Can You Be Moral Without God?

[Music] you don't believe in God your where's your whole Veronica that's just me talk I just what you want to believe if you're an atheist you're basing your goodness and morality or what where's your judgment cocking of judgment if you have no faith and how can I trust you with power if you don't pray that if is are in fact immoral this is nothing immoral if there's nothing in charge because everything becomes foul considering that atheism cannot possibly have any sense of absolute morality would not then be an irrational leap of faith which atheists themselves so harshly condemn for an atheist to decide between right and wrong I'm Laura by buying Rhoda died if I believe in the one who not an author a celestial place which is wonderful welcome to ask an atheist FFRF News Facebook live video where we will answer common questions and sometimes common insults as you just heard from that string of unflattering comments about non-believers and other free thinkers I'm Annie Laurie Gaylor and I'm Dan Barker Annie Laurie and I are cold presidents of the Freedom From Religion Foundation which produces this new weekly show I'm Andrew Seidel a constitutional attorney with FFRF and the topic of today's show is that perennial and insulting question that we non-believers hear all the time how can you be moral if you don't believe in God as we debunk the old myth that you can't be moral without God we invite you to post comments or questions right here on Facebook or you can send an email to ask an atheist at ffrs org or if you want to talk live to us you can Skype us at live : FFRF . studio and we'd love to talk with you in person so when you call in hang on you want to hold for a while we'll get to you as soon as we can we welcome questions from non believers as well as believers so if you have any religious friends or relatives invite them to join our show of all the Bugaboos about atheists agnostics and skeptics the number one myth is that atheists are all amoral it's the automatic magic assumption that atheists must be sinners and bad people and this is one of the most common and insidious attacks on non-believers it's the reason why many non-believers are even afraid to come out of the closet to their families or communities well it's because the Bible says we are evil one of the most quoted passages in scripture says The Fool has said in his heart there is no God they are corrupt they have done abominable works there is none that doeth good they are all done aside they are all together become filthy there is none that doeth good no not one that Psalm 14 and that Old Testament verse is echoed in the New Testament which says they have become worthless there is no one who shows kindness there is not even one they use their tongues to deceive the venom of vipers is under their lips their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness that's from the book of Romans we such venom being spewed from the pulpit it's no wonder that a longitudinal study by the University of Minnesota has shown that atheists are at the bottom of the social totem pole when it comes to acceptance where the people you'd least like your family member to marry for example religious stereotypes exist that prisons are filled with atheists when in fact we're disproportionately not represented in prisons and don't forget the study that found that people believe atheists are about as trustworthy as rapists or the Gallup polls that year after year show that nearly half the country would refuse to consider atheist for president or vice-president the misconception that atheists cannot be moral is based on at least three false assumptions first that religion is the only source of morality in other words that there's no basis for morality without God second and this is really a corollary of the first is the assumption that if you're religious you are automatically moral a bit of the circular reasoning there and third that people want to become atheists just because they want to go out and sin so let's detect these three false assumptions one at a time first let's take a look at the faulty assumption that religion is the only source of morality now we define morality usually commonly as a code of ethical behavior many religionists believe we humans are incapable of forming our own moral rules we can only be good if some authoritarian in the sky dictates to us how we need to behave born-again Christians it turns out really don't trust themselves and I'm speaking of the former evangelical myself who was taught to trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not on I know and understand and that is one of my least favorite bible verses by the way that's in proverbs 3 and we were awful taught as Christians to bring into captivity every thought unto the obedience of Christ in second Corinthians most believers want or need this external code of behavior a cosmic code of Commandments it's engraved on stone tablets it's comforting to those who can't or won't take for themselves or who have been indoctrinated to believe that they are miserable sinners who should not seek for themselves as I say in my book godless theists are afraid people will think for themselves atheists are afraid they won't rely greatly religion deals in absolutes humanistic morality which most atheists are subscribed to on the other hand is not based on rules it's based on principles that which contributes to well-being is good that which threatens it is bad for us non-believers as I write in my here's another book my book life driven purpose morality is simply the intention to act in ways that minimize harm whatever harm is its natural if not supernatural although we did evolve with a certain degree of moral instinct and human kindness there are often gray areas because many moral judgments involved a conflict of values which is why usually we have to temper our moral instincts with the reason my mother and Gail or who was the principal founder of FFRF liked to advise us and people to use what she called the yardstick of reason and kindness and here she is on Oprah Winfrey's a.m. Chicago show in 1984 without a god without a supernatural belief without a deity without anything that you say you don't need and you don't have how do you judge your own lives and let's forget about the Catholic Church or someone else I'm sure people may have differences but my answer is I apply the test of reason