Microscope Honesty
I hate when people go out of their way to appear honest. This usually means that they really aren’t honest and are just trying to put up a false front. However, sometimes actually being honest isn’t enough. For atheists we not only have to be honest, but since we are often under a microscope by theistic believers, we have to appear honest when viewed under that microscope as well.
What I mean by this is that we shouldn’t put up a “pious” (for lack of a better term) front, but we should make sure that if we are put under a microscope, our virtue is easy to discover. This of course necessitates being virtuous and that may not always be what theists believe it to be.
My point is that we should be aware that as vocal atheists we might at some point be under a microscope. Now some people are less vocal and therefore less likely to be under that microscope. So it really depends on how vocal one is. I am pretty vocal, so I have thought a lot about how I would look under that moral microscope.
When religious leaders are put under the moral microscope and their immoral behavior is discovered, they make a big show of asking God for forgiveness. For us, I am pretty confident that most vocal atheists are honest from the start. But because we are atheists, we need not be leaders to undergo this microscope treatment. This means we ought to be authentic and virtuous even in the small aspects of our lives and dealings.
Related articles
- The Ninth Commandment (dangeroustalk.net)
- What Anti-Faith Commercials Could Look Like (freethoughtblogs.com)
- Atheism and Tradition Building (freethoughtblogs.com)
- As far as morals and ethics go how good is good enough (wiki.answers.com)
- “Atheists can perhaps express compassion more easily without belief” (fffmks.wordpress.com)
Filed under: atheism, morality, People of Reason