In his article of January 2, Edward Caruana Galizia explained his thoughts on “the gap left by religion”. There are two, related, aspects of his discussion that we would like to address: the ‘replacement’ of God and the existence of morality.
While it is true that humans tend to rush to fill gaps, it is equally true – a secret shared by mystical traditions of all religions – that the gap (or call it mystery, questioning) is a source of inspiration and a reminder that any simple and easy response to our existential questioning misses many of the beautiful complexities of life.
As Caruana Galizia implicitly acknowledges, movement away from the communal (and perhaps comforting) bond of religion requires us to tackle our own moral dilemmas – preferably without replacing one set of externally-provided rules with blind adherence to another.
For those of us who don’t believe in a deity, there is no choice about whether to ‘replace’ God; we have to take responsibility for ourselves.
Out of the Seven Types of Atheism (a book by John Gray), we favour that of godless contemplation, appropriating ideas from Baruch Spinoza. This is characterised by a resistance to any straightforward answers, whether secular or religious.
We see it as a great sign of maturity if we manage to be “true” atheists in the sense that we resist anything that could take the place or status of a god in our lives. This, we believe, is where true freedom lies, and what it means to be fully human.
Turning to the issue of morality, of course the danger of moral relativity is contentious, although we don’t think that this is something particularly new to our times.
Although humanity is perhaps less guilt-ridden by our modern consciences, we would conjecture that the time and energy invested in weighing ethical dilemmas nowadays is much more than when people felt they had no choice but to follow some dictated morality.
If a decline in religiosity were the primary cause of today’s problems, we would expect those countries that have seen the greatest decline to have the most serious problems. But they don’t. Countries in which levels of religious belief are comparatively low, such as Canada, Japan and the Scandinavian nations, don’t have greater-than-average levels of crime and other social problems.
Countries in which levels of religious belief are comparatively low don’t have greater-than-average levels of crime and other social problems
It is up to our community in dialogue to establish the acceptable moral norms as society, its environment and available technology evolve, norms whose foundations are already mostly shared across different religions and non-religious world views.
In any case, no static morality can withstand the super-fast-paced evolution that we’re experiencing. Perhaps the biggest challenge here is that if as a society we are to evolve together, then it needs lots of opportunities for dialogue. And this is perhaps where we all need to do more.
Bringing our two points together, transcendence is far from a monopoly of religion. Atheists can transcend themselves horizontally when experiencing their connections to others, recognising beauty in the world and acknowledging the nature of our humanity.
Of course, religions have focused on the big moral questions but these are not exclusive to religion. There is a long tradition, back to antiquity, of non-religious thought on such questions.
In a great book Beyond Humanism. The Flourishing of Life, Self and Other, Bart Nooteboom argues that our evolution as human beings within society naturally gives us the basis of our morality when encountering “the other”. Our ethical framework must be shaped by an understanding of human nature, and of what enables us all to flourish.
We are social beings. We live in communities. And life in any community is much happier if its members are friendly and cooperative.
Perhaps what we need going forward is to ensure that we have more space for encountering those we live with and more time for contemplating the gaps.
While there may be a perceived division between believers and non-believers, the more important division we need to understand is between those who seek to adhere to (even differing) moral principles, and those who don’t.
Christian Colombo is the chair, and Joanna Williams is a committee member of Humanists Malta.