In a recent email exchange with a theist, I was told that non-theists, who don't subscribe to an absolute morality, are incapable of experiencing guilt. This really took me by surprise, since I personally feel guilt for lots of things, probably to a much more debilitating degree than I should.
I feel guilty whenever I hurt another person, even if by accident. It tears me up inside to know that I've caused another human being any sort of pain or grief. And I feel this because I'm compassionate about my fellow humans.
But the assertion by this email correspondent really made me think. And what I thought most was, "How could anyone think such a thing?" And the more I thought about it, the more I came to realize that my email correspondent simply doesn't understand guilt in the same sense that I do.
Guilt is a feeling of self-reproach, of remorse over one's behavior. My email correspondent appears to view guilt as being the human response to doing something that displeases God (whether it's hurting another person or taking the lord's name in vain, or whatever). As is so often the case, the theist puts God before his fellow human beings. But the disturbing part of this is that the guilt-ridden theist is remorseful over violating God's word more than the fact that he/she has harmed another person.
But why should the theist care about doing something that displeases God? Let's face it, God (as commonly described) is far and away more beyond humanity than humanity is beyond amoebic life. Amoebas are incapable of doing anything that would hurt a human's feelings, so it stands to reason that humans are similarly incapable of hurting God's.
And this becomes all the clearer when one looks at the nature of God and his omniscience and other attributes. Nothing we do is a surprise to God… nothing we do was not known to him millions of years before we did it. We are, in effect, programmed to do everything we do. That programming comes from God, so anything we do that upsets him is his own damn fault.
So the "guilt" felt by the religious crowd is really just fear, anxiety, panic, or any of several similar things… But it certainly isn't remorse over hurting another. They are more concerned with punishment from God than of any harm they may have done to another.
I'm not saying that theists are incapable of feeling "real" guilt. Certainly not. But those who insist that non-theists don't know guilt are obviously not talking about guilt to begin with. Just fear. And this fear accomplishes nothing. It will not lead them to offer an honest apology to the offended party. They may apologize, but an apology based on an external fear is empty.
We all know that fear has always been a tool of the church. But one can only get so far with threats. To really subjugate someone, you make them feel guilty. In the church's case, they've convinced millions upon millions of theists that it's their fault that God is upset. All transgressions are against God. His anger is the result of these transgressions. Humans hurt God, they claim (ludicrous as that sounds).
So the fear combines with guilt (making it more than fear, but less than honest guilt, interestingly) to become the most potent controlling technique ever used by religion. Its purpose is not to add anything of substance to humanity, but to keep the theist in a state of constant fear, with the church being the key to forgiveness.
What a sweet set-up…
I suppose it's clear who the ones truly incapable of guilt are: whoever came up with this scenario in the first place.
