morality, society, personalityThere seems to be a belief that atheists cannot be loyal or trusted. Google “atheist loyalty” and read a few items to see how entrenched the idea is. It apparently goes at least as far back as John Locke:
“…those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon an atheist. The taking away of God, though but even in thought, dissolves all” (J. Locke, Letter Concerning Toleration, 1689)
There is a GREAT discussion of this here… especially in the comments.
Is there any basis to it? Again, thinking in generalized, statistical terms, is(are) there any characteristic trait(s) in the atheist population that would justify this belief/opinion?
A corollary: If it turns out that atheists generally score lower on loyalty scales, should atheists be MORE loyal, or is the general population TOO loyal?
Even proper scientists think establishing a scale of human loyalty is an interesting question
BOUNTY UPDATE: I am intrigued by Haidt’s 5 categories. I could see “loyalty” being ascribed to at least 3 of them: In/Group out group MEMBERSHIP loyalty. Loyalty to fairness…i.e. loyalty to principles over people. Loyalty to purity… and as I read it, that means purity of the group.
Also… it has come up a couple of times, “Loyal according to who?” A good answer will address the fact that an atheists definition of loyal will (almost certainly) vary from a believer’s definition of loyal, and WHY. Good luck, bounty hunters. Edit your existing answers for a chance to win. :-)
Haidt found that Americans who identified as liberals tended to value care and fairness higher than loyalty, respect and purity. Self-identified conservative Americans valued care and fairness less and the remaining three values more. Both groups gave care the highest over-all weighting, but conservatives valued fairness the lowest, whereas liberals valued purity the lowest. Haidt also hypothesizes that the origin of this division in the United States can be traced to geohistorical factors, with conservatism strongest in closely knit, ethnically homogenous communities, in contrast to port-cities, where the cultural mix is greater, thus requiring more liberalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality
Atheists tend to be liberal (not always, but it’s a tendency). And liberals tend to care less about keeping their word (loyalty) and defining in-group/out-group dynamics (purity) and more about doing right by people (care and fairness).
Would you lie to the Nazis about the Jews hiding in your attic? Some Christians wouldn’t. That’s a strict honour code they hold to (a form of loyalty). Most atheists (and may religious people too, in this extreme example) would be more pragmatic, caring more about their fellow humans than their honour code (care).
I don’t think I can edit my existing answer with new data in any coherent manner, so I’m just adding a new one. I am not addressing Haidt because I don’t think morality and loyalty should be conflated.
The good ol’ Merriam-Webster defines loyal as: (a) faithful in allegiance to one’s lawful sovereign or government (b) faithful to a private person to whom fidelity is due (c) faithful to a cause, ideal, custom, institution, or product
with “faithful” defined as:
(a) steadfast in affection or allegiance (b) firm in adherence to promises or in observance of duty
Translated, the definition of loyal is “someone who gives affection and/or allegiance to a person, entity, or cause, and keeps that affection and/or allegiance.”
So to be measured as “more” or “less” loyal than anyone else, the question is: when is that affection and/or allegiance withdrawn? Under what circumstances? My criterion as posted above still remains: based on truth. Based on reality. On what can be proven.
Example: if John Doe is loyal to Group A, he identifies with Group A, he approves of Group A’s actions and what Group A promotes, and he proclaims himself a member of Group A.
When would he break with Group A?
Now, if John is an atheist, he doesn’t have to be loyal to a religion. And theists, who feel they must retain their allegiance to their group to be loyal to it, see this as breaking allegiance to their group. They see the atheist has NO allegiance to ANY theist group. They see the atheist refusing to follow instructions from ANY theist leader. And they perceive that as being “disloyal.” A Christian can understand how someone can be loyal to Judaism rather than Christianity, but not how someone can reject ANY loyalty to a deity whatsoever.
This is why atheists who used to be theists get so much grief. The former theist, who has realized that “god” can’t be proven, is not just breaking allegiances with Group A, but with the entire structure of thought and purpose behind Group A. The atheist is rejecting the reason for Group A.
This is also the framework behind the “how can you be moral without God?” problem. Theists are showing their loyalty to their group (religion) by following the group’s instructions on “how to be good.” A theist may be confused, or appalled, at the idea that a person can determine for him-/herself what constitutes “good” rather than following the instructions already provided by the group, because that means one can be “good” and “not loyal” at the same time.
Without even looking at the links I’m going to guess that the reason for this is the pervading idea that atheists have no basis for morality and therefore have no morals. By extension, as loyalty is seen as a ‘moral’ thing, they therefore aren’t bound by it, or are less bound than those to whom a “moral framework is provided”. What rubbish!
I would speculate that were such a study done, atheists would score no better or worse than anyone else, there would simply be one or two less items on which their loyalty could be measured.
Unfortunately I don’t remember about hearing of such research, so I have no links. But I do have my own opinion about it.
