Not quite
Update: Welcome atheists from Hemant’s twitter feed! Sorry had to shut down comments as I will be away from the computer and can’t moderate.
Many atheists will deny that objective good and evil exist.
They’ll claim that there is no absolute morality, but rather it’s all relative and socially or genetically conditioned.
One interesting way I found to approach an atheistic friend is to begin a discussion with this question: “Why do people wear clothes?”
The Christian answer is: people wear clothes, especially over their “private parts,” to avoid or reduce the chance of someone lusting after them.
Lust exists. One person can seek to use another person for their own ends, making them an object. This is sinful, evil.
The first chapters of Genesis, so powerfully explained through Blessed John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, reveal that Adam and Eve covered themselves once they had disobeyed God. Before that they were “naked and without shame.” Shame had not entered the world. But once sin was done, shame was there. And they hid themselves from one another.
Atheists will respond in varying ways: “People wear clothes to protect themselves from the elements.” Or, “some natives/African/Amazonian tribesmen don’t wear clothes.”
You can just bring it back to the fact that you and they wear clothes and ask why that is? And why not, if it’s warm out and you don’t need clothes, you don’t just take them off that day?
Eventually you get to morality. They may still argue that it is culturally conditioned. But it leads to other examples: what if someone tried to hurt your child (if they’re a parent)? Would you say that that person’s actions were morally neutral? Would you really argue that it was simply genetically bred into you to protect your child? Isn’t it instead true that you love your child and this goes beyond mere animal instincts? Etc.
In my experience atheists won’t concede much. But the discussion is good.
What are your thoughts in engaging in dialogue with atheists? And this particular tack?
This is a field I have not had much experience in but would like to. It seems to me that atheists must be taken on privately, since they will usually spin out of such questions.
Folks like Rand (of Speak the Truth in Loveblog, you know about him) have repeatedly told me that the biggest myth out there is that most atheists are philosophically ‘robust’, when in fact they don’t really have good arguments at all.
One trap that I’ve also been told to avoid is asking questions like “why do keep living?,” because the atheist is taught to be on guard for those questions and consider them fallacious questions that believers ask because they have no better argument.
Nick,
Yes one on one is best. I have lots of atheist colleagues so there have been many opportunities for discussion. But when they are in groups there’s too much temptation for them to save face, to make jokes, to ridicule, etc.
The good thing is that it is easier when you become friends because now you have a relationship and a rapport built up and it’s not just them trying to convince you that Christianity is false or you them that atheism is false. So sometimes just through life events you have things to talk about that inevitably lead to the important questions.
God bless!
Devin, if you’re trying to argue that objective good and evil exist, wearing clothes is about the silliest example you could start with precisely because clothes are so cultural.
Yes, shame and modesty are real things, but naked people do not universally experience shame. Shame is contextual; there are people who are perfectly content, and feel no moral compunctions, to be naked in their own homes around their own families, but who get dressed to venture outside. There are communities of nudists even in the Western world where nudity is freely practiced within the community, and whose members wear clothes when dealing with the outside world–not for their own sake, but for the sake of the outsiders. They may consider it a moral issue, but only one that affects relations with outsiders and not something transcendent.
There is no reason to concede that the first chapters of Genesis explain why some cultures use clothes as more than protection against the elements, nor that the Christian answer of clothes as a solution to lust is the universally correct one.
Ben!
Hmmm, by the looks of some atheist comments in the moderation queue right now, you or someone else shared this post around on some atheist boards.
Well, this question is really a “gateway” conversation starter. Usually it jumps to something more serious, like “what if someone wanted to harm your wife or family?”
I’m curious though, how would you answer the question: why do you wear clothes?
Well…because I’ll be arrested if I don’t.
Also, because it’s cold out.
(Oh, and I’m an atheist.)
Look, in the winter it’s damned cold out, and in the summer my Liquid Paper complexion will make me a candidate for instant melanoma. A huge portion of clothing is worn for protection.
I also wear clothing to insulate me from the world. I would prefer not to park my naked butt on the same chair every day. (In fact, at home I am naked much of the time, and my favorite chairs have washable covers.) I cannot imagine sitting on a bus bench or restaurant chair while in the nude immediate after someone else in the nude. San Francisco permits public nudity but a new law requires that you place a towel or other barrier over public seating before using it.
Finally, much about clothing is about custom and image. If clothing were only about covering ourselves, we could all wear featureless jumpsuits. The existence of the fashion industry, couture, and counter-couture are evidence that there is much more to clothing than coverage. By what is covered and what is not, and how it is covered, clothing enhances certain parts of our body. We use this to communicate with people about who we are, what we are doing, and how important the place we are and the people we are with are to us.
Well this is simple. Why do I wear clothes in the summer? 3 reasons:
The first and primary reason is that it’s illegal not to. Yeah, not going to be put in a cell, naked, just to prove a point to you. Apparently someone taking the “moral” viewpoint on clothing decided that we had to be forced to comply.
The second is practicality. Clothes are for more than protection from the elements. If I’m frying bacon in the morning, there are parts of me I’d rather not have hot grease pop onto. Same goes with the hot leather seats in my car, prevents chafing from my gear when I’m hiking, or just simply keeping my testicles from sticking uncomfortably to my legs when I walk. That and it’s easier to clean up if you have set of “work clothes” than it would be if you have to scrub paint off the majority of your skin should you accidentally spill a can on yourself.
Third is expression. Right now I’m wearing a shirt with a Zelda reference on it. Yesterday it was Star Wars. My only options to connect with other fans and give them a grin with a funny picture without clothing is to tattoo it on me, and you can only do that once for any given area without spending a LOT of money and getting a bit lucky with the results.
