So says the headline of an article in the Guardian. Rather than base the curriculum on the premise that something doesn’t exist, an endeavour that is patently absurd – like, to borrow a well-worn saw from atheism, running a school whose founding principle is that fairies don’t exist – the course is actually an outlet for the silly books of atheism’s evangelists.
The question is, once the children have been introduced to the idea that there is no God and that they live in a universe where, as Richard Dawkins puts it, “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”, what is to prevent them growing from self-absorbed little stinkers into solipsitic adults who trample on anyone who is weaker because they care for nothing and no-one but themselves? The answer is: nothing; and that is what will bring on the howling wilderness.
In a historic move that will cheer Richard Dawkins, atheists in Ireland have secured the right to teach the republic’s primary schoolchildren that God doesn’t exist.
The first ever atheist curriculum for thousands of primary-school pupils in Ireland has been drawn up by Atheist Ireland in an education system that the Catholic church hierarchy has traditionally dominated.
The class of September 2014 will be reading texts such as Dawkins’ The Magic of Reality, his book aimed at children, as well as other material at four different primary levels, according to Atheist Ireland.
Up to 16,000 primary schoolchildren who attend the fast-growing multi-denominational Irish school sector will receive direct tuition on atheism as part of their basic introduction course to ethics and belief systems.
“The question is, once the children have been introduced to the idea that there is no God and that they live in a universe where, as Richard Dawkins puts it, “there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”, what is to prevent them growing from self-absorbed little stinkers into solipsitic adults who trample on anyone who is weaker because they care for nothing and no-one but themselves?”
With respect, David, what’s preventing you from the very same fate? I may be wrong, but it seems to me this entire blog has mostly been you and an echo chamber whinging fairly aggressively for years.
Why would believing there is no foundation for objective morality produce the same result as pointing out that the Anglican church has largely abandoned the truth of that objective morality?
Dawkins is an ass, but he does not believe there are no grounds for objective morality outside of God. No atheist over the age of twelve believes this. You may disagree with what they see as a reasonable foundation for morality, but it’s not terribly fair to pretend they go around saying there is no good or evil.
Dawkins said exactly that:
See, I read that. I also read a whole lot more from Dawkins, and other atheists. Dawkins, whinging old wet blanket though he is, does not believe that morality is a meaningless concept. His shrill book The God Delusion spends some considerable time expounding on why morality does not need God. He uses the fairly legitimate “empathy/enlightened self-interest” standard. I’m more comfortable with a universe that has God in it, but Dawkins and his bunch do not go around saying “do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law”.
You’re just being self-serving and it does your argument no favour.
What you are referring to is not objective morality, it is subjective morality – morality invented by humans or existing, supposedly, as a by-product of our evolutionary development.
The new anti-theists certainly believe in subjective morality: they delight in making up their own rules. Dawkins, in conversation with Peter Singer, speculated that killing babies born with certain disabilities might be a “good” thing. When questioned about whether a hypothetical society with a culture that saw little wrong with rape would be “bad”, he had no reason for saying it would since, in his view, a culture largely determines its own morality.
Objective morality is independent of and above humanity; subjective morality is not. Dawkins does not believe in objective morality.
Morality needs a moral agent to mean anything, and in that sense it is always subjective. Using the empathy baseline, the “if it happened to me I’d hate it” baseline, is as objective as humans get — that is to say, not very but it’ll do. That does not mean I’ll agree with every moral judgment someone like Dawkins will make — indeed I’ll disagree with him on most things — but it is slightly too easy to dismiss moral frameworks left and right because they’re based on the human mind. Any moral decision made by a Christian according to Christian morality can be arrived at by an atheist, using reasoning that does not take God into account. There are atheists who don’t like abortion or rape regardless of the prevailing social position on either topic.
The Bible itself is less than sparkling clear on the moral status of a number of things, and has been used to argue both sides of many arguments over the centuries.
This is interesting. 🙂
Vincent,
I am using “objective” and “subjective” in this sense:
If God exists and he has determined what is “right“ and “wrong“ then right and wrong exist objectively, independent of our perception of them. The only subjective part of this is our understanding of right and wrong; our understanding may be imperfect. That in no way alters the objective (i.e. independent of humanity) existence of “right” and “wrong”.
There is a vast difference between God determined standards of good and evil and standards that have been concocted by men.
You appear to be labouring under the misapprehension that a man describing an imaginary unicorn has conveyed reality as effectively as a man imperfectly describing a real horse.
I’m using objective in the sense that objectivity doesn’t actually exist, and I go with what I see on the ground. An objective morality in the vaccuum of the cosmos is utterly irrelevant. Morality only means anything if moral agents are grappling with it. Morality _needs_ us to mean anything. We’re all subjects — we’re not God. If our understanding of God’s morality is imperfect or contradictory, it hardly matters that it is objective, does it? Because morality doesn’t walk the street on its own.
All I’m saying is that it is possible for an atheist to follow the same code of morality as a Christian, making the same decisions in the same situations, without zero disparity in outcomes. I know such people. I’m sure _you_ know such people, and if you don’t, you need to meet better atheists. 🙂 Indeed, there are people who _pretend_ to be Christians out of cultural expediency, who don’t actually believe in God, and who still live according to the same morality Christians do.
You can derive a morality that looks suspiciously Christian from biological imperatives, without believing in God.
I think you are mixing up whether an ability to observe a thing with complete objectivity exists with whether the thing – or object – itself exists.
If objective morality does not exist then, while it is possible for an atheist to follow Christian moral precepts, there is no reason for him to do so. Morality becomes a matter of one person’s opinion set against another’s.
If objective morality exists and people disagree on their perception of it, at least they can have a rational discussion of why they see it the way they do. If there is no objective morality, differences of opinion on what is right and wrong are in the same category as my liking blue and your liking red: non-rational, irreconcilable preference.
No, I don’t think that’s fair. You’re mixing up “being subjective” and “accepting axioms”.
It’s always a questions of axioms. For Christians and for atheists.
I think an atheist who bases a moral structure on the axiom “Getting hurt without provocation sucks” — for example — is doing a pretty good job. If I accept that axiom myself, boom, what we have is as objective a discussion as human beings can get to.
That’s what “objective” actually means to humans. The dictionary definition is everyday shorthand and quickly becomes useless in a philosophical discussion, as you know very well. The first axiom of human existence — well, one of the first — is “There is a reality outside of the human perception.” You can’t prove that, I can’t prove that. But we both take it as read and we go on from there.
So there is nothing diminished, wrong, contemptible or worthy of scorn about an atheist who tells you what his axioms are and derives a moral code from them. You may very well reject his axioms, reject his conclusions, counter that your own axioms begin with “God exists”, but you cannot say that what he’s doing is equivalent to preferring corn flakes to porridge. _Everything_ we say or do always begins with an unsaid “Assuming for the sake of the argument that such and such is true”. In that sense, everything — even faith — is the equivalent of preferring corn flakes to porridge. 😀
Side note: I don’t try to follow the Christian way because God decreed it right and true, I try to follow it because it actually makes sense to me.