Where are the Morals?

[Mister Agenda]

In the article I will discuss, why an atheist who adopted a moral way of living is more vulnerable to immorality compared to a religious person.

That seems like a question amenable to empirical testing.

But, before I go further, two points I want to make here. For me there is no difference between any religious person who does not follow his religious laws and rituals and an atheist.

The only difference is the only salient difference: one is a theist while the other is an atheist. It's not very honest to redefine theists who don't meet your standards as 'pretty much the same as atheists'.

Secondly, I would keep myself refrain from going into intricate details of morality and keep my focus purely on the reasons why a person can be moral or immoral.

I perceive human body as an interface comprises of different sensory receptors. The job of these receptors is to collect and process data from the outside world into meaningful information and provide sensibility to a person. Life is intelligent as it can receive data, read data, understand data, and issue commands based on data. This interpretation of data is in fact the cause of feelings of pleasure and pain in people.

Pleasure and pain is the core of all human activities, in general. Every person desires pleasure, joy, and comfort in his life and everyone put the utmost efforts to escape pain, anxiety, and discomfort. Here the exception goes to the concept of sacrifice where embracement of pain is premeditated.

MORALS
Now the question is why rational beings (humans) should live a moral life. Short answer to that is because humans are dependent beings. A person cannot be tailor, engineer, doctor, teacher, etc., at the same time. Man finds his personal fulfilment only in relations with other people. Why be good? Because being good--living virtuously--is the only way to a fulfilled, self-actualized life.

Morals develop through the needs and the fulfilment of those necessities, in human life. I can say moral is the innate quality of each person. However, there is a black side to this scenario.

Human nature, in favourable circumstances, is also clearly constructed for icy selfishness cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage and a range of other less desirable traits. So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts?

Although atheism fails to answer this dilemma, it sternly criticise morals based on religion by undermining the fact that religion is the only institute in the entire human history that successfully delivered and implemented efficient rules for a moral life.

Theism fails to answer this dilemma as well. That's because theism and atheism are differing opinions on a topic, not moral systems. If you care at all about comparing apples to apples, maybe you should be addressing humanism instead of atheism.

Some have argued that a morality based on obedience to a divine will is ‘infantile’ (Patrick Nowell-Smith 1966); others see it as ‘prehuman’ (Erich Fromm) or ‘bad faith’ (Simone de Beauvoir), or as promoting a ‘loss of self’ (Karl Marx).

However, these condemnations do not have any validation because atheism is only a belief in the non-existence of God, which instinctively eradicate any moral rules given by God.

No matter how many times we tell you that most atheists don't have a belief in the non-existence of God, it doesn't sink in, and you keep bringing it up.

Conversely, atheism has nothing to offer to fill this moral gap.

Neither does mere theism.

Maximum it says:

"Obey your evolutionary instincts,"
"Respect your brain chemistry," or
"Follow your mental wirings"

Atheism doesn't say any of that. Your continuous avoidance of our actual worldviews in favor of trying to make atheism one smacks of rhetorical dishonesty.

By Logic Atheism gives no ground for morality.

Neither does theism. Neither does plumbing. You're trying to get blood from a turnip if you're trying to derive a moral system from the sole fact of belief or disbelief in there being at least one real supernatural deity.

In atheism when you look at the bottom of the universe there is no good there is no evil there is no justice and DNA is just is and we dance to its music. By definition, this undermines all morality.

Can you point out where in the defintion the universe being indifferent undermines morality? What does morality have to do with how things that aren't moral agents behave?

mo·ral·i·ty/məˈralədē/
noun
principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

The message one may draw from this knowledge is this: You have a limited number of days, hours, and minutes. Therefore, you should strive to fill each of those days, hours, and minutes with meaning. You should strive to fill them with learning and gaining comfort, joy, and pleasure as much as you can.

Therefore, living in an Ethical and rationally governed society would afford everyone the best chance of achieving any rational plan of life, including immoral ones. Transgressors are often actually socially and legally rather morally, prim apart from their own immoral behaviours. In effect, they are civil freeloaders, happy to endorse morality and law for others while selectively exempting themselves from them.