I would think that there might be a basis to say that atheist would have less group loyalty. Or maybe a more correct way to say it would be that religious people would have much higher group loyalty (maybe some primeval instinct that we needed in times of pre-African exodus) because of them usually be following a “higher calling” in their minds.
A subset of this may be the ideological loyalty, as standing up for what you believe in. It seems to me personally that it always has been much harder to gather up large groups of atheists to stand for atheism for example, than collect a group of religious protesters. It can be because atheist will less act by this primeval instinct to follow the group. Although, I may be wrong on this one, and would be happy to get corrected.
I am very skeptical about such statements when made about personal loyalty (like between friends or significant others). I wouldn’t be surprised if on that point, atheists (perhaps the more correct grouping here would be secularists) would score higher than average or than their religious counterparts.
Update:
I found this link: http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2010/07/trust-and-atheism.html
I didn’t investigate the sources and validity yet but it has 2 tables of cheating vs trust. Atheists seem to cheat more (no holy constraint probably), but on the other hand, atheists are more trusting than others. Interesting.
Since we discount faith, we rely on evidence and earned trust. Without a religious book or deity delivering our morals we value personal integrity to a higher degree. In turn, we have more loyalty to the truth, or to a group that supports the truth, than other groups would. When integrity is a prized value, loyalty to a group with none is much more difficult.
It also seems to me that loyalty and faith are closely related in some regards. When you make rational decisions, loyalty fades away in situations where it might help one choice over the other. Faith fades in light of rational decisions as well.
[I removed phrases like ‘would be’, ‘more likely to’, and ‘tend to’ because I’m okay with leaving out qualifiers like that for clarity. I don’t think I made any generalizations that aren’t apt or applicable to a high percentage of atheists.]
My question is: who is defining loyalty? The Catholic church defines it as obeying the rules and dicta set down by the priests, and never questioning what you’re told, and never seeking to rise above or out of the place which they have ordained for you. As far as the church is concerned, if they say it, or if they can find something in their holy text which justifies it, that’s the end of the story, and you are being traitorious if you say otherwise. In other words, blind loyalty.
So by those lights, we’re not loyal at all; generally speaking, we question everything, and particularly we question the “received wisdom” of priests.
We also might be accused of disloyalty because we are willing to be proven wrong, if the evidence is contrary to what we previously believed. We aren’t loyal to ideas per se, and that may make us seem inconstant or flighty.
But the real object of our loyalty is the truth, in whatever form that takes.
Consider Jonathan Haidt's claims about the foundations of morality and how they differ between liberals and conservatives. With regards to this question in particular, I point to his claim that liberals are less concerned with loyalty as a moral foundation than conservatives (particularly he is discussing social liberals and social conservatives).
Now it is not clear that all atheists are liberals, for a discussion of this see the Point of Inquiry debate between Chris Mooney and Robert Price about the relationship between atheism and social liberalism/conservatism.
If it turns out to be the case that atheists are more likely to be liberals, and that Jon Haidt's work is right, then it would suggest, not necessarily that liberals are less loyal, but that their loyalty might be less morally motivated, or at least loyalty will be a less salient moral concern.
That said those are both open questions, but their answers would shed light on the issue raised above.
-------------EDIT------------------
In order to clarify the factual inaccuracies posted elsewhere in the responses to this question, I want to clarify briefly Haidt's levels and how they relate to this question.
Haidt argues there are 5 foundations of morality : loyalty to one's in-group (loyalty), respect for authority(authority), a desire for a pure body (purity), a desire for fairness and reciprocity (fairness), and a desire to not see others experience harm and to care for those who do (care).
In this system loyalty is considered different from purity, and is what is of concern here.
The moral foundation of purity is what is argued causes everyone to be reviled when they think of incest, and more specifically what causes revulsion in social conservatives who are against gay marriage when they think of gay sex.
The moral foundation of loyalty on the other hand is what is argued causes revulsion when some people imagine someone burning their nation's flag.
According to Haidt these are fundamentally different systems, and should not be conflated.
Additionally if you read the Moral Foundations Quiz (30 question) you discover that loyalty is generally related to the country, family, teams, and in-groups or loyalty in general. Never once did it speak of religious loyalty or anything directly about honesty, i.e. you can be loyal and dishonest as long as your dishonesty is in keeping with the success and goals of your group.
In Haidt's own words:
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one." Source
I found the Haidt stuff fascinating, but I think it is largely a red herring - what he is interested in is how morality is constructed in different people, and is using an instrumental and somewhat narrow definition of “loyalty” for the purpose. I’m big on definitions, so I went and got one from dictionary.com (not the most irreproachable of authorities, but good enough to be getting on with):
I think from this, we can extrapolate 3 different approaches to the stated question, and it yields slightly different answers:
How important a value is loyalty in people’s lives? Taking the first definition, of loyalty as the tendency to be consistent and faithful, we could say that the level of importance people place on this value in the abstract is how “loyal” they can be said to be. On this measure, based on what’s gone before in the discussion and some of the links, I would say religious people and other conservatives probably outpace atheists and liberals in loyalty, inasmuch as they consider loyalty a more important value in their system of ethics.
