The Atheist Dogma On Abortion

While I am in the main opposed to organised religion, I don't believe that everything (say) the Catholic Church opposes must therefore be supported by rationalists and atheists. Yes, religious beliefs often distort concepts of morality in very ugly ways, but this is not an infallibly predictable rule.

There is a Facebook site I subscribe to called "Atheist Quotes of the Day" (AQOTD). Normally, the posts here are the warm and fuzzy attacks on religious dogma and superstition that I enjoy. Recently, however, there have appeared some posts in favour of abortion, and these have not been greeted with the same degree of agreement even by the ..er.. faithful.

I have always been highly uncomfortable with abortion. I believe it is not a subject that has clear demarcations between right and wrong, and one of the mistakes made by hard-liners on either side of the debate is in assuming that there is a clear line and the other side is just not seeing it.

My point is that the line, if there is one, is highly blurred. Making an unequivocal statement of right and wrong is naive at best and dangerously arrogant at worst. So I don't want to see legislation outlawing abortion, and at the same time, I wouldn't want to see people accepting an abortion as nothing more serious than the extraction of an inconvenient tooth. (See what I did there? "An inconvenient tooth", get it?). Obviously, I would support abortion in cases of rape and incest, and also when the life of the mother is threatened. These are absolutely non-controversial to me. What makes me say "Not so fast!" is the hard-line feminist argument that a woman's body is her own and therefore there can be no questioning of a woman's decision to abort the child she is carrying inside her body under any circumstances.

I think we need to look at abortion not as a crime but as an ethical issue. That should take some of the heat out of the debate while still keeping us from turning our backs on it. I also strongly believe we should take religion out of the debate and rely on reason and empathy alone. I think reason and empathy form the necessary and sufficient foundation for a moral worldview. Religion only muddies the waters. As Arthur C Clarke said,

The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.

Abortion should be seen as a moral issue, not a religious one. And (surprise!) atheists can have morals too. The most recent post on AQOTD that spurred me to respond showed a petri dish containing human eggs (it wasn't clear whether they were fertilised or not). The site's owner had posted a rather arrogant (I thought) statement under it: "These are not human beings. Any questions?"

Edict from the High Church of Atheism: "These are not human beings. Any questions?"

This was the proverbial last straw. I can understand dogma from the religious, but dogma from atheists?

It's a little like the vegetarian debate, which again should be divorced from religion. There are people who are strict vegans and do not favour any kind of human imposition on the animal kingdom, the "ordinary" vegetarians (lacto-vegetarians), the ovo-lacto-vegetarians who will not eat fertilised eggs (and those who will), people who will eat fish and poultry but not red meat, people who will eat "regular" meat but not dogs, cats, horses and monkeys, those who will eat anything that moves except humans, and of course, cannibals. To each group of people, those further "ahead" of them seem weird and/or immoral, and those "behind" them are unnecessarily squeamish and should get with the program.

It's a bit like the saying about driving - anyone driving slower than you is an idiot; anyone driving faster than you is a maniac.

The resolution to all of these issues is the recognition that there is no single line that divides the acceptable from the unacceptable. Real life is messy, and different people (however rational and intelligent) will fail to agree on where to draw the line. Each will draw it in a slightly different place, and we must learn to accept some degree of difference in our approaches to ethical issues without condemning people as either immoral or superstitious.

When thinking about how to respond to the AQOTD post, I weighed several response styles from humorous to sarcastic and finally settled on a tone of civilised reason:

"So, after the non-controversial arguments against believing in imaginary friends, we have now moved on to the more controversial topic of human morality. As rational people, how can we be expected to accept someone else's line on morality without thinking for ourselves?

Hear me out. 100% of rationalists would agree that the killing of unfertilised eggs or of sperms is not murder. Also, 100% of rationalists would agree that the killing of a new-born baby is murder. Clearly, all of us have crossed over from "not murder" to "murder" at some point along the development of the human foetus.

Is this point conception (the point before which development into a complete human was impossible)?

Is it the development of discernible organs (when we begin to feel empathy for something like ourselves)?

Is it the development of a heartbeat (when we begin to think of the foetus as a living being and therefore capable of being "killed")?

Is it the development of the nervous system to the point of being able to feel pain (which again appeals to our empathy)?

Is it the development of the foetus to a point where it can be kept alive artificially outside the body of the mother (which makes it a complete and viable human being)?