People can and do have rational plan of life that include desires to achieve things that they morally ought to refrain from doing. For example,

Joseph Stalin kill 42,672,000 people
Mao Zedong kill 37,828,000 people
Adolf Hitler kill 20,946,000 people
Chiang Kaikillshek kill 10,214,000 people
Vladimir Lenin kill 4,017,000 people
Hideki Tojo kill 3,990,000 people
Pol Pot kill 2,397,0003 people

You consider power mad and paranoid dictators rational? I disagree.

Their rational plans of life-involved goals, such as genocide, were the integral part of their rational plan of life, and hence doing that had the highest value for them; but it does not follow that they morally ought to have pursued that end.

No kidding it does not follow.

So, insofar as Ethical Rational justification uses the motivation to realize rational plan of life, any rational plan of life, Ethical Rationalism would, at least in some instances, legitimize immoral rational plan of life.

Well, at least ethical rationalism is a basis for morality an atheist might hold, so you've finally brought up something that isn't a straw man. Even someone who isn't an ethical rationalist (probably most atheists here) should be able to discuss it intelligently, so this is progress. Of course the point of rational ethics isn't developing a 'rational plan of life', it's deriving moral principles through reason, and the flaw in it isn't that it results in a Stalin (no sign of him being an ethical rationalist), but that it doesn't take the emotional dimension of ethics into account. Sentiment plays a major role in ethics that can't be ignored.

In contrast to atheism, religion give definite laws for a moral life.

Religions like Aztec polytheism, which involved a LOT of human sacrifices, or religions like Moloch worship that involved burning live babies? I think you might want to find a better word to convey your case than 'religion'. Not to mention that at least from an anthropological point of view, a religion can be atheistic.

The relationship between religion and morality is important for questions of practical moral decision.

A religion's morality seems to be entirely relative to the moral practices of the culture it originated in modified by the moral practices of the culture in which it is currently being followed.

Religious ethicists have a long record of attempting to relate theory to practice in moral discussion. The ability of a moral system to provide practical guidance is especially important during times of extensive moral confusion.

Religious activity extends, of course, well beyond the range of specifically moral concerns. Religious scholars have typically insisted, however, that religious teachings provide the larger context in which the claims of morality find their proper place.

And what religion it is doesn't matter?

Compare religious teachings to the infinite stretch of time, and think that person will cease to exist, that he will be no more but an infinitesimal moment, a spark in the infinite blackness, a spark that flickers and dies forever.

Not every religion addresses an afterlife. And that doesn't sound like a reason not to be moral.

Critics of religiously based moral perspectives undermine the fact that Religious teachings are narratively rich. These narratives provide the believer with an expanded sense of what is morally possible: the belief in miracles and a Final Judgment, and a sense of access to divine sources of strength and blessing, can have an important impact on moral motivation.

I'd like to see some statistics that support that, else religious narratives being helpful to drive moral behavior is a mere assertion.

Atheism abandon the scriptures without providing any alternate model for moral code of conduct.

Neither mere theism nor mere atheism provide any model at all for moral conduct. They are each an opinion, nothing more.

Hence, atheists are left with no other choice than to peek into religion in pursuit of moral guidance.

Funny, religions seem to be haltingly catching up to humanist moral standards.

There is no academy in the secular world that gives awareness on morals in a scientific way.

Is there one in the nonsecular world?

On the other hand, I believe that whole structure of morals in secularism is based on the religious teachings because only it is religion that had given knowledge on human values in a systematic manner and people have enjoyed the wisdom of morals based on religion throughout the human history.

Most Western religions have been riding on the backs of secular Greek moral philosophers for thousands of years.

Please listen to this inspiring talk by Alain De Botton (an atheist) on how religion is important for Atheism.

Atheism is not a word that's properly capitalized except at the beginning of a sentence or as part of the name of an organization. No atheist has the authority to speak for all of us.