Michael Goldhaber: Atheism and Peace
Mary Keller wrote: From this perspective the a-theist is signifying the significance of their location in the world. When someone tells me, as you did, that they are an atheist I hear "I don't need God. I don't count on transcendentals. I am happy to become worm food. I'm not looking for wings." From my perspective the atheist and the theist are both exercising the cognitive desire to map out the significance of their location in the world.
Mary, I mistook your original position, it would seem, but here you mistake mine, and that of many atheists. [FOOTNOTE: Taken literally, a disbelief in god does not necessitate a disbelief in an afterlife (e.g., the original Buddhism, in which to be released from the cycle of reincarnation was a major goal) nor vice versa (Torah Judaism has “G-d” but no mention of an afterlife; on the holiest day of Yom Kippur, one prays only “to be inscribed in the book of life for another year,” i.e. not to die within the year.) But ignore these subtleties.]
Atheists believe there is no god. This has nothing to do with what they would like. Further, as an atheist, along with many others, I would not be happy to become worm food, in two ways. First, “I” will not exist after death (except in the minds of others). My dead body will not contain not myself; the self will have ceased.
Second, the prospect of death does not make me happy, but, no matter what I might want, heaven does not seem to be available as an alternative. Many atheists wish to avoid death simply by remaining alive. Some, such as Ray Kurzweil, think that we have reached, or shortly will reach, a time, when, at least for a fortunate few, life expectancy increases by more than a year every year, due primarily to medical advances, so living “forever” may become a scientific possibility.
Thus, for many atheists, life, at least their own, can become an “ultimate value.” Like other ultimate values, if taken alone, this can be dangerous. Some people may ruthlessly harvest others’ organs, for example. However, most recognize that acting to prevent murder and against violence can be mutually beneficial. Thus, I think it is no accident that where religion has most waned, in Western Europe, we also find, on the whole, quite little support for war, in comparison with the past.
The commonplace proverb “there are no atheists in a foxhole,” can be taken two ways. The common one, of course, is that being in foxhole under fire leads to prayer. The other is this: Without religious feeling, why give up your life, the most precious thing you have?
The fact is that much of western Europe’s long history of war and conquest was quite explicitly religious: the “reconquista” of the Iberian peninsula, the various crusades, the eastward expansion of the Teutonic knights, the thirty-years’ war, much of the move into Mexico, Cnetral and South America, the Puritans in New England, the American Civil War, etc. Perhaps later the religion of “the nation” (the “Motherland” or the “Fatherland”) or the pseudo-religions of Nazism or Marxism (both of which imposed belief) to some degree held sway. Now with social democracy, and no imposed religion, nor imposed atheism, Western Europeans seem to have become much more peace-loving.
Here in the United States, most military recruits and support for the current war come from areas where religion is also strong — chiefly the South and Midwestern and other rural areas. But, implicitly, even Bush recognized, for all his rhetoric that “we are at war,” that ordinary Americans are sufficiently atheistic in reality that they do not want to make any personal sacrifices whatsoever in this war.
> Michael Goldhaber
Mary, I mistook your original position, it would seem, but here you mistake mine, and that of many atheists. [FOOTNOTE: Taken literally, a disbelief in god does not necessitate a disbelief in an afterlife (e.g., the original Buddhism, in which to be released from the cycle of reincarnation was a major goal) nor vice versa (Torah Judaism has “G-d” but no mention of an afterlife; on the holiest day of Yom Kippur, one prays only “to be inscribed in the book of life for another year,” i.e. not to die within the year.) But ignore these subtleties.]
Atheists believe there is no god. This has nothing to do with what they would like. Further, as an atheist, along with many others, I would not be happy to become worm food, in two ways. First, “I” will not exist after death (except in the minds of others). My dead body will not contain not myself; the self will have ceased.
Second, the prospect of death does not make me happy, but, no matter what I might want, heaven does not seem to be available as an alternative. Many atheists wish to avoid death simply by remaining alive. Some, such as Ray Kurzweil, think that we have reached, or shortly will reach, a time, when, at least for a fortunate few, life expectancy increases by more than a year every year, due primarily to medical advances, so living “forever” may become a scientific possibility.
Thus, for many atheists, life, at least their own, can become an “ultimate value.” Like other ultimate values, if taken alone, this can be dangerous. Some people may ruthlessly harvest others’ organs, for example. However, most recognize that acting to prevent murder and against violence can be mutually beneficial. Thus, I think it is no accident that where religion has most waned, in Western Europe, we also find, on the whole, quite little support for war, in comparison with the past.
The commonplace proverb “there are no atheists in a foxhole,” can be taken two ways. The common one, of course, is that being in foxhole under fire leads to prayer. The other is this: Without religious feeling, why give up your life, the most precious thing you have?
The fact is that much of western Europe’s long history of war and conquest was quite explicitly religious: the “reconquista” of the Iberian peninsula, the various crusades, the eastward expansion of the Teutonic knights, the thirty-years’ war, much of the move into Mexico, Cnetral and South America, the Puritans in New England, the American Civil War, etc. Perhaps later the religion of “the nation” (the “Motherland” or the “Fatherland”) or the pseudo-religions of Nazism or Marxism (both of which imposed belief) to some degree held sway. Now with social democracy, and no imposed religion, nor imposed atheism, Western Europeans seem to have become much more peace-loving.
Here in the United States, most military recruits and support for the current war come from areas where religion is also strong — chiefly the South and Midwestern and other rural areas. But, implicitly, even Bush recognized, for all his rhetoric that “we are at war,” that ordinary Americans are sufficiently atheistic in reality that they do not want to make any personal sacrifices whatsoever in this war.
> Michael Goldhaber