and kindness I use the yardstick of reason and kindness if I'm contemplating an action is it reasonable is it kind and that's all you need and that is indeed all we need we need to use both reason and kindness and isn't reason a better basis for ethics than faith the Assumption implicit in the question can a theist be moral is that the word religion is synonymous with morality and by that standard atheists are amoral simply for being unbelievers not because of any actions we have may have taken I like to tell believers that it's not what you believe that counts but what you do we should based conduct on intent and consequences to the welfare of individuals humankind and the planet as a whole and surely that is more ethical than basing it on childish fear of divine retribution or some childish conception of the afterlife what's more noble a believer who only tries to behave because he wants to get into heaven or someone who leaves an exemplary life who tries to do good to leave the world a better place because it's the right thing to do let's ask miss another way do you want your children to be good because you promised them dessert or do you want them to be good for goodness sake we'll come back to this assumption that religion is the only source of morality a little bit so now let's turn to this assumption that if you're religious you automatically moral the Boy Scouts of America for example very ignorantly assert that you can only grow into the best kind of citizen if you believe in a God but I would argue if you want people to grow into the best kind of citizen you should not teach them religion you should teach them to think for themselves and to take responsibility for their own actions and right away Christianity is contaminated by the often self-fulfilling prophecy the humans are miserable sinners if you tell someone that over and over and over again from childhood of course many of them will become sinners and our prisons are full of religious criminals and our planet is besieged by holy wars and terrorism in the name of religion and religion often leads followers astray people who are taught never to question authority are more easily victimized or duped and the Bible itself is a moral quagmire murders murderers mutilators child molesters rapists sexist racist and even slaveholders have turned to Bible texts to justify their abhorrent behavior I have had the dubious pleasure of rereading the Bible again after all those years of ministry rereading in a depth in researching my latest book it's called God the most unpleasant character in all fiction that book is based on Richard Dawkins famous from The God Delusion which points out that the biblical deity is a jealous unjust unforgiving bloodthirsty Jenna final ethnic cleanser he's a misogynistic racist infanticidal pestilential malevolent bully and more you can see these biblical passages online at the website which FFRF just made is called unpleasant god dot FFRF dot i think there's a mistake on the monitor there's no period because it's unpleasant god god that's RS org now as a staff attorney here at FFRF i've had the real pleasure of writing legal letters complaining to public officials who have made many of these ignorant assertions the idea that all you need is prayer to remedy the world and that we need more religion to end crime a few weeks ago i sent a letter to the San Antonio mayor who made this mistake and didn't get reelected I've written to police chiefs and governors and sheriffs most recently the governor of Kentucky who think that religion will cure crime but social science shows that for any measure of societal health and well-being from teen pregnancy and stds mission to violent crime the least religious countries in the world do better and that trend holds here in the states as well the least religious states score better now this doesn't mean that secularism cures those ills either but we're talking correlations here but what I find particularly telling is that studies of heroic altruism during the Holocaust found that more secular a person was the more likely they were to rescue and help persecuted Jews and Andrew you're quoting a lot of research by among others still Zuckerman's book absolutely you wrote a book called societies without God he's a sociologist and I'd like to add where religion really goes wrong and becomes so dangerous in such a negative is in valuing dogma and obedience over people as the Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg put it for good people to do bad things that takes religion and finally the very irrational argument that we have heard so much that I've heard from a lot of people who I thought were my friends when I went public with my atheism after years as an evangelist is that the reason you don't believe in God is because you don't want any moral restraints on your life you just want to go out and sin well that was really insulting I always like to point out that we pass laws in our country secular laws to keep people who want to do these horrible things to keep them away from the rest of us that is not why I left religion as I put it in my first book here's another book losing faith in faith I threw out the bathwater and I found that there's no baby there I obey the laws I pay my taxes I help with blood drives I contribute to charity I try to be a good husband a good father and now a good grandfather I left religion not for moral reasons but because it simply isn't true I didn't want to waste the rest of my life promoting something for which there's no evidence I didn't want to live in a fool's paradise this life is all there is like Robert Ingersoll said one world at a time it's fine if someone wants to believe in religion so long as they don't try to force it on me through law or by social policy and Andrew you I thought it would be fun to end the segment by playing a video that you recorded for us for our out of the closet campaign it speaks to why you became an atheist yeah let's do it my name is Andrew Seidel I'm an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation and I'm an atheist I'm an atheist because faith is not a virtue a willingness to believe anything without evidence and to cling to that belief is humanity's greatest liability I'm an atheist because religion perverts love requiring us to love an imaginary tyrant more than our family more than our children I'm an atheist because our universe is far more