understood.... A black swan is one thing; a swan that visits you from beyond the grave is something else.”

Religious Claims
Let’s try to summarize religious and spiritual claims.  It won’t be easy.  There are about 3000 distinct religions followed by some group of people, now or in the past.  From this variety, it may be difficult to compile a simple list of religious claims, but I will try, using parallel ideas in a number of religions.  

God and Gods, each having many of the following characteristics:
    Non-corporeal, invisible, silent spirits.
    Immortal.
    Capable of magic or miracles.
    Interested in humanity.
    Intervening in human affairs.
    Responsible for creation of the world, or parts thereof.
    Often engaged in conflict with other gods, spirits, or beings.
    Protecting humans from evil spirits, people or natural disasters, often in exchange for worship.
    All-powerful.
    All-knowing.
    All-good. (In some traditions, not all.)
    
Divine Creation of the World
    Creation of the universe or world by gods or other spiritual beings.
    Creation of the living world.
    Distinct creation of people, separately and above the living world, and endowment of people with sentience, knowledge or wisdom.
    Creation of the spiritual realm, of heaven and hell.

Sacred Gifts
    Gifts of knowledge or other gifts to humanity, including positive and negative gifts.

Immortal Souls
    Spiritual, immortal extension of the human self, capable of existing without the body after death.
    Includes self-awareness, memory, will, thoughts and emotions.
    Generally believed to travel to non-material spiritual places after death -- Heaven, Hell, Limbo, Valhalla, Folkvangr, the seven Samaawat, Alma d-Nhura, Deva Loka, Narka Loka, etc.

Human Spirits
    Ghosts existing after life in the physical world (but not necessarily immortal).  May include malevolent spirits.

Divine Superior Beings
    Demi-gods, including Jesus, Maui, and Heracles, and divine relatives, including the Virgin Mary.  Often considered the offspring of god or gods, sometimes through parthenogenesis, sometimes the offspring of humans and gods.  Often believed to have a previous physical life, but currently are non-corporeal spirits.  Prayer for intercession is often directed toward divine superior beings rather than to God.

Spiritual Superior Beings
    Angels, demons, animal or natural spirits with greater magical power than humans or human spirits.
    May include antagonistic spirits such as Satan.

Afterlife Places
    Heaven, limbo and hell.  Places without a physical presence or contact with the physical world, where one can meet people from one's former life.

Miracles
    Extraordinary events, contrary to expected behavior of natural systems, generally for the benefit of people experiencing difficulty.

Divine Causation
    Routine natural events, seasons, tides, eclipses.
    Routine human events, birth, death.
    Movement of heavenly bodies.
    Extraordinary events as reward or punishment (usually punishment), including natural disasters, virgin birth, ascension to heaven.

Natural Spirits
    Attribution of living identity, will or sentience to animals, plants, places and objects; anthropomorphism of nature.  

Sacred Places
    Attribution of sacred living identity to mountains, rivers, and lands.  Sacred objects and places are believed to enable religious miracles.     

Spiritual Inanimate Objects and Places
    Religious icons, relics of saints, churches, temples, springs and objects or places believed to have magical powers or enable miracles.

Reincarnation
    The belief that souls are recycled into new people or animals.  Some religions attribute a “leveling-up” process of attaining higher or lower status according to moral behavior during life.

Divination and Prophecy
    Belief that the future can be determined by religious ritual or by religiously endowed individuals. 

Saints and Spiritual Intermediaries
    Belief that the spirits of sacred humans can intervene and influence God’s actions, or parallel beliefs in non-Christian religions.

Sacred Texts
    Belief that the Bible, Devi Bhagavatam, Quran, Book of Mormon or other sacred texts are divinely inspired, contain divine revelation, are literally true, and have an absolute obligation to be obeyed.
    
Prayer
    The belief that humans can communicate with gods and higher beings, to give thanks and ask for divine help.

Ancestor Worship
    Belief that deceased ancestors actively intervene and protect their descendants.

Human Religious Intermediaries Priests, Pastors, Popes, and Shamen
    Belief that special humans possess magical powers or can intervene to influence divine action.

Divine Humans
    Egyptian, Roman and Japanese societies held that their leaders were gods, or became gods when assuming office as emperor or pharaoh.  Chinese and other cultures believed that their leaders were semi-divine descendants of gods.

Belief in Transcendent Reality, and/or denial of physical reality.
    Belief that physical reality is corrupt and is superseded by a transcendent reality.

Karma
    Belief that good or bad actions have real-world consequences in luck or future events.

Ordinary Scientific Evidence

The scientific method systemized the search for truth and standardized the criteria for truth, beginning in the 17th century.  Scientific evidence involves the following elements.

• Empirical observation.
• Identification of processes and developing hypotheses about processes.
• Experiments designed to fulfill predictions or invalidate the hypotheses.
• Clarity of data from experiment.
• Repeatability.
• Relevance of evidence, often measured by statistical tests.
• Peer review and publication.

In general, religious claims fail most or all of the standards for scientific truth (or as it is otherwise known, truth).  Stories of 14th century BCE conversations with a burning bush or visions by a 15th-century French girl do not qualify as evidence.

 
Moses and the Burning Bush, Holman Bible, 1890

Vision of Joan of Arc (1428), artist and date unknown to me.

With religious claims, there are few repeatable observations with objective observers.  There are no identified processes.  There are no experiments to invalidate the claims.  There is little clarity of the data.  There is often little relevance of the evidence, and little critique of the claims.  We see that religious claims fail to meet standards for ordinary evidence before even considering the need for extraordinary evidence,

Why Are Religious Claims Extraordinary Claims?
Religious claims are extraordinary claims because they violate known scientific knowledge about processes.  The list of religious claims is too long for a complete rebuttal, but fall into four general categories.  First are claims involving spirits, second are claims involving higher classes of beings, third are claims involving miracles and fourth are claims of future knowledge or predestination.

