On God

The great thing about writing a book is that it brings you into contact with people whose opinions you should have canvassed before you ever pressed pen to paper. They write to you. They telephone you. They come to your bookstore events and give you things to read that you should have read already. It’s this dialectical process that makes me glad I chose the profession I did: a free education that goes on for a lifetime.

The exchange also improves one’s own arguments. Or so at any rate I hope. The case that keeps coming up against me is this: If the heavens are empty (as I maintain in my little book God Is Not Great), then why should anyone behave ethically? Until I wrote the book and went out on tour with it, I had thought that this question was an absurd one. Absurd in the sense that it was posed backward: Do we fear drawing conclusions from the evidence because the conclusions might have unwelcome consequences? People used to think that accepting Darwinism would lead to “social Darwinism,” but, in fact, the reduction of people to the status of animals or machines is as likely to be opposed by atheists and humanists as anyone else. And, in any case, the scientific evidence for Darwin’s conclusions happens to be overwhelming. We would not be justified in refusing the case for evolution or natural selection merely because it makes us into one species among many and shows that we are only half a chromosome away from the chimpanzees. (Though we might choose to be a bit nicer to the chimpanzees.)

Yet, I keep being asked, by good and anxious people, how we would teach morality in the absence of God. This question has two minor implications. It first shows a lack of confidence among believers, as if they half know that faith is weak, and suspect that morality might also be so. Second, it insults unbelievers, as if we infidels might at any moment give ourselves over to slaughter and rapine. Beyond this, it suggests a sort of arid pragmatism. So, faith has given people strength? Well, in that case, how do you criticize the Farrakhan militant who claims that the Nation of Islam gets young people off drugs? Or the Jehovah’s Witness, wallowing in lubricious visions of hell for all non-members of his cult, who still calmly refuses the orders of a totalitarian state? I once secured good behavior from my turbulent infant son by reminding him that Santa Claus would hear of his conduct, but I instantly felt ashamed because I knew that part of his growing-up would involve my disillusioning him of the very same belief.

We can all think of right actions performed by people who claim to be actuated by faith (just as we can all think of vile and cruel things done for the announced self-same motive). If I take my own case, I am not overwhelmed by the number of selfless or good things that I have done. But, when I can reflect on them, I have little difficulty explaining my motive. I do not hope for a heavenly reward and I am not afraid of divine punishment (and do not regard either of those inducements as moral). But I do hope to gain satisfaction for myself, and I do hope to benefit from others who are willing to do the same. My favorite example is donating blood, which I do not do with sufficient regularity. But I positively enjoy doing it. I do not lose a pint, but someone else gains one. And, when I too need blood one day (and I have a very rare blood group), I can be fairly sure that someone will have anonymously done the same for me. This is not strenuous, but not without its beauty and symmetry. The moral basis of action is quite robust. If we all did a bit more of it, and things like it, the world would be no worse. If the prompting to do such things was not innate in us, we would never have evolved this far. I have compressed these thoughts into a question: Can you name any right action or moral thought, performed or uttered by a religious person, which could not have been performed or uttered by an unbeliever? So far, I have had no takers. Maybe this column will introduce me to the answer I should already have had in my possession. 

Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and a visiting professor in liberal studies at the New School in New York. His most recent book is God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
  

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