amazing than the paltry miracles of the Bible I'm an atheist for the same reason that you are an atheist about Allah and Osiris and Thor I'm an atheist because vicarious redemption through human sacrifice cannot save my soul another person's death will not erase my wrongs and I am an atheist because I take personal responsibility for my mistakes and I believe we already have a few questions do we already have some questions that have come in the first question we have is from Mary J row which is why do so many people believe that morality is tied to religion it's baffling that people don't realize we each have a moral compass and know when something is right or wrong yeah well we do have a moral compass and part of that is instinct because we evolved as animals that we're social animals we have to get along with each other and so I know that if something's hurting me it's also hurting you so I have an empathy most most people who have empathy and altruism can see that that harm is universal so almost all cultures have come up with something like the Golden Rule don't do to others what you would not have do to them or do to others what you would like to them to do it which is a little more dangerous the Golden Rule and the New Testament isn't as well phrased to some of the earlier versions because do you not do unto me what you would not like done to you yeah because Confucius said it in the negative way which is a lot better don't do to others what you would not because if you do it in the positive way what if you have bad taste you know what else is right here a masochist yeah what if you I would like something done into me so I'm going to do that unto you I would like to be preached at you know I mean there are some problems but but a compass a moral compass is an interesting word because a compass doesn't tell you where to go all the couples doesn't told you where North is and so if you think of North as a world that has less violence and less harm in it that's your compass however you get to that world you have to figure out you have to use reason but we want a world that has less violence and more understanding that's our compass and let's figure out how we can get there I think one of the ways that religion has has helped tie itself to morality is by making the in-group versus the out-group you know you don't want to be like the people who who are not like us you know you need to be to be moral you need to be part of us I think the church has kind of actively pushed that that idea for centuries you know they've tried to say yes exploited the idea that you know if you are not with us you're kind of against us well that's what Jesus says as you pointed out and you in an earlier show love thy neighbor and the Bible men love thy Hebrew neighbor and love your own kind your tribe and big deal every group does that and whatever group you're part of we all love our group but what about the outsider what about those Canaanites what about those non Israelites what about the non-christian what happens where's the love for those people so it really is insular absolutely so we have another comment request we have a second question do you want to read this one yeah Keshawn Pharaoh can an American Christian lives by actual Christian values not legally not legally what you say yes and I agree I hope not but Dan is the born-again Christian of your woody what's your reaction well there's so many teachings in the Bible that it's a good thing we don't follow how many actual Christians are remarried to someone who's been married before Jesus said very clearly the Bible says very clearly whoever marries a divorced woman is committing adultery so so why are they ignoring their own Bible if able to follow their own teachings Jesus even said there are some men who castrated themselves from the kingdom of heaven hi they say eunuchs eunuch is a castrated male he was able to receive it let him receive it how many Christians are going to go oh boy I'm going to live by that Christian value ever hear a sermon or even some of his Sermon on the Mount suggestions like a be like the lily of the valley you don't have to plan ahead for yeah take no thought for tomorrow make no thought for the morrow let the dead bury the dead well if someone's dead well I'll tell you one literally one Christian principle that I wish they would adhere to and that's the one in Matthew 6 verse 5 and 6 which is if you're going to pray go into your closet and pray in private not in public because one of the things we deal with every week here is government officials constantly praying we just submitted a brief in our Chino Valley case against the school board there that's imposing prayer on all the students in that school district it says don't be like the hypocrites you go pray quietly right it's amazing that they ignore that one so much let's see them adhere to that principle well then Jesus you know Jesus principles in Jesus moral compass of his day there's really nothing more than what his Old Testament father talked about this you know no I own that one jot or tittle of the old law in Vail and not only did Jesus fail to tell us there's something wrong with slavery which you would have thought it's the New Testament it's kind of a big rule this would be kind of a good kinda point out by the way you don't need to Civil War just stop having favorite Jesus even said in Luke that he showed us how compassionate he really was by saying you know there are some slaves that you should not beat as hard as other slaves because they didn't know better and I think that shows a little bit of moral compassion but what about slavery itself you know he had this huge beam in his eye that he couldn't even see of course not because he was a product of the first century Jews who wrote that book yeah you had no divine morality his morality reflected the morality of the times it was just a man if he existed and I think maybe the other question would be if you're Christian maybe we should be asking the question that's asked of us how can you be moral if you're Christian well I think that that's the Steven Weinberg quote that I look at you read that you mentioned earlier that I love so much because it's not you know Dostoevsky has that famous quote that if you don't believe in God everything is possible but really it's the other way around if you believe in God everything is possible so if you think that yes you think God's telling