Where do atheists get their morality from?

[greneknight]

Sorry, but I think you are confused. You are saying that those who believe in God will have their ethics profoundly influenced. But it doesn't work that way. Most God believers (I'm thinking of fundamentalists) can be very nasty if you aren't in the same camp. That's not sound ethics at all. The non-fundamentalists are more like atheists. We get our ethics from our basic human decency. Everyone has that. Atheists have it just as much as a Christian but I honestly think for a Christian, he has to undo a lot of the bad things in religion like in our holy book. If you're in a benign religion like my church, the vicar will clean up the message for you. But you need someone to "purify" the ethics for you. Otherwise you can be pretty wicked if you follow the Bible totally. And it's not a safe bet that you will always have a benign vicar to do that. What if a fundy vicar takes over? There is not much stability in one's ethics if one is a Christian because much depends on interpretation and stuff like that. I think it's safer to depend on the basic human decency without getting ourselves polluted by ancient texts, which religion tends to do.

You said, consider how medicine would change depending on whether God existed. I don't understand that part but I think God and religion are more an impediment to progress of medicine and science than anything.

Sure, god-believers can be nasty. So what? We're not dealing with behavior, we're dealing with whether our moral values are rational. This is where you are confused.

There are good and bad Christians out there. Just like there are good and bad atheists out there. The question is not whether they are good or bad- it's whether there is any legitimate reason, as an atheist, to believe that an act is universally right or wrong. If you are an atheist, your morality undoubtedly IS informed by atheism, and very likely towards ethical subjectivism or relativism. The question is, how good is relativism if it can justify theft and abuse of others?

The solution is to mitigate the relativism of the morality, so as to keep some acts, such as killing babies, universally wrong. If we can't find a way to do that, atheism will forever remain untenable for people who are concerned with having a rational moral standard.

OK, I think I follow you now. You are saying that never mind the fact that Santa Claus doesn't exist. But boys who believe in Santa will behave themselves because they want presents. So those who don't believe in Santa need to clean up their act because they might not behave well.

Like I've said, I don't think it works that way. A lot depends on upbringing. If parents teach their kids to be honourable, their kids will grow up ethical. Religion is neither here nor there. Religious people say the same thing as atheists - that killing babies is wrong. But it's not absolute. There may a situation where someone might kill his baby and it can be justifiable to both religious people and atheists. I can't think of one right now but I'm sure there can be. You draw an artificial line between religious people and atheists and you think religious people might be more ethical but I don't agree. I have met Dawkins and I think he is an honourable man. I would trust him ethically as I would trust my vicar. No difference at all. I think it's the upbringing. If a child is brought up to be honourable, he can be depended on to do the ethical thing and it doesn't matter if he's a Christian or an atheist.

True, atheists may talk of relativism (not sure I know the meaning) and Christians will talk about how immutable God's morality is (which we know is rubbish because it changes with time) but in reality, both will probably have the same idea of morality that comes from our basic human decency and not from some religion. I'm speaking of the average Church of England Christian.