<underfire> Atheism and Peace

[Michael H Goldhaber]

Mary,  et al.,

Mary Keller wrote:
> From this perspective the a-theist is signifying the significance  
> of their
> location in the world. When someone tells me, as you did, that they  
> are an atheist  I hear "I don't need God. I don't count on  
> transcendentals. I am happy to become worm food. I'm not looking  
> for wings."  From  my perspective the atheist and the theist are  
> both exercising the cognitive desire to  map out the significance  
> of their location in the world.

Mary, I mistook your original position, it would seem, but here you  
mistake mine, and that of many atheists. [FOOTNOTE: Taken literally,  
a disbelief in god does not necessitate a disbelief in an afterlife  
(e.g., the original Buddhism, in which to be released from the cycle  
of reincarnation was a major goal) nor vice versa (Torah Judaism has  
“G-d”  but no mention of an afterlife; on the holiest day of Yom  
Kippur, one prays only “to be inscribed in the book of life for  
another year,” i.e. not to die within the year.) But ignore these  
subtleties.]

Atheists believe there is no god. This has nothing to do with what  
they would like. Further, as an atheist, along with many others, I  
would not be happy to become worm food, in two ways. First, “I” will  
not exist after death (except in the minds of others). My dead body  
will not contain not myself; the self will have ceased.

Second,  the prospect of death does not make me happy, but, no matter  
what I might want,  heaven does not seem to be available as an  
alternative.  Many atheists wish to avoid death simply by remaining  
alive. Some, such as Ray Kurzweil, think that we have reached, or  
shortly will reach, a time, when, at least for a fortunate few, life  
expectancy increases by more than a year every year, due primarily to  
medical advances, so living “forever” may become a scientific  
possibility.

Thus, for many atheists, life, at least their own, can become an  
“ultimate value.” Like other ultimate values, if taken alone, this  
can be dangerous. Some people may ruthlessly harvest others’ organs,  
for example. However, most recognize that acting to prevent murder  
and against violence can be mutually beneficial. Thus, I think it is  
no accident that where religion has most waned, in Western Europe, we  
also find, on the whole, quite little support for war, in comparison  
with the past.

The commonplace proverb “there are no atheists in a foxhole,” can be  
taken two ways. The common one, of course, is that being in foxhole  
under fire leads to prayer. The other is this:  Without religious  
feeling, why give up your life, the most precious thing you have?

The fact is that much of western Europe’s long history of war and  
conquest was quite explicitly religious: the “reconquista” of the  
Iberian peninsula, the various crusades, the eastward expansion of  
the Teutonic knights, the thirty-years’ war, much of the move into  
Mexico, Cnetral  and South America, the Puritans in New England, the  
American Civil War, etc.  Perhaps later the religion of “the  
nation” (the “Motherland” or the  “Fatherland”)  or the pseudo- 
religions of Nazism or Marxism (both of which imposed belief)  to  
some degree held sway. Now with social democracy, and no imposed  
religion, nor imposed atheism, Western Europeans seem to have become  
much more peace-loving.

Here in the United States, most military recruits and support for the  
current war come from areas where religion is also strong — chiefly  
the South and Midwestern and other rural areas. But, implicitly, even  
Bush recognized, for all his rhetoric that “we are at war,” that  
ordinary Americans are sufficiently atheistic in reality that they do  
not want to make any personal sacrifices whatsoever in this war.



Best,
Michael


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