you something look what you could do and you'll sacrifice your children as they bruh I'm tried to do or as Andrea Yates did you know so I think it is the other way around and it makes it harder to be moral with you if you believe God's talking to you and I do want to say of course that most religionists are better than their religions course most of them are not calling the scriptures to fulfill exactly what they say although in history that's happened and so I would never put a Christian on the same spot that we've been put on but yet this question should be asked if they believe in an immoral religion then what does that say about that turnabout's Fair Play so we have another question we have we have several questions so Darrell Brown asks can televangelists lead a moral life so right along the same lines so it doesn't seem like it I'm wondering if use maybe more focusing in on the the idea the prosperity gospel kind of notion the idea that these are these are televangelists and multi-million dollar houses they're piggybacking on their very poor congregations and maybe - maybe he's thinking about gee well Jim Jimmy Swaggart as the fall of Jimmy Baker there's been quite a few and I'm wondering if he's thinking of Jesus's teachings about you know being poor and giving away your wealth or something like that or if that's where Daryl's and Sinclair Lewis's book you know that tells elbows Obama's gentry the Alma grant III world so I used to do a show with Steve Benson the editorial cartoonist where we call it toons and toons his cartoons in my toons and we showed somebody televangelists on the screen you know the Jimmy Swaggart in tears and all that and one of the lines in our show was do televangelists do more than lay people it's pretty good well because look at the you know the hypocrisy of it they're they're preaching to these people had a limb but their own lives are in tatters well in the more you pop yourself up that's pretty good camouflage it's true it's just the thing that bothers me about it is it's so predatory you know and it really is preying on this vulnerable population and they they make it seem like the the poorer you are the that's a bigger faith sacrifice for your faith to give us money even if even if you can't pay for food this week I've heard them say go ahead and donate thousands that god--all got to look more kindly on you for doing it that way and that's not let Billy Graham off the hook and and his son and don't you have a story about your well yeah where my mother when my grandfather died I went to Grandma's house in Oklahoma and I was looking through their records and I saw that for many many decades they set the Billy Graham allistic Association $15 a month which is regularly money way back in the 6570 and they were not wealthy people they were you know they were maybe lower middle class people and they sent thinking they were doing this great thing and then I later learned that the Billy Graham Association even at that time had like a 15 million dollar surplus and the Billy Graham Association didn't actually pay for those rallies they asked the local organizers to pay for you know the churches all had to raise the money to pay for that and Billy Graham got to walk thin and do his thing so my grandma was sending money that she could have used to this organization that didn't need it well we have another question we do and this is from Stephen Tsai wack sorry if I butchered that name how can you be more like you do believe in God seriously how many theists of you have ever read their horribly immoral holy books more importantly why do we a key is so obvious even frame the question this way and I think we were just you're just kind of talking about this yeah well and but and it's not that we want to blame ourselves but this is the most common stereotype that we do encounter and I think it is the most insidious myths or a claim or accusation against non-believers it's I've never really done a talk show or radio show on the subject of religion without being asked this question and it even comes up in our state church work because you know of course you want to use a Bible in the schools or a Bible and public ceremony because the Bible is good and when we come back and say no it's not then we're being accused of being immoral for wanting to take religion out of government so it's a constant issue but I agree with you even yes deepen and I think Stephen in Stevens Point is right on that how many of them have actually read their books this is a question that I actually really wonder well Linda been study and in fact atheists and non-believers are much better read about the Bible than believers are there's a recent study you know it's like it's like if you're installing a new app on your device or your logging under the wireless and you come to terms you know the long list of terms and you have to accept it do you read those things or do you just scroll all the way down the bar I accept and I think most Christians are like that with their Bible they think there's a couple of good things in there yeah and there are actually sir there are some good teachings in the Bible but on balance the ugliness overshadows the the goodness so if terms and conditions Christianity huh that's what yeah just a genetics I don't know what's in it but it is a good book so I'm going to go with it we have another interesting question Jim McConnell asks can you speak about the rate of atheists in prison versus Christians and how can Christians convince themselves that they're moral when they're the ones filling up the prisons so I meant to look up this statistic actually before we started but I think it's point zero to the last time we saw it yes there was a study out of federal prison well you can get your federal prisons now there's a growing population of non-believers in the United States or perhaps we'll see a few more in prison and we do hear once in a while from non-believers with state church problems in prisons but in terms of our we are disproportionately not represented in prison best believe that there's six percent of the population is atheist or agnostic oh cool and 20 cent ROM is 24% non-religious and almost 24% non-religious panel but point zero two percent atheists in prison versus close to seven percent is I mean that's incredibly disproportionate but and of course there's other issues because often ministries are given access to prisoners