How an Atheist Convict Defines Morality, Part Three

What morality means to me – what I strive for – is that I can never rank the value of my life above that of anyone else’s life.  As a humanist, I think this is easy to do.  (Indeed, I think it’s the logical conclusion of rational mind.)  As a convicted murderer, I will forever be looking up.  I do believe that there are people out there who’re much worse than I am, and therefore their lives are less valuable than mine.  But this is only because they themselves have lowered the value of their lives through the victimization of others, not because I have elevated mine above theirs.  As someone who strives to be moral, I refuse to do that.

If I think that everyone’s life has equal (or more) value than my own, I cannot possibly justify victimizing anyone, ever, for any reason.  I will not claim to be selfless human being – but I willclaim as my moral goal to never base the value of another’s life on my own interests.

This does not, however, mean that I will abdicate moral responsibility and judgement.  I can’t do that and expect to be a moral person.  No moral human being can reserve judgement, or they would walk on by as a child gets beaten to death.  Anyone with the tiniest kernel of moral sense can make definitive judgements such as, “I’m better than that person.  I’ll fight him to put a stop to it.”

As a humanist who doesn’t think there is any divine moral standard, I’m still capable of absolute judgements about the value of human life.  For example, though I accept the evidence for the theory of evolution, this doesn’t mean I think there is anything moral about it.  We can’t look to natural selection for gauge of life’s value, because the only thing of value to natural selection is passing on one’s genes.  In this case, the mot valuable people would be the ones with the most children.  Sexual slavery and no birth control or abortion would be the hallmarks of a “moral” society (similar to life under Old Testament laws, ironically.)

The age-old and extremely common methods of valuation such as ethnicity, nationality, and skin color are simple prejudices.  They do not determine anything meaningful about the value of a human being’s life.  Indeed, they are the height of irrationality, since these concepts become meaningless if you trace humanity back far enough into it’s past.  Gender doesn’t work either.  One doesn’t have to be a radical feminist to understand that whether a person has a Y chromosome or not says nothing about their intrinsic value as a human being.

Productivity (how much a person produces in their life, in the form of goods or services for others) is also out.  It makes for a neat little synthesis of laissez-faire capitalism and evolutionary theory, but it obviously cannot be accepted as a moral standard.  A serial killer might be an extremely productive individual.  Indeed, perhaps his victims are people who refuse to produce anything.  Not only would he be a great producer himself, but he would be helping general productivity by removing those who only consume the work of others.  Besides, you can’t objectively measure someone’s potential productivity – a person might be unproductive their entire life, yet later produce a great product or service that eclipses many others.

None of these methods for measuring the moral value of human life are any good.  In fact, you can be pretty sure that if someone is using one of these methods, that person is a good example of what is not moral.

Our Illusion of Innocence

I just finished a book called Living High and Letting Die: Our Illusion of Innocence, by Peter Unger.  The idea put forthwas that everyday, there are children all over the world dying from malnutrition, malaria, or other easily-defeated illnesses.  Millions die every year, and something as simple as a few dollars will easily prevent this.  Everyone one of us could spare, for example, a few bucks a month so save a child’s life.

Most of us, however, do not.  And further, most of us see no problem with this.  If you receive a letter in the mail from UNICEF, informing you that if you send $100 now, you’ll save the life of a dying kid in Asia, and you toss the letter in the garbage (as a great many people would do), no one calls you immoral.  That behavior is perfectly acceptable.

Bus suppose you walk by a pool and see a kid drowning.  If you jump in to save him, you’ll be late and miss an important business meeting, costing you $100.  If you decide to leave the child to drown and spare yourself the hundred bucks, you’re a monster.

The book asked, “What’s the moral difference between letting the faraway kid die (which most of us do everyday) and letting the drowning kid die?  It then argues philosophically why there is no such difference at all, that we’re fooling ourselves if we think that it’s morally okay to ignore the UNICEF letter (and that the reasons most people give for doing so are inadequate).

