On The Morality of Atheists

Although the criticism contained within this piece relates to all religions, examples are taken from the Christian Bible and while reference to the Bible is made, I have taken a consensus view of events due to the large and differing translations of the Bible as opposed to direct quotes, in most instances, with appropriate references to the source.

A consistent concern amongst the religious is the source of morality within the atheist community in the absence of a divine creator. It is concerning to think that, without this eternal authority, the religious would not be able to independently reason the immorality of murder, rape and torture, or maybe the concern should be that, based on religious teachings, they are able to discern that murder, rape and torture are immoral, as, for specific circumstances, murder and rape are the explicit commands of God.

When Moses was leading the Israelites from Egypt (on the understand that this event has some historic basis), the Israelites began to worship Baal of Peor which angered God who, in his jealously, demanded that Moses arrange the deaths of all the men who worshipped the false idol (Number 25:1-5). On this occasion it is clear that God has no specific issue with the murder of the worshippers of other gods. Later, God instructed Moses and the Israelites of go to war with the Midianites, which resulted in genocide when every man of the Midian was killed, followed, after victory, with the deaths of every remaining male and the women who were not virgins. The women who were virgins were not killed, but enslaved for the purposes of sex by the victorious Israelites (Number 31:7 and 17-18). For a modern parallel it would be worth looking into the treatment of the Yazidi women by ISIS.

Those Christians who do not believe in genocide and enslavement for the worship of false idols and as the result of conflict have developed an alternative belief in how the enemy on such occasions should be treated. Due to the contradictory nature of the Bible, it is easy to find other passages what may discount such actions such as Luke 6:31 'Do to others as you would have them do to you’, but to make this decision requires the analysis of information followed by an internal rationalisation to determine which words of God should take precedence and which should be dismissed as myth or lacking in relevance in modern society. This is a decision that can fall on either side of the debate and which shows that humans do have the ability to reason independently when offered two conflicting views.

A similar example can be made with a religious view to homosexuality. Leviticus 18:22 states that a man should not lie with another man as he would with a woman because that would be an abomination and the punishment, as described in Leviticus 20:13, is death. On this occasion the specific passages of Leviticus, which also include commandants on the wearing of clothes made of two different materials and the eating of pig and rabbit, may be dismissed as irrelevant, or Hebrews 8:13 can be used to state that the old way of doing things has become obsolete and is ready to vanish because Jesus Christ has alternative ideas. In either circumstance a humanist decision by the religious whether to justify their homophobia by quoting scripture or to justify their acceptance of homosexuality by, again, quoting scripture must be made.There are many homosexuals who are Christians, and many Christians, if not explicitly pro-homosexuality, who take the moderate and progressive view that sexuality is not actually relevant or important in modern society with such selective reasoning and still retain their belief in a divine authority.

If Christians are able to formulate moral positions based on information wholly within the Bible by choosing to give a higher authority to specific passages, then cannot atheists gain their own morality through looking at different sources from literature, society and through reason, outside of the Bible. By accepting this the answer to the question 'From where do atheists get their morality?’, is that they gain their morality from exactly the same place as the religious by analysing a series of viewpoints and making an internal humanistic decision, just in the absence of an unnecessary deity.