that the rest of us aren't given it happens all the time I think that's an important caveat that you do get some some privileges for being religious in prison and that you're getting encouraged if you find religion it's a good phony way to say that you are regretting your your crimes without actually doing anything about it and so in a prison survey atheism might be underrepresented just because they think the wardens are going to give you more favors on good behavior for being religious but we have every reason to that actually and criminals are not usually atheists even though there's these ridiculous stereotypes that they're all easiest and it is really a major problem that we face in terms of public relations so the statistic doesn't prove that being an atheist makes you a better person it just puts the ball back in the court of the believer some claim that being a believer makes you a better person how do you explain the fact that believers are over-represented in the prison population well and also when you look at for example the Catholic religion where you can do whatever and then you can confess your sins at the end and get into heaven and for example Adolf Hitler is was Roman Catholic and Tuesday was Roman Catholic are we to presume that perhaps Hitler in in the religious mindset is in heaven but you don't know maybe at the very last minute he confessed to Jesus what I'm saying you don't know and were you there so according to Catholicism he could no matter what you do you can make it into heaven if you confess your sins and find Jesus at the end well that's not a very good way to promote good conduct seems a little unjust we have another question from Ali who asks what about moral gray areas like stealing if your children are hungry how do you determine what's right or wrong well let me talk about that when we just the Ten Commandments on our first show that the Ten Commandments are couched in absolutes and what if your life depended on in your child's life depended on it so religion is full of absolutes and there are no nuances or gray areas right yeah in religion it's all yes or no you know Jesus said you see cold or hot or I'll spit you out of my mouth right if you're not not a very pleasant no it isn't and and as this questioner points out most of our life is lived in a kind of a gray area and the whole idea of a moral compass is sometimes when you're trying to go north you can't go in or sometimes you have to go east or west sometimes you have to go south a little bit depending on the terrain and as we navigate our moral life sometimes the train the terrain is difficult it's not hard to decide should I burn a baby with a cigarette no that's not that's an easy question right that's you know it's obviously but sometimes the toughest immoral dilemmas involve a conflict of good values I have this value and how do I weigh them and so the moral compass would say well try to get a result that has the least amount of overall harm if that's what you're trying to do even if you fail you're you're using a moral compass to try to get through life sometimes something's got to give on both of them is like if you have two candidates to vote for it in an election and you hate both of them should I vote for stinky or should I vote for bully which one well you might think you have an oral a moral obligation to vote for the one that causes the least amount of harm so therefore you're going to hold your nose and vote for stinky right even though you don't think it so there's all these gray areas where you don't really have a clear answer and that's where moral judgment comes in with with religion you don't have the moral judgement you just look it up on a list of rules and you should do whatever God tells you I don't know that God has an opinion I think yours is really well I think he wanted Bali because Bali is a Christian okay so John Michael strum heart asks Oh Andrew are there any US judicial decisions that use the Bible as a legal argument and that there are actually there are a few probably the one of the most prominent was Bowers versus Hardwick which was the decision where the Supreme Court upheld the Texas laws criminalizing sodomy and they did it because the rules against sodomy worse had been preserved for so long in the judeo-christian legal tradition which has since been overturned and yes that was overturned in 2003 in Lawrence vs Texas and and there is absolutely no reason that the Supreme Court should have been citing religious rules as part of a interpreting a secular Constitution this general unconstitutional reason anyway exactly I didn't realize that and there are there are a few older decisions as well where it comes up where it was more it's less specifically a biblical reference where it's more generally this is the divine order type thing that prays actually appears in the Bradwell case which was when the Supreme Court that women join the bar pick up lawyers so of course keep women keep silent yes well speaking of books we showed a lot of my books today but Annie Laurie has a book woe to the women the Bible tells me so and in your book by the way I first look I read I read your book back in danger or force peace out book yeah I read you the first book I read ever yeah and you point out that many of our modern laws especially back in the nineteenth century dealing with women and women's and inheritance and women and education had came out of the principles that were in the Bible which held women back were so low well in Sabbath Katie Stanton who is the mother of the modern women's movement and the first took off a woman's right to vote recited in the history of woman suffrage the Bible was hurled at us from every side when they called for the vote and everything they called for it was always the religious press and the ministers and the pulpit no women cannot wear pants you know the Turkish pants no women cannot go to college they can't own property they can't have custody of their own children they can't have professions they can't have control of their own because the Bible says nine women should keep silent and that they were in subjection to men so yes it worked it's worked its way into law but most of it we're working out against did she say the Bible's our greatest stumbling block in the way of women's emancipation and I think that's the point it's typically when you see the Bible or religious laws referenced in our secular