No matter how we look at it, the 100% of rationalists who cross over from "not murder" to "murder" do so at different points, depending on their personal philosophies, which have nothing to do with god or religion (so don't insult anyone's intelligence by accusing them of religious beliefs).

It is naive to believe that there is a single line in the sand here after which 100% of rationalists will immediately cross over from "not murder" to "murder". We are all intelligent beings who believe in reason, but we need not all agree on everything, certainly not on something as blurry as the development of a human being from individual cells.

What I am asking for is an end to dogma and more respect for the views of other rationalists. "These are not human beings. Any questions?" sounds like an arrogant religious diktat from the High Church of Atheism. It is not respectful of the considered opinions of other rationalists and leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Let the atheist community not degenerate into another church with its own approved dogmas."

That should have kicked the hornet's nest good and proper :-). The angry buzzing must have started already. But I'm sure there will be plenty of people whose thoughts and sentiments I have expressed, so I'm not going to be alone.

Where Are You In The Moral Grid?

I have been thinking about this model of humanity for a while now. My attempts so far, to place adherents of organised religions, non-denominationally "spiritual" people and rationalists (agnostics and atheists) on some kind of spectrum or scale, have not been very satisfactory.

However, recent events have convinced me that the cornerstone of morality is empathy. It is precisely at points when people fail to show empathy that breaches of morality occur. No one who feels another's pain as their own would harm another in any way - whether through dishonesty, physical harm, cruel words or even a lack of positive action. This is "Do unto others..." in action. However, the principle does not owe its origin to the Bible or any religious text. Empathetic behaviour has been observed in primates and is most probably an evolutionarily favourable trait. Empathy, and therefore morality, pre-date any organised religion.

[It's important to emphasise that empathy does not imply abnegation, or the constant sacrificing of one's own interests for others. It merely means that one treats others as one treats oneself. In other words, we must be kind to ourselves as well as to other people. Overall, empathy is a fairer concept than either selfishness or martyrdom.]

Also, as I have commented before, I believe sexual behaviour by itself is morally neutral. It is only when one combines sexual desire with a callous disregard for the feelings of another person does one commit acts of sexual immorality. Infidelity, sexual harassment, molestation and rape fall into this category. However, homosexuality, non-marital sex between two consenting adults who have no prior commitments to third persons, masturbation and other sexual acts traditionally deemed by organised religions as "immoral" are not characterised by a lack of empathy (indeed, they may involve profoundly empathetic feelings), and hence they are not immoral. [While this is bound to be controversial, I don't believe that consensual polygamy is immoral either, for the same reason.]

I have also studied the phenomenon of psychopaths with some interest and alarm. Psychopaths are dangerous precisely because they have no delusions and lack the emotional weakness of attachment to other living beings. They are incapable of empathy, which is, I believe, the foundation of true morality. They are also supreme realists and therefore have no fear of God, hell, the afterlife or any other figment of religious imagination. Being cynical, they can fake emotion when appropriate and masterfully manipulate other people using a knowledge of their weaknesses. These traits are virtually super-powers in human society, and it is believed that a disproportionately large number of psychopaths are found at higher levels of organisations because they are the only ones cynical enough to lie, cheat, bully, manipulate and backstab their way there. A chilling thought.

When I added psychopaths to my previous line-up of people and viewed them through the two lenses of mystical beliefs and empathy, the picture became much clearer. This is how I think society should be classified in order to understand its relationship with morality. Click on the picture to enlarge.

This is the model that finally feels right to me. It makes concrete the reasons for my contempt of organised religions, i.e., because they are characterised by superstition and selfishness.

I place myself in the "Moral Atheist" cell. (I'm increasingly comfortable calling myself an Atheist and not just an Agnostic.)

I now also understand my strangely mixed feelings about "spiritual" people. I have no practical quarrel with them (indeed, they are the best of the other three kinds), and I have many friends in this category whom I like and respect very much.

However, I find the beliefs of "spiritual" people irrational because I cannot believe in mystical notions without proof. Fundamentally, I cannot believe in an immortal soul that outlives the physical body any more than a person can believe that Windows continues to run after they have shut down their computer. Functional MRI has demonstrated the specific areas of the brain that are responsible for various thoughts and feelings, and these aspects of consciousness consume measurable amounts of energy. Once brain cells die, it doesn't seem feasible to sustain the "consciousness" (i.e., thoughts and feelings) that a soul is supposed to be capable of. The hardware and the energy required for such computation are no longer in existence. Therefore, the notion of the immortal soul just doesn't make sense to me, and once this notion is demolished, the entire edifice of "spiritual" belief comes crashing down (although the empathy-based moral system should remain intact). That's why I use the word "spiritual" within quotes. There is probably no "spirit" to speak of.

