Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

"Suppose that some child is dying of cancer, we say, why is this child dying; what has it done to deserve it?' The answer is, there's no reason why. It's not divine retribution. It's not due to sin. There is no reason other than a series of historical accidents which have led to this child dying of cancer. No reason to ask why."

Richard Dawkins

"When it comes to the purpose of life, I am sometimes asked by the believers that isn't it horrible to think that life has no purpose and that it ends in death. I reply, as I think many other atheists would too, that praising some imagined man in the clouds and getting a piece of the heavenly cake doesn't seem much better or unselfish than working, loving, being kind and having fun here on earth."

Robert Brotherus, biochemist

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."

Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo

"I've certainly had feelings of overwhelming wonder and joy in nature. I protest that religious people feel they have the monopoly on feelings of awe and wonder. They don't know the half of it until they've been to a tropical rainforest or been swimming under water. I've contemplated a tropical rainforest and felt a tremendous sense of awe, of worship... not, of course, that there is anything to worship."

Richard Dawkins: who finds that it is sometimes difficult to express non-theistic emotions without using religious words.

Evil is subjective. From a truly objective point of view there is no such thing as evil.

Our most basic goals are to live and procreate. Events or circumstances that interfere with or prevent us from doing this are seen as evil to a greater or lesser degree. We think things that hinder us more strongly are more evil than things that hinder us to a lesser extent. Events or circumstances which do not affect us in any way are not seen as evil at all.

Bad health is seen as an evil because it limits our ability to live and procreate and evil people are traditionally portrayed as being physically unhealthy in some way - having pock-marked skin or some deformity marking bad health. A variation is to have a very beautiful evil person whose evil shows in some other way - a beautiful stepmother who does not like children, for example. A woman who does not like children is seen as evil because it implies she does not want to procreate. Fairy tales are full of examples of evil characters who have similar traits.

Evil is relative. Although in a general sense we think of war as evil it is always thought of as the lesser of two evils by those who engage in it. Those who start wars think that to fail in their objectives is a lesser evil than the evil of fighting and those who defend themselves think that fighting is a lesser evil than surrender. On either side soldiers rejoice when they achieve an objective because - no matter how great the evil suffered by the loser - victory carries with it the gift of life to the victor. And with the gift of life comes the opportunity to procreate and so create more life.

When we watch the natural behaviour of animals we do not condemn the lion for hunting and killing the zebra. Some observer from an alien world might view our conflicts in the same light as the conflict between the lion and the zebra. When we say something is evil we mean only that it is an evil for us.

Evil is tempered by our emotional distance from the sufferer. When we can identify with the victim we feel more strongly than when we do not and so the evil seems to be greater or smaller. When parents read of the murder of a small child in the newspaper they probably feel more strongly than the childless because they think the same thing could happen to their child. We can feel happier about our victory over an enemy when our enemy has been dehumanized by propaganda and we can feel more angry towards an enemy when we dehumanize him. This makes it possible for us to think of him as more evil because he is not like us and we see ourselves as good (however evil we may be). During the Gulf War mourning relatives of war-victims in Iraq said constantly on the news 'How could they do this to us? - they are not human.'

At another level, when there is a flood and many people die or are made homeless we spare little thought for the animals that have died or lost their habitat and even less for the plants that have died. When we look up at the night sky and witness the cataclysms occurring in the universe around us - the colliding galaxies and the exploding stars - we care nothing for the evil suffered by the inhabitants of those countless worlds. And if we were to be destroyed by some similar cosmic event it would not matter at all in the universal scheme of things but to us it would be an unparalleled evil.

These 'evils' are not the work of satan or any dark mysterious forces or paranormal phenomena - they are merely the natural result of the myriad complexities of the universe in which we live and are part of. It holds us no grudge but nor does it owe us any favours. What happens to us is factual - it is subjectively evil only to us. We have a point of view because we want to live and procreate and from this comes our subjectivity. From a truly objective point of view there is no such thing as evil. It follows, of course, that what is good is equally subjective.

Footnote

The atheist lives in a much more peaceful universe than the theist. The theist lives in a universe in which there is a constant war between the two opposing forces of good and evil. There is a lurking evil presence (e.g., Satan) always ready to wreak destruction because it wants to. This is an unhealthy and paranoid view of the universe. The atheist, on the other hand, is left alone by such 'evils'. How much nicer! The atheist never finds himself saying 'Life wouldn't be worth living if there weren't a God' because no god is required to counteract a false notion of evil in the universe.

Visit this link for an excellent essay on this subject by Bob Seltzer who writes the following comment on the essay on this page:

You're right: we should not look upon viruses as being evil in themselves -- i.e., they don't have evil motives or anything -- but they do end up saying something very important hypothetically, namely:

If God exists, then He is responsible for the laws.

So, the relation isn't between, say, viruses and people, but the relation between viruses and people given the assumption that there is a God. Once you throw out the antecedent of the conditional, you might be left with what you claim (since the universe is indeed apathetic).