(September 1, 2015 at 9:14 am)ChadWooters Wrote: The OP gives us a good example of atheist wishful thinking. If there is no god you can do as you please to serve yourself without having to worry about trivialities like justice or truth. You live, you die, the end. How comforting it must feel not having to worry about the ultimate consequences of your life and never being held into account. I can see the appeal of atheism for people with no sense of responsibility beyond themselves.
On the contrary, our sense of responsibility comes from the self. We needn't the threat of eternal punishment to do good deeds and live a positive existence. In fact, because this life is the only life, atheists tend to have more of a sense of responsibility because we know that we are accountable to ourselves and don't have a mythological figure to forgive us when we do wrong—we must take it upon ourselves to make it right.
I was deeply Christian and still have many friends and family who are such, and I have many atheist friends as well. By far, atheists have always had a deeper sense of responsibility and drive to do what's right. Probably because our sense of morality comes from a true desire to be morale, rather than a desire to avoid punishment. (Not to say there aren't believers who don't have a genuine sense of morality, but it's always been my experience that atheists act more morale on the whole—even statistically, areas with higher populations of atheist/non-believers have lower crime rates; I feel these are both tied in with better education.)
Being a believer or non-believer has little to no affect on one's actual morales; religion is often used to justify one's personal beliefs, not to dictate them. Hence why so many Christians support gay marriage and so many others don't, for example. Without religion, those same people would still support or oppose it, respectively, but would find other means to justify their beliefs.
