morality, warI personally find it hard to understand how a person can go into the army or navy with the understanding that they may be required to kill not only the enemy but also on occasion innocent civilians.
As an Atheist I could imagine someone thinking it was okay to kill because there was no one watching, this could lead to terrible actions but then I could imagine they might have more compassion. I could also see the same happening for a religious person.
So, Do Atheists make better or worse soldiers? Would they be more moral and would that work for a modern army?
I personally find it hard to understand how a person can go into the army or navy with the understanding that they may be required to kill not only the enemy but also on occasion innocent civilians.
I concur, but then again I am somewhat of a pacifist. I’d wager most people who enter the service voluntarily have disassociated that part of the equation from their decision to enter, that they don’t consciously think, “Joining the army may lead to me killing another human being, possible an innocent woman or child.”
Do Atheists make better or worse soldiers?
I doubt that in a professional, modern military a soldier’s religious beliefs impact his performance on the battlefield. Remember, when a person joins the military they just aren’t thrown into a battle. Rather, they go through training that teaches them how to respond in certain situations. They are taught to follow orders. The aim is to get the soldier to react to a situation in a manner the military has deemed to be optimal. The last thing the military wants is for each soldier to stop and ponder the philosophical or religious implications of their actions before making them.
Do Atheists make more efficient or less efficient cooks?
That’s the same question. It’s an illusional belief that religion has any impact on moral behaviour, thit way or that, and another misconcept is a moral per purpose - a soldier-moral, a cook-moral, a marketing-moral, a mother-moral.
Once a war has started, killing is inevitable. So a apart from pacifist motives (which can very well be religiously motivated) I don’t think that this is a fundamental reason for atheists to not become soldiers.
I do believe that there are other reasons.
Religion is a strong factor to define and delimit group affinity. This has positive and negative effects but one particular effect is that it generates a strong us vs. them mentality that isn’t present per se in atheists. It also (and for the same reason) makes for good patriots.
As an atheist, I find that patriotism is baloney, and dangerous at that, precisely because it generates a divide between “our” people and other people. In my view, this directly leads to conflicts, even if it strengthens the group coherence. I think it’s baloney because there isn’t inherently a good reason to love thy immediate neighbour more than people all over the world (other than the rather cold and calculating benefits of quid pro quo).
To summarize: Religious allegiance is a trait that visually distinguishes us from them and strengthens patriotism.
The second reason is that a soldier needs to be unquestioningly obedient. And that’s just something I’m not, even if I see why it is a good trait (most of the time) in soldiers. And being atheist is of course a departure from the unquestioning acceptance of church dogma so atheists are predestined to question seemingly stupid orders, that others would accept at face value.
To summarize: Religion conditions people to unquestioning obedience.
I believe that these two points make religious people better soldiers than atheists.
Bonus: depending on your particular religious bend, you may be conditioned to embrace self-sacrifice, while atheists are inherently afraid of death. But I think this is something that only applies to brain-washed fundamentalists: Even most religious people will still be afraid of death, to a degree that isn’t noticeably less than in atheists since people have an innate survival instinct.
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