The idea was one of the most compelling ones I’ve ever read, and it made me think a great deal about the nature of morality.  (Be warned, though: the book is a philosophical study, which for me at least means that it’s headache-inducing.)

One thing that wasn’t mentioned, however, was the notion of why so many kids are dying every day in the first place.  IF you donate money to kids in an impoverished country, you’ll save lives, but you’re really only alleviating a leak.  You’re not fixing the hole.  People can keep donating money for years, for generations, but if nothing is done to change the conditions in which the children are raised, the problem itself won’t be corrected.

If the definition of moral behavior is to save the most amount of people as possible, wouldn’t it be more moral to invest in the country’s economic, social, and political future?  That is, use your money to coax change that will bring about democracy, free market capitalism, private ownership, women’s rights, birth control, and technological advance?  Are there non-governmental organizations that do that, rather than simply give money for relief?

Don’t get me wrong: Relief is important, especially considering the fact that kids are dying right now.  But the issue is about investing in the long-term to save many more down the road.  What if the question becomes something like, “Save a hundred kids today, or let them die and save ten thousand tomorrow?”  Could we swallow a pill like allowing a hundred kids die for a noble purpose or saving more in the future?

How an Atheist Convict Defines Morality, Part II

I never understood why religious people say that morality can’t exist without a god.  If we live in an existential universe, isn’t it the logical conclusion that every single human is not only equal in value, but also incredible precious and fragile?  Indeed, can it not be said that the notion of an existence with Abraham’s God takes away the value of human life and bases it solely upon how obedient each person is?

I said before that I think morality is the position that your life is at most equal in value to the lives of others.  The “at most” part is very important.  No moral person can claim that his or her life is greater in value to the life of another.  They wouldn’t be moral anymore, would they?  Imagine if even a pillar of selflessness such as Mother Theresa got on TV and started shrieking that she is worth more than any ten human beings, that her life has much more value than the lives of others because she has done so much humanitarian work, that her life should be saved even if the cost is ten innocent lives.  Could she still be said to be a moral person?  Absolutely not!  A moral person would invariably do the exact opposite: willingly sacrifice him- or herself to save ten lives.

On the other hand, Mother Theresa’s life is certainly worth more than the life of, say, Adolf Hitler.  No one could possibly argue with that.  But it’s not Mother Theresa who raised the value of her life above his.  Remember, if you’re moral, you can’t do that.

A person can, however, lower the value of their own life.  That’s what Hitler did.  He did it by becoming a victimizer (a rather prodigious one).  When you make a choice to victimize someone, you’re claiming that your life is more valuable than theirs.  You’re using your opportunity to take away their opportunity.  This is unjust because your need to victimize cannot possibly outweigh another’s need to be left alone.  Serving your own self-interest is not immoral, but doing it at the expense of another’s self-interest is.

Raising the value of another’s life is what truly selfless people do.  For example, if forced to save the life of either a ninety-year-old with cancer who has lived a full life or an eighteen-year-old on his way to college, I believe that all of us would choose to save the kid.  Indeed, if the elder volunteered to sacrifice himself to save the teenager, he would be a hero – like a mother who sacrifices herself so that her child can live.

On the other hand, try to imagine that child demanding his higher status, demanding that his mother willingly give her life to save his, demanding that his life is worth more than hers and her duty is to protect it even at ultimate cost.  It leaves a bitter taste, does it not?  Perhaps the child is even right, but does it make him moral to claim such a thing?  Is it possible for a son to be a moral human being if he believes that his life has more value than his mother’s life?

My anser would be a resounding “No.”  It is, however, possible for the mother to be moral if she believes that.  Double standards are not always bad things.