So, there you have it.
In addition to the obvious functional answers, clothing is just as much cultural acceptance as it is cultural expression. Self-decoration is an expression of identity that allows you to differentiate yourself from others or identify yourself as belonging to a group.
Cultures in which nudity is more common are not necessarily more lustful: in part because it’s probably desensitizing (indeed, in some cases, wearing certain clothes can induce more lust than nudity itself) and probably also because when it’s easier to see people’s state of arousal, they have an incentive to keep more control of themselves and their emotions.
But if the idea is that clothing can reduce lust, and lust can be socially destabilizing, or that doing so is a matter of respecting other people’s own boundaries and modesty, there’s nothing inherently “theist” or “atheist” about that conclusion. Nor does the Bible provide a particularly unique, clear, or unambiguous explanation of that reasoning/justification. Theologians and non-theologian moral philosophers have both done so, based on reasoned arguments that don’t necessarily even rely on any theological propositions.
Pingback: Nude Quickie | emilyhasbooks
Here’s my full reply: http://emilyhasbooks.com/nude-quickie
____________________________________________________
As an atheist, I’ll chime in- though a warning, I’m not a universal spokesperson for atheists- we don’t have one. Without the fear of sex/sexuality that religion imposes upon people, I don’t have a strong desire to hide my “naughty bits,” because to me, they aren’t “naughty.” If you’re lustful after them, that’s an issue that YOU need to work through, not me.
In public, I clothe myself to stick with social norms and for functional reasons, but shed them as soon as those social norms shift. In private, I frequently go nude, but find it necessary to clothe my body to deal with fluctuating temperatures.
In environments where it is obvious where everyone is comfortable with nudity, I denude. It’s not a “moral” issue, it’s a matter of personal physical comfort/function, and making those around you comfortable. Though I must note, if you’re “offended” by my nudity, it’s something YOU need to deal with, not me. Our bodies are beautiful, ALL of them, and your fear of the nude human body is likely purely religiously influenced.
We’re all naked, some of us just have clothes on.
Not to make any inuendo here, but this line of logic only opens the door for explaining why natural biological ‘urges’ don’t and shouldn’t get satisfied by means of the stronger dominating the weaker. If you get my drift.
Modesty is focused on counteracting the urge to dominate, to reduce people to objects. Women are especially subject to the sin and danger of objectification.
The amount of clothes that are required to not be scandalous is 100% cultural, and what is considered titillating shifts in proportion. Two words: Victorian. Ankles.
There are cultures where people routinely are seen naked by people outside of their family and think nothing of it. Similarly, there are cultures far stricter about covering up than the one most people reading this are part of. They think westerners are horrifically over-exposed.
It’s wrong to hurt a child because it HURTS a person. In a culture where no-one is offended by nudity, no-one is *hurt* when someone is nude. If those people visited America, they would be asked to cover up. If I got on a plane and went to certain countries, I would be asked to cover my hair and wear clothes down to my ankles. I’d be terribly bemused too that they have such silly rules that are stricter than mine. The people who live in nudity-positive cultures are terribly bemused at us Americans who freak out when a woman is spotted topless.
What a terribly weak example of morality, especially if one believes in objective morality.
Why is hurting a person wrong?
Because they are a conscious actor capable of expressing their will upon their environment, and without a mutual agreement that directly harming other conscious actors for no adequate reason is wrong, they may all hurt each other and cease their collective existence.
And no conscious actor wants that. Well, very few.
Why isn’t the collective existence ceasing just as good as it continuing?
Because we know what we have – consciousness – and we don’t know with absolute certainty what we have when it ceases – therefore, the rational mind prefers to remain alive in even the most remotely tolerable circumstance; death is the cessation of one’s will being effected upon the environment, and the will of a person is, truly, what that person IS, what distinguishes them both from non-persons and from other persons. In that quiet knowledge (or worry, depending on one’s convictions) that consciousness may evaporate, we place faith in other persons we find desirable qualities in, that what we believe in and hope for shall persist even after we do not.
Some people do indeed feel rather nihilist about what happens after they themselves die, but that is their choice.
Crommunist,
Just because there are “dozens” of atheist responses to an argument from morality doesn’t mean that 1) they’re sound or 2) that it’s a trivial line of argument. It’s not trivial, and intelligent atheist friends and I have gotten into great discussions about the question of whether an atheist can claim objective morality exists.
There’s no magic bullet, nor did I claim that. Rather, this is a good starting point for conversation. So it’s not “silly” but rather an interesting place to begin.
Okay fine. If you do TEN minutes of Google you’ll find dozens of SOUND responses to the argument from morality. I’ll even help you out – here’s mine.
It is a good starting point for a conversation with an 8 year-old. Or Ray Comfort. It’s a question that is, yes, silly and trivial to ask of an adult human person with at least a high school education. It also betrays the fact that you have lots of interest in asking questions, but almost none in listening to anybody’s answers. Otherwise you’d see that this question has been answered thousands of times in thousands of places. It’s the “if evolution is true, why are there still monkeys?” of ethics.
How would you determine if one is “objectively” better? There’s plenty of people who would love to live in a hunter-gatherer society, yet I’m sure you would consider our own society superior to that. And yet to those people, our society is flawed and these other ways are better. Who decides what makes a superior society?
Alright folks, I’m going to be away from the computer for some time and as such cannot moderate the comments coming in, so this post is going to be closed at least for now. Also, I deleted the trail of comments (including my responses) that talked about “evil spirits” as that led down a rabbit trail that was unhelpful.
There’s plenty of grist for both the atheists and Christians here to chew on and consider. Thanks!
Devin