Faith and selfishness

    To begin, let’s distinguish self-care and selfishness. Self-care is a necessary aspect of our existence, self-care becomes selfishness when our wellbeing comes without concern for the values of others. We can recognize that we are just one part of a larger whole, or in the more eloquent language of Brian Miller: “our world is a shared experience, fractured by individual perspectives”. Human beings have inherent value, to ignore this is void of virtue and ignores the Truth.

     There is insightful research indicating a strong correlation between religiosity and selfishness (Cell, 2015).  This research indicates that children from non-religious households were more altruistic with an anonymous beneficiary than children from religious households. This insight is contrary to the religious narrative that god is the objective moral standard, and therefore without a god we cannot possibly know what is right and what is wrong. This assertion leads to the widespread belief that atheists are morally suspect and untrustworthy. This can be a frustrating aspect for atheists as belief in a god is not indicative of upright moral character. Although it logically follows that an objective standard is necessary consistently determine right and wrong, it is not logical that god is this objective standard. There has yet to be any actual evidence for the existence of god. As such, god is perpetually found not-guilty for the crime of existence.

     One of the most selfish tendencies is the belief that the local religion we were born into (at the precise time in history that we were born) provides us knowledge of the one True god. It is very hard to describe how phenomenally selfish this belief is. To address this, some theists will claim that all gods are actually the same. It is not possible that all gods are the same as their own definitions make them mutually exclusive. This magnificent selfish tendency stems from faith: believing ideas to be True without evidence or contrary to the actual evidence. Faith is clearly not a reliable path to Truth. Without verifiably knowing what is True to begin with, we cannot make a consistent moral decision. This is why Truth is our objective moral standard. In conclusion, not being responsible with the Truth is by definition immoral, tantamount to faith, and typically indicative of selfish behavior.

    The philosopher Daniel Dennett has an especially pertinent quote: “The secret to happiness: find something larger than you are and dedicate your life to it”. Hopefully we can recognize that our shared humanity is very much larger than we are.