Aaron Ross Powell

Theistic religion of the Christian variety espouses two kinds of morality, both owing their existence to god and his scriptural commandments. The first is familiar to all moral systems and forms the groundwork of humanist ethics. The second, however, is wholly alien to a secular worldview, one outside of the bounds of belief in Jesus’s promised hell. And, while it possesses little of value, it is this second variety that Christians see as necessary to a well functioning society. Remove it, they argue, and we will all become horrific hedonists, wallowing in filthy pleasure like a inarticulate Marquis de Sade.

Of course I am speaking of sin, that pernicious self-loathing priests inflict upon children and adults, the constant admonition that we are bad people doing bad things and must fight an ongoing, and often losing battle to be otherwise. Adam ate of the apple and man was cast out of paradise, a creature unworthy of simple and total happiness. While non-sin moral wrongs are grounded in the idea that it is wrong to cause harm to others, sin takes its prohibitions from the displeasure of god.

This is an important distinction. Under the secular framework, an act is immoral if it harms another person. Theft and murder are prohibited, as are acts that create a substantial likelihood of harm, such as drunk driving. Morality, then, can only be cogently discussed in the context of a society and of the interactions between its members. As the links between conduct and harm grow attenuated, the condemnation of that conduct as immoral becomes more difficult to justify. From this perspective, an act such as sodomy, when performed between consenting partners, is clearly not immoral. It would be incoherent to claim otherwise, as no third parties are hurt by the private sexual act. Religious morality embraces this harm-based definition of wrongful acts, but it layers on top an additional prohibition: sin.

If an immoral act is one that harms another, sins are acts that offend god. Take the sodomy example from above. For the secularist, no harm equals no immorality. But the Bible condemns the act as offensive to the dominant deity. We cannot, it should be noted, shoehorn the condemnation into a secular framework by arguing that sodomy, through its offensiveness, enacts a kind of harm upon god. This is because god is all powerful and, thus, impervious to hurt. To claim an act harms god is an nonsensical as saying troubling information can be hidden from him. It goes against the very definition of the supreme being.

It is sin that believers most often appeal to when confronted with the idea of morality in the absence of god. Without the threat of an avenging deity, what’s to stop us from plunging enthusiastically into lives of constant sin? And would we really want to live in a society were that unfortunate transformation has taken place? What these claims really amount to is the idea that atheists, because they don’t believe in hell, are bound to be bad people. We should control ourselves, the believers argue, and not give in to our most base desires. Human beings are sinful by nature, going back to Adam, and we must fight a constant battle not to give in to our bestial nature.

But why? Again, keep in mind that even secularly morality prohibits causing harm to others. With those kinds of acts still prohibited, why shouldn’t we love ourselves and embrace the pleasures life has to offer? After all, we only get this single lifetime, and to live it in a constant state of self-derision directed at our very human desire to seek pleasure seems a terrible waste.

Imagine the Christian argument in another context. For hundreds of years, blacks were imported to America as slaves and indoctrinated into a view of themselves as stupid, evil beasts. The best thing they could do was to obey the will of their masters, work hard in the fields, and try to live up to the pitiful standards they were capable of. This is very much like the idea of humanity brought low by original sin. We should toil in god’s fields and deny our nature because that nature is corrupt.

Then came the abolition of slavery and the century long battle for civil rights. Blacks were lifted from this terrible and demeaning characterization afflicted upon them. Society learned–and is still learning–to give up its groundless prejudices and respect the inherent dignity of all human beings. Blacks were, in a sense, finally allowed to embrace their genuine natures, natures no different from everyone else because blacks were–and always have been–just as human and just as dignified as every other member of our species.

Would it then seem at all proper, at all respectable, to tell those freed slaves that they were better off under the yoke? To tell them that they remain bad and that, only through following the master’s rules, can they hope to become better people? Of course not. Such sentiment is, at best, disgusting and, at worst, downright evil.

But how is this any different from sin? Why is it better to enslave ourselves to a morality based not in compassion and respect for our fellow men but in the whims and desires of an all powerful deity? Rejecting sin is not giving into our base natures. Rather, it is an emancipation of what it means to be human.