In my recent debate (“Is faith necessary for ethics?”) the Christian representative argued that, if religion is guilty of some crimes, atheist regimes like Hitler’s and Stalin’s have been even worse. Yes, playing the good old Hitler card.

First, the Nazi regime was not atheist. Hitler frequently invoked God, he was a declared Catholic all his life, and never left the church. And the Vatican never excommunicated him, nor ever even uttered a word of criticism.

As to the other totalitarians – Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and the like – this is all really just religion under a different name, with all the attributes including worship of a God figure, an absolutist ideology of revealed truth, and a willingness, nay, a zeal, to punish and kill heretics and apostates.

I have a magazine called China Pictorial which I was sent in 1966 because as a kid I was silly enough to write to Mao Zedong. It is full of pictures, and not one – literally, not one – doesn’t have Mao in it. Tell me this is not religion.

Do you know who the president of North Korea is? No, it’s not Kim Jong-il – it’s his father, Kim Il-sung, who’s been dead for 15 years. The country’s chief occupation seems to be worshipping the father and the son. They’re just one short of a trinity. Tell me this isn’t religion.

None of this is at all what humanism is about. Humanists reject religious dogma in all its forms, and instead want every person free to seek his or her own path. And the one country that most nearly conforms to that secular humanist ideal is the United States of America.

Last night I participated in a debate on this topic, at a local college; there were representatives of five different religions, and I spoke for the humanist viewpoint. Here is my opening statement:

The French scientist Laplace wrote a book about planetary physics; and Napoleon asked him why it didn’t mention God. Laplace replied, “Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis.”

We humans get morality first from our human nature, developed through biological evolution, and second, from our thinking minds. Religion isn’t necessary. We have no need of that hypothesis.

For a hundred thousand years we lived in small tribes or bands, in extremely challenging environments. Survival did require competition, aggression, and so forth. But it also crucially required a great deal of social cooperation and even altruism within a group. People who worked together and helped each other could get by; a tribe where it was “every man for himself” maybe not.

That’s why our brains evolved to make us feel good when we do good deeds, and shame and guilt otherwise. We are social animals programmed to crave the approval of others. We also have built-in empathy, in what’s called “mirror neurons” for feeling each other’s pain. We have strong instincts for compassion, gratitude, loyalty, fairness, etc. That’s morality; it’s actually a natural emotion.

But it’s not unique to humans. Other animals, especially our closest relatives, show similar if rudimentary moral instincts.

The other source of morality is our thinking minds. Lately it’s popular to debunk the idea of human rationality. Well, of course we’re not perfectly rational, all the time. However, we obviously deploy our reasoning faculty every minute of our daily lives, and our technology and social institutions are built on such rationality.

So — how do we get morality from rationality? Why not just act from pure self-interest, wouldn’t that be coldly rational? Actually, no. Because such behavior would quickly be defeated by the self-serving actions of other people. For example, if loans are not generally repaid, nobody would lend. But if we take into account the interests of others, then everyone is actually better off. This is enlightened self-interest. It’s rational morality. Most of us figure it out.

We also understand that other people have minds and feelings similar to one’s own, and similarly value their lives. Such rational thought likewise gives us the essence of morality – promoting human life and maximizing its quality.

All these factors make most nonbelievers at least as ethical as believers. And these factors shape human culture. Religion is merely an artifact of culture. We don’t get morality from religion; religion gets it from us, from our evolutionary background, our thinking minds, and our resulting culture. Religion is just a mirror reflecting all that.

Ask yourself this: if you suddenly found out there is no God, would you rape, steal, and murder? Of course not. Because religion is not the true source of morality. Religion merely codifies it. We’d be no less moral if we’d never invented religion.

Look at European countries like Norway or Denmark, where religion has almost disappeared. Have they descended into barbarism? They are among the world’s most orderly, ethical societies. Meantime, prisons are filled with religious believers.

Some say morality is a simple matter of obeying God. But following orders is not always right. (Remember Nuremberg?) The Bible says disrespectful children should be put to death. Why don’t we do it? Because, again, we have deeper sources of morality.

Simply following religious dictates divorces your actions from conscientious weighing of their consequences. That’s true morality — working it out for yourself. That’s what nonbelievers do. It’s better than toeing the line out of fear of Hell. And ethical precepts are more soundly based on our reason, and reality, than on faith, which of course means belief without evidence or even against evidence. Any ethics derived that way has to be faulty.

The theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr said, “Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.” But the problem comes when you imagine you know what God thinks, and believe you’re following a holy path—then, almost anything can be justified or excused. That’s how we got Muslim suicide bombers, men flying airplanes into buildings, all the centuries of massacres inspired by Christian faith, etc., etc., etc.