Spirits represent disembodied beings, with self-awareness, memory, will, ability to communicate and other powers.  But scientific knowledge places the seat of sentience in the brain.  Through observation of patients with brain injuries (as described well in the books by Oliver Sachs) we know which parts of the brain enable these aspects of sentience.  We can observe patients in which memory, will and communication are gone, and have established that the brain performs those functions of humanity.  Without a physical brain, spirits cannot have sentience; souls cannot persist after death.  To claim otherwise is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.  

The same reasoning applies to the existence of higher beings, gods, demi-gods, angels and demons that are believed to exist in the spiritual world.  Without a brain, how do they think?  How do they persist as self-aware entities?  To claim that an angel or demon possesses sentience without a brain violates our scientific understanding of sentience.

Religious claims of miracles and magic are also extraordinary claims.  We know how physics, chemistry, and life sciences work.  A miraculous event, by definition, is contrary to the expectations from those natural processes.  As such, every miracle or magical claim requires extraordinary evidence.

Claims of prophecy and predestination violate the scientific understanding of time.  In all well-documented experience, information can not flow backwards through time.  Future events are fundamentally uncertain, despite high precision in prior conditions and known processes.

Extraordinary Evidence
What is extraordinary evidence, as compared to the normal scientific evidence described above?  

I return to David Hume, who first established the ECREE standard in 1748.  “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish”.  

In essence evidence of a miraculous event must be strong enough to invalidate the scientific knowledge precluding that event.  To be considered true, a miracle involving levitation must be supported by evidence sufficient to invalidate our well-established notions about gravity.  To be considered true, the claim of a soul, ghost or spirit must demonstrate disembodied sentience in some unquestionable, observable, repeatable form.  The claim that God exists needs to be demonstrated by apparently unlimited power – perhaps by moving thousands of galaxies overnight to spell out, “I am God” in every language on earth.  Of course, none of those things have ever happened or ever will happen.

Conclusion
Religious claims are extraordinary claims, defying our existing body of scientific knowledge.  Religious claims fail to meet even the lowest standards of scientific evidence, much less the extraordinary evidence required for such claims to be regarded as truth.  
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Afterword
Non-Religious Paranormal Beliefs
There are also a substantial number of non-religious paranormal beliefs, some of which overlap with religious beliefs.  Some (telekinesis, telepathy, extraterrestrial visitors) do not involve spiritual elements, while others (ghosts) do not involve higher spiritual powers.  These also require extraordinary evidence, but are irrelevant to the discussion of atheism.

Non-Interventionist God
Albert Einstein said, "I'm not an atheist, and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist... I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings”  The Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) framed a special case of the non-interventionist God.  Spinoza held to a physical sense of reality, but viewed all of creation as a sub-set of God.  According to commentator Paul So, Spinoza “rejected the existence of Soul, Angels, Demons, Miracles, Divine Creationism, the possibility of Afterlife, Divine Revelation, validity of Prophecy, Biblical literalism, Tradition, Scriptural authority, and last but not least the existence of a personal God.”

Giordano Bruno in the 16th century rejected many of these same religious claims, while introducing revolutionary speculative cosmological ideas that are today held as true.  He speculated that stars were far-away suns, that planets might orbit those suns, and that intelligent beings might live there.  He also made contributions to the study of memory, mathematics, geometry and language.  Bruno may have been approaching the rationalist’s idea of a non-interventionist God, but was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600.

Giardano Bruno, 1548-1600, portrait from 1830 biography.

Execution of Giardano Bruno, source unknown to me.

Spinoza’s non-interventionist God eliminates most, but not all, of the unsupported religious claims.  Spinoza’s God presumes that God is the creator; that God is reality, and that God is greater than reality.  These claims are also unsupported by evidence. 

Baruch Spinoza, 1632 - 1677.

Spinoza tried to rationalize religion by removing the most fantastic claims, and altering the definition of God to equate God with our observed reality.  But God is unnecessary to explain our observations, and equating God with reality brings no additional understanding.  There’s also no evidence, extraordinary or otherwise, that God is greater than our reality.  The central claim that God exists is completely unsupported.  According to Occam’s razor, the best explanation of our reality is that God does not exist.

Atheism and Morality, Part II: How Does an Atheist Become a Moral Person?

Christians sometimes ask atheists, “If you don’t believe in God, how can you be a moral person?”  

The question is really two questions.  First, how do you know what is moral without being told by a religious authority?  Second, how do you control your impulses without the threat of divine punishment?  I addressed the first question in last post, and the second question in this post.

How Does an Atheist Become a Moral Person?
The answer is simple.  You choose to be a moral person.  Personal morality is based on personal values, which can be derived through lived experience, observation of other humans, and self-reflection.  I believe the most important human values developed through this process are empathy, truth, justice (i.e., equity, fairness) and responsibility.  Other core values include service, progress, respect for nature & animals, self-care and liberty.  Not everyone who observes and reflects on the human condition gets there; there are a lot of people whose world-views are based on self-interest and bullying others.  But the morality of the four core values of empathy, truth, justice and responsibility should be indisputable.  Atheists and religious people alike should agree that these are the foundation of morality, based on the precepts of caring for other people and doing the least harm.  

 “The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what's to stop me from raping all I want?  And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero.  And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero.  The fact that these people think that if they didn't have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping rampages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine.  I don't want to do that.

