What should atheist aid look like?

(You have to know about the atheist bus campaign to get this.)

A few days ago, Professor Richard Dawkins published a swingeing attack on Christians for their attitude towards disasters in general and the Haitian earthquake in particular. At the end of his article, he added a link to a website for “Non-Believers Giving Aid”, a coalition for “freethought groups or associates, to collect donations to non-religious relief organizations”.

As something of a thought experiment, I decided to see if, from (as far as possible) an entirely atheist perspective, this was actually itself a strictly rational response to the situation. In it, I suggested that there is a degree of unwarranted ‘anthropomorphising’ in Professor Dawkins’ language and a strong element of anthropocentrism in his world view.

This continues not only in his article, but in his appeal for aid:

Earthquakes and tsunamis are caused not by ‘sin’ but by tectonic plate movements, and tectonic plates, like everything else in the physical world, are supremely indifferent to human affairs and sadly indifferent to human suffering.

To say that an earthquake is ‘indifferent’ to human suffering, however, is to ascribe to it a quality which, in actuality, it does not possess. It sounds as though we have said something, when in fact we have said nothing. Or rather, we have simply used emotive language to subvert a viewpoint with which we disagree (that there are some potentially ‘sympathetic’ forces behind natural events). However, if we know that such forces do not exist, we cannot then go on to say that an earthquake is ‘indifferent’ about us —much less “supremely indifferent”, as if it had its nose emphatically in the air! It is rather like saying it is ‘humourless’ (or “completely humourless”). It is simply a non-statement within an atheist frame of reference.

As to earthquakes being “sadly indifferent to human suffering”, this rather presumes that human suffering matters. Now of course, human beings find human suffering ‘sad’, but then that is because we are programmed to. Professor Dawkins writes,

Those of us who understand this reality [that the human suffering caused by earthquakes is just the result of natural phenomena] are sometimes accused of being indifferent to that suffering ourselves.

And indeed people do sometimes falsely accuse atheists of lacking feeling, but of course, being human, atheists will have the full range of human feelings. That is not to be denied. However, atheists also claim to have something which they believe not all other human beings have, which is a proper understanding of the world in general and human nature in particular.

In Richard Dawkins’ case, I have suggested this includes three specific convictions: first, that there are no ‘gods’, secondly, that the material realm is all that there is, and thirdly that the evolutionary perspective he advocates is correct.

What he derives from that evolutionary perspective is what he calls “four good Darwinian reasons for individuals to be altruistic, generous or ‘moral’ [sic] towards each other” (The God Delusion, p251):

1. Genetic kinship (thus promoting the group genes).

2. ‘Tit for Tat’ reciprocation of favours.

3. Acquiring a reputation for ‘goodness’

4. Advertising onself through conspicuous generosity.

These are the raw ‘Darwinian’ principles behind moral behaviour. But, as Professor Dawkins argues, what arose from evolutionary pressures now finds itself in a new context: in the modern era, we no longer face those same pressures and, moreover, although “even now full understanding is confined to a minority of scientific specialists” (Ibid, p252), we can understand cognitively that we are being driven by natural (might one say “supremely indifferent”?) inclinations which no longer strictly apply:

In ancestral times, we had the opportunity to be altruistic only towards close kin and potential reciprocators. Nowadays that restriction is no longer there, but the rule of thumb [i.e. the natural instinct] persists. Why would it not? It is just like sexual desire. We can no more help ourselves feeling pity when we see a weeping unfortunate (who is unrelated and unable to reciprocate) than we can help ourselves feeling lust for a member of the opposite sex (who may be infertile or otherwise unable to reproduce). (Ibid, p253)

Of course atheists feel for the sufferings of the Haitians. We cannot help it! But at least the atheist understands that these feelings are what Dawkins calls ‘misfirings’ of an evolutionary mechanism. In that respect, our response to seeing suffering Haitian children on the television is no different from the feelings evoked by seeing a beautiful naked woman or man on the same screen. The sorrow and the erection are essentially the same. The question for the atheists is this: knowing what is actually going on in themselves what should they do? As Professor Dawkins says on his website,

... we do not hide behind the notion that earthly suffering will be rewarded in a heavenly paradise, nor do we expect a heavenly reward for our generosity ...

Quite so — but more than that, the atheist knows that the Haitian he sees on the television is not going to reciprocate when he himself is off work with ’flu. Professor Dawkins clearly thinks that we should, nevertheless, be motivated to relieve the circumstances of the Haitian:

... the understanding that this is the only life any of us have makes the need to alleviate suffering even more urgent.

But as we are increasingly being made aware, the ultimate way to put an end to suffering is through death. If we are to alleviate suffering in the short term, we must think through why, and what we are to do. The question is, knowing our true circumstances — that we are being moved by our instincts to have inappropriate feelings about strangers with whom we have no relationship and who will never themselves be in a position to reciprocate — how, rationally, should we respond?

The best answer, based on Professor Dawkins’ four criteria for moral behaviour, would seem to be to consider the effect of our response on our collective, national, status in the world. It is as a nation that we are likely to receive reciprocal benefits, and it is as a nation that we can enhance our reputation. As it happens, President Obama has recently given a speech (full of unfortunate religious references) part of which (whether deliberately or not) illustrates exactly this principle:

Last month, God’s grace, God’s mercy, seemed far away from our neighbors in Haiti. And yet I believe that grace was not absent in the midst of tragedy. ... It was felt in the presence of relief workers and medics; translators; servicemen and women, bringing water and food and aid to the injured.

