Stephen Law

Phil Zuckerman spent 14 months in Scandinavia, talking to hundreds of Danes and Swedes about religion. It wasn’t easy. Anyone who has paid attention knows that Denmark and Sweden are among the least religious nations in the world. Polls asking about belief in God, the importance of religion in people’s lives, belief in life after death or church attendance consistently bear this out. It is also well known that in various rankings of nations by life expectancy, child welfare, literacy, schooling, economic equality, standard of living and competitiveness, Denmark and Sweden stand in the first tier. Well documented though they may be, these two sets of facts run up against the assumption of many Americans that a society where religion is minimal would be, in Mr. Zuckerman’s words, “rampant with immorality, full of evil and teeming with depravity.” Article continues... thanks to M Male.

The "moral capital" move that I explored here showed up again in today's Observer (article here ) . On page 25, Richard Harries, Bishop of Oxford, suggests that perhaps modern atheist do-gooders are nevertheless living off the moral capital built up by earlier religious generations (and when that capital finally runs out, then where will we be?!): "... many people who have strong moral commitments without any religious foundation were shaped by parents or grandparents for whom morality and religion were fundamentally bound up. Moreover, many of those in the forefront of progressive political change, who have abandoned religion, have been driven by a humanism that has essentially been built up by our Christian heritage... How far are we living on moral capital? " (p.25)] Harries credits Charles Taylor with making this point, though the U.S. neo-cons seem to have got there before him (see below). I have not read Taylor's "magesterial" A Secular Age...

Morality requires God? Here's a nice quote (pointed out to me by my friend Tom Pilling) From M y Country, My People (1935) by Lin Yu Tang. "To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party."

BTW there's also a great article by Hauser and Singer here on this same theme.

Here is a Guardian Face to Faith Piece by Nicholas Buxton. It perpetuates a whole series of myths about atheism and the Enlightenment. Buxton is in fact more or less quoting from Rowan Williams' Dimbleby Lecture in which Williams claims that only a religious tradition makes "possible a real questioning of the immediate agenda of a society, the choices that are defined and managed for you by the market." Buxton would have us believe only the religious ever really question our shallow commercial culture. They alone are the "free thinkers". As an atheist philosopher who has spent half a lifetime asking such questions as whether there’s a God, whether life has meaning, what makes things right and wrong, whether there may be life after death, and whether there is anything beyond the material, I find it surprising that Buxton and the Archbishop would pretend that it’s only from the perspective of a religious tradition that such questions ever get asked. The great re...

Here , by the way, is Independent columnist Bruce Anderson recently repeating the same tired old neo-con guff that I tackle in the post below, but with the added point that only a robust Christian culture can withstand the onslaught of Islam. That Anderson has been reading the U.S. neo-cons is perhaps suggested by the following passage (read it, then compare it to the quotes from Bork, Himmelfarb and Kristol about our "moral capital" being "depleted" in my post below). "...one point should have occurred to the adherents of [atheism], at least in a Christian country. Even if they reject faith, it might be better if not too many others followed their example. In the West, we have a vast cultural and intellectual heritage. But our ethical heritage is sadly depleted." Here too is Melanie Phillips promoting the same "to hell in a hand-basket" neo-con line. Her main point seems to be that only the religious are prepared to really fight (Islam) and ...

Is religious belief indispensable to a healthy and prosperous society? That morality cannot survive without religion is a perennial worry. Even the Enlightenment thinker Voltaire (1694-1778) would not allow his friends to discuss atheism in front of his servants, saying, I want my lawyer, tailor, valets, even my wife to believe in God. I think that if they do I shall be robbed less and cheated less. Here, too, is Democrat senator Joseph Lieberman echoing George Washington: As a people we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God's purpose… George Washington warned us never to 'indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Even Adolf Hitler insisted that "[s]ecular schools can never be tolerated” because a morality that is not founded on religion is built “on thin air”. But of course the claim that morality is causally dependent on religious belief - that it will not (or at least is unlikely to...

One of the thoughts lying behind the often-made claim that “atheism is a faith position” is that there is a great mystery about life, the universe and everything. Why, for example, is there something, rather than nothing? Personally, I haven’t a clue (we'll maybe I have - but let's put that off to another day). Noting this mystery, the theist/agnostic may then argue like this: Either (i) the atheist refuses to recognize this question. But this is just a "faith in science" position - it just assumes the only legitimate questions are questions science can settle. Bang - the scientific atheist's position is a "faith position" too! Or (ii) the atheist admits they haven’t a clue how to answer the question. But once the atheist admits they are in the dark how to answer it, they must admit there’s no more reason to suppose God didn’t create the universe than there is to suppose He did. So you see? Theism and atheism are equally (un)reasonable! This is a p...