I just stumbled across this, but I think it’s an excellent addition to “you’re doing the same thing you criticize”, which I think we realize happens all the time. This comes from an old Atheist Experience video, and it’s contained only at the beginning, although it’s probably a decent enough video to watch all the way through. So first, you’ll get the video itself, watch the first bit where Matt is talking about morality, and I think you’ll see where the problem is. Otherwise, I’ll explain below the fold. Ready? Let’s get to it!
Matt, like a lot of people, seem convinced that the take on morality pushed by their current society is somehow perfect. It is actually true and anyone who does any different, they are wrong. That, of course, is false because all morality is now and always has been entirely subjective. This is a failure on Matt’s part and I’ve pointed it out before.
Just because most modern people agree that marrying a 9 year old girl off to an adult man is wrong, that hasn’t always been the case. In fact, it isn’t the case today. Child marriage is still a thing in a lot of places. Matt’s opinion on the subject is entirely irrelevant. In sub-Saharan Africa, up to 30% of all marriages are child marriages. In central and west Asia, it’s about 25%. In Latin America and the Carribean, it’s about 21.2%. These are not small numbers. I’m not saying it’s a good thing or a bad thing, only that the people engaged in the practice for cultural reasons don’t really care about your opinion. Your desire to end child marriage isn’t going to change the people who want to do it. This is just forcing your views on others and that’s sadly very common among some political extremes.
This doesn’t just apply to child marriage. The Incas and similar group in Central and South America used to engage in human sacrifice. Was it wrong? Not according to them. If they still wanted to engage in it today, there are a lot of groups that would try to force them to stop because it makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Discomfort doesn’t mean wrong. It also doesn’t mean right if you want to do it because right and wrong are entirely subjective states. Morals are now and have always been subjective. It’s what different groups of people have wanted to do over the years. A thousand years ago, there were different subjective moral standards than there are today. That doesn’t make any of them inherently right or wrong. People need to rent a clue.
Later in the call, Matt said this: “The truth of a religion is not impacted in any way by the number of people that believe it, how quickly it spreads, how confident they are that it’s true. None of those things are relevant.” Guess what, Matt? The same thing applies to your moral beliefs. It’s not right because you like it and it’s not wrong because you don’t, but that’s something that Matt can’t understand and he’s hardly alone. He is doing the exact same thing that the Muslim caller was doing and when he didn’t get his way, he childishly called the caller immoral because that’s what he always does. This is the exact same thing that the religious try when they insult non-believers. It’s no better when Matt does it than when theists do. It’s all childish.
It doesn’t mean anything to assert that what we think today is inherently “better” than what they thought in the past. In another couple of decades, people will probably think that modern thought was inherently evil and should never have been believed. That’s how history shows reality works. Every generation thinks they’ve got it all figured out and the next generation disagrees. You’d think we’d have figured out how absurd it all is by now, but the examples of the very same absurdity are all around us. It’s why I keep saying people need to be able to step back and it’s not just with religion. It’s with everything. Every position you hold is not about you, it’s about reality and sadly, most people can’t get that through their heads.
It’s no wonder we’re so messed up, especially the extremes. You people really need to rent a clue.