Penn Jillette, of the illusionist team Penn and Teller

 The entire question of morality, of course, concerns people who are interested in being moral.  There exists a distressing percentage of people who have no interest in being moral and act entirely for their own self-interest.  According to popular media, about 1% of men are psychopaths, and up to 4 % of men are sociopaths; a somewhat smaller percentage applies to women.  This blog post is not about them.  This blog post is about the people who aspire to live moral lives, and their reasons for doing so.

A good friend just posted a question on social media regarding religion and morality.   She asked her religious friends (excluding the non-religious) this question: “Does either fear of hell or promise of heaven/good rebirth affect your choices/behavior?  If so, which is the stronger motivator?”  She had about a dozen responses.  Interestingly, in all of the current responses there was no consideration for consequences in the afterlife due to their decisions and behavior.  (I think that I read one response that half-heartedly admitted to fearing punishment after death, but it seems that response was deleted.  So it may be that people don’t want to admit that fear in public.)  The question was posed by someone who is generally on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and I presume that her respondents are also liberal.  A conservative group may produce different results.  But with those caveats, this group makes their moral decisions in the same way as atheists – according to principles of right and wrong, and consideration of doing good or harm to other people.  The only religious motivation mentioned in the responses was that the joy of a religious life gave encouragement to do good works.  Religious joy may be a motivation for religious people, but that does not imply that atheists are immoral.  Like many religious people, atheists find joy in doing good deeds for the sake of doing good. 

Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash

Does Religion Make People Moral?
If people require the discipline of a God to be moral, are they really moral?  If fear of God is the motivating factor to behave with kindness and justice toward other people, is that behavior moral, or simply fearful?  Coerced behavior isn’t rooted in morality.   For people who are only moral because of the threat of eternal damnation, the only thing that matters is avoiding punishment.  When religious doctrine becomes the authority for what is moral, morality itself is distorted.  Religious doctrine has no clear foundation of ethical morality.

Let’s briefly consider the historical record for Christianity and morality.  
If religion (specifically Christianity) actually produced moral behavior, would the world have seen the cruelty associated with the following Christian campaigns through history? 

• Systematic persecution of pagans and Jews in the late Roman Empire and Middle Ages.
• The coerced conversion of Northern and Eastern Europe to Christianity around 1000 CE, enforced by unspeakable torture and murder.
• The Crusades, from 1100 CE to 1300 CE.
• Burning of heretics at the stake in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
• Burning of witches at the stake in the Renaissance.
• The repression of science in the Renaissance, through arrest and threatened torture.
• The Italian and Spanish Inquisitions of the Renaissance, marked by repression, torture and murder.
• The conquest, enslavement and exploitation of Native Americans and other indigenous groups in the course of conversion to Christianity.
• European wars of religion from 1400 CE to 1700 CE.      

The Christian Bible had reached its current form by about 400 CE.  By 1000 CE, Christianity was a mature religion, and Christian principles of loving your neighbor, of forgiveness and non-violence should have been well-established.  Brutality in the name of Christianity continued for the next 900 years.  Mark Twain, a relatively recent author, decried the brutality of Christianity during his time, in writings such as “Letters from the Earth”, “The War Prayer”, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness”, “The Chronicle of Young Satan”, and “Grief and Mourning for the Night”.

Across centuries, religious doctrine sometimes corrects errors of the past, with actions ranging from Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses to the belated admission by the Catholic Church, after 359 years, that its conviction of Galileo was wrong.  Missionaries no longer use torture and murder to convert adherents of other religions.  But after a millennium and a half of cruel subjugation of people with other beliefs, can we really say that religion can claim any high ground with respect to morality?  

Historian Thomas Cahill argues that every human culture practiced some form of human sacrifice prior
to encountering Christianity.  That is an improvement, but relative to other crimes of Christianity it is a fairly low bar.  It seems to me that Christianity did not become less brutal according to its own principles, but rather in accordance with the general improvement of human behavior over the very long term.  Steven Pinker documents this gradual improvement well in his books “Enlightenment Now” and “The Better Angels of Our Nature”.  The arc of moral history does bend toward justice in the long run, but not necessarily because of religion.

The Origin of Moral Authority
Morality derived from religious authority is necessarily suspect, because religious authority is often concerned with behavioral issues other than care or harm to others.  Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have many moral laws about sexual issues, including gender identity, sexual orientation, interracial or intercaste relationships, abortion, contraception and sexual liberty.  There are also many non-sexual restrictions specific to women, including the freedom of women to work, study,  to refuse compulsory dress, or even the freedom to appear in public alone.  

There are religious decrees asserting moral control over other aspects of life.  Western societies have slowly loosened these restrictions, but in my lifetime, local government typically restricted business hours and activity to ensure observance of the sabbath.  There are religious decrees concerning caste status, cutting hair or not cutting hair, eating or not eating certain foods, wearing hats or not wearing hats, all of which infringe on the fundamental moral value of liberty.  Some religious moral dictums are arbitrary traditions, and some reflect ancient health concerns, but many aspects of religious morality exist to perpetuate religious control.  Some religious moral standards exist in order to perpetuate patriarchy, slavery, caste systems, or social hierarchy.  There is no real moral authority for these religious judgments.

Considering all of this, moral authority from religion is null and void.  People who take moral guidance from their religious authorities are mistaken.  True morality comes from consideration of the well-being, rights, freedom, and feelings of other people.  Religious issues outside of those considerations are morally irrelevant. 

Atheists in religious societies (as we all are) are necessarily independent-thinkers.  Perhaps atheists understand the origins of morality and its foundation in human values better than religious people.