Religion too often breeds demonization of other people. Mainstream Christianity has traditionally taught that non-Christians burn in Hell forever. I’ve never heard a more immoral idea! Not to mention all the thousands burned in this world. Religious faith can be a set of ethical blinders, overriding, distorting, and subverting our inborn moral instincts. That’s why philosopher John Stuart Mill called religion “a great moral evil.”

I have been reading Amartya Sen’s book, Development as Freedom. (Sen is a Nobel laureate Harvard Economist.) His basic thesis is that developmental progress and freedom are intertwined: that freedom is both a key factor in promoting material progress – it makes people more productive – and also, freedom is itself part of development, being important to quality of life and human happiness. An unfree nation could never be considered fully advanced no matter how materially rich it was.

Sen demolishes the idea that democracy and human rights are some sort of “luxury” that a poor nation can’t afford, that may conflict with economic necessities. To the contrary, he shows how democratic culture makes a nation better able to grapple with economic challenges. He also rebuts the notion that poor people care less about democratic rights than “more pressing” needs. And he provides an antidote to the currently fashionable notion that free market economics are somehow tainted, arguing that markets not only improve economic outcomes, but give people a crucial element of personal autonomy as well. (Arguments along all these lines also appear in my own new book, The Case for Rational Optimism.)

Sen discusses at length the question of what happiness really means – i.e., what is the true objective? (This too is addressed in my book.) Thus, while wealth and GDP are unarguably key determinants of human welfare – you can buy a lot with money – they are ultimately just instrumentalities, valued not for their own sakes, but for enabling us to get other things we really want. Certainly wealth would be meaningless if there were nothing to buy – though this statement is perhaps silly, as of course production and sale of goods and services is how wealth is developed in the first place. (Yet some on the left imagine we could somehow have a wealthy society without anyone grubbing for profits.)

Sen’s point is that the goal should be empowering people to be proactive in fulfilling their desires – whatever those desires happen to be. A society in which this happens is a good society.

It strikes me that there are two kinds of mindsets. One is Sen’s apparent view – the essence of classical liberalism — that people should be left free to pursue their own desiderata. The other mindset is prescriptionist. Those having it often use language of freedom and human welfare and even diversity – yet really want people regimented to conform to certain prescribed virtues. This is mainly a characteristic of the political left, ever keen to compel people to behave the way they should — or the way one thinks they should (e.g., current proposals to force us to buy medical insurance, whether we want it or not, on pain of fines and, ultimately, jail.) But of course the right also falls into this trap, having its own assertedly moralistic agenda that it wants to see enforced upon the unwilling.

Political vocabulary gets muddied when certain coercive ideologies (communism, socialism) get tagged as “left” and others no less coercive (fascism) as “right.” The real divide is not between such lefts and rights, but coercion versus freedom, liberal versus illiberal (and again I’m talking about classical John Stuart Mill liberalism, not what is called “liberalism” in today’s America).

Amartya Sen is right that society’s true purpose should be not conforming people, but, rather, to give them maximum opportunities to be, and get, what they want.* That is what freedom means, and that is the ultimate goal of developmental progress.

* Lest someone nitpick this, I will add the proviso that no harm to others is done, of course.

I met a guy last night who made this argument: it’s been calculated that if, for example, the strength of gravity were a teensy bit greater or smaller, our universe with stars and planets, and life, could not exist; and similarly for twenty-odd other parameters in physics; so, in sum, our existence defies astronomical odds against it. Therefore some “higher power” must have manipulated all these parameters, intentionally, to produce a life-friendly universe.

This has been called the “anthropomorphic argument.” It’s been around for a long time. It’s nonsense. Here’s why:

When I was conceived in 1947, the odds that, 62 years later, I would be sitting in this particular chair, writing these particular words, would have been practically infinity-to-one. Exceedingly improbable. Yet here I am — so calling this outcome “improbable” is meaningless. And for exactly the same reason, because the Universe is the way it is, to talk about its being in any sense improbable is meaningless too.

Further: let’s suppose it were possible for the Universe to have been born with a slightly different gravity strength, etc., in which case life could not occur. That possibility might make it seem plausible to talk about improbability in connection with our existence — IF our universe were the only one. But why assume that the birth of our universe was a unique, one-off occurrence? Nature never works that way. All natural phenomena recur. If a big bang happened once, it’s a reasonable bet that it happened other times — zillions of times, given the vastness (if not infinitude) of time and space.

This idea that ours is only one universe of many can’t be proven, of course, but because of its obvious logicality it has actually been the subject of a lot of scientific thought. (And in fact, it turns out to be remarkably consistent with what we do understand about the cosmos.)

