There was discussion of this subject on the British Christian radio station Premier today. I was not convinced by the speakers, who seemed to start fom the premise of the title of this thread, that religion is necessary for morality, and stay there. One comment referred back to an interview with Richard Dawkins (who holds that altruism has been essential in the evolution of humanity - the speakers felt this meant he contained contradictions within himself). In this interview he had been asked what would be the case if we had evolved to consider rape to be a good thing, and it was reported that he had had no very convincing answer. Apparently, he said that if that had happened, then that would be what we believed.

My first reaction was to think that there is plenty of evidence that there has been, and still is, a strand of human development with exactly that belief - a leader in the Congo explains his men's behaviour as due to being human, for example.

As the debate moved on to abortion, as it always does, without considering it to be a very, very difficult issue, it occurred to me that insisting on rape victims bearing any child conceived that way is not going to reduce that attitude. Perhaps a trivial reaction to what is a horrendous dilemma, but one the debaters did not spot.

When we discuss atheism, I feel that we need two words. One for the people who bother to describe themselves as such, who are prepared to discuss morality. These are likely to have thought out their morality, and probably have done so by regarding other human beings as as fully human as they are themselves, and as deserving of consideration and respect as they are themselves. (That is all other humans, not only the ones resembling themselves.)

The other sort are not simply atheists, but people without any awareness of the issue of whether to believe in God or not, or, possibly, of any need to think of others.

When the religious start this sort of debate, they assume that all atheists are the second sort, who probably do not know the word.

Penny