Grim Rhapsody

A common question posed to non-theists is, of course, “Theists get their morality from God. Where do you get your morality from?” or alternatively the more blatant “Atheists are immoral because they don’t accept God’s written rules of morality.” Other humanistic writers have shattered this insulting assertion utterly and brilliantly, but I still wish to refute it for my own liberty.

The first and foremost response to this question is simply pointing out that theists, even under the same denomination, can hardly be said to be in agreement on exactly what God’s idea of morality is. There are literally hundreds of different “interpretations” of the Bible alone, the most extreme of which spit on the very idea of morality. And ironically, it is these fundamentalists who are following God’s written laws most precisely. I have no doubt that most theists who ask atheists about their “missing” morality have not read the Bible, which is of course one of the most effective methods of deconversion. A simple retort would be to ask the original questioner if they would consider the following things morally acceptable: bears mauling children as punishment for teasing; the genocide of seven civilisations for being in the wrong place; the slaying of innocent children and “ripping open” of pregnant women;  and of course throwing ten thousand unarmed captives off a cliff. That’s God’s written idea of morality.

Following this, a common answer I’ve received is that these are all Old Testament shenanigans. Everything’s much better in the New Testament, they say. Jesus teaches love, compassion and ultimately all morality.

This is effectively an admission that the Old Testament is indeed brutally immoral much more often than not. To claim that God had a “change of heart” between Old and New, or that Jesus managed to convince his wrathful father that maybe humanity wasn’t so bad after all, is incompatible with the well-accepted notion of God’s infinite benevolence. It doesn’t work. To admit that God was, at some point, immoral, destroys this basic definition of the Judeo-Christian God.

This forces Christianity back onto perhaps the most frequently-heard lay apologetic: “The Bible is not meant to be taken completely literally.” The obvious problem with such a statement is thus: how are we to know which verses to take literally, and which not to take literally? As far as I know, God hasn’t left any hints. Using this ideology, I could also claim that the evil verses are the literal ones, and the verses of love “aren’t meant to be taken literally”. Taking into account that there are more of the former, this would actually be a more realistic claim. Yet I have (fortunately) heard of no one who would do such a thing. In any case, look at the above examples of outright immorality in the Bible. What on earth are we supposed to take from these verses? If not literal, are they metaphorical? Please, Christians, enlighten me on this. These are verses of injustice, bloodshed, and the slaughter of innocents. I’m not seeing a loving “message” behind it at all.

The question of which verses to shrug off as non-literal is of course synonymous with the question of which verses aren’t likely to be featured as “Bible Verse of the Day” at a church. It’s synonymous with the question of which verses are kept quiet and pushed behind the curtain by preachers and evangelizers. It’s synonymous with the question of which verses are left out of the (Christian-written) ”children’s Bible”. What does this mean? Christians are not just getting their morality from God. More accurately, they are flicking through God’s written word and pulling out the verses that they want to get their morality from. And on what basis do they decide which verses are good examples of morality? Why, the same basis as atheists, of course.

While I am thankful that Christians effectively decide their own morality rather than taking all of God’s (rather controversial) written advice, I also hope that the stereotype of the immoral non-theist will be replaced with the more accurate image of someone who intrinsically desires to minimize suffering and maximise happiness, and knows it.