What I am asking here is why an atheist 'should' be moral.
I'm not asking 'if' atheists are moral or whether an atheist 'can be' moral which is normally the question that seems to get answered. For this I'm assuming atheists can be moral. Also I'm assuming everyone agrees on what morality is and being immoral is purposely breaking a rule which everyone else, and yourself, in society accepts to be moral.
I'm also not asking 'why' an atheist is moral. I've read reasons why before such as from Richard Dawkins who talks about how it has come from evolution. This is the best argument I've seen for why we are moral so am pretty much assuming this is the reason for this question.
Religious people often ask the question if you are an atheist why do you not go around murdering people. Apart from fear of getting caught why should we not just kill anyone you want or is the only reason we don't because of how our morals came from evolution.
This is an extreme example. A better example might be giving money to charity. Why should you give money to help someone that you are never going to see when you are just making yourself worse off by doing so. If you are intelligent enough to see that the reason you would be doing it is a 'side-affect' of how humans evolved then is there a reason to still do it.
Also I know if everybody in the world was to think in this same way, then we would no longer live in a civilised society and we would probably all kill each other. I accept that but it does not answer the question of why each individual should be moral if it would make their life better
I am an atheist and am also a moral person. I am not trying to argue that we should not be moral but am looking for someone to give me a good reason on how to answer this question to religious people because I can't think of one myself at the moment.
I'm not asking 'if' atheists are moral or whether an atheist 'can be' moral which is normally the question that seems to get answered. For this I'm assuming atheists can be moral. Also I'm assuming everyone agrees on what morality is and being immoral is purposely breaking a rule which everyone else, and yourself, in society accepts to be moral.
I'm also not asking 'why' an atheist is moral. I've read reasons why before such as from Richard Dawkins who talks about how it has come from evolution. This is the best argument I've seen for why we are moral so am pretty much assuming this is the reason for this question.
Religious people often ask the question if you are an atheist why do you not go around murdering people. Apart from fear of getting caught why should we not just kill anyone you want or is the only reason we don't because of how our morals came from evolution.
This is an extreme example. A better example might be giving money to charity. Why should you give money to help someone that you are never going to see when you are just making yourself worse off by doing so. If you are intelligent enough to see that the reason you would be doing it is a 'side-affect' of how humans evolved then is there a reason to still do it.
Also I know if everybody in the world was to think in this same way, then we would no longer live in a civilised society and we would probably all kill each other. I accept that but it does not answer the question of why each individual should be moral if it would make their life better
I am an atheist and am also a moral person. I am not trying to argue that we should not be moral but am looking for someone to give me a good reason on how to answer this question to religious people because I can't think of one myself at the moment.
