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Secular Altruism
by Joseph Rowlands

Atheists are often on the defensive when it comes to morality.  The religious claim is that morality is inextricably (and inexplicably) linked to religion.  You can't be moral unless you believe in God.  Without an all-seeing entity that watches and judges your every move, and that offers punishment and reward accordingly, there wouldn't be any reason to be moral.  The argument is not that atheists can't occasionally act morally, it's that they have no reason for it.

Many atheists attempt to counter this argument.  They claim they can be as altruistic as any religious person, and in fact they can be even more altruistic.  Religious morality has all kinds of oppressive elements that are a byproduct of their particular supernatural mythologies.  Don't eat pork.  Homosexuality is evil.  Sex is bad.  Women are inferior.  "Immoral" behaviors should be outlawed.  The list is long.

In a sense, both sides are correct.

Religious morality recognizes an important idea.  Morality needs to be of benefit to the practitioner.  If someone asserted arbitrarily that you should hit your head against a wall, you (hopefully) wouldn't do it.  Arbitrary statements about what you should do are properly ignored.  If someone wants to convince you, they have to answer one important question.  Why should you?  What purpose does it satisfy?  And more importantly, why should you do it?  If someone comes and tells you to give away everything you value, they better have a good reason.  Simply pointing out that the recipients of your gifts will benefit is not enough.  They need to show how you will benefit.

Religious morality recognizes this and offers infinite rewards in the afterlife.  The rewards don't technically need to be infinite.  They just need to be greater than the burdens that morality imposes on you.  But since the afterlife is unseen, and must be taken on faith, they have to hedge against the reasonable idea that a value with certainty is worth more than a value based on hope.  Infinity is just hedging the bet.  You might think that's good enough, but it seems it isn't attractive enough on its own.  So they promise the alternative is an infinity of torture.  Not a lot of subtlety there.

So religion recognizes that you need to be rewarded for your moral sacrifices.  They promise as much as they can possibly promise, and throw in the all-seeing judge so you know there's no cheating.  In the eyes of religion, this is a good incentive to be moral.  And in their eyes, atheists lack that incentive entirely.  A secular altruist is a person who claims something is moral, but completely lacks any incentives to act on it.

The secular altruists see things a little differently.  First, they think the religious morality is flawed.  It isn't purely altruistic in the sense that it has oppressive elements.  If religions really cared about other people, they wouldn't work so hard attacking homosexuals and treating them as evil.  If they cared about death and disease, they wouldn't try to convince people that condoms were unsafe and worthless.  If they cared about the poor, they would support more socialist programs.  To the secular altruists, they can claim a purer from of altruistic morality.

They may also respond to the idea that religion offers actual incentives to being moral and atheism doesn't.  They may point out that the reward system of religion detracts from the morality.  If people are practicing altruism only so they themselves can get into heaven, how are they actually interested in helping their fellow man?  Aren't they just going through the motions so they can pass the supernatural test and get their rewards?  Isn't it all just selfish behavior?

So the secular altruist response does not attempt to rebut the incentives argument.  Instead, it calls for a purer morality, one that has no selfish motive at all.  Yes, it is harder to practice since there is no personal gain.  But that only proves that those who do practice it are morally superior.  Religious people can't claim to be sacrificing for their beliefs since they believe they will be richly rewarded.

So in a sense, both sides are right.  Religion is right that secular altruism lacks any incentive to be moral, and secular altruism can claim a purer form of altruism since their actions are not corrupted by personal benefit.  Religion values integrity, and secular altruism values pure motives.  Each claims moral superiority based on the value they see as most important.

In a sense, they're both right.  But in a larger sense, they're both completely wrong.

The religious argument says that atheists can't be moral because they lack the incentives that religious morality has.  But this argument is only true in a sacrificial morality.  Only when the morality asks you to make sacrifices would an atheist lack incentives.  Altruism does require sacrifice, so the religious argument applies there.  A secular altruist has no reason to adopt or practice his morality.  It is pointless, self-destructive, and there is no incentives or rational motivations.

However, the religious argument completely fails when discussing a morality based on rational self-interest.  A morality that shows you how to live your life effectively and peacefully, gaining all of the benefits of living and interacting with others, is not sacrificial.  The actions it favors are those that improve your life.  There is no need for fanciful supernatural promises of rewards.  The rewards stem directly from your choices.  They don't need a magical entity to compensate.

Secular altruism is also flawed in a fundamental sense.  While it may think of itself as morally superior for not having any personal benefits associated with the moral acts, this actually makes it groundless and nonsensical.  It is claiming that certain actions should be taken, but can't provide any reason for them.  Religious morality makes sense based on their supernatural beliefs.  Secular altruism has no such excuse.  It is the worst kind of arbitrary.

Atheists criticize religion for accepting beliefs on faith.  But when it comes to altruism, they have no qualms with taking it on faith.  They start off assuming that altruism is good, and go on to try to rationalize their beliefs.  Religious beliefs make claims about the world, supernatural or otherwise.  Religious morality is a product of those beliefs.  Secular altruism does not even start with facts (mistaken or not) about the world.  It supports altruistic morality without a hint of a reason why.

Even the notion of moral superiority is devoid of meaning in secular altruism.  In religion, moral judgment and comparisons are the key to getting into the preferred afterlife.  What's the point in secular altruism?  Why bother with judging at all?  There's no point to it.

The likely answer is that you can feel good about yourself by knowing that you are moral.  But this is conditional on believing that there is something "good" about being moral in the first place.  Since secular altruism is pointless and groundless, this is a big stretch.  It's the same as arbitrarily saying that people with your first and last name are superior to everyone else, and therefore you should feel good about it.  There's no foundation.  It's a pride based on circularity.  You made up the standard, and then go on to pretend it is meaningful in order to feel good about it.

But as absurd as it is, people are able to convince themselves that they should feel good about themselves for following an arbitrary set of rules.  This points out a new problem, though.  The goal of feeling "morally superior" is now the incentive for acting morally.  The original claim to moral superiority because they weren't seeking personal benefit must be discarded since there is a personal benefit being sought.

Secular altruists may not recognize that morality only makes sense when it leads to personal benefits.  They may even reject this view as a distortion of morality.  And yet they act on it anyway.  They perform their moral actions, not out of a genuine desire to help others, but out of an attempt to view themselves, and be viewed by others, as a moral person.

Here we start to see the absurdity of it all.  They reject the idea of a moral system where your own benefit is the goal, and yet they practice a morality with a purpose to benefit.  Even worse, they reject a system where the benefits to their lives are real, and instead seek a system where the benefits are merely an act of confusion.  They seek to feel good about themselves based on an arbitrary moral standard with circular reasoning.  Action A is moral.  If you perform action A you will be a good person.  Why?  Because action A is the right thing to do.  Talk about absurd!

There is a different approach atheists could make.  Instead of trying to be more absurd than religious morality by claiming they will perform all of the sacrifices with no benefits, or absurdly delusional benefits, atheists could simply skip the middle man.  The religious belief is that morality requires you sacrifice others and follow moral rules, but ultimately the goal is your own benefit.  Getting into the afterlife and being richly rewarded are the real goals.

Atheists could accept the goal of practicing a morality for their own rational self-interest.  They could then point out that there is no proof that an afterlife exists, and point out that without that belief, the morality would work differently.  Instead of hoping for some supernatural entity to compensate you for your sacrifices on earth, the morality would have to change so the benefits would accrue here on earth.  It would become a morality without sacrifice.  It would become a morality for living a successful and fulfilling life on earth.

This would be a step away from absurdity and faith instead of leap into it.
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