Hi Guys.
Just to get us back on topic. There still seems to be a preconception that atheists still believe in one deity or another and are corrupt and without morals. This all seems to be from the inflexible constant that there must be a god and their must be a devil, and these constructs are held to be true as they were written in a book that was originally written by ancient jewish scribes, badly translated, edit and compiled by a Roman Republican Forum, then retranslated in a flexible manner at the command of an english king.
Moral Psychology Research Lab
On the subject of Morals, the moral absolute does not exist in any human being upon birth. It is learnt from the culture and environment within which it develops. Every moral decision results from a process of 'if this was done to me how would it feel?' and/or 'what are the possible positive and negative tribal outcomes from me performing a certain action'. You burn your finger on a hot oven hob. It causes you a pain which last for a long time. Do you now have the urge to put someone else's hand, who may be important to you, on the hob? Well mostly no because you are empathetic to the pain they will endure. But some people do who may well be religious, they just don't have the brain wired in such a way to create a socially acceptable decision of the pain they will inflict. You may argue a christian would never do that due to the 10 commandments, however, there have been plenty of cases where people are defined by their local communities as being 'Good Christians', Ted Bundy for one example, until they are caught, prosecuted and identified as being either a psychopath or a narcissist. Then all of a sudden they are servants of the devil despite their previous social or religious status. Surely this is tangible proof that someone's actions and their believes are not always related. Take for example the Catholic priests sexually abusing young boys yet their faith is not in dispute.
The stonewalled refusal of some users to accept that people do not share their beliefs does demonstrate the cause of intolerance between the religious and non-religious communities. Yet were we to say that you are all lying to yourselves for believing a big bearded father figure creator of all fairytale character, people would claim us as being bigoted. As I do not believe in any divine or insidious beings yet am a morally secure person, I could argue that I don't believe there are true theists because they believe in something infinitely improbable as to be impossible.
“Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist,'" says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing."
"But," says Man, "The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED."
"Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"Oh, that was easy," says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
