Hemant Mehta, who goes by the alias "Friendly Atheist," has a YouTube channel on which he reports on religious overreach in the US, mostly by Christian reactionaries, which he deplores with the kind of scandalized relish that I associate with Christian reactionaries, though liberals love it too. I've been aware of him for a long time, but only started noticing his videos in the past couple of months.
A day ago he posted this video about a 26-year-old Christian youth pastor who decided that God wanted him joined in marriage to a fourteen-year-old girl. This was in the mid-1990s. His church and the girl's parents accepted his claim, though they insisted on its being only a "betrothal" until she was older. He then initiated sexual contact with her. In 1998 he fled to Australia before he could be charged, but last year Interpol blocked him from entering the Philippines and he was returned to the US and to jail in Pennsylvania, where he was held without bail as a flight risk. He's now 55. This month he accepted a deal to plead guilty to felony charges; he will serve six to twelve years in prison, followed by several more years of probation, and he will be registered for life as a sex offender.
It's hard to call this outcome good, because of the original situation and the long delay in catching the man. The victim, who's been in touch with Mehta, is more or less satisfied, though of course she wishes her abuser had been caught sooner, but thanks to the plea deal she was spared having to confront him in court. She points out there have been changes in American society, including in organized Christianity, regarding abuse of power by authority figures in and out of the churches. Their expectation of protection and immunity has been eroded considerably, but new cases continue to emerge, so we have a long way to go still. It surprises me that churches should have any prestige or authority anymore, given their exposure as institutions that enabled and protected the mistreatment of their own members for so long.
I read the comments on the video with interest. Certain themes and slogans recurred, such as that people should not get their morality from books but rather from their inner feelings and hearts. I asked where they thought the "books" got their contents? So far I haven't gotten an answer, though a few people liked my comments. This is the familiar belief that religion is something external to human beings, rather than something we invented. If bad stuff is in the Bible, it's because people put it there. This should be obvious, a truism, in an atheist forum, but once again it seems not to be. It's certain that the oppression of women predates the Bible, and existed outside the cultures that produced it. I keep having to point out that most religions have not relied on sacred writings; yet their treatment of women wasn't better than what the Bible prescribes.
I noticed a number of comments on the video that consisted of one word, gross, sometimes in all-caps. I suppose they were sincerely looking into their hearts, but although gross isn't a moral principle but an aesthetic one, Mehta and his liberal fans wouldn't want to rely on it much. Many actions and practices have been judged immoral because they're gross: anal sex, for one; vaginal sex, for another. Bodies are gross, especially female ones with their monthly bleeding. Heart surgery is gross. Childbirth is gross, as shown by the number of people (not all of them men) who have run gagging from films or the reality of birth. Nudity is gross, especially male nudity. "Interracial" sex has been judged gross. Abortion is gross, as is all non-reproductive sexual activity. And so on; the list could continue forever. I think there are better reasons to object to the youth pastor's actions than their grossness.
If you don't want to admit that the sexual morality of the Bible (to keep it simple I'll leave out the rest of the world) is the result of people looking into their hearts, very well. (I should have said "moralities," because the Bible isn't consistent in its moral teachings, including those on sexuality.) You still have to explain the tenacity with which many people today cling to male supremacy; as I've argued before, that includes male scientists and secular philosophers. And if you want to have a set of moral principles that apply to everyone, as opposed to individuals' personal likes and dislikes, you have to be able to discuss them, to argue with people who disagree with you. Morality isn't just a question of what feels right to you, it's about what happens when people come into conflict. That hasn't occurred to Hemant Mehta's commenters, from what I see, nor to many atheists or other unbelievers.
One commenter tried to answer me by concocting a little story about two cavemen who, after bashing each other on the head, realized that it was in their best interest to stop bashing each other on the head, and voila! there's morality that didn't come from a book. What he had to offer was a myth (in the sense of a just-so story that purports to explain the way things are), not an argument; nor was it about morality. Modern religious reactionaries accept religious toleration on the same prudential grounds, but they still consider competing sects to be immoral, and they would suppress them if they could. Nice try, but no cigar.
The public library in the nearest, mid-sized city asked for input on its Facebook page last fall on what sorts of public programs it might organize and sponsor. I wrote that I would like a group that would discuss morality and ethics from an atheist viewpoint, reading and discussing serious writing on the subject. The comments I got were interesting. Someone told me about an atheists' advocacy and educational organization that covers northern Indiana. I looked it up on the web and it looked worthwhile (unfortunately I don't own a car and couldn't go to their meetings), but it doesn't seem to include exploratory programs about unsettled questions like morality and ethics. When I said so, several people mocked the idea that such questions even need to be asked: everybody knows what's right and wrong!
Well, no, everybody doesn't know. When I was much younger, I looked for and found books about non-religious philosophy and sexuality. Books published before around 1970 simply assumed that homosexuality was a bad thing - but a sickness that could be treated, not a sin. There were some dissenters about that, but not many published books saying so. It was the post-Stonewall gay movement that pushed secular philosophy and medicine away from complacent, unquestioning heterosexual supremacy. The same was true of second-wave feminism. Both movements had to grapple with religious bigotry, but secular authorities were also our targets. We won some victories sooner and more easily than we'd anticipated, but resistance hasn't died out yet.
When other atheists have written about morality on a non-academic level, they tend to fall back on handwaving like "Be good for goodness sake!" which ought to be embarrassing. Luckily for them, their religious opposite numbers don't do any better. And it's not like I have the answers. What I mainly have are questions. The writings on moral philosophy I've read indicate that even the best thinkers are in the same boat. I think we'd be better off if more people were aware of the complexity of the questions they brush away so lightly.
