Why, When it Comes to Religion, the Ends ALWAYS Justify the Means

One of the great philosophical debates (and the first thing you learn in any Intro to Philosophy class) is about deontological vs. utilitarian morality: Are “right” and “wrong” a result of certain actions being inherently right or wrong (killing and stealing are wrong in principle) or is it determined based on the consequences of those actions (killing and stealing are wrong because of the harm they do to others)? Or, in even more simplified form, when it comes to “right” and “wrong” do the ends justify the means?

Traditionally, these two approaches to morality seem to line up pretty closely with debates surrounding religious vs. secular morality. Either we should obey the commandments because God commands us to, since through his divine authority he has determined what is “right” or “wrong” via cosmic fiat, and going against those divine dictates is, quite simply, wrong (Euthyphro’s Dilemma be damned), or we should follow secular/humanistic ethics, which generally consider right/wrong to be based on the real-world consequences of our actions, meaning in some cases it may be permissible–even morally obligatory–to perform acts which may otherwise be considered “immoral” (a parent stealing medicine to save the life of his child, for example).

Traditionally, this leads to the notion that secular/humanistic/utilitarian ethics means that the ends justify the means, and as long as the final outcome is beneficial the methods you use to get there are ultimately irrelevant (think Watchmen’s Ozymandias).

But it seems to me that in a way, this dichotomy is precisely backwards, and not only do the “ends justify the means” when it comes to traditional religious morality, but they do so to a literally infinite degree, and that’s for one reason: Because the traditional concepts of “Heaven” and “Hell” introduce the element of infinity to the equation, with notions of everlasting infinite torment or everlasting infinite bliss; and when you perform the cost/benefit analysis on anything involving infinity, the answer is always similarly infinite (math nerds like me might point out exceptions like series of infinite sums which converge on finite numbers, but obviously that doesn’t apply in this case).

So what does that mean? It means that any amount of harm you do to anyone—lying, killing, even torture or mass murder—pales in comparison to the harm you can inflict on someone by causing them to go to hell. Infinitely so. Even increasing the odds of someone going to Hell by a miniscule fraction of a percent is still a transgression of infinite harm, since even .00001% of infinity is still infinity.

And the same goes for heaven; no matter how much good you may do in the world, it will be infinitely trivial compared to even one act which increases the odds of someone reaching Heaven.

Even more disturbingly, the flipside is also true: any action, no matter how abhorrent, is perfectly acceptable in the Heaven/Hell equation, and the ends ALWAYS justify the means provided that the end goal is helping others reach heaven or avoid hell since that end goal is literally a positive of infinite value.

Of course thankfully, with the exception of religious extremists, nobody really applies this logic to their day to day lives, or actually considers these implications and takes their beliefs to the logical extreme.

And we all should hope it remains that way.

Follow-up: Sacrificing One’s Soul

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

“Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John”. What are the four Gospels of the New Testament? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John of course. Which matches their order in the Bible, and matches the order they were written in according to the Catholic church and Christian tradition. The only problem: It’s wrong. And not only is it wrong, but the fact that it’s wrong is surprisingly devastating to the credibility of the gospel accounts and the Bible overall. And yet, despite this, you will often (if not always) hear even atheists referring to the gospels in the “stock” order, thereby perpetuating the myth of when they were actually written, and obscuring–however slightly–precisely what the church has tried to obscure.

In actuality Mark was written well before Matthew (which copied extensively from Mark), yet Mark has no birth narrative; it mentions nothing of Jesus being born of a virgin; it has the fewest miracles, the least-grandiose miracles, and presents the most “human” characterization of Jesus. Even the way Jesus speaks in Mark is dramatically different than in the later gospels. And perhaps most damning, Mark does not even contain a “resurrection” of Jesus per-se (Mark ends at the discovery of an empty tomb, and mentions nothing about Jesus appearing to anyone afterwards; of course that didn’t prevent early Christians from tacking-on a resurrection story to Mark, many years after it was written).

All of these issues are far less problematic if Matthew was written first, and if Mark were simply a condensed account of the “original” gospel… which is precisely the excuse that Christian apologists claim. But for Mark to be the first gospel account, and for it to leave out such critical details? That’s much harder (and probably impossible) to explain without acknowledging that those elements were later fabrications.

Mark, Matthew, and Luke never got to do this.

