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Selfishness and Generosity
The Ethics of Giving and Taking
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What do concepts like Greed, Selfishness, Generosity and Selflessness have to do with reality? Not a lot. Reality exists and what is real doesn't depend on our behavior. The Earth will continue to orbit the Sun no matter what we do. But the Church of Reality is about more than just believing in what is real. It is about exploring reality and increasing our understanding of reality. It is about the relationship of the human race to reality and reality as experienced by humanity. That is what makes the religion of reality different from science. And because we as Realists have chosen to expand our understanding of reality, the way we organize as a society to do that together is important to the success of our mission.
As a religion we have accepted the exploration of reality as one of our missions. We know that in order to accomplish this we need to grow the Tree of Knowledge and increase the sum total of our collective human understanding. This is the way for us to evolve in the Sacred Direction. Since it is necessary for us to act as a community to accomplish our goal, it would seem that freely sharing information, generosity, and selflessness are the most logical strategy to achieve this goal. It is in our self-interest to be selfless. To that end, we adopt the Philosophy of the Open Hand as our way of living in a reality based community.
The Philosophy of the Open Hand is both for giving and for taking. It recognizes both our collective nature living in harmony with our individual nature. The individual gives of himself for the benifit of all and the individual takes the resources they need to survive. |
When we think of evolution we think of "survival of the fittest". We think of male lions fighting to the death to take control of a pride of females, killing the male cubs, and breeding until a stronger male comes along and takes over. Indeed, this is one common mode of evolutionary advancement, but another survival strategy is cooperation. Individuals ban together for the common good pooling their resources for the gathering of food or the common defense. Penguins huddle in great masses to preserve body heat to survive the antarctic winters. Packs of wolves hunt and bring down prey together. Bees live as a super organism in the form of a hive. There are even interspecies alliances that are necessary for survival. If not for the bacteria growing in our stomachs we would all starve to death without the ability to digest our food. The predator relies on the success of the prey for, without prey, there would be nothing for the predator to eat.
The reality of human nature is that we are social animals that evolved to be extremely interdependent in order to survive. We are in fact so interdependent that very few of us could survive out in the wild on our own. We have evolved language to communicate with one another, allowing us to share complex information and form great societies of individuals with highly specialized skills. When you look around at the stuff that you own, how much of it was made by you from raw materials that you found out in the wild in nature, that you fashioned into something without the use of any tools other than tools you made yourself? Probably not one single thing. The words that you speak and that you hear in your mind are words that were invented by other people. Almost all of your personal reality was created by the human community that you live in. Humanity is by nature a social organism.
Our evolution is through our cooperation. We are evolving through the evolution of society. We are progressing by growing the Tree of Knowledge. We receive knowledge from our ancestors and pass it down to our children. Each generation adds (or something takes away from if we ignore reality) something to the Tree of Knowledge so that new generations start with more tools than the previous generation. The rate of our evolution is based on the rate that we give back to the Tree and increase the knowledge of the human race. In the Church of Reality we call this Intellectual Tithing.
If we only take from the Tree of Knowledge and give nothing back, then we fail to evolve. If we damage the Tree with false information, then humanity takes a step backwards towards extinction. But if we give freely of ourselves and share our knowledge, then we as a human race all evolve forward in the Sacred direction towards a better future. Thus giving is necessary to achieve the goals of our individual and collective self interest.
Besides our collective knowledge, being generous and taking care of one another helps us to survive. Everyone has times in their lives where they are sick or injured and need to rely upon others to take care of them until they recover. We do that because it is in our own self-interest to be selfless and generous to others so when we need something, there are people who take care of us. The open hand is for both the giving and the receiving. It isn't about what is fair, it is about what works best.
To that end the Church of Reality realizes the collective nature of humanity and therefore incorporates this fact into our reason for adopting the open hand. Our self interest depends upon our selfless generosity. It is what propels humanity forward. |
People think of Atheists as selfish people. This is in part because a philosophy called Objectivism, which is atheistic, extols greed as a virtue and selflessness as evil. Communism didn't do Atheists any good either. But the other part of why Atheists are considered selfish is the belief that if you have God, that God will make you generous. God makes you generous because when his holy spirit merges into you you become divinely inspired to be a good person. Alternatively, for those who don't hear the "Word of God" clearly in their heart you have the reward of eternal life in paradise vs. eternal punishment in Hell. Quite the carrot and stick to get people to fork over some bucks to the poor. So - it's easy to see why Theists would want to be generous and selfless. And many believers believe that without a God that there is no reason to be good and therefore there's nothing stopping Atheists from being evil. Or is there?
For those of you who know an Atheist personally, you'll probably notice that these people are not really any different that Theists in the way they live. They don't eat their children. They tend to obey the laws and are good upstanding members of society. They donate money to feed the starving children, they attend PTA meetings and they are honest hard-working productive members of society. But how can that be without the promise of eternal life or the threat of punishment? Why can these people be good without God?
Atheism and Altruism are a good fit because selflessness achieves our selfish goal of survival and help us thrive as a community.
Interestingly enough, the same can be asked of Christians. When you take "forgiveness of sins" and that you are saved by faith and not by works, we Atheists see that as a giant loophole in the rule book. The simple view is that a Christian can get away with anything because Jesus died and bought them a ticket to eternal life so they can now get away with anything as long as they have faith and keep getting forgiven. One could even argue that if you don't sin, then Jesus died for nothing and that sin honors his sacrifice. But in spite of forgiveness and grace, for some odd reason, Christians tend to behave themselves. Even the ones from "those denominations" that you know are probably going to Hell anyhow. (Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholics, etc.) So why is it that believers behave themselves?
