Are atheists as moral as religious believers? Surprisingly, even atheists seem to think not. This belief is almost certainly wrong, but it reflects a long-standing bias that morality stems from faith. Fortunately, there is hope this bias can be beaten.
The of anti-atheist attitudes comes from a study led by , a psychologist at the University of Kentucky. Gervais polled more than 3000 volunteers to glean views about atheists and believers. They came from 13 countries with a wide range of faiths.
Gervais used a trick to get people to reveal what they really think. He told volunteers a story about a man who tortured animals as a child and grew up to become a serial killer. Then he asked half of them whether it was more likely this man was A) a teacher, or B) a teacher who did not believe in a god. For the other half, option B was a teacher who was a religious believer.
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The correct answer is always A. It is always more likely because, there are always more teachers than teachers who are atheist or who are believers. But Gervais found that people still chose option B when it matched their intuitive notion of how things should be.
In almost every country surveyed 鈥� Christian, Muslim, Hindu or secular 鈥� more people made the error when option B was the atheist rather than the believer, which suggests they found an atheist mass murderer more plausible than a religious one. Remarkably, even responders who said they did not themselves believe in any god showed the same pattern.
At one level, it is obvious why they should think that way: atheists鈥� behaviour is constrained only by personal morality, while believers have both personal morality and the fear of divine punishment.
that cultures that believed in strong gods with the power to 鈥渟mite鈥� developed more cooperative societies than those with more laissez-faire deities. Even today, reminding religious believers about their faith makes them behave more cooperatively in lab experiments.
But cooperation isn鈥檛 the same as morality, and when you look at the latter, the numbers suggest that religion doesn鈥檛 actually help. In both the US and the UK, atheists are vastly (although this is probably confounded by socio-economic status), and over-represented among civil rights activists and anti-war protestors. And the world鈥檚 most secular countries 鈥� notably Scandinavian nations 鈥� are . So why the bias against atheists?
One reason may be that the basis of religious morality is obvious. But it isn鈥檛 clear 鈥� even to themselves 鈥� where atheists get their moral guidance. Widespread atheism is also a relatively new phenomenon. Even today, most atheists were raised in religious homes and thus bring a lot of implicit religious baggage to matters of morality, says , a sociologist at Pitzer College in California. As societies become more secular, this influence is likely to fade away within a few generations.
Finland, a secular country, was the only one of the 13 surveyed that clearly did not show an anti-atheist bias. Gervais plans to investigate whether the nation has a longer secular tradition than the others surveyed, and hence more time for the intuitive moral/religious link to dissipate. Let鈥檚 hope his work helps debunk the belief that you cannot be good without god.
Read more: Unholy? Atheists should embrace the science of religion; Losing our religion 鈥� Your guide to a godless future
