Suppose we have 2 children going out to a restaurant with their families. One is told by their parents that if they behave they will get to watch tv later, and if they misbehave they will be spanked. The second child’s parents explains to them how there are other people in the restaurant that want to enjoy their meal, and they point out that if those people made a scene it would make our families meal less enjoyable. Both children behave, but which one is more moral?

I was thinking about this today, and I feel like atheists that are secular humanists are, in some ways, more moral than christians/theists. When we are good, we do so for goodness sakes. We are empathetic to people around us. A Christian, when they do good, only does so because there is an authority standing over them that will reward them for doing good and punish them if they don’t. It’s worse then that, because the Christian can actually do all the bad they want and as long as they ask for forgiveness and believe Jesus gave up a weekend dead on the cross, they won’t be punished at all. It’s like the kid can misbehave all they want at the restaurant as long as they say sowy once they get home. That’s not the point of this post though.

The question is: are christians moral agents? Are they using their reason and empathy to reach rational conclusions about morality (whether it’s granted by an evolved mind or a magic fruit)? If one is surrendering their humanity to blindly follow the proclamations of an authority figure without actually considering the harm the instructions may or may not be causing, then I don’t think they can be considered a moral agent. If we are lucky, they happen to be following an authority that’s giving moral proclamations. Unfortunately in too many cases, the authority is corrupt and opportunistic. Either way, if you are blindly trusting an authority instead of relying on reason and empathy then you aren’t a moral agent, you are a moral puppet. In the case of christians, they aren’t even getting instructions directly from an authority! They only have an old book that people claim was inspired by the authority giving them arbitrary rules and promising reward/punishments.

Luckily I don’t believe this is really the case, I think (most) christians get their morality from the same place secular humanists do: reason and empathy. This is evidenced by the church changing its mind on all manner of things to reflect the attitudes of the time (slavery, gay marriage, interracial marriage, etc...). They simply credit their morality to a god and reinterpret scripture to match their new outlook. I’m a fan of that because at least it’s progress of a kind, I just wish you all would skip the extra step and join the rest of us in the 21st century. I know there is an argument that atheists borrow from the Christian world view for things like the golden rule, I’m ok with that. If there is no god then all of Christianity is man made, so whats wrong with humans borrowing ideas from other humans? If there is a god then that changes things, anybody have some evidence?

It is generally agreed by believers that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and goodness are subject to God’s arbitrary decision or whether they are subject to the physical laws of reality and their impact on the experience of thinking agents.

I believe that any Christian that thinks and cares about others is a moral agent. The ones that prioritize doctrine over well being are not moral agents, they have sacrificed their humanity in the name of their religion.
Thoughts?