Moral Dilemmas and Conflicts
Morality necessarily involves dilemmas and conflicts.  Sometimes, moral considerations are in conflict for different people in a particular situation.  Indeed, moral conflicts are nearly ubiquitous in civil discourse.  An example might be the fishing rights of indigenous people, where their need for sustenance competes with the need to protect wild fishing stocks.  Other examples might include conscientious objections to military service, restricting the liberty to own guns to improve public safety, requiring vaccinations and masking in certain jobs to prevent the spread of disease, or setting immigration quotas for asylum and resettlement.

As an atheist, humanist and western liberal, there are some common notions of morality that I reject.  I reject nationalism and patriotism.  I reject restrictive norms of sexual identity and behavior, except for actions involving minors, actions with those incapable of knowledgeable consent, relationships with a power differential, and relationships which cause harm to others in a committed relationship.  Otherwise, the moral value of personal liberty should prevail.  

I recognize truth, self-care, and liberty as core moral values of a different kind.  These are values which do not directly benefit or harm other people or nature, but exist as moral values for their own sake.  These values are sometimes in conflict with other values, such as when a doctor must comfort a dying patient, or times when self-care is in conflict with serving others.  

There is one value, one of the top four values in my opinion, for which mystical religions are clearly immoral.  That value is truth.  As I hope to show in the final essays for this blog, mystical religion fails every test of rationally determined truth.  

Truth is part of morality, and religion isn’t true.  Therefore, I conclude that religion is immoral.
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The image of Dudley Do-Right and Snidely Whiplash is used without permission and not for profit.  It will be removed upon request.  This seems like a sufficient moral accommodation.

Atheism and Morality, part 1, Where Does Morality Come From?

Christians sometimes ask atheists, “If you don’t believe in God, how can you be a moral person?”  

The question is really two questions.  First, how do you know what is moral without being told by a religious authority?  Second, how do you control your impulses without the threat of divine punishment?  I will consider the first question in this post, and the second question in the next.

The entire question is vague, because “a moral person” is poorly defined and is up for considerable debate.  If the chosen definition of a moral person involves religious observance, then no, an atheist is not going to fit that definition of morality.  But any thoughtful person can independently determine what is moral and what is not.  I have found that atheists, accustomed to thinking for themselves, are typically more considerate of right and wrong than religious people.  

 

Angel Aziraphale & Demon Crowley, from Good Omens, by N. Gaiman and T. Pratchett

I settled in to do a small bit of research for this post, and quickly realized that I could fall into a very deep rabbit-hole without adding any clarity about the subject.  So I will take a shallow look at the meaning of morality and then address the question of how atheists can be moral people.  

There’s a growing body of academic work on the topic of morality.  The research is focused on the development of morality with maturity, and cross cultural patterns of accepted morality.  There are a few core values across cultures that are widely regarded as moral, though the list of values is by no means settled.  This post will look at the development of moral thinking, moral foundation theory, the Ten Commandments, my own thoughts about morality, and finally, the relationship of morality to atheism.

Development of Moral Thinking
Lawrence Kohlberg (1958) built on the work of Jean Piaget (1932) in looking at the development of moral thinking in children.  Kohlberg defined a hierarchy of six levels of moral development, beginning with the thinking of young children, and continuing to the thinking in (some) adults.  In summary, the six levels represent a growth in care and respect for others.  These include the values of physical well-being, property rights, and liberty.  With increasing maturity, there is an overall decrease in the acceptance of authoritarian guidance on morality, and an increase in independent thought and action relative to morality.  

Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development

Moral Foundations Theory
Moral Foundations Theory is a 21st century attempt to categorize moral precepts across cultures.  It was proposed to counter the “developmental rationalist” approach by Kohlberg.  The Moral Foundations authors identify six core values across cultures: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, Sanctity and Liberty; the converse of these values represent immorality.  Earlier work had identified the areas of autonomy, community and divinity as representing cross-cultural clusters of moral concern.  

The Moral Foundation authors remain open to additions or deletions of these core values.  Not surprisingly, there are disputes regarding moral variation across cultures and additional proposed core values.  Other proposed values include efficiency, ownership (property rights), honesty and equity (separate from fairness(?)).  The discourse with respect to Moral Foundations has taken on a decidedly political turn, with conservative and liberal views being argued and amended over what qualifies as fairness in economic distribution.  Certain views of morality appear to be reverse-engineered from self-interest, which is a long way from the authors’ original concept of universal morality.  

The Ten Commandments
Conservative Christians often cite the Ten Commandments as the foundation of morality.  Like the Greek myth that Prometheus gave fire to humanity, there is a Christian myth that God gave morality to humanity.  Conservatives frequently campaign to post the commandments in courts and schools, ignoring the glaring illegality of doing so.  The First Amendment prohibits establishment of a state-sponsored religion, and posting the Ten Commandments in official government facilities would clearly violate that ban.

Ten Commandments, von Carolsfeld, 1850

With that aside, let’s consider what values are expressed by the Ten Commandments.  I will  note that the subdivision and numbering of the commandments is vague and not universally agreed upon.  I will use the traditional Christian numbers for this discussion.  

The first four commandments concern the relationship between God and humans.  Certain behaviors are required or prohibited as a form of respect toward God.   The remaining six concern relationships between people.  Here is the list, and the values represented by the commandments.

        You shall have no other gods before me.           Relationship to God.
        You shall not worship any graven image.           Relationship to God.
        Do not take the name of God in vain.                Relationship to God.
        Remember the Sabbath.                                  Relationship to God.
        Honor your father and mother.                          Respect and fairness.
        You shall not kill.                                           Care, avoidance of harm, respect, civil order.
        You shall not commit adultery.                        Sexual behavior, purity, respect, clear inheritance.
        You shall not steal.                                        Property rights, respect, civil order.
        You shall not bear false witness.                     Truth, fairness, civil order.
        You shall not covet your neighbor’s things.        Property rights, civil order.

