Morality

[Brian37]

I really wouldn't try to argue "atheist" are better. "Off" is a mere position. It does not denote a moral code, or a class, political view, or economic view.

The real argument to be made is that when better data comes in, you adapt that data and scrap the older bad data.

FYI Plato did not get everything right himself. Plato got the idea of questioning right, but he still did not have benefit of modern scientific method. If you read the preface to "The Greatest Show On Earth" by Richard Dawkins, in it he explains, much of humanity's chase for a utopia infected religious and political thinking with his idea of "Essence". The idea for Plato was that if you simply thought about something long enough you could find that perfect thing.  IE, "essence of rabbit" or "essence of chair". Unfortunately that idea of the perfect thing bled into religious and political thought.

I would say that humanity would do better without old mythology. I don't mean erasing history, we should not do that. But we should learn from our mistakes as a species and leave bad claims behind.

If all 7 billion humans were suddenly atheists, we would still have our differences and groups and conflicts. Our species behaviors are not in a label, but in our evolution.

Sure. I don't think I've said anything contrary to what you've said. I posited that atheists were no worse off than theists in the search for moral facts, but our nonadherence to dogma might (perhaps) work in our favor.

I don't think any modern reader of Plato considers Plato an authority. Even ancient Platonists knew better than that!

Plato was obviously wrong about a great many things. But his approach to values is pretty compelling, even if his metaphysics might have lead us down the wrong path. As you pointed out, the most valuable thing Plato taught was to question all assumptions. I don't think that Plato exempted his own ideas. My favorite thing about Plato is that he invites you to disagree with him.

Plato was a human, and finite like the rest of us. I would not suggest ever claiming there is a method to morality, especially knowing that changes in our species over time. 

Even the ancient Romans and Greeks owned slaves. Not claiming he did personally, but slavery was worldwide back then. 

I'd say that our modern understanding of things like evolutionary biology, sociology, neurology and psychology and psychiatry give us a better understanding of how humans group, how they behave, not Plato.

Again, Plato did contribute some useful things to humanity, but again, he didn't get everything right. "Essence" was a bad idea and human thought suffered as a result of that idea.

Just in the same way that Newton got physics right but Alchemy was junk. Imagine if Newton had scrapped physics and stuck to alchemy? 

Point is morality isn't of an era, nor a patent you can point to in one point in time to one human or one label. Our species has always displayed both cruelty and compassion. I think that is better understood through modern methods than ancient philosophy or mythology.

Humans will never stop having conflicts or crime to some degree. I'd say morality is anything that would seek to reduce harm to others, but outside that, it isn't something you can pin on one person or one nation or one label.