Can't An Atheist Woman Have Morals? Or at Least Make Choices?

Selfish Genes vs “Skepchick’s” Jeans

by Chris Parker

It turns out that sometimes Atheists like to gather together in halls and hotels for conferences where they seek to encourage one another in the faith and discuss ways to proselytize. They discuss the sacred writings of their high profs; book, chapter and verse. They listen to speeches (sermons?) from those skilled in dealing with their specific articles of faith and of course they socialize and talk about MythBusters.

Rebecca Watson is a young Atheist who leads a team of “female activists” at Skepchick.org and who gets to travel all over the world delivering talks on science, Atheism, feminism etc. She appears on a number of Atheistic/Skeptical programs and has an internet presence. Considering that she is one of the few female stars in the Atheistic realm she is well known and is apparently sought after as a speaker.

Not long ago she mentioned on a podcast following a conference where she was a panelist with Richard Dawkins a story about being “hit on” in an elevator by a conference attendee. Her comment/request has engendered a fairly nasty response from the Atheist/Skeptic community.

“So I walk to the elevator, and a man got on the elevator with me and said, ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but I find you very interesting, and I would like to talk more. Would you like to come to my hotel room for coffee?’

Um, just a word to wise here, guys, uh, don’t do that. You know, I don’t really know how else to explain how this makes me incredibly uncomfortable, but I’ll just sort of lay it out that I was a single woman, you know, in a foreign country, at 4:00 am, in a hotel elevator, with you, just you, and–don’t invite me back to your hotel room right after I finish talking about how it creeps me out and makes me uncomfortable when men sexualize me in that manner…”
Ms. Watson went on to mention that a number of women she knew did not like to attend these types of conferences because they were “hit on” so frequently and she avowed that this served to limit the number of women in the movement. She went on in a blog about the incident above;

“So here we are today. I am a feminist, because skeptics and atheists made me one. Every time I mention, however delicately, a possible issue of misogyny or objectification in our community, the response I get shows me that the problem is much worse than I thought, and so I grow angrier. I knew that eventually I would reach a sort of feminist singularity where I would explode and in my place would rise some kind of Captain Planet-type superhero but for feminists. I believe that day has nearly arrived.”

Richard Dawkins, the world’s most famous non-believer responded to her advice and concern regarding the elevator incident in a sarcastic message that began;

“Stop whining, will you”? From there it went down hill.

Now, much of the Atheist community is at war (of words). Ms. Watson has received more than 1,300 comments on her site alone and many other acrimonious conversations are taking place elsewhere on the web.

Here’s the thing; why is Ms. Watson surprised by any of this?

As a leader in the Atheistic religion hadn’t she studied its history? Didn’t she know that a powerful force behind the rejection of Christianity and religion in general was “sexual freedom”? It was the burden of morality and the requirement to adhere to societal standards (which drew their inspiration from the Bible and Christianity) that provided a primary motivation for unbelief.

This is something that Christians have been pointing out for decades and that Atheists have tried to argue against; that a powerful motivation for Atheistic beliefs both in the formation of modern Atheism and in many Atheists today is freedom from exogenous moral values.

Aldous Huxley, a famous and influential Atheist of the 1960’s and grandson of ground floor Atheist/philosopher Thomas Huxley explains:

“I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do . .

For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”—*Aldous Huxley, “Confessions of a Professed Atheist,” Report: Perspective on the News, Vol. 3, June, 1966, p. 19

We could give additional examples but Ms. Watson probably now has hundreds if not thousands of additional, personal examples to draw from. How dare someone, and particularly a woman and particularly one from their own community suggest that there be any restriction on their sexual freedoms? Is she trying to describe a morality that Atheists and particularly male Atheists should have to adhere to, they wonder?

What’s the point in rejecting God if at the end one has to lead a moral life anyway? What’s the point in imagining an entire scheme that makes you an accidental life form in an accidental universe with no one as your boss only to have someone acting as your boss?

No wonder that Dawkins, the titular head of the Darwin party had to step in to try to set things right. As an Atheist, he probably has a hard time even figuring out why she would selfishly say no, anyway. What’s the big whoop he must wonder? Just selfish genes trying to replicate, after all. Dawkins made the notion of selfish genes famous in his 1976 book wherein every action and reaction of man can be seen as selfish genes seeking to propagate themselves. (No doubt many would object to this definition)

The signers of the Declaration of Independence had it right (borrowing from the French) when they said that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, a proposition that would hold true with respect to government for both Christians and Atheists. However, the cornerstone statement in the Declaration is “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” supersedes even the consent of the government and places those rights and moral responsibilities in the hands of a greater power, God. Moral systems must be obtained from a higher power than man himself since if all men are equal then they are each equally capable of deciding on their own what is wrong and what is right in their own eyes.

Atheists may accept the idea of government and laws based on the consent of the governed but certainly reject the notion that we are endowed with anything from a Creator. We’re surprised that Ms. Watson, as a high priestess of the faith didn’t know that.

As far as Atheists are concerned, heaven is here on earth and that means they don’t need women (or God) getting in the way of their liberation from restrictions, particularly sexual ones.

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