“I have better sources of morality than a 2,000 year-old book”. I’ll often hear people emphasize how ridiculously outdated the Bible is by referring to it as “2,000 years old”. But not only is that not accurate, it actually does the Bible a favor by obscuring the fact that the Bible’s origins do not even come close to coinciding with the events that it purportedly describes. In actuality the books of the New Testament were written beginning approximately 50 CE (decades after Jesus’ death) and were finished at some point in the 2nd (perhaps even 3rd) century. The books were then collected into what we now know as “the Bible” at some point well into the 4th century.

Obviously calling the Bible a “2,000 year old book” is much easier to write and say than “a collection of books written somewhere between 2,800 and 1,960 years ago which were collected for the first time in their current form about 1,650 years ago”. But the use of the “2,000 year old” shorthand suggests that the Bible goes all the way back to the lifetime of Jesus–as if it provides a contemporaneous account of his words and deeds–as opposed to being separated from them by at least a full generation. And by doing so, the Bible’s critics are unintentionally implying a greater degree of legitimacy to the Bible than it actually deserves.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 3

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

References to immoral/evil acts committed by characters in the Bible. Even the most ardent Christians will admit that the Bible contains a lot of fucked-ed up people doing really fucked-ed up things. But just because the Bible describes individuals doing fucked-ed up things doesn’t mean it necessarily endorses those acts (polygamy, adultery, murder, incest, etc). On the other hand there are plenty of stories where the Bible clearly DOES endorse some of the most depraved acts imaginable: mock execution, offering one’s own daughters to be raped by a mob, slavery, and mass genocide. Those are the stories we should focus on instead.

This is what theologians mean when they refer to “Objective Morality”.

“Why couldn’t God just…” As a general rule, when atheists raise objections to the Bible in the form of a question, it’s not that they lack knowledge on the subject; it’s they have too much knowledge to not see through the bullshit. And in most cases it’s not that they “don’t know the answer”, there simply is no answer. But the problem with rhetorical questions is when people don’t take them as rhetorical. And the problem with non-rhetorical questions is that they imply a lack of knowledge and/or a lack of understanding on the part of the person posing them, even when the complete opposite is the case. That makes it easy for Christians to dismiss “questions” out of hand, and plays right into the stock Christian responses of “God works in mysterious ways” or “the mind of God is beyond our mortal comprehension” or similar such bullshit. Phrasing objections as statements—instead of as questions—prevents this issue.

“Atheists can be moral too”, or “You don’t need God to be good”. Both of these statements are absolutely true, but saying we “can” be moral implies that as a general rule we’re not, and saying that you don’t “need” religion still suggests that religion might make us better people than we already are. Yet the truth is that when compared to the religious, atheists are statistically more “moral” than virtually any other demographic group, often by the very same metrics that the religious emphasize most. For example in the United States, on a per-capita basis, atheists commit less crime, have lower rates of divorce, have lower incidence of teen pregnancy, lower rates of STD’s, higher levels of education… And the same holds true when you break it down worldwide; the nations with the highest rates of voluntary atheism have the least crime, the lowest corruption, and (with the sole exception of the United States) the highest standards of living in the world. By virtually any objective metric you can think of (sadly, with the exception of charitable donations), atheists are more moral than the religious, not less.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 3

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Saying that religious claims “don’t make sense”. It’s true there are countless religious claims which don’t make sense, and can never make sense. But I’ve always felt that saying something “doesn’t make sense” sounds a little too close to “I don’t understand it”. It’s the kind of thing one might say when trying to understand advanced calculus, not just things which are inherently nonsensical. But most of us are atheists precisely because we do understand religion, and speak from a position of having too much information on the subject, not too little. So that’s why I find myself catching myself, and instead of saying the concept of the trinity, for example, “doesn’t make sense” (which it doesn’t), I say it’s incoherent. Instead of saying that the concept of an infinitely loving God punishing people with infinite torment for finite sins “doesn’t make sense”, I say that it’s paradoxical, not to mention unethical. To me that sends a much stronger message: that the issue isn’t with us, it’s with metaphysical claims that directly contradict what we know to be true about the world we live in. Other options: logically invalid, fatally flawed, internally contradictory, unintelligible.