As I stated in the last chapter, it is human nature to give. It is human nature to need to be an upstanding member of society. We are biologically programmed to form groups and work together. It is the way we are. Altruism is something that evolved that has become key to our very survival. It is as natural as eating, breathing, fear, sex, and everything else we do to survive. So in spite of what the Objectivists say, Atheists are as normal and as generous and live a life that is not that different than believers. Other than perhaps having more tattoos and more free sex, we are just like everyone else. We are normal people just like you are.
If religion goes away, if tomorrow there were no believers, society would not degenerate into selfish anarchy. Morality would not go away. We wouldn't become a lawless culture. Right and wrong would still exist. Why? Because these are things that are necessary for survival. So believers need not fear that an Atheistic society is going to bring down humanity. If God doesn't exist and Realism took over the culture, all the good stuff stays. People will still live in peace and harmony, love each other, take care of each other, and be generous. In fact one could say Atheist generosity is more generous than Christian generosity because we don't have a selfish reason that compels us to be generous. We just do it out of the natural goodness of our hearts.
Believers tend to believe that "man has an evil nature" and by default we are of sin. And it is only from God that goodness originates. But that just isn't so because people who are godless are just as good (if not better) than those who believe. In reality, humanity has a predominately good nature, but not always. Some people are selfish and take more than their share. A lot of people's behavior is learned, so if we teach our children what is right, then they will tend to grow up doing the right thing. Most everyone wants to do what is right whether you are a Theist or an Atheist. We just don't always agree on what that is.
We in the Church of Reality however, state to the rest of society that we choose to be good moral upstanding citizens and that we want all the good things that believers want. And we commit to a reality-based method for determining what that is and we think that reality is something that is safe enough that a believer doesn't have to worry about moving in next door to a realist. If you read our Sacred Principles and what our religion is about, you will see that if we stick with what we say we are, that we are no threat to civilization. There is a reason for Atheists being altruistic and we in the Church of Reality embrace it. |
To survive and to thrive is often a balance of opposing forces. Humanity has a tendency to be selfish as well as selfless. We are by nature self interested and we want the best for ourselves individually. We have both individual needs and community needs. Sometimes they work together, sometimes they don't. How do we balance the needs of the individual against the needs of the community?
If we were a hive of bees, then only the community would matter. For bees work only for the common good and the individual is disposable. Worker bees work themselves to death, literally in about 6 weeks. Fortunately, we humans aren't like that. Much of our strength is collective, but much of it is also individual. And it is in our collective best interest to protect and defend our individuality.
We distinguish the term self-interest from greed and selfishness which mean about the same thing. Self-interest is the interest in the well-being of the self. Selfishness and greed involve the taking of more than one's "fair share". Three kids have 12 cookies to share. Each kid has a self-interest in getting 4 cookies. But if one kid eats 6 cookies, he's selfish.
Some people say that everything everyone does is selfish and therefore humanity is either evil by nature, as believers express it, or that humanity is naturally greedy as Objectivists like to believe. But there is a difference between looking out for your self-interest and wanting more than your fair share. And one can easily make an argument that everything has a self-interest component.
For example, I am generous because I gain from my generosity. Even if I don't gain directly, I believe it helps humanity in general, so I gain in the long run. It make me feel good. Believers can be viewed as totally self-interested. They aren't generous, they are just afraid of going to Hell. It's like an investment in a retirement program where it costs you a little in this life for a huge return in the next life. And there's no way to argue the point because any act no matter how selfless it might seem, can always be deemed to have a self-interest component, if nothing more than a desire to prove to someone that you can be totally selfless.
But it's no surprise that it's human nature to look after one's own hide and it's natural to do so. Children start out very selfish because they haven't learned anything about community. Selfishness often comes from short-term thinking. It's about what's good for me now, not what's good for me in the long-run. So since children haven't learned about community and long-term thinking, they often act more self-interested than their wiser adults.
Too much selflessness can also be a problem where the individual sacrifices themselves too much for what they see as the common good. Sometimes these people don't look at the long-term view that their own personal interests are important to keep themselves in good condition to be a strong healthy member of society. They don't realize that their goal of long term selflessness is actually impeded by their short term selflessness.
Sometimes people surrender their individualism thinking that merging into a group mind will be of community benefit, but it is often our individualism that creates the intellectual diversity that keeps the group on track. One's self-interest is sometimes in the community interest in the long run, and the community interest is often the best way to take care of yourself. Sometime a little capitalistic greed is a good motivator to get people to invent great things so that they get a personal reward. Selfishness isn't all bad and altruism isn't all good. Selfish Altruism might be the best way to describe the position of the Church of Reality as a religion. Our generosity serves our self interest.
The Church of Reality doesn't accept the false dichotomy that self interest and altruism are opposites. Our position is to apply wisdom to the situation and try to determine the best solution. The issues of fairness and what is the right way to live varies widely from situation to situation and from person to person. It is not a problem that is solved with a few simple rules. Sometimes conflicting interests can be resolved by coming up with a new solution. We in the Church of Reality have the Principle of Wisdom to express our expectation that we use our logic and reason and taking reality into account to come up with a solution that works. We are an innovative religion and if there's a solution to a problem we are going to figure it out. |
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Newsflash |
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The IRS has approved the 501(C)3 tax exempt status of the Church of Reality. |
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Altruistic Atheism