So we see that the Ten Commandments include generally acknowledged elements of morality, involving respect and care for others.  But the Commandments begin, in a prioritized order, with moral sentiments that are explicitly rejected by atheists as nonsensical.  The remaining commandments, while dealing with aspects of fairness and respect, also show that maintaining civil order is also a priority of the commandments.

Moses Breaking the Tablets of the Law, Gustave Dore, 1866

My Take on Morality
Since there is no clear definition of morality, it’s fair that I weigh in with what morality means to me.  I generally agree with the ideas in the Development of Moral Thinking theory.  I agree with some ideas in the Foundations of Moral Thinking theory, but with the caveat that the moral consensus has changed radically over time, and will probably continue to change.  Some part of the moral consensus will soon be judged to be incorrect.  Historically, there has been a consensus about a patriarchal morality across many cultures, but modern western cultures would find many of those ideas unjust.  Consensus and tradition are insufficient; we have to think about these things from the perspective of human values.

The clearest moral principles reflect respect and care for other people.  Many religions contain these principles.  It has been said that the Golden Rule is intrinsic to all religions.  Like the Golden Rule, moral principles can be independently derived by anyone of sufficient intelligence and maturity.  Above all, universal moral principles should reflect care and respect for other people.  “Other people” includes those of different races, ethnicity, beliefs, origin, sexual identity or orientation, age, near and far, and people in the future.  Aspects of that respect should include safety, health and well-being, property rights and liberty, including freedom of sexual orientation and identity. Morality should also include self-care, and care for animals and nature for their own sake.

A few years ago, I initiated a project to identify the core values for the Alaska Democratic party, and to write those values into the state platform.  I interviewed about 40 Democrats, and asked about their  values.   It was clear that there was a strong consensus about key values, but often expressed in different words.  I identified related values and grouped those into six core values.  After some valuable editing, my six core values were named as Empathy, Truth, Equity, Service, Progress, and Responsibility.    A seventh value, Ethics, was added in the editing process.   I also see Ethics as the intersection of Truth and Responsibility.  

Included in each value are other facets which relate to the named core value.  For example, Empathy includes compassion, kindness and generosity.  Truth includes integrity, honesty and accountability.  Equity is a broad value, including fairness, justice, democracy, intentional inclusiveness, equal opportunity, human dignity, diversity, and respect.  Responsibility means taking action for good and ensuring that we create a better world for others and nature, now and in the future.  In the words of Thomas Jefferson, these values are self-evident, without needing the imprimatur of religious authority.  Like the Golden Rule, these values can be derived independently by anyone.  To expand this list to a list of universal morality, I would add respect for nature and animals, self-care, and liberty.  

My list of moral core values is expanded somewhat from the values of the Alaska Democratic Party.  Moral core values include Empathy, Truth, Justice (renamed from Equity), Service, Progress, Responsibility, Respect for Nature and Animals, Self-Care, and Liberty.  To me, those values are founded in care for others, and form the core of morality.  

Other Aspects of Morality
As seen in literature, theater, art, and music, humans are intensely interested in all aspects of love and mating.  For many people across many cultures, morality is directly connected to notions of sexual behavior and gender norms.  If you Google images of "morality", you find iconography of right and wrong; but if you Google for "immorality", you will find an overwhelming majority of references to sexuality.  Note that many of those moral norms reflect patriarchal repression of women and rejection of human gender diversity.  Over the past two centuries, the notion of what is moral for women has changed significantly in western cultures, and notions of what is moral in gender identity has changed radically in the past two decades.  Those changes are reverberating around the globe, as seen in global television dramas.  Still, there is a wide divergence in the perceived morality of women’s dress codes between Taliban Afghanistan and St. Tropez.  There’s a wide gap between the perceived morality of gay marriage between Waco, Texas and San Francisco, or trans-gender rights between Franklin, Tennessee and Key West, Florida.

There is a wide range of perceived morality of dress among different cultures.

Sexual behavior should be judged in the same way as other aspects of morality, in terms of the respect or harm to others caused by different behaviors.  Sexual actions involving minors, or others incapable of knowledgeable consent are clearly immoral, because of the harm caused and the exploitation of a power imbalance.  Sexual relations or pressure in situations with a power imbalance are also clearly immoral.  Relationships which cause harm to those in committed relationships are also immoral.  Sexual relations which result in children create moral obligations.  Children deserve a loving home, ideally with two parents, and sex without fulfilling that responsibility when a child is born would be immoral.  Sexual relationships are complicated, but as for other moral questions, the morality of a situation can be judged according to standards of care and respect.

What about other issues deemed immoral, such as LGBTQ+ rights?  No one is harmed by LGBTQ+ rights.  On the other hand, religious proscriptions on sexuality cause considerable harm to the non-heterosexual community.  

Community standards on dress can be appropriate to a social setting, or can be repressive.  A reasoned judgment can be made about whether it is moral to prohibit wearing a hoodie in the US Senate, or allow not wearing a hijab on the street.  The balance between community standards and personal freedom is on-going in society, and should be addressed from the perspective of who or what is harmed, and at what cost of personal liberty.  

Throughout history, men have largely been responsible for determining codes of morality for women.  This is well-illustrated by the photo of G.W. Bush, surrounded by his old, male advisors, signing into law the United States’ prohibition on so-called partial birth abortions.  Without going into the morality of a procedure which might be required to save a woman’s life in an impossible delivery, I would simply note that no women were included in the celebratory signing ceremony.  It seems to me that deciding moral standards on women’s reproductive rights and issues should necessarily involve women.

G.W. Bush, signing a restriction on abortion procedures, 2003.