“When it comes to the Bible, you can’t just pick and choose what you want to believe…” Not only can Christians do this, they absolutely have to. And as I point out here, every time someone repeats this cliche they are actually giving the Bible far more credit than it deserves. Also, do we really want to imply that absolute fundamentalism is the more admirable position, simply because it happens to be more logically consistent?

“Christians believe serial killers can still go to heaven just by becoming Christians on their deathbeds”. For the most part this is absolutely true–particularly when it comes to evangelical Christians, who largely believe that salvation is achieved by faith and faith alone. But a secular argument could at least be made that it is conceivable for someone to commit the most horrific crimes imaginable, and eventually come to deserve forgiveness for those crimes before dying. But consider the same scenario in reverse: a law-abiding, devout Christian who later becomes a sadistic mass murderer, and remains one until the day he dies… How many people realize that according to the Christian doctrine of irrevocable salvation (“once saved always saved”), this hypothetical person is still guaranteed a spot in heaven while Einstein and Gandhi burn in Hell? Such a scenario is FAR more perverse than the hypothetical “deathbed conversion”, yet is every bit as consistent with the professed beliefs of fundamentalist evangelicals.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 3

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7

Atheist Cliche’s to Avoid – Part 3

“The books of the Bible were just decided by popular vote”. The Da Vinci Code has probably done the most to perpetuate this myth, and even went so far as to claim that the Biblical Canon was voted into existence at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD under direct order from Roman Emperor Constantine. In reality none of that is true. Yes, the canonization process was in large part subjective, and often based on faulty premises (the alleged authorship of the texts supposedly going back to Jesus’ disciples, for example). But the process of canonization took place over hundreds of years, as a result of many decisions made by many individuals, and to this day it still has not been truly “settled”: Different branches of Christianity still recognize different canons, with many of them—even the Catholic canon—not being formally ratified until the 16th-18th centuries.

OK, just kidding. This is what Jesus actually looked like.

“The Bible has gone through so many translations we don’t know what it originally said”. There are indeed many translations of the Bible, and in some cases the specific translation you read can make a pretty big difference. But it’s not like the Bible was written in one language, then translated into another, then translated from that into another, and so on and so on until it eventually reached “English”. We actually have existing manuscripts in the languages the Bible was originally written in (primarily Hebrew for the Old Testament, exclusively Greek for the New Testament), and we’ve translated those texts directly into English. But the irony is, this is actually MORE damning to the trustworthiness of the texts than if it weren’t the case.

That’s because Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic, not Greek, and they were largely if not entirely illiterate by the Bible’s own admission (with the exception of Paul, who let’s face it was not one of Jesus’ disciples). So the fact that the books attributed to Jesus’ disciples were actually first penned in Greek (and not just Greek, but in many cases highly literate and fully fluent Greek) means they could not have been written by their alleged authors, or anything resembling first-hand witnesses. At-best they were oral accounts passed down for decades before being committed to paper; at-worst they were literary creations based on a kernel of historical truth but written for the first time decades after the fact.

“Pretty much anything from Zeitgeist”. It really says something when an atheistic documentary has been thoroughly and independently debunked by just about every atheist/skeptic website, magazine, and podcast out there. Here’s a good one from Skeptic Magazine.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

“Jesus never existed”. Not only is there overwhelming scholarly consensus that he did (even among non-Christian scholars), but any atheist making this claim is ultimately doing themselves a disservice–not only by setting the bar artificially and unnecessarily high and essentially flipping the burden of proof onto themselves, but because the strongest arguments for Jesus’ existence are also arguments against his divinity and his status as the so-called Messiah.

“Jesus said bring them and slay them before me”. This is “true” to the extent that the Bible claims Jesus uttered those words. But Jesus was actually telling a parable–in an attempt to justify the doctrine of Hell–of a hypothetical king who says those words within the context of that parable. In other words, Jesus did not literally order any men to be killed before him. Of course, the irony here is that this is actually more damning (ha) than the alternative: If Jesus had truly ordered these men to be killed, an apologist could find some way to rationalize their deaths as morally justified, or claim that the story was only applicable to that specific instance at that specific point in time. But parables are by definition intended to be universally applicable, and the orthodox doctrine of Hell (if it were real) is infinitely more morally abhorrent than the mere execution of a few men.

