Rebecca McLaughlin

Brahmans (mainly priests and intellectuals) are believed to have come from Brahma’s head; Kshatriyas (the warrior class), from his arms; Vaishyas (traders), from his thighs; and Sudras (menial workers),

Oxford professor and author C. S. Lewis argued, this is the teaching of an egotistical maniac or an evil manipulator, or God in the flesh.

Saying that religion hinders morality is like saying philosophy hinders morality: we must evaluate each religious tradition and differentiate between them as we would between Marxism and Libertarianism.

Aristotle supported direct eugenics, the latter declaring, “Let there be a law that no deformed child shall live.”

By Singer’s calculation, “A week-old baby is not a rational and self-conscious being, and there are many nonhuman animals whose rationality, self-consciousness, awareness, capacity, and so on, exceed that of a human baby a week or a month old.” Therefore, “the life of a newborn baby is of less value . . . than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.

The premise of human equality is not a self-evident truth: it is profoundly historically contingent. I began to realise that the implications of my atheism were incompatible with almost every value I held dear.

Infanticide was common. Abandonment was common. Hippocrates, who lived about 400 years before Jesus, often wrote about how physicians should ethically interact with patients. But Hippocrates never mentioned children.

2012, Duke philosophy professor Alex Rosenberg addressed a series of questions from an atheist perspective in The Atheist’s Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life without Illusions:

Is there a God? No.

What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is.

What is the purpose of the universe? There is none.

What is the meaning of life? Ditto.

Why am I here? Just dumb luck.

Does prayer work? Of course not.

Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding?

Is there free will? Not a chance!

What happens when I die? Everything pretty much goes on as before, except us.

What is the difference between right and wrong, good and bad? There is no moral difference between them.

Why should I be moral? Because it makes you feel better than being immoral.

Nowak describes five mechanisms for cooperation: direct reciprocity (“I scratch your back, you scratch mine”), indirect reciprocity (“I scratch your back, and someone will scratch mine”), spatial selection (“I cooperate within my network”), multilevel selection (“If most people in my tribe cooperate, we’ll out-compete other tribes”), and kin selection (“I’ll sacrifice for members of my clan”).31

Ethical principles are no more divine whims than the laws of gravity. With a theistic worldview, morality and reality spring from the same source.