(November 28, 2014 at 12:48 pm)vincent150 Wrote: What I am asking here is why an atheist 'should' be moral.Based on the first three or four pages of discussion, I think that the answer is that it depends on what you want from life and what actions may present an opportunity or an obstacle. If you can get away with immoral behavior, then the only reason that you 'should' act moral is out of a sense of obligation or fair play or for peace of mind. If none of those are a concern, then I don't see a reason that would be acceptable. It does imply that if you wind up being victimized by another person, you have no cause to feel cheated; he was simply playing by your rules.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
