Deconversion and some doubts

[Acrobat]

If atheists where mindful of what theism contained they’d be more like Belaqua, than Gae.

Bel is not an atheist.

As far as I know Bel lacks a belief in God, which seems to be the minimum requirement for atheism.

It’s not all that surprising that most atheists seem to have an understanding of theism reserved almost exclusively to fundie evangelical views.

You seem to think that merely using different words, you can cleverly disguise your rather obvious theism.

I'm not trying to disguise my theism, I'm a theist. It's atheists who like to tell me my beliefs are not theistic, though you seem to indicate they're obviously theistic.

So pare it back to bare bones. You agreed that stealing is bad. Why is it bad? Because you simply decided so? Because society decided so? Some other reason?

I didn't decide that stealing is bad, nor did my society decide it's bad. Good and bad are matters of objective truth, not some arbitrary decisions. We recognize things that are bad, we don't decide it, just like I don't decide the sun is out this morning, I recognize it.

Perhaps the question could be what is my earliest recognition that stealing is bad, probably the first time i saw stealing, or had my stuff stolen. No one needed to tell me it was bad, as if someone didn't along the way, I wouldn't have recognized this.

As far as what makes bad things bad?
I don't have an enough answer for why it's bad. This is not dodging the question, its just that I'm not that sure about it.

Most people here would probably provide some sort of harm based, or consequentialist answer, and others another sort or the other. No matter what explanation/rationalization someone gives, it seems to me that our brains recognize whats bad about stealing by the same basis, even if none of us particulary understand those reasons, or how our minds derived this. The explanations we often provide appear to be made after the fact.

A toddler might recognize stealing is wrong, absent of any such theories. Its not based on any real sort of consequetialist rationalization, in fact there seem to very little processing done between recognizing stealing, and see it as bad. This seems to take place simultenously. And I dont think that changes as we get older either.

An accurate explanation would have to be able to take account of this, and none of the popular moral theories appear to do so, nor do I have much a good explanation to offer you.