“You’re a Good Guy For a Godless Heathen”

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A while back I received a text message from a lady friend that included, “You’re a good guy for a godless heathen!”

I’m glad she didn’t call me a “great guy” since that’s always followed by “but [clever way of saying I don’t ever want to talk to you again].”

I’ve also had people say things like, “well you’re an atheist so you must not believe in honesty…” and “I know you don’t believe in God, but do you think you could help me out?” I’ve even heard, “you’re an atheist so you probably don’t believe in love…”

Come on people, Atheists are human too!

Just because we don’t believe in a cosmic dictator or hold to a divine command theory of morality doesn’t mean we don’t have emotions or empathy. Atheists can be quite generous as can be easily seen with the way the community raised over $30,000 to provide for Damon Fowler’s education after his family cut him off. Atheists do community service. Atheists even serve and die for their country.

What’s different is that we actually think about why something is right or wrong and we try to understand how things work. This comes with the end result of being (at least potentially) pretty ethical.

Honesty is usually the best policy, but I’m not going to be honest if it’s going to needlessly and uselessly harm someone. If you wrong me in someway and there’s a good reason I’ll be pretty forgiving and I’ll usually give you the benefit of the doubt if I don’t know why you did it. If you need help I’ll give you a hand if I can, just don’t preach at me afterwords.

Whether or not someone’s a godless heathen, they’re at least as likely as anybody else to be a good guy.

4 Comments


  1. Nice post. In a very short time as a skeptic, I'm surprised I've already been asked why I was looking out for someone else or in one example, speaking out against the murder of an innocent man. It all goes down to the same retarded notion that without gods, people are incapable of doing good. I would actually go one step further than just saying unbelievers can be good people — I think most of us reject religion for the precise reason that gods like Yaweh commit unconscionable evil and their fans rationalize it or copy it themselves. It takes empathy, kindness and a strong sense of fairness to hurt for the needless suffering caused to other people (for religious or other reasons) But the average religious nut would rather rationalize and justify those things, then go ahead and say unbelievers cannot be good or moral.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7xt5LtgsxQ — nails it.


  2. I remember when I first confessed my atheism to a close cousin of mine.  His response was "You're an atheist? You know you're going to hell, right?"

    To which I replied, "Well, if there is such a place, then we'll all see each other there."  He had this weird look on his face.


  3. Whenever I hear that, my internal reply is: "I see you are dogmatically in denial of the material world (religious) and claim to believe in (insert "sacred" book) but I'm glad you don't stone children or keep slaves and are essentially a rational human being despite your claims to the contrary!" 😛


  4. D Yeates, I may borrow that for externalization.

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