“A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary,” wrote Albert Einstein in 1930. “Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.” Yet the idea that religion is necessary for morality has been with us, in one form or another, for 2,000 years. Even in relatively recent times, atheists could not testify in US court because it was believed that they had no reason to tell the truth.
The subject of secular morality has been debated by atheist scholar for decades – but is the argument that a religious framework is not a necessary part of ethical living finally entering the mainstream? A survey by theHuffington Post suggests that it might be.
It found that more than half of Britons believe that religion does more harm than good, with less than a quarter saying that faith is a positive force. Even 20 per cent of the respondents who described themselves as “very religious” (a small percentage of the whole) agreed that religion was harmful to society. More than 60 per cent of those polled said that they were not religious at all. This reflects other recent figures; for instance, the 2013 British Social Attitudes Survey found that 48 per cent of people said they did not belong to any religion.
Perhaps the most interesting statistic is that 55 per cent of those surveyed said that atheists are just as likely to be moral as religious people are. In fact, 12.5 per cent of people said atheists tended to be moral people; twice as many as the 6 per cent who said atheists are less moral.
The British Humanist Association’s Chief Executive Andrew Copson commented:
“This survey just confirms what we know is the common sense of people in Britain today – that whether you are religious or not has very little to do with your morality. Most people understand that morality and good personal and social values are not tied to religious belief systems, but are the result of our common heritage and experience as human beings: social animals that care for each other and are kind to others because we understand that they are human too. Not only that, people understand that religious beliefs themselves can be harmful to morality: encouraging intolerance, inflexibility and the doing of harm in the name of a greater good. We only need to look around us to perceive that fact.”
Maybe the idea that religion is crucial bulwark of morality is finally dissipating.