Once again, I am forced to ask, "Can there be a moral atheist"?

Question

If yes, what use is religion?

If no, why not? I try my best to be a good person and I'm not the only one.

Answer 1

Once again I am forced to answer that morality and religion are not inter-dependent.

Morals and taboos, a sense of right and wrong, existed long before religion and will exist long after religion is dispensed with as an unnecessary prop for the feeble-minded. In fact if you study religious texts, what they contain at their core is a "code of conduct" (often not entirely appropriate for today's society but a code nevertheless). These religious texts were written by men as "rules to live by" and one could argue that as a religion based one them only formed AFTER such texts were written and disseminated then the authors were in fact atheists.

There are plenty of corrupt priests and other religious figures just as there are plenty of good honest decent people who happen not to believe in god.

Answer 2

Of course there can.

Almost all modern moral values are derived outside religion. Only 3 of the 10 commandments have ever made it into law. Meanwhile we have sensibly chosen - through atheistic humanist reasoning - to not include in our values stoning adulterers to death or mutilating theives. In fact, we choose to ignore 95% of the moral values of the bible because they are sick and depraved.

Religion is of no real value in establishing moral values - it simply embeds prejudice and give it strong roots.

The founding fathers of the USA all came from deeply religious and deeply flawed cultures, and as a result were atheists. The US would be more like Iraq today had they instead followed religious moral in establishing the Union.

Answer 3

Once again I am forced to answer..

Each person lives by a code of morals and ethics whether that code of morals and ethics matches your or not is irrelevant.. Whether someone chooses their code of morals and ethics from religious dogma or another source is irrelevant. The code of morals and ethics is still present..

What use is religion?

As far as I can see there is no use for religion, it divides mankind into factions that often go to war over slight differences in dogma.. Not a very good system for creating peace and harmony...

Answer 4

Yes, what use is religion???
I live a perfectly ethical life without religion.
Why you ask?
Because humans need a standard of behavior to interact with each other. There are many different cultures that came up with a 'golden rule', you know the whole 'Do unto others' bit? This doesn't necessitate a belief in a higher power. Its just a decent way to get along with your fellow earthlings.

Answer 5

Of course one can be quite moral without religion. What is more I think it has greater value to live a moral life without it because you strive to be a moral person rather than just fear of punishment or desire for reward. Which do you think shows a higher morality?

But Christians will agree with this. Ask any of them if they think that everybody was a bunch of thieving murdering adulterers right up until Moses brought the 10 commandments down the mountain. Of course not. So we did not really need God to point out that killing and stealing is wrong did we?

Answer 6

Atheists have morals but even within that group and any other those morals will differ from person to person. And then that leads to the question of what/whose morals we measure them by..
Love these questions; they really get you thinking...
Religion is useful to those who have a use for it.
I mean a fork is no use to me if I am eating tomato soup, you know.

Answer 7

I dont think that religious morality = universal morality!
Take the idea of sexual morality in Christianity for example...they dont believe in sex before marriage(even for mature adults who are unmarried) because it is considered immoral as the bible says so.But in the secular world, the emphasis or morality lies in sexual responsibility of using protection and not about controlling and propagating the condemnation of pre-marital sex.
Whats the use of religion then?...Keep the people stupid with religious laws and bring them under control so that they may assume they are the moral ones, and hopefully religion would still be relevant in the modern world.

Answer 8

Definetly!, I became atheist after I learned to be moral. Religion is for the sake of people who cannot come up with a moral code of their own. It takes a certain amount of enlightenment and suffering to not be dependant on religion, as a means of moral and comfort. The general public can not handle this, and without religion as a readily available moral code we would have anarchy.

Answer 9

This is an easy question to answer once you get past the labels--there are good people all over the globe who don't believe in God. Our daughter-in law's father was the best man I ever knew and he never darkened the church doors. He was sweet, loving, giving, tolerant, and kind to everyone. While his wife--a pentecostal radical Christian, never let a day pass without telling him he was going to hell. She is a gossipy, mean, nasty, judgemental, hard-hearted person. Not all Christians are like her, however--and not all Atheists are like him either! Let's loose the labels and look at the person. "You will know them by their fruits"-right?

Answer 10

Morality does not dreive itself from religion. Of course atheists can be moral. Morality dreives from society's needs for acceptable standards of behaviour, else society would be torn apart by lawlessness. Morality naturally evolves in order to create boundaries of acceptable behaviour that may, over a period of time, adapt to better meet the current needs of society. Religion, being dogma, cannot adapt, leaving a society with a dubious basis of morality (where it is acceptable to ask a parent to sacrifice a child to prove loyalty, or for victors in battle to rape and enslave all the opposition's virgin females, both examples from the Old testament).

Religion has no practical use. God doesn't exist. The afterlife doesn't exist. Religion is a complex tool of social control.