How an Atheist Convict Defines Morality I

If I live with the idea that there is no divine moral absolute, how do I know what is right and wrong?  I’ve tried to answer that question for years.  I see morality as making choices about the value of human life in relation to your own.  There are basically three positions that you can take in this matter:

1. My life is equal in value to the lives of others.
2. My life has more value than the lives of others.
3. My life has less value than the lives of others.

Number One is the position of a moral person.  Number Two is the position of a victimizer.  Number Three is the position of a reformed victimizer.  I fall squarely into the third category.  In fact I lean toward the idea that I can never climb to the summit of Number One, because the effects of my crime are impossible to erase and repay.  The best compliment I can award myself is that I’m incapable of ever returning to Number Two.

As a de facto atheist, I’m operating under the notion that I don’t have a soul, that I live in a universe with no afterlife, that I am the sum of my parts, a collection of atoms.  Identity, consciousness, and self-awareness are simply the products of social experiences and the firing of synapses.

If this is so, then it’s perfectly compatible with Number One.  Each of us is a human being, the same as billions of others.  We’re all equal in value.  We start off with the same opportunities, the same capacity for kindness or cruelty, the same inalienable human rights.  None of us are special – at least no more special than anyone else can be.  Your happiness and pain are no more important than the happiness and pain of a random shoemaker in Tibet or a farmer in Kenya.  It is simply irrational to think that your desires have more importance than theirs do.  If you don’t think so, then try making an objective argument for why your happiness is more pleasurable than theirs, or why your pain hurts more.

If you have a rational mind, if you use the faculty of reason, I don’t see how you can escape Number One.  This is why I’m so fond of saying that reason banishes prejudices, pointless tradition, and other faulty methods of thinking.  This is also why I think that reason is the true path to morality, not obedience to a divine moral standard.  And you can’t have it both ways, either; reason cannot abide obedience to dogma.

So not only do I think that there is insufficient evidence to believe in the notion of divine morality (or divine anything), my position is that even if there were a divine moral standard, I would not follow it.  I think humanism is simply superior.

Why I Think God is Useless

What has God ever done for us?  I’m talking about the father-figure sky god of the three great monotheistic religions.  I want to know exactly what purpose He serves, because I honestly can’t figure it out.  This is a serious question, with all due respect:  What is God good for?

Does God put food in our stomachs or a roof over our heads?  No, hard work of the charity of other human beings does that.  Does God heal our children if they get sick?  No, modern medicine does that.  Does God prevent horrible things from happening to good people?  Nope, the action and sacrifice of human beings does that.  Does God give us beauty, grace, and art?  Again, human beings produce that all by themselves.  Does God prevent wars, famine, earthquakes, and floods?  Has God done anything about the AIDS virus?  Did God devise solutions to malaria, yellow fever, and smallpox?  Can God ensure that your kids will grow up safe and educated and happy?  Does God save unborn fetuses?  Did God stop the Nazis?  Did God give us the knowledge for modern agriculture, sanitation, and refrigeration so that the earth can support billions of more people than it otherwise could?  Has God done anything about the madmen trying to produce biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons with the intent of wiping out entire races of people?  Has God ever shed an ounce of sweat to stop a child molester?  Does God ever give money to feed the poor?  Does God ever help build a house for a homeless person?  Has God ever done anything to keep the environment clean or conserve natural resources?  Did God do anything to prevent Mutual Assured Destruction during the Cold War?  Has God ever put any effort into stopping all the evil done in His name?  Has God ever put any effort into stopping evil at all?

If you think God has done any of this, prove it.  Prove that it wasn’t all the effort of human beings.  If you think God did many wonderful miracles in biblical times, prove it.  And if you can, why doesn’t He still do those things, especially since nowadays they are needed more than ever?

Do we need God for morality?  Why?  We’ve devised morality by ourselves.  No sacred text proffers the first amendment.  Jesus never told us to treat women as equals or to free slaves.  Did God give us moral sense to begin with?  Where’s the evidence that points to this?  Even the lower primates have an innate sense of fairness and injustice.  Did God give us the ability to love?  Why is He required for that?  Why take away from a human being’s capacity for love?  Why insult us by saying we’re inherently flawed and low-minded and in need of magic to be capable of love and altruism?

