{"id":3688,"date":"2012-10-19T10:02:09","date_gmt":"2012-10-19T15:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=3688"},"modified":"2012-10-19T10:02:09","modified_gmt":"2012-10-19T15:02:09","slug":"morality-built-upon-atheism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2012\/10\/19\/morality-built-upon-atheism\/","title":{"rendered":"Morality Built Upon Atheism?"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_3697\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-3697\" style=\"width: 199px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/makelessnoise\/7031210199\/in\/photostream\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-3697\" title=\"Goodness\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/files\/2012\/10\/Goodness-199x300.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2012\/10\/Goodness-199x300.jpeg 199w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/files\/2012\/10\/Goodness.jpeg 213w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-3697\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">At The Reason Rally 2012 in Washington, DC. Photo by makelessnoise via flickr.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Americans are extremely dubious about the integrity of atheists. In fact, an article by several of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/people\/edgell_p.html\">Minnesota\u2019s<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/people\/gerteis_j.html\">own<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/people\/hartmann_d.html\">sociologists<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.soc.umn.edu\/%7Ehartmann\/files\/atheist%20as%20the%20other.pdf\">\u201cAtheists as Other,\u201d<\/a> found that atheists are the least trusted minority. Most Americans think that the absence of belief in the divine renders one prone to turpitude and without basis for morality.<\/p>\n<p>According to Rohan Maitzen in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2012\/10\/08\/good_without_god\/\">recent article from Salon<\/a>, the remedy for this ethic-less reputation lies in the most unlikely of places, namely the semi-obscure novel <em>Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe<\/em> by famous atheist George Eliot. In contrast to Richard Dawkins\u2019 and Christopher Hitchens\u2019 confrontational stance toward religion, Eliot understood \u201creligion as the form through which many people have, historically, expressed their best moral impulses.\u201d She did not mind religiosity so long as it fostered feelings of sympathy and responsibility for human suffering.<\/p>\n<p>At once a \u201cstringent moralist and an unbeliever,\u201d Eliot wove a tale of human suffering, loss, and redemption through the experiences of the title character, using the \u201caffective power of fiction to convert us to faith, not in God, but in humanity.\u201d Indeed, through the tale of<em> Silas Marner<\/em> and her own letters to her deeply religious family, Eliot poignantly makes the case for the morality of atheism, mainly because \u201cin a material universe there are no rewards or punishments to come later.\u201d Summing it up, Eliot explained to another writer,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>It is a pang to me to witness the suffering of a fellow-being, and I feel his suffering the more acutely because he is <em>mortal<\/em>\u2014because his life is so short, and I would have it, if possible, filled with happiness and not misery.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Americans are extremely dubious about the integrity of atheists. In fact, an article by several of Minnesota\u2019s own sociologists, \u201cAtheists as Other,\u201d found that atheists are the least trusted minority. Most Americans think that the absence of belief in the divine renders one prone to turpitude and without basis for morality. According to Rohan Maitzen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1887,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[9080,17250,17248,17251,3107,17252],"class_list":["post-3688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-atheism","tag-doug-hartman","tag-george-eliot","tag-joseph-gerteis","tag-morality","tag-penny-edgell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1887"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3688"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3699,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3688\/revisions\/3699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}