I've never understood how fundamentalist Christians in the United States are able to argue that they're supporters of a culture of life, while the rest of us godless heathens apparently favor a culture of death.
The way I see it, the truth is exactly opposite.
Those who don't believe in God, an afterlife, or commandments handed down by a distant divinity are much more likely to favor individual actions, and collective social policies, that favor life over death.
For example, here in Oregon a jury currently is deliberating whether the parents of 15 month old Ava Worthington are guilty of manslaughter for letting her die of a treatable infection because their Christian religious beliefs taught that prayer is the solution to medical problems, not doctors.
To me, they're guilty, no matter what the jury legally decides.
What parents would stand by and watch their child die when they could have easily saved her? Answer: fundamentalists who surely believe that now Ava is in the hands of Jesus and God is pleased with them for choosing death over life.
If this life each of us is living now is the only existence we'll ever have, then every moment is almost (or exactly) infinitely precious. Life shouldn't be discarded lightly based on an evidence-less assumption that there will more of it to enjoy after the body dies.
This usually isn't talked about explicitly, but I'm convinced that the beliefs of the Christian majority in this country go a long way toward explaining why dying often is taken so lightly by Americans.
Grieving parents of a soldier killed in Iraq, or the wife of a man killed in a mountain climbing accident, will say in an interview, "I know he's in a better place now."
Actually, they don't know this. They believe this.
And that belief supports a culture of death — in that a foreshortened life isn't viewed as having taken away a good part of a person's only chance to experience living, but merely transferred their existence to another domain of reality: heaven.
Now, I'm not arguing that progressive political policies, which I generally favor, are more in tune with a culture of life than conservative policies. (Others have, though.)
I'm simply suggesting that both individual and societal moral decisions would be made more wisely in the absence of metaphysical assumptions about an afterlife, God's will, and such. What we know is that people are born, and eventually they die.
What happens to an individual, if anything, before birth and after death is a belief — not a knowing. If living a life here on Earth is needlessly sacrificed, cut short, or considered insignificant for any other-worldly reason, that's wrong.
Which is why I see religion as supporting a culture of death, not life.
(For another perspective on this, in a continuation here's a recent comment from Adam on a post about death and non-existence, followed by my response to him.)
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