Via Randy I came across this interesting article about a Christian American living in what seems like an atheistic society, the Czech Republic. The CIA Factbook lists 40% of the Czech population as “atheist”, which I believe draws from a public survey. In cities like Prague the secularism could very well be cloying to an American Christian. I remember when I was attending a Unitarian-Universalist Church in college (to meet ladies, but they were all old there) that when newbies were introducing themselves, a young man brought his Czech fiance, and she got up and exclaimed, “I am Jana from the Czech Republic, and I am not a Unitarian!” with a mild bit of edgy hostility in her voice. It amused me at the time because she was under the misperception it seemed that all churches were equally evangelical and that the Unitarians were out to convert her!
So has society collapsed because of the Death of God in Czech society? Well, not yet from what I gather, but, places like the Czech Republic and Hungary, where secularism is far more advanced than in Poland or Romania (as contrasts), tend to produce many porn stars. Some of this can be chalked up to the demand for cheap blonde labor, but, Poland is far more populous than either Hungary or the Czech Republic (and as blonde), but my impression is that it does not produce as many porn stars in even absolute terms as the two latter nations. But porn does not equal murder or assault, so I am skeptical that a toleration for this sort of behavior can be the sole judge of ethical or moral fiber. I tend to agree with Pascal Boyer in Religion Explained that morality (or ethics) precedes religious doctrine, so a lack of religion will not result in a collapse of morality or ethics because these tendencies are drawn in part from our evolutionary heritage.1 Other the other hand, specific aspects of morality or ethics might be strongly shaped by religion, for example, admonitions not to participate in Euro-porn for money because the body is a temple. This might be distinguished as the general morality vs. the particular morality (in many nations it is immoral and repulsive to eat with your left hand, which is an example of the particular morality).
In short, religious people are right when they say secularism does open the door to moral relativism, but only to a point, as the core principles of the general morality are intuitively clear to all but sociopaths. That does not deny that religious institutions and beliefs might firm up the application of the general morality, or that elements of a particular morality might be conducive to a particular social structure (eg; Western Christian admonitions against polygyny), but it does deny that belief in God alone is the overwhelming principle component in moral behavior.2 A flip side in this somewhat essentialist conception of morality is that just as ethics were not introduced from On High into the human mental universe, belief in the supernatural also does not depend on the intercession of supernatural agents themselves, that is, God belief itself may be resilient in the long term in places like the Czech Repubic because it is for many individuals a low tension state that can only disrupted by strong cultural, social and individual forces.
1 – This does not mean that I am advocating Rousseau’s Noble Savage, rather I am implying that depraved selfishness (that is, all-against-all state of nature) is not some default state that mental constructs need to work against, rather, people are social animals and so have predispositions that heighten their fitness in a milieu of other human beings.
2 – If supernatural retribution is somehow the prime motivation for ethical behavior, I would predict that (all things being equal) Roman Catholics would be more ethical than Calvinists (because Roman Catholics believe that works might be relevant and accept free will) and that Hindus would be more ethical than Catholics (because Hindus place primacy on karma, while Catholics add the possibility of saving grace).
Posted by razib at 12:14 PM