law it's my count we're trying to escape it I mean another decision that it came up in was when the court was dealing with in the loving case in the previous decision the court was dealing with a decision where the court had said that God created the races and put them on their different continents so the loving cases what 67 okay so miscegenation saying that you could not have Android own bans on interracial marriages yes and even it's very the very first punishment for interracial relationships on this continent was in 16:30 in Jamestown I believe and it was it was portrayed by the court as a crime against God these two loving Native American I don't recall the exact facts but yeah so so when when the Bible works its way into law it's always a bad bad call that's not so long in our laws and unfortunately most of those decisions have been overturned and by the way if you haven't seen loving the feature film about the loving case that came out last summer it is wonderful I have not yet have you do it so therein Baumeister asks thank you for your work a lot of people turn to Christianity because they're looking for community where are the places that you find community well here at the office we have a pretty great community and I mean there are a lot of regional groups there's the Sunday assembly there's just been a plethora of local and regional free thought groups myself I grew up without religion I'm a third generation free thinker and so I like that added to be put on a bus once celebrate reason sleep in on Sunday but I recognize that people who are in far-flung places and conservative areas really feel alone we have over 20 chapters of the Freedom From Religion Foundation and if you there's so many atheist meetup groups but I do think that that is an area where we need a little more infrastructure I'll say that I think one of the benefits of online community now is you can if you are in one of those far-flung rural areas there's a really vibrant atheist community online that you can take part of and and join that's very very welcoming and I would highly recommend anybody and the idea of community is not necessarily correlated with how can you be good without God because sometimes community can make people worse you can look at the Klan look at these religious groups that people gather to look at the white supremacist in that but we're going to say you know my dad who died grew up in Springfield Missouri and he Hazara how he said it he was a native and they went to and the Christian Church disciples of Christ and he was disgusted because it was they were segregationist and the Deacons they'd all be patting themselves on the back about what good people they were on Sunday and then on the whole rest of the week incredible racism when he grew up in that 30s 30s and early 40s in Springfield Missouri probably still to this day and that was one of the reasons it is opened his eyes to leave religion so he has compete in that fine community in his particular church but there are a lot of Unitarian Universalist congregations which are is creed 'less and they vary in flavor but there are ways to get together on Sunday if you have one of those in your ears even then what is community you know essentially ago or even more recently in small-town America or small towns anywhere the church is sort of the local place where people would come together and meet and socialize really just watch that movie Pollyanna Wright and Hayley Mills is there and a lot of the action in that movie it's pretty fun movie you know a lot of it happens in the church and one in the minister took his credit does something good through all of that but now with the internet and many more options for people to get together of some area of common expertise you can find community in a chess club or in a swimming group or whatever you can find community of all sorts of it doesn't have to be through religion so and I don't know if it really has to be at a weekly meeting but I think is on different needs they can just join us here every Wednesday on Facebook la but but it's something we're working on and you have a couple more questions yes we have Lauren fajar Ski Judson sorry Lauren as a parent I worry about what my child experience will be with two atheist parents any studies research or information to indicate what that experience might be well you just said we dishes to study about empathy that atheist families yeah that's right atheist children are more empathetic on average more empathetic and more charitable and concerned about other people as human beings the one where they were less likely to steal as well that wasn't part of that state okay Wow look at this came out you were raised in a non-religious family right so did you turn out of the moral monsters no I mean I think what is the name of that person Lauren Lauren I think you should be very proud that you're not going to be inflicting dogma on your children and in fact my parents were so adamant that they thought it was almost child abuse to indoctrinate small children in these abstractions they can't possibly understand especially original sin and you have two adorable toddlers you know can you look at your babies and think original yeah okay I don't know any parent can do that and we have some other adorable babies in the offices ditto on original mischief maybe which is great it's part of their development but I think it's something to be proud of and I think that you I don't think most atheists want to indoctrinate their children in atheism per se we want people our children to grow up to think for themselves that's the rule and if they when they are old enough to make up their own mind and they they've been exposed to your views and other views and they decide to go the religious route well I'm sure you'll love them too even if you're disappointed and you know I think that most atheists and agnostics are have intense respect for freedom of conscience absolutely and and for the rights of children yes we have a daughter raised in an openly atheistic family who knows how to think for herself and it wasn't like we were indoctrinating her every Sunday you have to memorize Bertrand Russell and you need to answer it we just let her be herself and your mom used to have a saying that parents really do not raise their children children raised themselves right and our parents are facilitators parents provide a home in an environment and love