Setting up the tables involved arriving early and staying late for the events, which we were all gladly willing to do. We had popcorn, Freethought music CDs for sale, literature, and, of course, an eight-foot golden Statue of Liberty. With these powerful weapons we charged into the heart of West Chester for three summer nights, donning identical "Freedom Depends on Freethinkers" T-shirts with FSGP advertisements on the reverse. We were ready for whatever West Chester would give us.
On the final night of Swinging Thursday 2004, Wisdom was, unfortunately, unable to attend. Downey, Rosch, and I set up our canopy and tables and put the flame in the hand of our golden Statue of Liberty, her earnest expression both attracting and admonishing the passersby. Children pointed this spectacle out to parents who tried to both entertain their interest as well as inspect our crew of freethinking, T-shirt-wearing troublemakers. But Lady Liberty stood as testament that we, too, are Americans, and the Freedoms that she embodied are as much ours as anyone else's. It was good to see that most of those we spoke to understood that.
One might think that opening a FSGP tent in a town like West Chester might be an invitation to be ignored, preached to, or maybe even becoming a target of fear or disgust. However, people are more complex than that two-dimensional caricature of the Bible-thumping, hell-condemners that would shake their god in our face-at least most of them are. Yes, we were greeted with some quick glances followed by rapid steps intended to carry them swiftly past our canopied tables of godlessness. Some just politely smiled as they walked by, genuinely either uninterested or too shy to approach. One man seemed to stalk our table, inspecting us while trying not to be noticed. I made eye contact with him at least twice, but he darted his eyes away and kept moving, only to return a minute or two later to again slowly pass by, either unable or unwilling to approach us. But there were a number of people who did stop--most after some reluctance--and talked with us. Many, being of like-mind, offered words of encouragement. Others were unfamiliar with the existence of groups such as ours and curiously fingered through the pamphlets of the various Atheist and Humanist groups that lay on the table (since the brochure holder we had didn't want to remain upright, spilling its contents numerous times before we discarded it). Some took information, others didn't. I imagine most ofThose who did later discarded them or merely put them in that place at home where they will get back to look at them later. That place is undoubtedly cluttered.
Then there were those who, knowing what kind of group we were anyway, still stopped and talked with us for awhile. I can speak for neither Downey nor Rosch, since their conversations with our visitors were separate from my own. I, however, had an interesting discussion with a born-again Christian who decided to have a discussion with me. He was not interested in any of the pamphlets, but only to hear me explain what our group was about, what we did, and what we believed. He didn't say so at first but I suspected that he was a Christian by the nature of his questions and the way he seemed to cloak a creeping smirk at some of my responses. He asked me how I came to be an Atheist, why I was angry at God, why I had turned away from him (always "him"). I explained that for most Atheists it was not about being angry or rebellious or any other kind of reaction to the (idea of) God that made us Atheists. I explained that for many of us Christianity was as real as the story of Osiris and Isis, Hansel and Gretel, or Hercules and his many labors.
To this he gave the usual answers: his unmistakable feeling of God's presence in his life as he helped him to stop his abuse of alcohol, women, etc. He had been, after all, born again for six years (not without some 'backsliding' of course). His life was changed. "Good," I said, "I'm glad you've improved yourself. But was it really God's work, or your own, aided by a powerful idea of God?" The cloak on his smirk gave way a little at this. "I couldn't have done it without Jesus," he said. He seemed very sure, so I let it go at that.
Not hiding his smirk now he asked what is considered among many evangelical Christians the hard question for Atheists; how can anyone expect to be moral without God? I asked him if he really thought that an ethical system was impossible without God. His answer was prepared. He said that God and the Bible were the sources for morality. He pointed out that without this "objective" source for what is good and evil one would always have to rely on flawed human judgment--relativism--to try to be moral. With this there would be no certainty in your life as to whether what you were doing was good or evil.
To his surprise I agreed that this was a problem. His smirk had turned into a subtle smile; he seemed as if he felt he had scored a great point, perhaps a victory. Except I was smiling too as I clarified my response; it was not, however, a problem that makes ethics impossible, I said. His interest was peaked. I asked him if I might explain how we can rationalize morality without God, and he said yes. As I spoke his smile slowly mellowed, and his smirk began to fade. He understood, or was beginning to, but he had never thought of it this way, I thought as I proceeded through my points. My discussion was somewhat lengthy, but I will highlight the important points as follows.
I started out by indicating that the way he was framing the question of morality was in the form of a logical fallacy called "false choice." The mistake is presenting a problem as if it only has some number of possible answers (usually two, but often three or more). This fallacy, I said, is a common mistake that evangelicals often make when talking about morality, another example being the question of whether Jesus was "crazy, lying, or right" (he recognized this reference). This is a misleading and erroneous tendency that people should be aware of.
I asked him whether he believed in free will. He said that he did. I also asked him if he believed that the other people around him were also free, like he was. He said that he believed they were. I then asked him if he valued his free will. Because he seemed slightly puzzled as to what I meant, I clarified as to whether he liked that he can choose what to do from moment to moment, whether he liked choosing between hamburgers or veggie-burgers, for example. He said yes.
In that case, why not take a closer look at the logical implications of our being free among other free beings? He seemed willing, so I continued. To even begin talking about ethics, we have to concede some form of free will, otherwise the argument can never leave the ground. There would be no point in talking about right behavior if we have no choice as to what to do in the first place. We have to assume that other people are also free beings like ourselves, and not merely zombie-like puppets. To assume otherwise would be like pretending other thinking and feeling people don't exist around us, which would make the question of ethics less significant, if not altogether irrelevant.
