The theist charge that atheists can’t have morality without a sky god is pretty laughable. But the error in the argument goes so deep that the argument is actually much more devastating when applied to theistic morality: how can a person following theistic morality be good?

Suppose your sky god decreed it morally good to steal, rape, and kill; and morally wrong to live peacefully. Would the atheists then be living immorally for abstaining from these activities? Clearly not. The theist argument presupposes that theistic morality corresponds to our intuitive morality. If theistic morality just codifies our innate moral sense, then it’s at best supplementing it; it’s not the source of morality.

The more interesting case occurs if theistic morality contradicts our intuitive morality. In this case, we say that god’s moral code is wrong, not that our innate one is wrong. So god is fundamentally constrained to codifying the morality inherent in human nature. If god deviates from that, we deem his morality to be wrong.

The problem with the theist argument is that morality is a collection of evolved instincts, not a set of rules passed down from on high (by gods or rulers). (I suggest reading Matt Ridley’s The Origins of Virtue for the argument from evolutionary psychology.)

So: if you follow intuitive morality, then you will act morally. If you follow theistic morality, then you may or may not act morally (depending on how closely the theistic morality corresponds to intuitive morality—usually very closely, otherwise it wouldn’t survive long.) The real question is this: if one is simply following god’s rules, how can we be sure that they will behave morally? As soon as god gives them the green light to steal, rape, and murder, they can override their innate moral qualms with religious justification.

“Both creationists and socialists distrust invisible-hand processes and cannot conceive of order emerging except through some sort of centralised top-down control.” —Roderick Long

A statheist is an atheist statist. In other words, statheists reject supernatural explanations of the world but believe that the state is necessary for creating social order and managing society. Now, anti-statism (aka market anarchism or libertarianism) is relatively obscure compared to atheism—and much less obvious—so statheism is nowhere near as egregious an error as creationism. Yet it’s very important to point out the statist error to atheists, who claim to be proponents of reason, since it’s in many ways similar to the errors of creationists.

There’s a certain incongruity of being an atheist and a statist, namely that many atheist arguments are closely related to anti-statist arguments. As atheists, they have no trouble rejecting top-down creationist explanations of the universe. They laugh at the idea that the universe was centrally planned by a supernatural being (“Cosmic Socialism”). They see clearly that the order and complexity of the universe and of life has emerged through bottom-up natural processes. As Dan Dennett would say, they don’t need a skyhook because they have a perfectly good crane.

But when it comes to the order and complexity of large-scale society, statheists balk at the idea of emergent order. They are “Political Creationists”, holding that social order can only come down from a powerful state. They employ faulty “state of the gaps” logic in their feeble attempts to rule out the possibility of a stateless society (e.g., “Only a state could provide roads/education/laws/courts/etc”). As usual, the problem boils down to a lack of understanding of economics. Don Boudreaux writes:

While there are some exceptions – Indur Goklany, for example – of natural scientists who understand economics, far too many of them see the world as posing physics or engineering problems rather than as posing economic ones.  The two problems are very different from each other.

Economics explains how social order emerges through the decentralized market price system, a “crane” theory. Statists keep their heads in the sand, content with a top-down “skyhook” theory of social order. They cling to an almost supernatural conception of the state: all-powerful, wise, and benevolent. In reality, the state is none of these: its power is derived from the support of its subjects, who could easily overpower the state if they revolted; its wisdom in managing society is extremely primitive compared to the information aggregation of markets, as seen by the utter and universal failure of central planning (and the spectacular success of free markets); its benevolence is largely a myth, as policy makers usually have more incentive to favor special interests at the expense of the general public.

Ultimately the problem of social order boils down to this: There are only people, all imperfect and selfish to some extent. There are no super-people to rescue us from this anarchy and selflessly govern society. So how can we find a way to cooperate amongst ourselves, to avoid conflicts? Is it really best to give one group of people a bunch of guns and tell them to enforce social order while hoping that they won’t abuse this power? That’s a terribly uncreative, skyhook solution. No, a much more sensible position would be to reject the monopoly solution and look for a crane, a bottom-up, competitive, polycentric solution. And as economists have long insisted, markets are just the crane we need—incredible decentralized systems for coordinating cooperation among billions of people and directing production so as to best satisfy the wants of consumers.

If statheists wish to fly the banner of reason, they should seriously re-examine their belief in the skyhook we call the state. They will find that there’s a perfectly good crane to replace it.

Effectively all large societies have been religious. But religions haven’t been successful because they’re true: practically all religions are mutually contradictory, so there must be another reason to explain their success. One very good reason—probably the most fundamental one—is that religions have been very useful in promoting social cooperation. This is the basic prerequisite for civil society and economic progress.

Securing cooperation is the fundamental challenge in establishing a civil society. It would be nice if we could all just get along, but we all have incentives to cheat and steal on occasion. These incentives become magnified as the society grows and relations become more anonymous, since it becomes more and more difficult to know whether other people are trustworthy. There are various ways to solve this problem, but if left unchecked these incentives would lead to social chaos.