This is another answer to the anthropomorphic argument. If lots of varying universes occur, then even if the odds against one particular variant are great, it should exist. Out of a million lottery tickets, it’s no surprise that one has the one-in-a-million number. And it’s likewise unsurprising that we could have drawn that lucky number — the one-in-a-million universe — because only in that universe could there be people thinking about this.

While the Universe’s big bang origin is well-founded, science cannot really explain the big bang’s origin — yet. But we’re on our way. Today’s understanding is vastly greater than a century ago. Certainly there is a naturalistic explanation capable of being understood. We used to explain a lot of things in mystical, supernatural terms, but in every case where the truth emerged, the supernatural idea proved wrong. No different outcome should be expected for any remaining questions.

The cosmos can do everything it does by the operation of natural laws, with no “higher power” needed. The reality that I experience is, indeed, completely consistent with the absence of any “higher power” and completely inconsistent with its presence. In the face of this, only through torturous casuistry can religion be sustained.

I admit that I can’t answer the ultimate question — why is there something and not nothing? But neither can any religion. “God did it” is an answer satisfactory only to those who can avoid asking where God came from. Are arguments like this — and the anthropomorphic argument — the best that “higher power” advocates can do?

David Owen’s new book is titled Green Metropolis. It argues that people living in densely populated cities, in many different ways, cause less stress on the environment than people living in spread-out suburbs, and he argues for all sorts of policy initiatives to push people into abandoning the suburbs and moving back downtown.

The book is reviewed in the September 13 N.Y. Times Book Review (click here for the review). The reviewer seems to think this is all very daring and new and thought-provoking, etc. But excuse me: new? Really? Haven’t we been hearing this kind of stuff, like, relentlessly over the last couple of decades? Anyone heard of James Howard Kunstler, among many others, writing to similar effect?

The problem with writers like Owen and Kunstler is that they seem to overlook one very salient point: people move to the suburbs because they like it. In fact, in an earlier era, this exact species of social critic was arguing against urban living with all its societal ills and in favor of all the benefits of suburbia. People like to have spacious homes instead of cramped apartments. They want some grass and gardens and not just asphalt. And so forth. Sure, there are some benefits of urban living they must give up; everything in life involves trade-offs. But people who live in the suburbs do so because they have evaluated those trade-offs and made rational choices.

Now here is the delicious kicker: where do you suppose David Owen himself lives? Yup – according to the review, “Owen and his wife . . . left Manhattan for a leafy Connecticut town more than 20 years ago.” In the concluding paragraph, the reviewer notes, “We all yearn for our own personal space, a little fresh air an elbow room. Owen doesn’t want to give up his charming but energy-inefficient house in rural Connecticut any more than I would (if I had one).”

Owen doesn’t want to give up his – but his book says everyone else should give up theirs.

You might think it’s only in Iran that supporting or opposing a politician can be a criminal offense.

“Hillary: The Movie” is a documentary film produced by an advocacy group called Citizens United. It lambastes Hillary Clinton. Its distribution has been barred by the Federal Elections Commission (pursuant to Congressional enactment).

Apparently some fine print in the U.S. Constitution has been overlooked: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech.” Or maybe that language is just too ambiguous.

At any rate, the case is now before the Supreme Court. The issue is fundamental: to what extent can the government regulate political advocacy, or even outlaw it? Some argue that such power is necessary or else politics can be corrupted by money spent by, say, corporations.

I share their concern about money distorting politics (and even lament this problem in my recent book). But spending money on, for example, political ads, or documentary films, that support or oppose politicians is certainly a form of freedom of speech — indeed, it is the most important aspect of freedom of speech. The freedom to say you hate Broccoli is not that critical. But the freedom to say you hate Hillary — and to express that opinion in the public square — is absolutely critical to our democratic system. That’s why the Constitution does not say “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, except when it deems such abridgement desirable.” The framers knew exactly what they were doing in writing the First Amendment in such unequivocal language.

This Congress has essentially disregarded in passing laws that subject political advocacy to federal regulations and limitations. Thus, the politicians who run the government, in effect, claim the power to restrict what their political opponents can say about them. For instance, they have placed restrictions on ads that support or criticize political candidates in the weeks before an election. If you form an organization, “Citizens for Free Trade,” and raise money, and want to run an ad before an election saying, “Congressman Charlie Rumpkisser opposes free trade; vote against him” — that can be against the law. In America!!!

And, so far, the Supreme Court has upheld this.

Civil Liberties attorney Floyd Abrams, representing the film-makers, says “Criminalizing a movie about Hillary Clinton is a constitutional desecration.”

Abdel Baset el-Megrahi was paroled from prison by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill. Megrahi had been convicted in the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bomber, killing 270, and served 8 years out of his 27 year sentence. Megrahi is dying of cancer; hence MacAskill based his decision on “compassion,” to allow Megrahi to die in his home with his family.

