The Atheist Next Door

My morals come from the bible. If you don’t believe in God how can you be moral?

What a strange thing to say, but this is one of the “devastating” things believers like to say to atheists. It is really a statement of profound ignorance.

Are these people seriously claiming that only Christians can be moral? Are the Jews only half moral? That other religions cannot be? That Indigenous peoples are inherently immoral? The entire supposition is ludicrous.

If their belief fails, will they begin maniacally stealing, killing and raping, as they implicitly imply atheists will?

Are the religious seriously claiming that their personal morals dictates include slavery, no shopping/work on the Sabbath, treating women as possessions and selling daughters into prostitution? The list goes on and on. Of course not, they pick and choose from the bible.

If you pick and choose from the bible, then you are the source of your morals, and your morals exist outside the bible. The ancient book of wisdom needs to be adapted to present time, just as the morals of the new testament progressed from those of the old.

Our fundamental morals are innate. We have many built in behaviors that can be explained in evolutionary terms. We form social groups, we take care of children, we are predominately heterosexual, we are cautious of the dark, snakes, spiders and other dangerous things. We universally defecate in private.

We are social animals. Killing those around us or stealing their possessions would get us ostracized from the group. Making survival much harder.

Making misleading and outrageous claims might get you booted as well.