and food and all that but really do any of us think that our parents made us and we are they particularly did not like that term raise raise a child and I mean respecting your children giving them a rich environment encouraging and to think letting them know there's other views but not being afraid to share your views we don't want a pious parents to seem like they're apologetic or too timid to you know that there's something wrong with that view and I think one advantage it was for me not to be raised with religion look what you had to go through dan to kind of undo all of this indoctrination the scars are still but I'm not a lot of waste in terms of your education and what else you could have done with your life instead of soul winning and you know I was really free it was such a it's not having like not having a dead or a monkey on my back that I didn't have to fight and I you you had some religious upbringing you know my mom encouraged me to go out and go to Temple with my Jewish friends go to the different churches of my Christian friends it became very obvious very early on that there's mutually exclusive claims they were all wrong and none of them were right so ya know no real but I had the opposite feeling because we used to go to Sunday school every every week and I would sometimes invite my friends at Sunday school because my teachers and my parents would go invite your friends through I go over to there I have my little coat and tie on I go over there and they're playing in the backyard having fun you want to come to church no so it's kind of like and the thing was we thought we were special there's sort of an in celerity that we churchgoers were the truly good people look at all these bad people they're not even going to church so there's a sort of differential that's added maybe that's part of that study the white people raised without religion don't have that us-versus-them mentality one just one other thing I don't want to hold up the other questions but my mother wrote a little piece up about my older brother she we had boarders and I think it was an african border took a liking to Andy my older brother and said could I take him to my church and my mother and when he came back with Andy he had kind of a sheepish smile on his face and she asked him how to go and he said well he said he'd rather play outside I think Lauren is hit on kind of a rich topic here so we'll probably do a future ask an atheist just about parenting about parenting yeah so we have a question from Barney I saw again sorry for the pronunciations as an atheist how should an individual deal with religious imposition that's occurring within a family so I mean I have a couple rules that I try to keep in mind when I'm dealing with religious family members and the first thing I try to always keep in mind is remember that this is a good person they're not a bad person they just believe in a bad idea I think that's important and the second thing that's important for me when dealing with a religious family member is to remember that they're not stupid just because they have a religious belief they're not stupid they believe a bad idea most of it most of them I even if even if I know they are well I'm engaging I tell myself but they're not I think it's a good idea to just keep in your mind well respect yeah and I mean that you don't have to respect what they they think that you respect them in their relationship with you and I think the best thing you can do really when you're when you're engaging is ask ask questions that you can't that you care about the answer to that that is the way that I mean I do it to sow doubt and I do it because I think you know religion needs to go away and I do enjoy sewing sewing down people but well this person is talking about impositions because my first reaction would be hey if you know you can't get along on this topic you just talk about the things you can't get along on which may also in Calvera the politics cannot read you that old adage about don't talk about religion and politics at a party sounds like if you can get away from it you know there's nothing to be gained but if they're imposing it on you I guess we'd like to know what that is maybe prayer sure maybe that you have to come in late to bring dinner Sunday late or let someone know I had a time gee that really bothers me that might be why I come in a little late or just don't I just don't participate when that happens I'm happy to hold hands but I don't you know put my my god donor ad you don't have to create a ruckus that would be the best thing do you have any advice because you you have some religious relative well my brother Tom is a great guy he's a born-again Christian and he after my after I became an atheist my mom and dad became atheist my brother Gerald became an atheist humanist we kind of jokingly called Tom the white sheep of the family because he stayed a Christian and so we kind of have this rule we like each other we're brothers right and we don't get together that often but let's just talk about the things that unite us let's talk about the things that we agree on and white you know there's so precious little time you have with your family why spend it fighting about things why not just remember the good memories in and I think I I think sometimes atheist might go a little bit too far in trying too hard to get everybody else to think like us when like in your example they know your views right you're not hiding anything but then just leave it at that it'd just be an example be a good person I think that is important and I think there's a lot because there are so many misconceptions about I mean this whole program is about a misconception everybody has about atheists I think it's important to just just be a good person be good model and always be open I've gotten quite a few questions from family members about very very obvious things one of the one that sticks in my mind is but if you're an atheist that means you believe in nothing yes and yes and their conceptions that people have about atheist that you know they don't mean you any harm and so no you say of course not there's many things I believe in love family friendship I just don't believe in God that's it and I think you can do you know you can do a lot for your family relationship by being just open and honest about that and it won't work for everybody I'm thinking about the person especially if they're a