North Star Writers Group

My previous column, Is An Atheist Just the President We Need? may have surprised some who are familiar with some of my other thoughts and opinions. My desire was to stimulate thought about the purpose of international warfare, and to suggest that morality and national defense are not necessarily connected. I was discussing atheism as it would affect a nation externally.

I don’t intend to discuss this any further at this point, but I do intend to discuss a question that this column raised, concerning whether or not a nation is better off believing that it is “under God”. This discussion involves how atheism would affect a nation internally. To what degree must a nation dictate laws based on morality? How can a government encourage its citizens to act morally? I believe this encompasses issues such as abortion and gay marriage, among others.

Before getting to these issues, however, I think it is important to point out that every nation I’ve ever heard of legislates, at the very least, two primary moral rules – do not murder and do not steal. Some nations have stretched this rule more than others, but I have never heard or read about a government that allowed its citizens to arbitrarily kill one another without any form of discouragement or punishment. Where did this idea come from? Why is it wrong to haphazardly kill your neighbor? Of course, if this sort of thing happened regularly, it would probably cripple a nation’s economy and eventually destroy it. This is the only case for suggesting that laws against murder have nothing to do with morality. But the problem with this idea is that no one, in the presence of an apathetic murderer, can consider this person without contempt. We frown upon it.

C.S. Lewis illustrates this point very effectively in Mere Christianity, when he states, “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him”. It doesn’t exist.

As far as we know, every nation until 2007 A.D. operated a code of morality, whether they saw it this way or not. Why? Because it just makes sense to us.

The problem is, not all moral rules are so clear. Americans seems to have proven that some issues are very vague. For example, there is a grand divide concerning abortion – baby’s rights or mother’s rights? Is it really a human before it’s outside the mother’s womb? I believe that life begins at conception, and that all abortions are morally wrong unless the mother’s life is at stake. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that, if I had the authority to make the laws, I would legislate exactly according to my beliefs on the subject. And concerning gay marriage, I believe that marriage was designed by God to be a spiritual union between a male and a female, but again, this does not necessarily mean I would choose to legislate this way. I do not know what I would do.

The heart of the issue, I believe, concerns the definition of human rights. Most of us agree that no one has the right to harm someone else, or to take someone else’s things without permission. But the harder questions are those that involve someone’s choice for his or her own life. Why is prostitution illegal? Does a person not have the right to sell their body for money? And what about narcotics? Does a person not have the right to put whatever substances they desire into their body? Why is it a law in most states that motorcyclists must wear helmets, and drivers must wear seatbelts? To what extent do we have the right to put ourselves in harm’s way?

The point is, human rights are, from a secular perspective, indefinable. Only a theocracy can attempt to define human rights, and because of the wide range of human opinions on God and spiritual things, theocracies don’t tend to work well. The only logical way to try to define human rights is morally, and unfortunately, not everyone maintains the exact same moral values.

A nation must try to legislate pragmatically. A government must take into account that, regardless of the laws it passes, people will do what they want to do. And I believe that the more frequently a law is broken, the more a government ought to question the law – not the morality of it, but the practically of it. Prohibition exhibited this fact perfectly.

The core philosophy of America, as stated in the Constitution, is to legislate justice and to promote the general welfare. What may be most important to realize is that everyone has this ambiguous thing called a conscience, and that not everyone interprets the urgings of their respective Jiminy Cricket in the exact same way. The government’s nearly impossible task is to legislate in ways that satisfy the consciences of most and the general welfare of everyone. The task of the citizen is firstly to understand the ideas of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and secondly, to ensure that these rights are not infringed upon.

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This is Column # NS051. Request permission to publish here.