But as I said, what I consider to be the delusions of "spiritual" people do not interfere in a practical way with our ability to coexist. If the world consisted of only "spiritual" people and moral atheists, there would be no need to look for a Heaven beyond this earth. Life would be extremely kind, gracious, loving and harmonious (with the occasional friendly philosophical debate about the existence of mystical things).

It's the presence of the two other groups that causes suffering and strife, and keeps earth from being heaven. We need different strategies to deal with Psychopaths and with Religious Adherents.

We cannot appeal to the empathy of psychopaths - they have none. We cannot scare or tempt them into pro-social behaviour through the sticks and carrots of a purported afterlife - they know it to be hogwash. In short, we cannot change them for the better. They are "perfectly evolved" predators in the manner of crocodiles or great white sharks.

We will need to protect ourselves against psychopaths by smoking them out and branding them. (I think it's fair to say, with just a touch of irony, that I have no empathy for psychopaths! What are known as "non-criminal psychopaths" are those, I believe, who haven't yet committed a crime or who haven't yet been caught for a crime that they have committed. Their congenitally conscienceless, selfish rationalism practically ensures immoral behaviour.) Although their prodigious manipulative skills help psychopaths elude detection through psychological testing, science seems nevertheless to have found a way to identify them - they lack a sense of smell. What a fortuitous coincidence! If there is a yellow sun that gives these villains their super-powers, there is also a green kyptonite to which they are vulnerable. The same mental impairment that prevents psychopaths from feeling empathy also prevents them from recognising smells, and that is how society must smoke them out, figuratively brand them on the forehead, and steer clear of them thereafter. If future neuroscientific advances can help psychopaths acquire the capacity for empathy afresh, then they could be re-admitted into society.

And that leaves the adherents of organised religions, collectively the most numerous group by far. Given their numerical dominance, the only thing that prevents the world from descending into utter anarchy is the fact that their behaviour largely mimics moral behaviour, thanks to the superstitions they believe in, which play on their greed and fear.

When these people do good, they generally do so in order to secure a better afterlife for themselves (whether the eternal heaven of the Abrahamic religions, or karmic credits for an inevitable rebirth as per the Dharmic religions). When they refrain from evil, they do so out of fear (of eternal hell or bad karma as the case may be). It is scary to think of how these people would behave if they should ever lose their faith in the mystical afterlife, since these imaginary carrots and sticks will then fail to ensure their good behaviour. The morality of religious people is a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons, and the harmony of a social system based on this foundation is a rather fragile one.

On the flip side, we have seen too many cases when religious dogma has caused people to commit immoral deeds, such as killing perceived blasphemers, or punishing those who violate religiously sanctioned codes around sexual behaviour (i.e., the harassment of homosexuals, stoning of "adulterers", etc.) These are cases where dogma trumps empathy, and many otherwise empathetic people go against their better natures because of their superstitious beliefs and peer pressure, and end up causing harm to other living beings.

I think there are three possible strategies to deal with Religious Adherents:

1. Contain - continue to use greed and fear to ensure good behaviour, i.e., exploit the notions of heaven and hell, or of karma, to make them behave in a fashion that roughly resembles true morality.
2. Sublimate - a better strategy would be to raise their thinking to a level beyond narrow dogma so that while they may retain their foundational superstitions (such as their belief in a soul, a God and a few others), they also begin to see the oneness of all humanity (indeed, all living creatures). In other words, turn them into "spiritual" people. Once empathy trumps dogma, they should begin to practise, rather than mimic, true morality.
3. Educate - best of all, make them realise the irrationality of their beliefs by convincing them that there is nothing beyond the physical world, and simultaneously, of the need for empathy. In other words, turn them into Moral Atheists. This is best done with children. Train schoolchildren relentlessly in the scientific method, emphasising the importance of evidence over blind belief. And since empathy is often a trained response, train them by example to be empathetic to others, not just towards their own kind but all living beings (except maybe the psychopaths who are by now locked safely away! - You can tell I don't like psychopaths :-).

If we can get the bulk of humanity into the top right-hand quadrant of the above diagram (traditionally the best place to be), we will have attained something close to what the spiritualists would call nirvana.

And that's my philosophical learning for the day.