Now, the second definition brings in the collective aspect of loyalty, or the ingroup/outgroup view of it. If loyalty is to be defined as the extent to which one identifies with and tends to unconditionally approve of a larger organisation or structure, comprised of people and instantiate in the physical world and with an ingroup identity, e.g. a church, a country, a fan club etc., then the natural assumption to make is that those of a more conservative bent would be more inclined to this frame of mind. Again, this has been well covered above.
However, when it comes to loyalty individuals - the tendency to adhere to a specific person regardless of their group identity - the liberal mindset has an advantage over the conservative one, and by extension the atheist over the religious one.
In a religious view, individuals inherit their right to the loyalty of their peers by continued identification with the group to which they all belong. Once the bonds of loyalty to the group are shaken, there is a knock on effect to the loyalty between the different members. I’m thinking of things like shunning, excommunication, ostracism etc., but also smaller fractures to the fabric of a community of loyalists when doubts or dissent enters the scene.
It is much less likely - both in principle and from my personal experience, though I do not have statistics to support this hypothesis - that an atheist would, all other things being equal, cut off their family for becoming religious, than it is that a religious family cuts off a member who is gay, say. It is equally unlikely that an atheist terminate a friendship over church attendance (or other ideological differences not related to religion - veganism, say, or voting Conservative, or Ayn Rand).
I think this “loyalty gap” is driven both by moral differences (Haidt is relevant here again - care and fairness towards a friend would tend to trump the fact that that friend behaves in a way an atheist or liberal finds unethical) and the attitude towards a multiplicity of views which is at the core of the liberal, and by extension usually atheist, mindset.
On this view, atheists can be supposed to be the more loyal ones to the individuals in their lives - friends, family, members of the community.
When we come to look for actual instances of loyalty - as per the third definition above - the picture is somewhat complicated by the messyness of the real world. It’s also extremely difficult to get concrete data on atheists as a group. But we do have a lot of anecdotal data on religious people, especially ones in the public eye: and it is certainly the case that, at least when it comes to sexual fidelity, things don’t look too good for the religious. In the US in particular, but elsewhere as well, religious men in the public eye have an almost irresistible bent towards sexual transgression. The list is too long and well known to elaborate here, but one very topical example is the kippa-wearing former Israeli president Moshe Katsav, convicted of multiple sexual assaults this week - not very loyal to his wife or his state office!
Liberals and conservatives are always hurling accusations of hypocrisy and dissimulation at each other. As a progressive, I’m naturally inclined to believe that cpnservatives are hypocritical liars whereas liberals just have a flexibility of mind that allows them to change course when they encounter new data. But this, I must acknowledge, might not be a scientifically objective conclusion.
It is certainly the case that there are examples of loyalty to home and countny where religion is not concerned. Not all communist revolutionaries were brainwashed or coerced into loyalty to their party and political ideology; many Russian people fought in WWII with the greatest sincerity and from a deep conviction that a secular atheist worker state was worthy of their loyalty, even unto the ultimate sacrifice. Likewise the Maoist rebels still waging a low level civil war on the Indian government are not doing so from religious, but rather political conviction, and of course Che Guevara didn’t die in Bolivia out of a lack of loyalty to his cause. So it would seem that religion is not a necessary component in patriotism or loyalty to a larger cause, even though it’s been appropriated as such in much of the Western discourse.
So maybe on this third aspect of the question, we must refer to the gods of “more research is needed”.
People in minority religions (eg Catholicism) are seen as a potential “Fifth column”. I don’t think I’d like to comment too much on whether that’s really the case …
Loyalty to what exactly? The subject of the loyalty, that which is being held loyal to, plays a great part in the amount of loyalty provided to it. A country, for example, might expect a very high degree of loyalty, as would a religion. Personal loyalty would also have a high demand. Which do you choose? A job would have a lower degree of loyalty generally.
If I had a very good friend who was found to be an illegal immigrant, would I be loyal to my friend or my country?
If my friend was to be made redundant from my company woudld I quit as well?
There are too many possibilities/variables to express overall loyalty.
If you defined the subject of loyalty I’m sure you would get a better answer.
I’m going to take a slightly different approach than some others in answering this. Please read my reply carefully and let me know if my logic/argument makes sense. Thanks.
Since/whereas:
Therefore:
Locke’s postulate could be reframed as:
“…those are not at all to be tolerated who are not deluded or irrational. Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon a rationalist. The taking away of superstition, though but even in thought, dissolves all”
So, does it make any sense whatsoever that you must be insane, irrational, ignorant, or deluded to keep covenant with a promise? Does seeing a superstition as a superstition actually destroy your sense of civic and personal social duty?
I’d say that the opposite is true, but at a minimum it’s clear that the postulate is incorrect.
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