I have to write a paper about atheists and there morals and values...can you help me out!?
2006-07-16 12:24:35 · 19 answers · asked by pingme03 2 in Society & Culture ➔ Religion & Spirituality
Atheists have varying morals and values just like everyone else. They just don't believe that morals and values are necessarily tied to religious teaching. I personally believe that the highest moral value is liberty, followed closely by achievement. Atheists tend to be more tolerant about things like sex, drugs (including alcohol and tobacco), obscenity, and other frequent targets of religious groups, but not all atheists are. We are just as diverse as any other demographic. A lot of atheists line up with libertarian political philosophy in that if it doesn't hurt someone else or violate their personal or property rights, then you should be free to do it at will. But that doesn't mean that all atheists are nymphomaniac drug-addicted alcoholics. Just some of us. ;-)
2006-07-16 12:33:30 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 13⤊ 0⤋
People who believe that atheists have no morals are absolutely WRONG. It's not like we are robots. Although, religious people believe morals are objective but most atheists believe morals are subjective. I can think stealing a pen is wrong but you may not agree with me. You may think smoking weed is good and I might disagree with you. Do gays deserve to have the right to get married? Is abortion acceptable? Is eating animals okay? If morals were objective then we wouldn't have debates. Getting back to the topic.... Not all atheists have the same moral values, atheism is not a religion... we have the same instinctive moral values... Also, keep in mind that EVERY religion has different moral values. Which proves that the atheistic belief that morality is subjective is true.
2015-08-14 18:48:11 · answer #2 · answered by Nidia 1 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I'm an atheist and I have higher morals and values than most of the religious people I listen to on this site.
2006-07-16 12:37:36 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 8⤊ 0⤋
Me, I am a secular humanist. I go by my conscience, and I believe that anyone who needs an external source of morality to be good, say, threats of hellfire, is a monster and should be locked up.
And I do NOT believe in "objective morality" partly because morality is an abstract concepts and abstract concepts only exist in the mind of living things and therefore are not objective by definition, but MOSTLY, because every time I hear theists* or atheists arguing for objective morality or moral relativism, they end up letting Hitler off the hook! How is that a morality system at all?
*it's wierd, they argue for and against the same thing at the same time, it's like they're trying to force us to conform to a strawman just so they can hit the strawman
2015-07-23 16:28:50 · answer #4 · answered by ? 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
An atheists morals and values are determined the same way anyone Else's morals and values are determined. Atheists and people of faith do it the same way, what is moral and valuable is determined by our own self interests.
2006-07-16 12:31:37 · answer #5 · answered by Ray H 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋
There are a variety of moral philosophies to which an atheist could subscribe, just as their are a variety of religions to which a theist could subscribe. An atheist who lacks an explicit specific moral philosophy (like a theist without a religion) will generally behave in the way which they have learned through instruction, experience, and their innate senses of reciprocity and fairness, which are present in the brains of all social primates when functioning correctly.
2014-09-18 10:15:20 · answer #6 · answered by Dean 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
I get my morals, from empathy, I.e "how would I feel if someone did this to me"
Morals are just anot opinion of what is right and wrong, religion gets this wrong all the time, for example making the lives of gays worse due to religious beliefs and they even used the bible as a means to allow slavery, religion is part of the reason America is killing people in the middle east and it's the reason why people can't understand why Muslims are angry.
morals were around before religion, there are even old laws dating back to before the bible.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Hammurabi
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_of_Ur-Nammu
Religion is not necessary for morals, it is my responsibility to choose the correct morals, I am responsible for my own actions if I hurt someone else, because I can empathise with people, I consciously make a decision to not hurt people or affect their lives in a negative way.
2014-11-09 07:13:05 · answer #7 · answered by Loey 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
As an atheist, I do not discriminate people by religion. Most non atheists, specially the religious one, look the people of other religion with the feeling "they are wrong, they choosed the wrong way". I don't have any feelings at all when I hear someone is jew, or catholic.
I can`'t understand people fighting people because of religious reasons.
2006-07-16 12:34:00 · answer #8 · answered by choloconche 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
They could not possibly HAVE any morals or values, because what is the source of all morals and values?.... God! So if they don't believe in Him, regardless of what they say, they have no morals or values. Or they contradict themselves, and believe in God after all.
2006-07-16 12:29:19 · answer #9 · answered by rsb332002 2 · 0⤊ 12⤋
I would hope that atheists would have a value system based on Humanism... meaning that compassion and understanding of juman nature guides their actions. Being an Agnostic...it is my value system
2006-07-16 12:29:12 · answer #10 · answered by Tom Van Dyke 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