Why 'should' atheists be moral?

[vincent150]

What I am asking here is why an atheist 'should' be moral.

I'm not asking 'if' atheists are moral or whether an atheist 'can be' moral which is normally the question that seems to get answered. For this I'm assuming atheists can be moral. Also I'm assuming everyone agrees on what morality is and being immoral is purposely breaking a rule which everyone else, and yourself, in society accepts to be moral.

I'm also not asking 'why' an atheist is moral. I've read reasons why before such as from Richard Dawkins who talks about how it has come from evolution. This is the best argument I've seen for why we are moral so am pretty much assuming this is the reason for this question.

Religious people often ask the question if you are an atheist why do you not go around murdering people. Apart from fear of getting caught why should we not just kill anyone you want or is the only reason we don't because of how our morals came from evolution.

This is an extreme example. A better example might be giving money to charity. Why should you give money to help someone that you are never going to see when you are just making yourself worse off by doing so. If you are intelligent enough to see that the reason you would be doing it is a 'side-affect' of how humans evolved then is there a reason to still do it.

Also I know if everybody in the world was to think in this same way, then we would no longer live in a civilised society and we would probably all kill each other. I accept that but it does not answer the question of why each individual should be moral if it would make their life better

I am an atheist and am also a moral person. I am not trying to argue that we should not be moral but am looking for someone to give me a good reason on how to answer this question to religious people because I can't think of one myself at the moment.

[LostLocke]

Religious people often ask the question if you are an atheist why do you not go around murdering people

I think the real question is, why would I go around murdering people?

By their question, they are saying that our default position is to want to run around murdering people, but their god puts the brakes on that by issuing 'morals' that we have to live by.
In other words, they are indirectly implying that if they learned their god didn't exist, or their god declared that life was now a free-for-all, they would turn into murderers.

[Chad32]

For the same reason anyone should be moral. Because it will lead to a better life within the community. We're a social species, and those of us that get along with the group tend to do better in life.

I would think it's the christians who are more likely to go around killing people, because their god has such a dim view of people who don't worship him.

No religion has a monopoly on morality. Certainly not the Abrahamic religions, which are much more concerned about what their god wants, than what society needs. It only takes a cursory reading of the bible to figure out that if we actually followed it, we would quickly descend into barbarism. Killing and enslaving those who don't worship the same god, pushing down every group to keep them below the white male members of the population. We have been slowly growing out of the narrow minded and violent teachings of the bible. This nation wasn't founded on the christian religion, and the more we move away from it the better this country becomes as far as equality goes.

[vincent150]

One of my points is though, when a religious person asks this question atheists immediately turn the question onto them which is not what I want this debate to be.

You say why 'would' you want to murder someone. If doing so would make your life better then apart from fear of being caught why would you not if it wasn't for morality. Again, this is an extreme example.

Stealing might be a better example. You steal something off someone else and don't get caught. You have made your life better by taking it and someone you don't knows life worse. Why not do this if you an atheist?

[Esquilax]

Um, doesn't life work out better if we all get along and don't murder each other? Isn't your chance for survival and prosperity improved when you are A: not constantly at risk of dying, and B: not constantly at risk of getting thrown in prison for murder?

That's the obvious answer, but it skips over how malformed your initial question is, OP. Theists so often make the mistake of assuming that morality is all about them, which is why they phrase their moral questions as personal ones; "why be moral as an atheist? Why not go murder anyone you like? What's going to stop you?"

But morality isn't about individual people, it's about everyone together. Why be moral? Our entire society works better when we are. A society in which immoral behaviors are tolerated, where murder is allowed and rape is okay and so on, is demonstrably worse off. The reason human society works as well as it does is that it lets us specialize; we can have whole careers based around just medicine, or just farming, and we have a system in place that rewards those individual specialized labors and allows those who benefit from them to trust the working output of those labors. But what trust should the farmer have that his work will be compensated for when it's acceptable for the people to just steal from him? What confidence does the doctor have that his medical advice will be a benefit to him if killing him once you've got your prescription is okay?

Our entire social system is based on a mutual trust and agreement not to hurt one another. That trust breaks down, and our ability to have the comfortable lives that we do goes with it. Morality isn't about individuals; the reason you should be moral is that you want everyone else to be too. Not just your immediate social circle or your civilization- so many theist objections to what I'm saying just try to pull back the scale by one degree of separation, like "what if you killed someone you didn't know?" or "what if it benefits you to enslave another society?"- but everyone. Everything just works out better that way, for us all.

[vincent150]

For the same reason anyone should be moral. Because it will lead to a better life within the community. We're a social species, and those of us that get along with the group tend to do better in life.

I touched upon this in my first post and don't think it is a valid answer. Yes if everyone was immoral it would make for a much worse community, but the way it is now, if you know everyone else in the community will be moral, why not benefit yourself by being one of the few immoral people in it. For example, why not not give money to charity yourself but then happily take money from charity for when you need it later in life?

[Chad32]

Only in the short term. Unless you already have enough power to be confident in doing it repeatedly.

On the other hand, I was robbed recently by people that I let stay in my house. There's not really anything I can do, since I let her in, aside from hunting them down and beating them half to death.

But in the long run, she's going to be trusted less and less, and remain homeless and unloved. Drifting from place to place, talking about how everyone hates her for "no good reason", and wondering why the people who have custody over her kid keep blocking her from having shared or full custody.

[Exian]

Morality is a quality of being social creatures, which is the way our evolutionary cookie crumbled. Morality is beneficial to the survival of the individual as well as the tribe. To me, the question "should atheists be moral" is kind of nonsensical. It's almost unavoidable by all humans, not just atheists.

If we didn't evolve as social creatures, then it would be every man for himself. Murder and all manner of immoral behavior would be the norm. The question of morality wouldn't come up. If having even one bad apple was detrimental to our survival, the bad apple would be worked out of our system. Every person would be trustworthy. The question of morality wouldn't come up. It's because our soecies is able to have both good and bad people that morality is even brought up. The question shouldn't be "should we be moral", but "Can we even avoid being moral as individuals?", and on the flip side "Can a murderous psychopath make a conscience decision to be moral?"

[Neo-Scholastic]

The idea of 'should' only makes sense in reference to values and goals, with can only come from two sources: outside the moral agent (objectively) or from within to the moral agent (subjective). Without values and goals that transcend the individual, like the Good or the True, the moral agent must look to their own desires and needs as the source. Now to transcend the individual one need only go up one level to the community. That move doesn't say from where a community gets its values. Appealing to evolution doesn't solve the problem, since it only applies to survival. You need to be able to show that survival is the ultimate source of value to get near anything objective.

[vincent150]

Um, doesn't life work out better if we all get along and don't murder each other? Isn't your chance for survival and prosperity improved when you are A: not constantly at risk of dying, and B: not constantly at risk of getting thrown in prison for murder?

This is a similar argument to the above post I just replied to. I agree with you completely it makes life better for everyone but why should someone who is intelligent enough to take advantage of everyone else being moral to each while being immoral himself not do it.

Also your arguments such as not getting thrown in prison are reasons which I noted which we shouldn't take into account as it's exactly moral if this is the only reason you are killing somone.