The Good, the Bad and the Downright Offensive

Church Leaders in Sydney (Pell, Fisher and Jensen) have used the occasion of Easter to put the boot into we atheists for not being, as they see it, active enough in the area of community service.

This is obviously a ridiculous argument as the large numbers of non-Christian members of service clubs attest. In any event who declared that you need to be a member of a ‘club’ to do a good deed for others. Many of us regularly ‘do unto others’ on an informal basis. Does this not count?

Count towards what, I hear you say. Good question. So lets take a look at the questions of motivation and reward for effort.

A long suffering battered wife has finally had enough and in the face of yet another beating picks up an axe and takes what she sees at the time as her only opportunity to get out of her predicament. No doubt she will be charged with murder and probably convicted, although many of us, if on the jury, might be tempted to recommend a medal instead.

What will be her sentence? No doubt the judge will, quite rightly, take into account the dire situation she found herself in and her consequent mental state at the time. If she receives a custodial sentence, it will almost certainly be much lighter than that dispensed to the axe murderer who kills for the vicarious pleasure of it or because “the Devil made me do it”. In other words motivation is a key factor in determining the essential ‘quality’ of the act and the result, or reward, will be much different.

So, why should not the same logic apply to the corollary of acts of evil? ie good deeds. Take for instance someone who performs acts of kindness for the sake of it or because his/her own sense of right and wrong compels them. Should this not be seen as intrinsically more worthy than someone who helps others because he/she fears the wrath of God in an afterlife? “God made me do it” should result in a discount in the perception of the ‘quality’ of the act, just as the axe murderer’s crime is seen as more heinous than that of the battered wife, although the result is exactly the same; one person dead.

So how should good deeds be rewarded? Here on Earth, in this life, we have a range of ways of doing so from Orders of Australia through various lesser honours all the way down (sic) to bunches of flowers and pats on the back. Using the argument outlined above these honours should be heavily skewed in favour of atheists but I suspect they are not. The Christian lobby has long claimed the moral high ground for itself as evidenced by the statements by Pell, Fisher and Jensen yesterday.

In an afterlife, should it exist, I’m sure the system will be much fairer. No doubt the ‘discount’ argument will be applied rigorously at the Pearly Gates and as a consequence Heaven is likely to be heavily populated with altruistic atheists and, God willing, Pell, Fisher and Jensen et al are unlikely to be able to annoy us for eternity. Hallelujah!