Atheist Mortality?

[Napoléon]

I get my morals from the talking voice in my head.

[Whateverist]

I get my morals from the talking voice in my head.

"Kill pussy cat. Faster. Faster."

[Ziploc Surprise]

What defines morality? A sky daddy, a religious text, or society?

There are some that believe that without a sky daddy one cannot be moral. In other words, humans are like toddlers who lack sufficient reasoning ability, they need rules and boundaries and can only handle a little reason. Without an adult (sky daddy in this case) to correct bad behavior and praise good behavior a toddler (adult human in this case) would not learn proper morality. Many older flavors of religion were very rule driven, they treated people like toddlers. In modern flavors of religion there is a lot of psychology. It seems as if religion has changed to accept the notion that perhaps humans are capable of reason because the modern flavors of religion that have a lot of psychology in it require reasoning ability. Therefore I'd say that you can nix the sky daddy and still be moral. To a point even Modern Christianity proves this.

Other's say that the Bible defines morality -insert humor here-. Obviously this is not true because there are many things in the Bible that god finds moral (such as selling your daughter into sex slavery) but are totally unacceptable today. When a Christian spouts off Bible verses regarding morality these are highly cherry picked. A lot of horrible verses are ignored. This leads one to ask what caused this? If the whole Bible supposedly can be used to define morality yet only a portion of it is used to define morality then what is going on? How about the notion that society defines morality and the Christians reinterpret their texts to keep in pace with the changes in society (though the Christians are often a few steps behind the latest changes)?

If this is so then how does society define morality? I'd say we do so through the process of reason. Over time people see the cause and effect of certain actions and determine from this if the action was a good one or a bad one. Meanwhile they experiment with other new ideas. Some people say that morality has changed as a result of the notion that all humans are of equal value and therefore should have equal rights. Whatever the cause for the change I'd still pin it on something other than the Bible.....and I won't even mention the Koran...Oh wait, I just did.