Counterpoint: Murder as an Effect

¶ … Counterpoint: Murder as an Effect of Atheism

Murder is an Effect of Atheism:

Theistic religion is the basis of modern concepts of law and human morality. The prohibition against murder is one of the Ten Commandments, and is a universal moral concept even among the many different religious belief systems throughout the world (Ginsberg, 1965). It is logical to assume that if a belief in God is central to the notion of morality, an atheist would be less likely to resist the temptations of immoral and illegal conduct, or to control one's anger in situations that could lead to physical confrontations including those that escalate into murder.

Since atheists believe that there are no consequences to immoral behavior, they have no reason to refrain from any of the conduct that religious beliefs define as immoral, and therefore, they have no reason to do anything other than what they want to do, and they have no reason to feel guilty or remorseful for stealing property, lying, cheating, or even killing, under circumstances that may give rise to those types of immoral conduct.

Without a religious philosophy, it is impossible for human beings to have a moral conscience, because religion provides a baseline for understanding the difference between right and wrong. People who believe in God sometimes experience intense anger, even rage, to the degree that they might have the internal momentary desire, or the impulse to commit murder, but their belief in a higher power gives them the moral strength to resist the most primitive human urges, including those which could lead to murder if they were not controlled by a belief in something bigger and more important than human intellect. Belief in God is a fundamental prerequisite for moral conduct in society, and is an essential deterrent to the crime of murder, in particular.

Murder is not an Effect of Atheism:

Theistic religion is the original basis of the moral system underlying the legal systems of many societies, but that does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to have morals without a belief in God. If it were the case that illegal conduct in general and murder in particular were effects of atheism, there would be many more atheist criminals and murders in society and comparatively fewer criminals and murderers who are not atheists. The fact of the matter is that, according to authorities like the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics as well as studies of prison inmates in the United Kingdom, atheists represent only a very small minority of incarcerated prisoners, and the vast majority of imprisoned criminals and murderers are not atheists, but Christians (Guessous, 2001).

Atheists believe that there are no consequences of their actions in the divine sense, but they fear the legal consequences of their conduct just as much as theists. Even someone who does not believe in God is deterred from committing murder by the prospect of life imprisonment or the death penalty. Belief in God is no guarantee of moral conduct, particularly where someone believes all his sins are automatically forgiven by a God who forgives, in advance, the sins of anyone who believes in Him.