Why be good?

[Ravenshire]

Your ignorance is showing.

Meh. His ignorance has been on proud display for quite some time now.

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38 responses overnight. Thank you.

I won't be able to respond to all of them before heading off to work, but let me says this:

I'm not asking whether atheists can be good people or whether they are good people. Despite much of the rudeness and foul language directed at me (and others) in this forum, it should be obvious that atheists may strive to be kind, tolerant, generous and respectful toward others. And they do this because they recognize that "right" and "wrong" behavior is real and not theoretical.

What I am asking is: what is the BASIS for objective moral behavior? Where does it come from?

If some feel that they have already answered, my apologies; however, I re-phrased my OP based on a quick scan of a few responses.

I will try to get through all of the posts as quickly as time permits. Sorry for the delay.

You need to define what moral behavior is specifically.
Everyone seem to default to murder, but guess what? there is a law against murder and that's an effective deterrent for the majority of people.

There's at least one honest atheist here...
http://atheistforums.org/thread-32313-po...#pid906588

And yeah, I don't commit murder because I AM afraid of the death penalty. That and I obey the laws because Prison Orange isn't my color. I have a list of five people who I would happily off right now if I knew that I could get away with it. So your argument is invalid.

I think we can all agree that lying and adultery are also immoral, there just (generally) aren't any laws against them. How many are guilty of those?

I'll argue that lying and adultery are only immoral when they cause harm. To briefly give examples, open marriages and answering "I'm fine" even though I've had a shitty day. Neither the "adultery" in an open marriage or the "I'm Fine" social convention does any harm.

Huggies, I've got to ask, do you collect and hoard potentially embarrassing quotes just in the hope of being able to use them at a later date? You certainly seem to.