One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world —Navy Corpsman Christian [sic] Brossard. And lying on a gurney aboard the USNS Comfort, a woman asked Christopher: “Where do you come from? What country? After my operation,” she said, “I will pray for that country.” And in Creole, Corpsman Brossard responded, “Etazini.” The United States of America.

The atheist will rightly scoff at the President’s theology. And the atheist may not be too impressed by the reciprocity on offer —we send you our navy with medicines, you give us your (meaningless) prayers. Nevertheless, as President Obama’s words hint, the useful thing is to have a high profile for your country:

God’s grace, and the compassion and decency of the American people is expressed through the men and women like Corpsman Brossard. It’s expressed through the efforts of our Armed Forces, through the efforts of our entire government, through similar efforts from Spain and other countries around the world.

Here we have something like a rational reason for aid, though it is not the reason put forward on Professor Dawkins’ website. His own suggested motivations are rather less clear and rather more mixed:

Non-Believers Giving Aid is ... an easy conduit for the non-religious to help those in desperate need, whilst simultaneously giving the lie to the canard that you need God to be good.

The question this begs, of course, is what we mean by ‘being good’. The atheist knows it is not what the religious believe —misled as they are by their ignorance at many levels. That being the case, however, the important thing is to make clear what we do mean, and how it is expressed through what we do. Atheist aid, I suggest, should look like this:

John Richardson
6 February 2010

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You're not the boss of me now —or are you?

Teaching on the Wisdom literature yesterday, I was struck by how in Proverbs the foundation of the good life is the godly family. The book opens with several chapters addressing the young man (person) in need of wisdom who is urged to listen to his father’s instruction and not forsake his mother’s teaching.

We may note that this itself builds on another ‘foundational’ principle, enshrined in the Ten Commandments: “Honour your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.” As St Paul observed (Eph 6:2-3), this commandment has a special quality in that there is a promise attached to it. It has consequences, not just for the individual but for society, and these are spelled out: “you will live long, and it will go well with you in the land.”

Similarly, the Proverbs have social consequences. They are, according to 1:3, “for ... doing what is right and just and fair.” And this is also the basis for God’s blessing of the world through Abraham’s descendants: “I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him” (Gen 18:19).

All this depends, in the first instance, on the parent-to-child communication of God’s ways. Abraham is to direct “his children and his household”. The subject of Proverbs is to “listen to a father’s instruction” (4:1).

The Christian reader of Proverbs, moreover, is in the privileged position of knowing that the human relationship between parent and child is a mirror of the divine relationship between two of the three members of the godhead. The Son is constituted as ‘son’ because, as Jesus is recorded as saying in John 5:19, he does “only what he sees his Father doing.” Obedience is inherent in the son-to-father relationship. What is often overlooked, however, is that the converse to this is trust: “the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, that all may honour the Son just as they honour the Father” (5:22-23). Here is not just a lesson about the Trinity but about parenthood: parents may expect children to obey them, but ultimately they must honour this by their absolute trust of their children.

Yet it is part of the lesson of the Wisdom literature (and its fulfilment in Christ as the Wisdom of God, cf 1 Cor 1:24), that this is not universally understood or accepted. That parents may expect obedience from their children, and have the right to direct them as to how they should live, is itself a theological proposition, based on the principle that “the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom” (Prov 1:7).

Where there is no such ‘fear of the Lord’, however, we may expect Wisdom to be in increasingly short supply. We must thus be ready to question much of the agenda of our society with regard to children and their upbringing.

At the same time, however, we may challenge the assumptions of our society, both collectively and individually, about not merely education but procreation. A question worth asking, it seems to me, is what people think gives them the right to have children in the first place.

Having a child involves bringing another person into existence — yet we do not (indeed, of course, we cannot) ask that person whether or not they want to exist. Most of the people thus caused to exist will experience life as, to a greater or lesser extent, a struggle. They may, of course, have happy times as well as bad, but they will have to come to terms with their own existence, and, perhaps most difficult of all, they will eventually have to face the inevitability of the termination of their life which, in the view of many, means their consequent non-existence. (The book of Ecclesiastes is replete with material which reflects that particular struggle!)

Yet parents —even atheist parents —assume they have the right to do this to someone else: to cause them to exist and therefore to face the angst of existence itself. They do this without question and, moreover, they unquestioningly impose their authority on them, beginning with naming the child. Yet what gives anyone the right to say to another person something as dramatic as, “Everyone will call you ‘Joel’ or ‘Ziggy’,” or whatever takes their parents’ fancy?

I have no doubt that somewhere in the dark recesses of some department of sociology or social policy unit exactly these questions are being asked. And I suspect that the answer is precisely what we would expect in a society where there is no ‘fear of the Lord’: that there is no right to do this —or rather that any rights there may be are to be defined in law and regulated by the State. Once it was thought to be a privilege that schools, colleges and so on could act in loco parentis. Today, one suspects, we are moving to the position where the parents will be allowed only those privileges that the State grants to them.

But that, of course, begs another question: what gives them the right ...?

If the fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom, it is also true that the lack of such fear is the beginning of the unravelling of reason.

Revd John P Richardson
27 September 2009

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