Ridiculing Genesis. The Genesis stories are prime fodder for atheists and standup comedians everywhere, and for good reason: They are the most ridiculous stories in the entire Bible. But everyone already knows that, and most Christians will simply dismiss such ridicule by saying that the stories are meant to be taken metaphorically.
So instead of Genesis, how about ridiculing the problems with the Bible that people don’t know about, and which aren’t as easily written off as “metaphorical”? Think Jesus destroying a fig tree because it wasn’t fig season. Animal babies being born with stripes because of what their parents were looking at while mating. Jesus saying the end of the world would come within the lifetimes of his original followers. Or my personal favorite, Jesus riding into Jerusalem on two donkeys at the same time because the writer of Matthew sucked at reading Hebrew. No more Noah’s Ark jokes please.

This is what Jesus actually looked like.

“How the hell could they have fit two of every animal on the Ark?” OK, sometimes taking jabs at the Ark story is just too hard to resist. But if you’re going to do it, at least don’t make this mistake: Despite the popular conception of “two of every kind” on the Ark, the Bible is clear that there were actually seven pairs (or just “seven”, depending on which translation you read) of every “clean” animal–which includes the VAST majority of animals–and two of every “unclean”. That’s right… the Noah’s Ark story is even more ridiculous than even most atheists realize, by a factor of three to seven times.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 3

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 1

Christian author Christian Piatt recently wrote a series of articles on “Christian Clichés To Avoid”, which generated quite a bit of buzz in both the Christian and atheist blogospheres. It was a great read, even if (maybe even particularly if) you’re an atheist.

It was so good, in fact, it prompted me to start this series on “atheist clichés” we should also avoid.

These are a basically things I hear from other atheists all the time, in some cases even highly prominent figures in the atheist community. Some are weak arguments against religion (where similar but much stronger arguments exist). Some are statements that atheists make in an attempt to defend atheism, yet actually downplay the atheist position or even implicitly marginalize atheists overall. And some are simply things which are flat-out, demonstrably false.

As with most clichés, some of these sayings certainly have their uses, and—with the exception of those which are simply false—they can be perfectly appropriate for use in certain contexts. These are clichés to avoid, not clichés to completely stop using under all circumstances. So I’ll try to be clear, while discussing each one, which category they fall under, as well as what we should be saying instead.

“I don’t believe in God”. There’s obviously nothing wrong with saying this in casual contexts, particularly in the company of other atheists. But the problem is the way “believe” can be interpreted as whether you support a particular position, not just whether you believe in its existence. One can say they “don’t believe in” the death penalty, for example, but that says nothing about whether they believe the death penalty exists. And as absurd as that interpretation may sound, it plays directly into the mindset of countless religionists who claim that atheists know deep down that God exists, but we simply choose to “reject Him”. Also notice how the wording is subtly yet inherently biased in theists’ (particularly monotheists) favor, while making the subtle presupposition that the existence of their god–particularly the Judeo-Christian God–is somehow the default position. That’s why I prefer the slightly more wordy (but far more accurate) “I don’t believe in the existence of any gods” (of course, if you really want to get under a theist’s skin, there’s also “I don’t believe in the existence of your god”).

“(So and so) lost their faith”. Think about this for a second; what else is there that we refer to as a “loss” that isn’t something we’d like to have back? If you ask someone you how they’ve been lately, would they ever say “I had a really bad cold but I lost it a few days ago”? Would someone ever say they once had a smoking habit, but “lost it”? Simply saying “became an atheist” avoids that connotation.

“(So and so) actually believes…” (Examples: “Catholics actually believe the bread and wine literally become Jesus’ flesh and blood”; “Mormons actually believe magical underwear will protect them”; “young Earth creationists actually believe the Universe is less than 10,000 years old”). Unless we’re psychics we have no way of truly knowing if someone believes in the specific metaphysical claims of their religion (with the possible exception of suicide bombers). Even if they explicitly and publicly proclaim it, there is simply no way to know what private doubts someone may harbor, or whether they’re simply toeing the party line when it comes to professing their beliefs.

That’s why to say that a person or group “claims to believe” something is not only more accurate and more intellectually honest, but it subtly conveys the point that just because people claim to believe in absurd, ridiculous things doesn’t truly mean that deep down, they truly believe in those absurd, ridiculous things. And as Richard Dawkins points out, in many cases they probably don’t.

For the rest of the series:

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 2

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 3

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 4

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 5

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 6

Atheist Clichés to Avoid – Part 7