Are credit-card interest rates of 18% moral?  I would say no.  We used to have laws against excessive interest rates.
Is is okay to lie on a credit application?  No.  
Is it okay to lie to comfort a dying patient?  Yes.

Morality is simply a question of fundamental human values, applied to questions of behavior and societal norms.  In all of these questions of morality, religion has no role.
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References
Kohlberg's Stages of Moral Development
https://www.simplypsychology.org/kohlberg.html

Moral Foundations Theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_foundations_theory

https://crossexamined.org/can-atheism-account-for-objective-morality/

https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/the-nature-of-morality

https://www.yourmorals.org/

The image of Aziraphale and Crowley from "Good Omens", by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is used without permission and not for profit.  It will be removed upon request. 
Go read the book and see the mini-series.  The story is wonderful.

Acceptance of Atheism in America

                                                       Imagine there's no heaven
                                                       It's easy if you try
                                                       No hell below us
                                                       Above us, only sky

                                                       Imagine there's no countries
                                                       It isn't hard to do
                                                       Nothing to kill or die for
                                                       And no religion, too
                                                                Imagine, by John Lennon, 1971

John Lennon’s “Imagine” is a unique, remarkable song.  Contrary to Steve Martin’s assertion, “Atheists Don’t Got Any Songs”, in fact, atheists have this one extraordinary song.  I’m surprised at the success and popularity of Imagine.  It was ranked among the most-performed songs of the 20th century, ranked #3 on Rolling Stone’s 2004 list of the greatest songs of all time, has been performed or covered by over 200 major artists and was featured in ceremonies of three Olympics.

The popularity of “Imagine” is surprising because it is an atheist anthem in a society which generally shuns and despises atheists.  Polling and social research both show that a large segment of the population deeply mistrusts atheists.  However, like various other minorities and “out groups”, such as Blacks, LGBTQ+, Latino, south and east Asian and other immigrants, atheists are gradually gaining more acceptance in America.

Political Polling
A series of Gallop polls dating back to 1958 tested the acceptance of various out-groups as potential presidential candidates.  The polls asked participants whether they would vote for a well-qualified candidate from their own party, if that candidate were a member of an out-group.  In 2019, an atheist was the most objectionable minority as a presidential candidate, relative to Black, Catholic, Hispanic, woman, Jewish, evangelical Christian, gay, lesbian, young, old, or Muslim hypothetical candidates.  Only a socialist would poll worse than an atheist as a potential candidate.

Nevertheless, there is progress in acceptance of atheism.  In 1958, Gallop found that only 18 percent of American voters would consider an atheist as a potential president.  That number held steady in the mid-40 percent range from the 1980s to 2007, but has risen in recent years to 60 percent.  That said, acceptance of atheists is lagging the acceptance of other out-groups by two-to-six decades.

Decline of Traditional Religion
Polling shows decreasing adherence to traditional religion, across all ages and political affiliation.  Specific numbers are hard to tabulate, due to the personal sensitivity of the topic, and aversion to self-identification as an atheist.  Given the European history of atheist barbecues and torture, that reluctance may be well-founded.  Polling numbers for self-identification of atheists also suffer from nuances of language, and the failure to discriminate between atheists and agnostics.

The decline in traditional religion is mostly a 21st century phenomenon.  As recently as 1996, 96 percent of Americans said they believed in God or a universal spirit, about  the same percentage as in 1947.  Since 2000, increasing numbers of older and conservative citizens identify as spiritual but not religious.  And among younger and liberal citizens, increasing numbers identify as neither spiritual nor religious.

An overwhelming majority of citizens still identifies as either religious or spiritual.  In the 2023 poll, 47% identified as religious, 33% identified as spiritual, 2% identified as both.  Only 18% identified as neither religious nor spiritual.  This is a strong increase from around 10% at the beginning of the millennium, but still a small minority.

There’s a significant cohort which denies the existence of God but still avoids self-identification as an atheist.  In a 2015 poll, only 3% of those surveyed identified as atheists, but 9% denied the existence of God or a universal spirit.  This may simply reflect a failure to provide “agnostic” as a polling option, or may reflect reluctance to openly admit to disbelief, an aversion to the label of atheist, or some nuance of belief or language.

Social scientists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle conducted a series of clever experiments designed to determine the percentage of individuals who are reluctant to admit they are atheist, even in an anonymous opinion survey.  Their results suggest that 26% of Americans are atheists, but that more than half of them refuse to say so.  

Atheism and Morality
In 2023, a Pew Research Poll showed that 65% of Americans said that it is not necessary to believe in God to be a moral person.  The remaining 34% said that a person must believe in God to be moral.  Pew noted that these percentages varied by the strength of religious and political affiliation, and age.  Responses across all other countries surveyed, averaged near the American results, but with a wide range, generally depending upon relative wealth and the degree of religious conservatism.  In earlier polls, Pew noted that majorities in many countries considered that belief in God was necessary for morality.  Those majorities were strongest in poorer countries.

 

Like the political polling, Pew’s results over time show a growing acceptance of atheism in America.  In general, there has been a two-decade trend of increasing acceptance of atheism.  Nevertheless, there is still a strong core of people, representing about one-third of the population, who believe that atheists are intrinsically immoral people.

Social Science
Social scientists have researched acceptance of atheists in society, in this country and others.  The research uses proven but indirect methods for identifying conscious and unconscious bias.  Researchers deliberately chose progressively more provocative associations in an effort to elicit clear results.  

Studies of intuitive perception performed by Will Gervais, University of Kentucky, showed that a significant percentage of people (up to 60%) associated atheists with various kinds of immoral behavior.  In every test, subjects were far more likely to have negative views of atheists than any other religious, social or ethnic group.  Curiously, a larger percentage of atheists themselves associated atheists with immoral behavior than members of established religions.

