observant Americans are more generous with time and treasure than demographically similar secular Americans.”2
We’ve actually known this for quite a while; numerous studies over the years have attested to religious Americans’ higher than average charitable tendencies.3 So doesn’t this then mean that God-believers (theists) are more moral than those who lack such a belief (atheists)?
Before such a conclusion can be made, we need to look a bit more closely at what is going on here. A most valuable element of Putnam and Campbell’s research was that they were able to discover just why it is that religious people donate more in terms of charity and volunteering than secular people—and it actually has nothing to do with God. Rather, it has everything to do with people.
Simply put: charitable giving increases when people actively gather with others in communal, congregational environments. And when people don’t gather with others in such ways, their generosity dwindles, in terms of both time and money. Belief in God simply doesn’t matter. How do we know? Because Putnam and Campbell found that people who believe in God but are not members of a religious congregation do not donate time and money in higher than average amounts, and conversely, people who don’t believe in God but are members of a religious congregation—for whatever reason—do. Put another way: when people are more isolated from others, with fewer friends and fewer moments of social interaction, their proclivity to engage in charitable and voluntary activities decreases. But when they hang out with others on a regular basis at church or synagogue or mosque or temple, their pro-sociality increases, along with their interest and willingness to be more altruistic.
As Putnam and Campbell explain, while “it is tempting to think that religious people are better neighbors because of their fear of God or their hope of salvation . . . we find no evidence for those conjectures.”4 The “secret ingredient” of religious charity, their data reveal, is not faith in God but rather church attendance. It is the getting together with people on a regular basis, the routinized rituals, the singing and announcements, the sharing of cake and coffee after the service, the conversing and schmoozing, the taking field trips and joining groups—and other such social-bonding activities—that actually increase the likelihood of charitable donating and volunteering. Not a fervent faith in God. “When it comes to the religious edge in good neighborliness,” Putnam and Campbell conclude, “it is belonging that matters, not believing,”5 and “although many devoutly religious people might explain their own civic virtues as manifestations of God’s will . . . theology is not the core explanation . . . rather, communities of faith seem more important than faith itself.”6
It bears repeating: community is more important than faith. Belonging is more important than belief. Gathering is more important than God. As the similar findings of American social psychologists Jesse Graham and Jonathan Haidt have confirmed, bonding with other humans is the driving engine of increased charity and generosity, not believing in a deity.7
But what all of the above illustrates is an extremely important distinction that we must set forth and fully understand: the difference between religion and theism.
Theism
“Religion” is a notoriously multifaceted concept encompassing a plethora of ideologies, identities, associations, and activities. “Theism,” however, is an extremely narrow term that refers to just one specific thing: belief in God. That’s it. A theist is simply someone who believes in God.
What’s the difference? Doesn’t being religious mean that you believe in God? And doesn’t believing in God make you religious? Yes to the latter, but no to the former.
If you believe in God, then you are certainly religious. But many people are religious without believing in God. For example, there are millions of people who attend religious services, engage in religious rituals, and even identify with a religion—but don’t believe in God. Then why are they religiously involved? For a host of nontheistic reasons: they like the music at church, or they want to keep a spouse happy, or they think it is good for their kids, or they enjoy the rituals and celebrations, or they like taking time for quiet contemplation, or they want to maintain a tradition, or it links them to their heritage, or it increases ties to their ethnic community, and so on. As my father used to like to joke: “Yaacov goes to synagogue to talk to God. I go to synagogue to talk to Yaacov.” The bottom line is that there are many, many reasons that people can be religiously active, and it can have nothing to do with belief in God.
Remember that there are a lot of religions out there that don’t even contain a god in their cosmology. Many animistic indigenous religions all over the world lack any concept of a god, but instead are focused on nature spirits, dead ancestors, and/or other supernatural forces.8 Additionally, some Eastern religions, such as Jainism and Zen Buddhism, do not contain any beliefs in a god at all. But they are still religions. As philosopher André Comte-Sponville notes, “all theisms are religious, but not all religions are theistic.”9
Again, religion and theism are not one and the same. And it is theism—rather than religion, in all its varied manifestations—that comprises the true target of this book. For it is theism’s relationship to morality that will be deconstructed in the chapters ahead. And at the heart of that deconstruction is theism’s obverse: atheism.
Atheism
Atheism refers to the lack or absence of a belief in God. That’s it. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a god; according to the latest tallies, there are over one hundred million atheists in the world today.10
Of course, various individuals have defined atheism more grandly and effusively. For example, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the founder of American Atheists, defined atheism as “the mental attitude which unreservedly accepts the supremacy of reason and aims at establishing a lifestyle and ethical outlook verifiable by experience and the scientific method, independent of all arbitrary assumptions of authority and creeds.”11 While these are strong and impassioned sentiments, they go well beyond the limited confines of the term “atheism.” After all, a- is a prefix meaning “without” or “lacking,” and theos is the Greek term for “god”; so again, atheism refers to nothing more than lacking belief in a god.12 Perhaps this is a god you have heard of or know a lot about, such as the God of Christianity or Allah of Islam, and you have chosen not to believe in this god—an atheism predicated upon dismissal or rejection. Or perhaps it is a god you have never even heard of, such as Perkunas (the Baltic god of thunder) or Mawu (goddess of the Fon people of West Africa) and, given your utter lack of knowledge or even awareness of these gods, you don’t believe in them—an atheism predicated on ignorance. But either way, an atheist is someone who doesn’t believe in any gods.
Even though the meaning of atheism is quite simple, things get more complex in the real world; while atheism describes an orientation involving belief (or lack thereof), the term “atheist” is quite a bit more loaded at home, at school, at work, and at the grocery store or softball field. That is, in contemporary society, the designation “atheist” can be, for many people, about identity—and a negative, stigmatized identity at that. For example, according to a 2014 Pew study, when Americans were asked about their feelings about people from various religions on a one-hundred-point “feeling thermometer”—with one hundred being the most warm/positive and zero being the most cold/negative—Jews, Catholics, and Evangelical Christians all rated an average of above sixty, Buddhists came in at fifty-three, Mormons at forty-eight, but atheists were down at forty-one, with only Muslims scoring slightly lower at forty.13