Did God create us in the first place?  Prove it.

We make our own lives, we put in all the labor.  We toil and sweat and fail repeatedly in our attempt to succeed.  Our lives are about struggle.  We aren’t given any divine insight or quick solutions or cheat-sheets; we have to learn the hard way, build from the bottom, stand on the shoulders of giants.  We reap the benefits of our advances, but we also swallow all the pain and consequences when bad things happen.

Where does God come in?  What does He do?  Our earthly accomplishments are the only things that are solid and dependable.  If your child gets leukemia, you might pray, but don’t only pray.  You take that child to doctors who use the science of modern medicine.  You might argue that God gave us the capacity to reason and discover the tools of modern medicine, but until you can prove it, it’s just an opinion that lowers mankind and elevates something else.  Why do that at all?

Nietzsche said God is dead, but does it even matter whether He is or not?  He does nothing.  He can’t even do something as simple as dictate moral laws that every human should follow.  We were forced to improve upon them and reinterpret them and throw away the ridiculous ones.  We do God’s job for Him.  From my perspective, we’re putting in all the work, yet people give Him all the credit.

My Faith in Reason

I generally avoid talking about why I’m in prison because I despise the idea of being seen as someone searching for sympathy, forgiveness, or rationalization.  I want none of those things.  But one thing I do want is for a crime like mine to never, ever happen again.  No one should ever have to be victimized in any way, especially not in the worst way imaginable: murder.  Murder is evil.

As a practicing existentialist, I think that good and evil are most likely creations of mankind, that the root of altruism is nothing more than a genetic predisposition.  This doesn’t devalue morality, however; this makes it infinitely more precious.  I also think that faith is nothing more than the opinion of the person having it, but I do have faith that murder is evil.  And considering that I’m a convicted murderer, it would follow that I myself am evil.

I can’t disagree with that.  I’m not saying murder is bad because I’m suffering the consequences of doing it – I’m saying it’s evil, pure and simple.  I regret what I did because it was tragically unjust to my victim and his family.  As a person who continuously deals with the fact that I am literally the lowliest of human beings and always will be, that I completely deserve to be where I am, I also consider myself a person who aspires to be moral.

To that en, I should not only be punished for what I did, I should try to prevent it from happening again.  I see no way of doing that while incarcerated, other than trying to examine why I committed my crime and revealing that information to others.  When I committed my crime I possessed two traits that I think are shared by almost every convicted felon: a lack of personal responsibility and a lack of the ability to reason.  So if I accept that the mindset that led me to rob a man and subsequently kill him is a common one among people who do similar things, then examining that mindset – especially how and why I discarded it – can possibly be useful in preventing it in other young people.

I think it’s likely that there is no such thing as an objective yardstick of good and evil (a God with commandments, for example), so therefore it is completely and utterly my opinion that murder is evil.  That’s all, my opinion.  It doesn’t county for anything.  It shouldn’t, but that’s what I think.  Furthermore, if there is no objective good and evil, then a statement such as “Murder is evil” can never be anything but a collective opinion of human beings.

I’m pretty sure there aren’t going to be any consequences when I die, that I’ll only be held accountable for what I’ve done here on earth, by worldly forces.  Maybe this is unfair.  Possibly I deserve eternal damnation.  Regardless, I don’t think I’ll receive it, because I don’t think there’s any evidence to support such a fairy-tale notion.  So what business do I have thinking that murder is wrong?  Why should I feel guilt?  Many Christians have told me that since there is no absolute of morality, it is inevitable that I should only be concerned for my own life and no one else’s.  I should refrain from victimizing others solely because there are earthly consequences, not because I think it’s evil.  These Christians consider such a paucity of morality to be the inescapable net result of existentialism.