Religion is a particularly effective, if crude, method of securing cooperation. In general, religions lay out moral rules (which often happen to be social ones) and set up strong incentives to follow them. Eternal life in heaven is an infinitely great reward for being a cooperator; eternal damnation in hell is an infinitely great punishment for being a cheater; and the judge is omniscient, so it’s impossible to “get away” with anything. Societies with these religions would have a competitive advantage: greater cooperation means more trade and more production—in a word, prosperity. These societies would grow and spread—by conquest or consent—until they came to dominate. So religion is a hack that gets people to behave in large, anonymous societies.

On the individual level, there are strong incentives to portray oneself as a believer. Being genuinely religious makes you more trustworthy, as you can be counted on to cooperate and not cheat. Displaying (advertising) your religiosity to others is a signal of this trustworthiness, it creates a good reputation. Thus, being religious has material incentives: more people to trade and cooperate with. Once a religion gains a foothold, the incentive would be for everyone to jump aboard.

Yet I don’t think that religion could get a foothold with these incentives alone. Religion—a cultural universal—fundamentally rests on our psychological willingness to believe in the supernatural. Evolutionary psychology plays a large role. So religion is a particularly infectious meme that exploits an innate human irrationality and produces the byproduct of social cooperation, creating strong incentives to be religious.

This explains so much about religious behavior. Why do the religious often ask what keeps atheists from stealing and murdering? Because that’s supposed to be the function of religion. (Note that this question is self-contradictory: on one hand, it tries to argue that only religion can be the source of morality, while on the other hand, it presupposes that theft and murder are inherently wrong—regardless of what god says.) Why are the religious so hostile towards atheists, and why are they less hostile to believers in contradicting gods? Because genuine belief in any type of divine justice makes one more trustworthy; atheism makes one an unconstrained danger. Why do people invest so much time and money in religious affairs? To signal to others that they’re believers and therefore trustworthy. Why is questioning religion taboo? To avoid undermining the social order.

But there’s plenty of hope for truth. As other institutions replace religion in enabling social cooperation, religion becomes redundant and people can freely satisfy their intellects without undermining the social order. Religion is supported by mass belief and cultural momentum. It has already started to come undone, and will only unravel faster as mass support shrinks.

There is a striking parallel between belief in a personal god and belief in Santa. As Richard Dawkins argues, these beliefs (or memes) are viruses of the mind. The two beliefs are of the same type, differing only in particulars:

• Both beliefs infect young minds incapable of critical thought and lacking the knowledge to properly judge the validity of those beliefs.
• The disinfection process is identical for most people: critical thinking develops and knowledge about reality increases until the superstition is seen for what it is.
• Both depend on mass support: children believe in Santa because everyone else appears to. But when the appearance of mass support vanishes as children get older, the belief gets wiped out. If someone maintained the belief into adulthood, he would be considered mentally immature. Likewise, religions get their strength from mass support. The religion of culture A is considered ridiculous by those of culture B—culture B is highly resistant to religion A simply because mass support is missing. Religious belief is considered childish and ridiculous where it is rare.

Growing up involves learning about reality and discarding falsehoods. Everybody drops the superstitions that don’t have mass support among adults. But many who were infected by religion as young children aren’t able to shake the virus as adults—because the mass support among adults prevents it from being exposed as a superstition. They go on to spread the virus to their children—that’s how the virus propagates itself.

It’s telling that nearly all religious people were indoctrinated into their particular religion as children. Those who are infected as adults are usually of questionable psychological integrity, or are simply unaware of the scientific evidence. After all, atheism correlates with intelligence and education. Consider this: a person may have complete faith in religion A, but had they grown up in a different culture they would have complete faith in religion B, even though the two are mutually contradictory. It comes down to sheer luck whether one is born at the right time and place to be infected with the ‘correct’ religion, although such a person will always believe that his is the ‘correct’ religion, while the other is false. Take a moment and think through the implications of this.

Now, religious people are not all stupid. In fact, many are very smart. For example, several Mises Institute scholars are religious, despite being very sharp thinkers in economics. This strikes me as a huge disconnect, a double standard—intellectual dishonesty, but probably not intentional. It’s as though religious belief is kept in its own compartment in the mind, sealed off from the rigors of evidence and logic that rule everywhere else. I find it absurd that one can be committed to the high standards of logic and evidence while also believing the superstitions of Bronze Age tribesmen.

Belief in a personal god is childish, just like belief in Santa. Both beliefs have zero scientific evidence to support them, and are opposed by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. If one must believe in a god, then deism (the belief in a non-personal god) is best—it doesn’t contradict the facts so blatantly. But it’s best to ditch deism and even agnosticism and be a full-blown atheist. Reject the existence of god(s) in the same way that you reject the existence of Santa.

Religion is an affront to reason and human dignity. It represents a complete rejection of reason and it lowers humans to the level of pawns in some divine game. Religion spreads by infecting innocent children, before they can critically assess what they’re being taught. Leave the children alone and let them decide what they’ll believe when they grow up. But if that were done, I reckon that religion would completely evaporate in a few generations.