A higher percentage of Gervais’ subjects (60%) considered that an atheist was likely to be an untrustworthy, opportunistic thief, than any other religious or ethnic group.  Interestingly, atheists were regarded as more likely to cheat and steal than rapists (50%).  The third highest association was for feminists (30%), higher than any religious affiliation.  Gervais subjects also considered that an atheist was more likely to engage in consensual incest (50%, 2.5x higher than other religious groups) or sexual perversion (60%, 3x higher than ethnic groups).

Gervais said, “I wanted to come up with one unambiguously immoral description…[I was] basically trying to come up with something so bad that people wouldn’t think an atheist would do it.”   Gervais’ last survey tested associations with a pathologically sadistic serial killer.  Fifty percent of Gervais’ subjects could potentially associate that description with an atheist.  Interesting, of the religious groups tested, the second most likely association was Christian, ahead of Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish or Muslim.  

Social science shows that there is still deeply ingrained bias against atheists in the American populace.  Atheists lag behind acceptance of ethnic groups, immigrants, LGBTQ+, and the entire spectrum of religious groups.  

Coming Out as an Atheist
I recently watched the delightful Pixar short film, “Out”, about a gay man coming out to his parents.  It made me wonder, for adults of any age, which would be the most difficult to say to conservative parents: “I’m gay.”, “I’m a Democrat”, or “I’m an atheist”?  Looking at the social science experiments, I suspect the most difficult of those would be “I’m an atheist”.   I am openly atheistic on Twitter, where virtually none of my family or older friends can see my views.  I conceal my atheism on Facebook, where religious family and friends see my posts.  

It seems to me that religious people see atheists as a threat to their beliefs, as well as intrinsically immoral.  I can imagine a conversation with my friends from my childhood church.  “Well, WHY are you an atheist?”  I would then point out that religion contains inescapable logical contradictions and that there is no factual basis for religion.  At that point, they would feel that I was attacking their beliefs.  There’s no way to explain self-identification as an atheist without saying that religion makes no damn sense.

Atheism is one of the least accepted forms of self-identification in America today.  Acceptance is growing, but for now, it seems best to stay in the closet, if I would like to retain my relationships with family and old friends.

Imagine
The closing lines of John Lennon’s “Imagine” are hopeful.  It’s an acknowledgement that there are others in the world who don’t believe in religion.  It is an invitation to let go of things that don’t make sense, adherence to abusive institutions and beliefs that cause conflict and destruction.   I hope someday you’ll join us and the world will be as one.

                                            “You may say I'm a dreamer
                                            But I'm not the only one
                                            I hope someday you'll join us
                                            And the world will be as one”
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The image of John Lennon's "Imagine" album cover is used without permission but not for profit. 
It will be removed upon request.

References
Political Polling
https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx
https://news.gallup.com/poll/254120/less-half-vote-socialist-president.aspx
https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx
https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2015/08/10/431205042/should-we-distrust-atheists

Other Polling
https://news.gallup.com/poll/511133/identify-religious-spiritual.aspx
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/13/15258496/american-atheists-how-many
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1997/05/31/poll-finds-america-as-churched-as-ever/f5e38ee3-2560-4680-b926-e2829c0c23f1/

Atheism and Morality
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/20/many-people-in-u-s-other-advanced-economies-say-its-not-necessary-to-believe-in-god-to-be-moral/
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/07/20/the-global-god-divide/
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2017/10/16/a-growing-share-of-americans-say-its-not-necessary-to-believe-in-god-to-be-moral/
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2014/03/13/worldwide-many-see-belief-in-god-as-essential-to-morality/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2005/01/24/politics-and-values-in-a-51-48-nation/
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2003/07/10/god-and-foreign-policy-the-religious-divide-between-the-us-and-europe/
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2002/03/20/part-1-religion-in-america/

Intuitive Perception
Popular Perceptions of Atheists, Will Gervais, University of Kentucky
Breaking New Ground in the Science and Religion Dialogue Workshop, University of Texas, 8/3/2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrjw6bBOqR0&t=1195s

Other Resources
https://www.cfequality.org/issues/data
https://www.baylor.edu/baylorreligionsurvey/doc.php/292546.pdf
https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/01/03/faith-on-the-hill-2023/

Atheism and Fellowship

 “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs” - Steve Martin

My grandfather had a number of jobs in his lifetime.  He was a Methodist missionary, an English teacher at a Christian boys’ school in Japan, a professor of religion, founding director of the World Council of Churches World Literacy Program (“Lit-Lit”), president of the Pacific School of Religion and author of several books.  His best-known book “This Revolutionary Faith”, was written in 1956.  Writing a few years after Maslow developed his hierarchy of human needs, in this book Grandpa laid out a similar framework for missionary work.  According to my grandfather, people need food, shelter, health, education, and fellowship, and all of these needs come before religion.  A missionary must work to satisfy these primary needs before proselytizing for a particular faith.  Of course, by working to fulfill human needs and living an exemplary life, the missionary is building a foundation so that religious faith will be well regarded.  When religion is finally introduced to a group of people who have found fellowship together, it is much easier to find collective acceptance of the new faith.

Atheism cannot be a binding philosophy in the same way as religion.  It has been said that atheism is a worldview in the same way that not skiing is a hobby.  

Atheism isn’t a movement.  Atheism has no meetings, no music, no collective recitations, no study groups and no buildings.  Atheism has no particular associations or collective goals.  There is no institution that draws atheists together and provides the critical human need of fellowship.  Atheism does not and cannot provide the same social experiences that religion provides so well.  Atheism also does not provide hope for a better life or comfort in times of loss or death.  

