citizen. He had learned the lesson of not biting. He didn’t need me, and he certainly didn’t need any god. Zolten’s morality gets more sophisticated every day, but it doesn’t need to. He was pretty much there at two years old. He had the basic principles in place. Don’t cause pain.
I’d like to say this story is evidence that my son is a moral genius, but I don’t believe that. I believe he’s a normal child (yeah, most children take their first steps into the arms of a porn star), and all normal children understand the moral code at an early age. Children are cruel, children are violent, children have no patience, children are moody, and children can’t seem to understand that sneaking under Daddy’s desk when he’s lost in thought while writing his book and grabbing his feet is going to scare the living shit out of him. Maybe they do understand that last one. Children have a lot of work to do on impulse control, but morality takes its place early on. There are studies about normal children knowing the moral difference between a teacher saying it’s okay to stand up during circle time and a teacher saying it’s okay to lie and hit. They know the teacher can’t turn something that is morally wrong into something right by just saying it. They understand that right and wrong are separate from authority.
Years ago, I brought a date to hear an atheist speaker (I knew how to pitch the old woo, huh?), and during the Q&A a stranger sitting next to us stood up with a question, “If there’s no god, what’s stopping us from just raping and killing all we want?” Before the speaker onstage could give his answer, my date raised her hand, stood up and asked, “Quick question: may I change my seat please?” She got a huge laugh and had made the philosophic argument perfectly. If you rape and kill, people will move away from you. That’s all.
I do rape and kill all I want. The amount I want to rape and kill is zero. I completely condone murder fantasies—there are no thought police—but I don’t have those thoughts myself. “Didn’t you want to punch Clay Aiken in the face?” Nope. Not once. I just wanted to get back to my real business partner, Teller, and back to my real team, my family. When I’m pissed off at people, I have no desire to kill them or even hurt them. I don’t even want to yell at them. I don’t want to talk to them. I just want to get away from them. Whether rape is a crime of hate or a crime of sex, it doesn’t ever cross my mind. I don’t want to fuck when I’m angry, and there’s nothing sexy to me about someone who is not attracted to me. I take it as sexual rejection if my wife pauses for a moment to pull back her hair before she kisses me. We have sickening evidence that not everyone feels the same way about rape and murder, but I believe my lack of desire for violence is typical. Many religious people seem to think that it’s nothing but faith that stops them from committing three-state killing sprees with a side of forced sodomy.
It’s not fair to say all Christians are murdering rapists being held back by fear of hell, or desire for heaven, but as unfair as it is, it’s bothersome how many Christians lead with it. The argument that the only reason you’re not killing and raping me is that your magic book teaches you not to is not reassuring, and I don’t think it’s even true. Christians defend the insanity of the Bible by saying how good, kind and peaceful Jesus was in the New Testament, even though he negates none of the Old Testament’s horrors. What do they mean by “good” about Jesus anyway? If all morality comes from god, isn’t all of the Old Testament’s genocide, slavery, rape, incest, torture, and ignorance good by definition? If all morality comes from god, what does it mean to believe “god is good”? Wouldn’t that be a tautology? If Satan were to win the final battle (the spoiler says he doesn’t), defeat god, and become the most powerful force in the universe, wouldn’t he be our god? We’d meet the new boss, and he’d be the same as the old boss—good, by definition. Would we just replace the cross with heavy metal horns and start fucking our sisters’ assholes on beds of goats’ blood in the name of all that is unholy, while listening to Slayer? Wouldn’t that be community service?
That’s beyond flippant, but anyone who says god is good has made the argument that morality exists outside religion. Either that or they’re saying “X = X” and there are quicker ways to say that. You can say that clearly by just shutting the fuck up.
If Zolten refrains from hitting Moxie when I’m watching, I don’t consider that morality. Maybe he’s hoping that I’ll reward him if he doesn’t and worried that I’ll punish him if he does. He’s right—if he hits his sister, he gets a time-out, except for that one time when she was being a real douche and Daddy turned a blind eye. (I’m a peacenik, but she was being such an asshole.) That’s not morality. Morality is when they aren’t being supervised and they get along without hitting. It’s morality when Zz controls his temper from the inside because it’s the right thing to do. That’s morality outside god, and if there’s morality without god, we don’t need god for morality.
Richard Dawkins writes about morality in animals other than humans. Many religions say that only humans have a soul, and in claiming that, they can’t attribute any non-human moral action to god. If monkeys are good and god is good, good means something other than god. Oh boy, the beginning of that sentence is so close to:
Monkeys = good
Good = god
Therefore:
Monkeys = god
And by the commutative property:
God = monkey
God is a monkey!
I came so fucking close to convincing myself to be a priest.
When I have just my 140 Twitter characters or a sound bite on Bill Maher, I’ve said things like, “Only atheists can be moral. If you’re doing it for reward or to avoid punishment, it’s not morality.” That’s 100 characters on the nose, which leaves you room for “@Penn Jillette” and the appositive “SexyBeast” and you still have room for a hashtag. Those 100 characters are provocative, but not completely fair. It’s not only that atheists can have morality, it’s that morality
I didn’t have to teach my son that hurting people is bad any more than I had to teach him to walk toward Nina Hartley. Those are just part of being human.
IT’S TODAY AND YOU’RE ALIVE—CELEBRATE!
THANKS
It might have been a mistake to tell my wife, Emily, that I felt that my editor, Sarah Hochman, understood me better than anyone in the world. I meant, you know, outside of my family. You know, professionally. I’ve made that clear now. It was Sarah’s idea for this book—thanks, Sarah, and to all the Blue Rider and Penguin people. Thanks to my agent, Steve Fisher, for doing the wheeling and dealing. I would have written the book for free.
Robbie Libbon has been my dear friend for my entire adult life. He makes sure the Penn & Teller show goes up every night and he read this book over and over, gave a zillion suggestions and helped Sarah figure out what the fuck I was trying to write about and shared the burden of taking out all those commas. I think someone told me sometime that “but” was supposed to always have a comma after it. Fuck public schools.
Lana Strong is a buddy who’s read all my other books a little too carefully, so I could send her each of these hunks and ask her if I’d written any of the stuff already in another book. I often can’t tell what I think and say from what I write—she can.
