i would again argue that if you were to find definitive proof tomorrow for the lack of your god, you would not cease to be the compassionate reasonable people you are now. if you were already so inclined, perhaps you would lack the framework for, e.g., mass acts of charity, but i do believe you’d replace it with a secular framework, or at least still help the lil old lady that fell over in the street. i don’t believe that faith, or abandoning one, leads to the desecration of already held values and priorities, but i can accept you’d go about them in a different manner.

Maybe, maybe not. I suppose it would depend on what kind of worldview ended up replacing my Christianity. I can’t say for sure what that would be (especially since this is all hypothetical anyway), but I do know that I can tend to be pretty cynical, and I’m not sure some of my ideals for how the world could be would survive the loss of faith. Right now it takes me quite a bit of faith to believe that the world is not simply headed for inevitable ecological/economic/societal disintegration, and that fighting against these trends is actually a worthwhile and potentially successful endeavor. But like I said, I’m a cynic at heart.

But at any rate, Karen is quite right that many people do hang onto their values and ethics after losing faith in God – I’ve known several people like that myself. However, I can also provide anecdotal evidence of the opposite result as well. I do know people who have walked away from God and “gone off the deep end” as it were. I can’t speculate about what the difference was for these people, but I would say that in general their lack of belief in God didn’t end up being replaced by anything positive – without the meaning in life outside of themselves that belief in God provided, their meaning in life simply became “themselves”, i.e. their own narcissistic desires or nihilistic despair.

Please understand, I’m not saying that is a natural or even the usual result of atheism, but it can be for some if the “meaning in life” supplied by religion is not replaced by a “meaning in life” from some other source.

As a pastor he frequently talks to people who have little faith or are skeptical about joining organized religion. As part of his sermon, he disclosed the following: I paraphrase:

Often when people tell me that they don’t believe in God, I ask them to describe the God they don’t believe in. After listening to to the description, I usually tell them I don’t believe in that God either…. Most people end up creating a concept of God that is convenient for them. They “create God” in their own image. I then tell tell them about the true meaning of God.
Jesus… dying for sins…. resurrection…. only way to heaven… yada yada yada…

I was impressed with his understanding that people mostly “create God” in their own image… The only thing he can’t see is that the original Christians did the same thing… All God concepts are man-made. Not just all non-Christian God concepts. He is most of the way to enlightenment.

i would again argue that if you were to find definitive proof tomorrow for the lack of your god, you would not cease to be the compassionate reasonable people you are now. if you were already so inclined, perhaps you would lack the framework for, e.g., mass acts of charity, but i do believe you’d replace it with a secular framework, or at least still help the lil old lady that fell over in the street. i don’t believe that faith, or abandoning one, leads to the desecration of already held values and priorities, but i can accept you’d go about them in a different manner.

I agree with you on this, ash, and I have some pretty good anecdotal evidence that we’re on the right track. I help moderate a support group for ex-fundamentalists and I blog over at de-conversion. Both groups include a lot of formerly religious people (mostly Christian, but not all) like me.

None of the ex-religious people I’ve associated with in either place has had their values substantially changed after losing faith in religion. (Either that or they won’t fess up to it!) In fact, most people are quite surprised that they still have the same charitable impulses, moral framework, etc. as they did when religious. All they’ve lost is the god-belief. Some still go to church to appease their families, in fact.

For some there is a loss of places to do good and opportunities to donate money. But it seems like most of us find acceptable secular alternatives to channel our good impulses in the long run.

however, to defend the point that individuals can be admired seperatly from their beliefs, i would again argue that if you were to find definitive proof tomorrow for the lack of your god, you would not cease to be the compassionate reasonable people you are now. if you were already so inclined, perhaps you would lack the framework for, e.g., mass acts of charity, but i do believe you’d replace it with a secular framework, or at least still help the lil old lady that fell over in the street. i don’t believe that faith, or abandoning one, leads to the desecration of already held values and priorities, but i can accept you’d go about them in a different manner.

Karen said,

December 21, 2007 at 3:23 pm

It made me cringe when I read the words, “Absolutely nothing”, “Not a damn thing”, etc etc.

I can only imagine that people who can find nothing to admire about Christians really don’t know any.

Or maybe they do know some and they are the Religious Reich type. Who knows.

To say there’s absolutely nothing to admire about Christians or Christianity comes off as stingy, to my eyes.

That’s why I cringed and the same thing works the other way around when people said the same thing about atheists.

When we’re asked “what do you admire about christians?”, we have to think of what it is about being christian that we admire – are there any specific personality traits that leads one to embrace christianity, for instance? -, and we end up realising that, well, there isn’t anything. Sorry.

I don’t think the question was meant to look at specific personality traits, honestly. There are asshole Christians and wonderful, merciful, generous atheists, as far as that goes.

What I was answering is what general things about Christianity are admirable: In other words, what does the religion motivate in people that is worthy of admiration? Surely the things I mentioned – self-sacrifice and community support – can be espoused by atheists and by atheist groups. But I found them to be much more a priority in Christian groups than I do in atheist groups. Just as many people who commented in the “admirable atheist” thread mentioned things like independent thinking and willingness to question and dedication to honesty and truth – which are all traits much more nurtured by the atheistic world view than by the religious world view (in my experience anyway).

To say there’s absolutely nothing to admire about Christians or Christianity comes off as stingy, to my eyes.

Karen, it’s entirely possible for me to find something admirable about an individual christian. I know at least one personally who is a very caring, loyal and sensitive friend. But I don’t admire him as a christian, I admire him as a person. When we’re asked “what do you admire about christians?”, we have to think of what it is about being christian that we admire – are there any specific personality traits that leads one to embrace christianity, for instance? -, and we end up realising that, well, there isn’t anything. Sorry.

Felicia, your comment (and similar ones made by several others here) has got me thinking that I wish there were more existentialist atheists. You seem to be making a pretty sharp divide between a person’s Christianity and their personality, as if you think you can separate out what person believes from who they are or what they do. Almost as if you believed in some essential “soul” of a person that can be separated out from all the particulars that actually go into making them who they are.

Personally though, in my experience, human are far more holistic and integrated beings than that. My beliefs and my personality and my actions are all wrapped up together, each influencing the other in turn. I couldn’t separate one out from the others even if I wanted to.

So I guess what I’m saying is that if you know individual Christians that you find admirable, then it’s not fair nor accurate to simply try to isolate their admirable traits from their Christian beliefs as if they were two separate things. Is it not possible that that person actually has some of those traits because they are a Christian? After all, the whole idea of “spiritual transformation” (i.e. becoming a better, more “admirable” person) is one of the central goals of Christian belief and practice and has been for millenia.

And before you say it: it doesn’t matter if these same traits can be found in other people who are not Christians. The fact that these same traits can be produced by other means does not mean that, in the case of your friend, they could not have been produced by Christianity as well. There are many ways to produce good, admirable people in the world, and if Christianity is sometimes one of those ways, then give credit where credit is due.