minor under the constraints of their parents or they they need their support or to go to college they don't want to make waves there can be some very this main situation - and you've dealt with them we've helped these kids who have been in this situation so sometimes you just are going to have to put up with it depending on what it is safety first but if your family sees that you are a person of integrity that you have some moral values that you're kind like your mom said kind and reasonable if they see that without religion you're just a basically good person then that goes a long way is anything else we have a last question from Chris Gregory can you elaborate on the recent Supreme Court Trinity Church decision and if there's any way to legally fight that decision and also any consequences that will stem from that decision so we're we're still reeling from the decision is this is a terrible seven to opinion that came down on Monday we were kind of expecting it after listening to the oral argument but not a seven to I still held out maybe I thought it would be a 5-4 after listening to the oral argument it was I thought it was unfortunately clear which it usually isn't from oral argument if it is a bad decision it is a wrong decision one thing that's very interesting about it is they didn't touch on the Establishment Clause at all the parties agreed that there was no Establishment Clause problem and the court accepted that agreement so the bulk of the analysis that the court needed to do in this case is just completely missing so that's one good thing that we can we can hold on to about this and there's a footnote by Justice Chief Justice Roberts who wrote it footnote number three and you want to explain that it says it says that the opinion is limited to playground resurfacing only but you know Supreme Court decisions never are just limited to one thing and what's already happen and yeah the next day Tuesday yesterday the court actually put a couple other cases back down to the lower courts to reinterpret in light of Trinity Lutheran and one of them was the Colorado vote your case Colorado Belcher this is very chilling development I mean we're all kind of licking our wounds right now and we did put out a statement at FFF torg on the news section and then you're working on it and now it is probably later today so that be more and of course we'll be covering this all along and we will be looking for ways to turn this opinion on its head and try to use it to our advantage for somebody who doesn't know what this is about this is about the High Court saying that a Missouri state statute that had stronger prohibitions against funding of religion and basically the First Amendment just doesn't matter anymore pretty much calm and and about thirty well there's some I see different things 38 or 39 states including the state of Wisconsin where we're based that have these Jeffersonian provisions that nobody shall be compelled to attend direct or support a place of worship in this particular language was about funding so it's a very very bad decision we should take this opportunity to create but the common misconception about the case is that it is about playgrounds and kids with skinned knees and and that is absolutely not what it is about this church runs what they call their learning center which is meant as a children's ministry if you look on their website it's under that under the ministry tab it's called their children's ministry it's mentok and to solidify the faith of kids as young as two and to bring other kids in the community into that face and now what the Supreme Court has said is that the government has to fund that ministry it's a very tricky inseminate and they can profit eyes and as Liz Koval your wife another cemetery knee pointed out they had pea gravel it's not like the kids are going to fall and hurt themselves that they were just trying to get money that the state had offered which was not available to churches and and they demanded that they get that perk a public perk even though they discriminate and yet the kate the case was framed as discrimination against churches yep and that that's that's the very chilling aspect of it it's discriminating against the discriminators basically but I think one of the dangers of a case like this is that even though as you point out the decision was limited the Religious Right will take an inch and make it into a mild okay all good the courts going to give all this preference to entities like what happened with the Greece decision and school board prayer yeah a lot of school board said all what they can pray and legislature so we can pray too that's why we're in court in winning and well you're you're in court in Congress part of the Greece decision was everybody gets a chance to give in location and the House of Representatives says except for Dan Barker because he's an atheist can't we're waiting for a ruling so that's that tie is this question to the topic how can we non-believers be good without God and the chaplain of the Senate denied me to be a guest chaplain because I don't believe in a higher power so apparently be having a higher power makes you a good person not having that higher power excludes you from the conversation exclude you as a citizen yeah absolutely yeah I think we round lis covered this topic and it was nice to get that question about Trinity Lutheran you look at time for too long and they'll see more about that yes so if you want to delve a little more into this topic there's so many great books you've seen some of them and among the books that FFRF cells which touch on these you've seen losing faith and faith God the most unpleasant character in all fiction written by Dan we also have an on track on ten common myths about atheist to dispel those myths so thank you for joining us today and let us know by Facebook or reddit or Skype if you've got any other questions or questions that you would like us to address on ask an atheist in the future and thank you for joining us tune in next week [Music] [Music]

Channel: Freedom From Religion Foundation

Views: 29,261

Keywords: morality and god, morality and the will of god, god and morality, are atheists moral, can atheist be moral, what is morality, religious morality, can a person be moral without god, Freedom From Religion Foundation, FFRF, Atheist, Atheism

Id: rMXqZbN55bM

Length: 54min 57sec (3297 seconds)

Published: Thu Jun 29 2017