The fact that we value our freedom is also significant because if you don't value your freedom to choose then potential points of conflict become insignificant. His expression changed to confusion, so I clarified that if you didn't care if you ate hamburgers or veggie-burgers it would make less difference if someone only served hamburgers to you, whereas if you did care which you ate then not being given the choice would seem like an affront, especially if you are not offered what you would have chosen. If you value your freedom to act as you will, and you accept that other people around you have a similar freedom that they value as well, then you must respect the will of others.
To respect your own will while not respecting other similar wills is absurd; it implies that your will is somehow more important. What would make what you choose more important or true than what someone else chooses? If it is because you value it, I guarantee that others value their choices with equal conviction (kind of like two people of different faiths might be equally faithful about different things). We would need some kind of objective source for determining which values we should all agree on (his smirk returned at this). But choosing the Bible--or any other source for that matter--as being a reliable objective source for true moral values is absurd because you have to choose with your subjective free will that it is an objective source. This is another fallacy which is commonly overlooked.
Free will, I said while enunciating more clearly to emphasize the point, is what not only brings about the question of ethics but actually presents the solution. Thus, the following implications are what we have established so far:
A) Do not act upon others as they would not want to be acted upon;
B) (Otherwise) do your will, so long as you do not violate A;
further,
C) You have an obligation to anticipate the consequences of your actions such that they will not impede on the ability for others to act or choose freely, assuming that their actions do not violate A.
This is strikingly similar to, yet more complex than, the Golden Rule, a form of which is attributed to Jesus in the New Testament. He recognized this immediately and was quick to quote, loosely, what the Bible says. I explained to him that this rule, while Biblical, is not of divine origin. Rather, it's just a rational way of thinking about how to act towards one-another, a way of thinking that predates Christianity. (One early form of this rule is attributed to Rabbi Hillel, who was an older contemporary of Jesus. Others are derived from ancient Buddhist ideas, and still make sense to us today.)
At this point he seemed to play the devil's advocate in reiterating what he said earlier, that this all still led to relativism and subjectivity. After all, he said, its "natural" to value the actions I would choose to do over what another chooses to do (especially if I disagree with them). Why should I care about what other people wanted without God as a source for moral inspiration and good? He seemed to be trying to catch me without a response here, his smirk temporarily having returned. I said that if we really needed God in order to care about other people then we are not really being moral people, but merely being "good" either because we fear eternal punishment or out of misplaced duty; that is, we are misplacing the duty we should have for one another and giving it to some invisible, law-giving authority figure.
A non-theist ethic is based on caring for each other as peers, as beings having to deal with the same responsibilities, worries, and desires. This selfishness that he was calling "relativism" is precisely what this non-theist approach to ethics is designed to combat. If you feel like you need to believe in a God, fine. I don't believe in a God. However, this way of thinking about ethics is equally as valid for the theist as the Atheist because it doesn't address the question of whether God exists but rather the consequences of being a free being, no matter whether we were created or whether we developed over millions of years of evolutionary forces. In terms of ethics, God is irrelevant. (I thought of calling Rosch over at this point to explain his argument supporting what he calls "Irreletheism."
I'm not very clear on exactly how I finished my dialogue with my new Christian friend, but I think that it went something like the following: Ethics can only give us guidelines on how to act towards one another in a world muddled by numerous perspectives that generate various values. Any agreements that we come to concerning values would not be universal but inter-subjective and tentative at best. That is, we don't agree on mutual values because we agree on their (objective) source, but because where we do agree on something we have come to this agreement based on a similar perspective on an issue, a perspective that is subject to change upon receiving new information.
What this means is that this approach to ethics can tell us how to act towards one another, but it cannot allow us the comfort and security of an objective source of value. We must rely on our best rational efforts while acting according to the rules (A, B, and C) that the principle of free will implies for us. We may never agree, but we can get along just fine.
He seemed as if he wanted to disagree, but he replaced his smirk with a friendly smile that seemed to be spread over an expression of thoughtfulness and perhaps some hopefulness that I was right. I shared that hope, I suppose. I gave him a FSGP pamphlet with the URL of my website written on it so that he could read my papers on ethics that I'd just quickly outlined for him. Whether he ever did so is unknown to me, but it makes little difference. He seemed to understand what I was getting at because he treated me with the same respect I tried to treat him with.
All in all, he seemed to have taken something away from my presence--FSGP's presence--that night, which is all I asked for. This is only one story of our experiences those summer nights, but for me it's the one that stands out most. I'd talked with quite a few people those nights but none of them was as memorable as the conversation with that Christian. The talk was cordial, and frank, and I feel like we both took something away from it. I believe this is the way that Freethinkers can make a great impact on the world, by showing those that don't yet understand that these issues, such as ethics, are not simply answered by a book, and that those that don't share their beliefs are not merely rejecting, turning away from, or just not opening up to God. We are adding to the world, thinking rationally, being creative and critical.
I want to give one final word for my readers on this subject of religion and ethics. The assumption that morality needs an objective source (whether it is God or some other source) is embedded in the need (the "metaphysical need," as Friedrich Nietzsche called it) for the existence of what are called universals, the need for there to be something more "behind" or beyond reality. The rejection of universals is, in part, a rejection of a metaphysical category that generally includes divinity, the supernatural, etc. If we take away the superstition of "other-worldliness" in all of its forms, we take away much of what aids God-belief.
I'm glad that West Chester opened up to us, and I hope that it allowed us to shine our godless light on a part of the world for a little while. I look forward to next summer.