I completely reject that sort of pop psychology stereotyping.  It’s intellectually lazy.  My opinion stands.  And I may also add that I committed my crime when I still had faith that Jesus Christ had died for my sins.  It is only since I have become a de facto existentialist that I have truly understood why murder is evil, and indeed, what evil really is.

I have concluded the opposite of the Christian values impressed upon me as a child.  Rather than thinking that I’m beloved of God and deserving grace and forgiveness, I’m basing my opinions of morality on the realization that I am not special, that I never was.  I have always been and always will be nothing more than an ordinary human being, the exact same as a billion others.  A creation of natural selection, a primate with a big brain and pretensions.  I’m not saying human beings are worthless creatures of muck; I believe in the power of the individual and the preciousness of every single life.  I’m just saying that no one’s life is worth more than anyone else’s life.

This is so because such humility is a necessary component of a rational mind.  Reason leads us to this conclusion.  It is simply irrational to think that you have more value than another of your human cousins, just as it is irrational when racists assign more or less value to a person because of something arbitrary like the amount of melanin in their skin.  If we are all equal in value, that means we are all entitled to the same things.  For instance, the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Victimization is evil because it deprives another person of that right.  Victimization is evil because any potential victim is equal in value to the potential victimizer.

I say “potential” because once you victimize, once you attempt to elevate yourself to having more value than other human being, you forfeit your self-value.  By subscribing to the illusion that you have more value than others, that your rights are more important than the rights of others, that your needs are greater than the needs of others, you become evil.  You become a victimizer who thinks he can do whatever he wants because he is either selfish, powerful, or both.  This is an irrational position because, again, your need to victimize cannot possibly outweigh any other person’s need to not be a victim.  No one has the right to take away the rights of others.

Of course, I am an idiot.  Almost everyone lives their life without every significantly victimizing someone.  Most people have no need of hearing what I’m saying now – what I should have realized as an eighteen-year-old.  Most people are probably saying, “No shit, Sherlock,” or some variation thereof.  I have no excuses.  I’m not saying I should have been given special instructions or that I needed extra attention to keep me away from committing a crime, or that my parent didn’t raise me correctly.  I had the same knowledge of the difference between right and wrong as anyone else did; I simply didn’t use it.  This is solely my fault.

But the fact is that people like me have done these things, and people like me continue to do them.  Punishing us is necessary and just, but it’s only the first step.  It must be prevented from happening in the first place.  Punishment won’t do that.  People have been “deterred” by prison, retribution, and even the death penalty throughout all of history, and they still commit crimes.

If the promise of a very harsh punishment won’t stop a criminal from committing a crime, it stands to reason that an abstract rule certainly isn’t going to do a great job of it.  For some people, a rule is not a good enough deterrent, and neither is a punishment for breaking the rule, or a reward for adhering to it.  Everyone knows that robbery and murder are against the rules, but people still do these things anyway because thier reason for doing them has more value than the victim’s right to be left alone.  They need to be taught that this is not so, that it’s pure stupidity to think in such a way.

In my case, I never truly understood why robbing someone to get money was wrong until much later.  I thought that if I could get away with it, that was all that mattered.  I was thinking only of myself.  I believed that my life and my desires had more value than anyone else’s.  That was precisely the heart of the problem.  That’s what led me to do it, even though I knew that it was explicitly against the rules.

It is my opinion that had I been capable of rationalizing morality in this manner when I was a teenager, I never would have considered robbery or any other form of victimization to be an appropriate act.  I would have recoiled – as I do now – at even the thought of becoming a victimizer.  Victimizers represent evil; they should be battled and restrained and modified.  To prevent someone from attaining the mindset that allows them to victimize, or to correct such a mindset, reason is needed.  Not blind obedience, but reason.  Using reason imparts to us the gift of a rational mind, which is by necessity a humble mind.  And humility negates any justification to become a victimizer.