I believe it is proper to allow a man to die at home with his family – if he is not guilty of 270 murders. That ought to be a consideration.

MacAskill could not have given much compassionate consideration to the feelings of the families of the victims – who are, understandably, infuriated by Megrahi’s release.

We seem to have developed the idea that punishment for crime ought not to involve any unpleasantness. Thus MacAskill’s “compassion” toward a man who was probably the worst murderer in his country’s history.

That Megrahi received a 27-year sentence – one year for every ten murders – already bespoke a certain nonseriousness about criminal punishment. I wonder what it would take, in Scotland, to get a life sentence? I won’t even dare breathe the words “death sentence.”

MacAskill’s title is “justice secretary.” Society does not punish criminals for the sake of revenge. It does so mainly because of our deeply-seated human hunger to see justice done. We don’t really believe in divine justice; we believe that if any justice is to be achieved, we human beings must get it done ourselves. That should be the remit of any government functionary with the title “justice secretary.”

Megrahi’s victims numbered not just the 270 killed, but the hundreds, or thousands more, whose lives have been poisoned by the horrific loss of kin and friends. Imprisoning Megrahi till his last breath would have been inadequate to achieve justice for all those victims. But it would have been the very least we could do (if we didn’t have the mortal courage to execute him).

“Greed is good,” said villain Gordon Gekko in movie satire. We’ve heard the word a lot lately. Greed is blamed for the recent financial crisis; it’s also invoked constantly in the health care debate.

What, exactly, is “greed”? Some even seem to think anyone with income or wealth above the average (national? global?) is greedy.

In its essence, greed means wanting more. More tomorrow than you had yesterday. More income, more wealth, and hence more of the good things in life that they can buy; as much as you can get. Every normal human being wants more; as much as possible; the best possible life. And that’s not wrong. In fact, it’s a very good thing. We might romanticize an idea of spiritual asceticism that eschews all desire, but really, a human who desires nothing is psychically dead. And the desire for more is what motivates all human enterprise, effort, and creativity. Without that, we’d still be living in caves.

How do you get more? Well, you can steal it. But that is wrong, and most people get more in a totally contrary way: not by impoverishing others, but by enriching others – by devoting one’s efforts to creating and producing things for which others cheerfully pay. Most of economic activity is not a zero-sum game where one’s gain is another’s loss. I recently paid a surprising sum for an art work. Was the artist “greedy” to demand such a price? I would not have paid it if I hadn’t valued her art work higher than the money I paid. The transaction enriched the artist – but enriched my life too.

Similarly, you can get more by working hard at your job, producing goods or providing services that enhance the lives of others.

Only if it’s fed at others’ expense is greed bad. But doing anything at others’ expense is bad per se. It’s not “greed” that’s the problem; it’s willingness to harm others. Of course, we do see that all the time. People behave that way because, sometimes, they can. The Wall Street guys who made off with huge sums did it because they could. It’s just silly to imagine some greed-free world in which people will forego money that’s theirs for the taking. However: human society is organized in such a way that that’s the exception rather than the rule. Most people, most of the time, get more for themselves by giving more to others. And that again is the fundamental driver of progress and improving conditions of life for everyone. In that way, greed is indeed more a force for good than for evil.

Maybe Gordon Gekko had it right after all.

The physicist Ernst Schrodinger proposed this hypothetical: a closed box contains a cat; a random mechanism inside the box can kill the cat, or not; it’s fifty-fifty either way. Schrodinger said that until you open the box and look, both possibilities exist, in parallel universes, equally real, but when you open the box, a “quantum wave of probability collapses.”

However: those probabilities seemed to exist only because the human observer didn’t know the answer. All our knowledge of reality is like that. Just as the cat is actually alive, or actually dead, all of reality actually has certain characteristics. We humans may not know those characteristics until we find out — by opening the box, as it were — or scientific experimentation. What then “collapses” (as Ian McEwan puts it in his novel Saturday) is our ignorance.

Footnote: as for the notion of “parellel universes,” if there is an infinitude of them, then if the cat is dead in our universe, there might be another universe identical to our own in every particular except that the cat is alive. There might also be another universe — indeed, there must be one — identical to ours in every particular respect except that FDR’s middle name was Donald. (If you don’t accept that, then you don’t know what “infinity” means.) But we cannot know anything about those other universes, and nothing concerning them has any bearing on the reality in our own universe.

I am pleased to announce release of my new book, The Case for Rational Optimism, by Transaction Books at Rutgers University — “Publishers of Record in International Social Science.”

It shows not only how life and the world are improving, but analyzes the underlying causes, bringing in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, sociology, economics, and history. A fun read that challenges many commonly held ideas, it will lift your heart and change your thinking.

For more information, click on this link.