Expert: Philip A. Stahl - 4/6/2008

Question
Hi. I wondered if you might share your thoughts with me on taking prayer out of public schools. Some of my colleagues were discussing school shootings the other day, and how youth seem to be becoming increasingly violent and lacking in direction and "morals". They blamed it on taking "god" and religion out of the schools.

It seems to me that so many people believe that if you don't believe in god, you must not have any morals. I have had people ask me "why bother being good, if you don't believe in god? You are not accountable to anyone anyway. This upsets me very much. How would you respond to such arguments/comments? thank you.

Jasmine

Answer
Hello,

It is a sad spectacle, but alas, too many people are only able to arrive at facile answers to complex problems. Such is the case with those who blame the absence of school prayer (or taking "god out of religion") for many current societal problems, especially those to do with youth: gangs, drugs, aimless obsessions like video games, etc.

It seems to escape them that, in fact, the much more immediate source of these societal problems was the negative way the economy altered since the oil crisis of 1973. Since then, wages have been essentially stagnant for the middle class. And this has forced the emergence of "two earner" families.

While a typical family's cash flow may have been improved, time to oversee one's offspring became the casualty. Result? Younger generations with less and less supervision (and with it, instilling parental values) and much more chaos, crime, drug use etc.

The other aspect, missed by the pios complainers, is that no one is prohibiting any student from praying any time he or she wishes in school! This can be done, quietly and personally, during recess, or even detentions, whenever the students desire. All that the 1962 court case did is to remove *public prayer* from the schools.

After all, IF "God" is everywhere, and also all powerful, he ought to be able to discern a silent prayer directed at him any time of the day, from anyone who makes it.  Meanwhile, I have little patience with those who demand prayer be made a public spectacle, with the school a public sponsor and the students (even Hindis, Muslims, Jews, atheists) a captive audience.

Because if prayer becomes mandatory and goes beyond the personal, then it transgresses basic rights, especially coercing non-Christians into a forced submission to Christian piety. And, to what end? None that is constructive - since forcing any behavior only unleashes resentment and more problems.

Forcing students to pray against their will doesn't increase teaching effectiveness, or obedience, nor does it enhance any morality.

Apart from that, it violates the wall of separation between church and state first enunciated by Thomas Jefferson.

The other bunkum that if one doesn't believe in a god one must be immoral is codswallop on its face.

It’s important, however, because many otherwise sober people believe that atheists live by the rule “anything goes,” since we don't acknowledge any god. On many occasions, I've been telephoned by religious types who ask: "If you don't believe in God what's stopping you from going out and raping, robbing, murdering or doing anything else? If you don't believe in God, then you don't believe in God's laws."

Invariably, I respond that decent, civilized behavior doesn’t depend on god belief or adhering to 'laws' of a god. Rather, it depends on rational and objective analysis of a situation, and sound decisions maximally promoting the welfare of all concerned.

As William Provine notes ('The Evolution of Ethics' - paper, in MLB Science, Vol. 3, No. 1, 1988, p. 25) youngsters should be encouraged to think rationally and critically concerning ethics, not out of fear of some divine moral force, but to protect their own long-term self-interest.

In line with this, any persistent observer of human social interaction will note that the vast majority of people are law-abiding and decent folk who naturally practice a common-sense, utilitarian ethics similar to what has been described. No supernatural law or commandment ordains this behavior.

Instead it is the conscious and deliberate recognition that the promotion of the welfare of others is directly linked to the one's own welfare. Compromise others' security, and you in effect compromise your own. Undermine their welfare and you also undermine your own. No god is necessary.

By contrast, religious morality is predicated on some formal codification of expected human behavior in terms of absolutist propositions, not subject to debate. The typical moral code of a religionist-  whether Muslim, Pentecostal, Catholic or Jewish, isn’t subject to evolution or variation based on contingencies, or externalities.

This blindness probably results from a “control” meme that proclaims the morality as ‘god-ordained’ or revealed in some scripture or other. If ordained by a god, whether Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh or whoever, it cannot be compromised or altered no matter what.

Kai Neilsson (in his superb, 'Ethics Without God') poses it this way :

Is an act good because God did it, or is it good independent of such action?  

For a genuine ethical basis, any human action must be totally independent of whether a god did it (in scriptures) or ordains it. It must be good on its own merits. A first test, as Neilsson observes, is ethical choice predicated on a humane standard. Consider: if a human parent knows his child is trapped in a burning house, s/he will try to save it however s/he can. There is no way the human parent will simply walk out and allow “fate” or "free will" of the child to make the decision. If the human parent has an ounce of common decency s/he must intervene.

However, god-ists seem quite happy to let their deity off the hook, when and where it suits their fancy. Start then with the standard deity template, say espoused by most Christians. This entity is posited as both omniscient and omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful).

Let us say, as reported in the news back in the spring of 1994, It knew from before all time an F-2 twister was headed for a particular house of worship in Alabama. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to deflect said twister and let it tear up some nearby forest or woodsheds- as opposed to its church with people inside.. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the tornado to demolish the church and many of those children within. All innocents. All dead.

Those who would defend such a deity but hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved),  disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans.

Those who beg the question with theo-babble ("we cannot fathom the ways or mind of God") are no better, and do no better. In many ways, they're worse, because they lack even the courage to face their own logic and the consequences of their definitions! They either invoke the escape clause of "faith" or the impotence of human logic beside the alleged Divine Mind. (And surely, if humans sprung from such a mind, comprehensibility of its ways and modes must follow. Else he, she or it could as well be a Demonic clown who allows humans - innocent children- to be slain for sport)

Thus it follows, even from the most generic examples (presupposing a supernatural, omnipotent force) that human ethics trumps divine ethics on its face. If this is so, then it must also trump any and all human extensions of divine ethics, whether the ten commandments, canon law or wherever. Hence, it follows that human ethics and ethical standards can exist independently of invoking any divine or religious fluff, affiliations or baggage.

In terms of said "baggage" what the religionists have done is to take the natural code of (humane) ethics most people follow and embellish it with a blizzard of superstitious precepts and injunctions. These are superstitious since, inevitably, they are linked to the supposed dictates of a supernatural "being" that will not hesitate to "punish" those who disobey "him."

Ethics (or morality) without god is human behavior elevated to its highest consistent standards without the need for superfluous theo-babble.

This then is the thrust of how I would address such questions. You can also find more material, in more depth at this link ('The Human Basis of Law and Ethics- Without God, How can you be moral?)

http://www.skepticfiles.org/human/morality.htm

Good luck!