Atheists experience social stigma and rejection, something I will explore further in a future post.  In an era of increasing acceptance of human differences, including a wider range of religious beliefs, sexual orientation and gender identification, atheism remains one of the last issues of personal identification to reach social acceptance.  Atheists are still in the closet.  I do not dare to reveal my atheism on Facebook among my religious childhood friends and extended family.  In part, this is because religious people consider any discussion of atheism to be an attack on their beliefs.  

“"I'm atheist. I know that when you die, there's no heaven, so that really bums me out.  I wish I could be Christian and say I'm going to heaven but I know I'm not.  It sucks to know the truth”
- Bree Olson, former pornographic movie actress

Why, then, would someone choose to be an atheist, rather than accept the happiness that comes from church fellowship, the joy in the music, and social support?  It is because religion has a single, fatal flaw.  It isn’t true.  

For those of us who hold the value of truth among our highest lodestars in life, it is simply not possible to accept the comfort of religion.  I think that for many people, there’s a mental compromise, attending church for the friendship, ritual, fellowship, music and activities, but retaining a private core of agnosticism.  They pragmatically avoid thinking about it.  Others struggle to find a comfort zone between their beliefs and the beliefs required by the church community.  

For me, at a certain point late in my life, it became necessary to decide my own belief as documented in this blog.  Luckily for me, my spouse and children agree with me, and each came to atheism as their own belief.  Family does not replace outside fellowship and community, but at least this is not a topic for conflict.

Atheists need community and fellowship, like all humans.  We are social creatures.  For us, it is necessary to find that fellowship in other venues – book clubs, sports, cards or other games, music, etc.  We need to find fellowship in institutions other than church.  We will just not join others in reciting creeds that we know are not true.
---
Atheists Don't Have Any Songs, by Steve Martin

“Christians have their hymns and pages.
Hava Nagila's for the Jews.
Baptists have the Rock of Ages.
Atheists just sing the blues.

Romantics play Claire de Lune.
Born-Agains sing “He is risen.”
But no one ever wrote a tune
For godless existentialism.

For Atheists,
There's no good news.
They'll never sing
A song of faith.
...
Atheists
Atheists
Atheists
Don't have no songs!” 

from “Atheists Don’t Have No Songs”, by Steve Martin
--
Image credit: Runner1928 - Own work, in Wikimedia,
A Lutheran Divine Service in the United States, cropped.

Is Injustice in the Bible a Reason to Disbelieve?

The preceding five posts of this blog concern the Judeo-Christian Bible.  Perhaps that is too much, given the global existence of other religious and spiritual traditions.  The time I’ve spent on these posts reflects my own background as a Christian and the importance of the Bible in American culture.  The Bible itself is often cited by Christians as the ultimate authority on questions of religion, behavior and government without noticing the circular reasoning.  I concentrated on this topic, because, if the Bible is shown to be without moral or divine authority, then the religious conclusions drawn from Bible study are also void.

My posts on the Bible discussed various aspects of Biblical injustice: genocide; tribalism; divine extortion and intimidation; misogyny and sexism.  Indeed, these topics have barely scratched the surface of divinely administered injustice in the Bible.  There is the slaughter of innocent Egyptian children (Exodus), the slaughter of innocents in Sodom & Gomorrah and Noah’s Flood (Genesis), the disproportionate punishment of Lot’s wife, and disproportionate punishment of those condemned to eternal suffering in Hell (Matthew, Mark, Thessalonians, and Revelations).  The book of Job anticipates the plot of the movie “Trading Places”, where God and Satan have a wager about the consequences of ruining Job’s life.  The consequences of the wager include collateral damage: the death of Job’s children, servants and livestock.  Is there any regard for the lives of the innocents when God is punishing opponents or playing a game with Satan?  

Saint Paul writes in 2nd Timothy 3:16, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness.”  How can we say that the Bible is divinely inspired if it contains a single example of such injustice?  Indeed, the injustice is ubiquitous, spread throughout the Old and New Testaments, though, to be fair, the New Testament is generally less objectionable than the Old Testament.  To make sense of the Bible in terms of justice, we are forced to cherry-pick the best passages: justice for the down-trodden (Beatitudes, Matthew 5:3-12, Luke 6:20-22), love, (1st Corinthians 13), balance in life, (Ecclesiastes 3), and caring for the least of Jesus brothers (Matthew 25: 35-40).  But nearby or adjacent to these verses, we find some deep injustices.  If we hold the value of justice, we have to reject a divine origin for the Biblical texts.  The bad parts are flawed human injustice and the good parts are human wisdom.

You may have noticed that I did not list Psalm 23 or similar texts in my short list of “good verses”.  If you google “favorite bible verses”, you will find many, many verses promising God’s protection and comfort.  If these are comforting to people, why do I not consider them good verses?  It is because they aren’t true.  An earlier post on this site is called “Regarding the Power of Prayer, or Did the People on the Titanic Forget to Pray?”  Simply looking at the lives and deaths of other humans around us, it’s clear that there is no protection by God in this world.  Thus, the promises of God’s protection in the Bible are simply untrue, offering false complacency about the hazards of life.  

The Bible contains its own refutation as divinely inspired guidance for life.

Previous Posts on the Bible

Sexism in the New Testament

https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2023/08/sexism-in-new-testament.html

Misogyny in the Old Testament; Deuteronomy 20 - 22, Numbers 5

https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/11/old-testament-rarely-heard-bible-verses.html

Tribalism in The Old Testament; Deuteronomy 7, 20, 21

https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible.html

The Protection Racket in the Old Testament; Leviticus 26

https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible.html

Religious Genocide in the Old Testament, Deuteronomy 13

https://sensibledisbelief.blogspot.com/2017/10/the-old-testament-rarely-heard-bible_29.html