On the morning of December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed his mother Nancy at their home in Newtown, Connecticut . He then drove to nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School and used his mother’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle to kill 26 people, including 20 children between six and seven years old, before killing himself.
The incident, the worst school shooting in U.S. history, prompted the reactions one would expect― calls for tighter gun-control measures (by liberals mostly); a proposal (by guess which organization) to place an armed Deputy Fife in every school in the country (the National School Shield program); the claim that Adam’s murderous behavior was a result of the decline of religion in America.
A core tenet of believers ― evangelical Christianists in particular ― is that one cannot be good without God. Well, for the record, both Adam and Nancy attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church in Newtown, where several of his victims’ funerals were conducted. And Adam, in fact, attended school at the church for a time.
***
Contrary to what the Bible thumpers claim, while the rate of religiosity in America has continued to decline, so has the rate of violent crime. In 2007, the FBI reported that the rate of violent crime per 100,000 people was 479.3; in 2014 that crime rate was 351.0 per 100,000 — a 26.7-percent decrease. Meanwhile, according to the Pew Research Center on Religion & Public Life, over that same period the proportion of professed atheists and agnostics in the United States rose from 4.0 percent of the population to 7.1 percent of the population (a 77.5-percent increase). And the proportion of Christians in the population sank from 68.2 percent to 60.9 percent (a 10.7-percent decrease).
It would be a crime against reason to jump to the conclusion that there is a causal connection, rather than just a correlation, between the drop in violent crime in the United States and the accompanying drop in religiosity. However, these data firmly rebut the Christianist thesis that morality is the product of religious indoctrination, and that forcing that old-time religion on the general population will decrease the rate of violent crime. The simple fact is that the fewer the followers of the Prince of Peace, the more this country has been blessed with a lower crime rate.
In 2013, Gallup polled Americans regarding their level of religiosity, then ranked them state by state. The national average of those who Gallup classified as “very religious” — i.e., people who said that religion was an “important part” of their daily lives, and who said that they attended religious services regularly — was 41 percent.
With the exception of Utah, the ten most-religious states were in the South. All ten states are historically red (Republican-leaning). In six of them, all God-fearing Southern states, the rate of violent crime was higher than the national average of 367.9 per 100,000 people. The South, with an overall rate of violent crime of 403.5 per 100,000, stood at 9.7 percent above the national average.
All ten of the states with the lowest level of religiosity are blue (Democratic-leaning), with seven of the ten having rates of violent crime below the national average. Five of the ten least-religious states are in New England, where the overall rate of violent crime was 299.2 per 100,000, 18.7 percent below the national average. Vermont has the lowest rate of religiosity (22 percent) and the lowest rate of violent crime (114.9 per 100,000) in the country.
Once again, given these state-by-state data about the relationship between religion and violence, it is difficult for Christianists to justify expanding the influence of religion further into public institutions and functions — whether it be school prayer, teaching creationism in public schools, religious invocations before public meetings, or electing those political candidates who claim to be guided by God.
***
One does not need religion (belief in an imaginary friend) to behave morally. Ethical treatment of each other (the Golden Rule) in fact preceded any religious belief. And moral behavior by both the religious and the non-religious, therefore, is not contingent on any religious dogma, but rather on parental guidance, common sense and enlightened self-interest.
Many believers claim that the Ten Commandments are the basis of all morality, or that the Judeo-Christian ethic is the “foundation of our freedoms.” This simple-minded malarkey is not only contradicted by the facts (as I have shown above), it is a blatant insult to all non-Judeo-Christians ― Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, pagans, atheists, agnostics and secular humanists alike.
Further, according to the theology itself, devout Christians — by virtue of Jesus’ “dying for our sins” — have no ethical imperative whatsoever. They can do as they please to their fellow human beings without fear of divine retribution (although in some cases certain ritualistic niceties, such as confession and “penance,” are required to avoid the “fires of hell”). On the other hand, atheists and secular humanists do not have that luxury ― and find themselves making thoughtful ethical decisions all the time.
In fact, Christianist “morality” isn’t as much about “doing unto others as you would have them do unto you,” as it is about public expressions of faith. Someone having the Ten Commandments displayed in his shop window or on the tailgate of his pickup truck tells me nothing about whether or not he would cheat me in a business transaction, run me off the road, poison my dog — or bomb an abortion clinic, beat a homosexual to death, sexually molest an altar boy, or massacre innocent school children.
So, can one be good without God? I’d say one is likely to be better without God.
Richard E. Wackrow is author of the book Beginner’s Guide to Blasphemy.