As this is an old re-post, I've added some pictures to spice it up.

Over the course of my intellectual development, I have found that the predominant question I have been unable to answer internally and set aside without social repercussion has been concerned with the nature of religion. I have followed a path of enlightenment, secular inquisition, and comparative analysis, all of which have deposited me firmly and without apology on the shores of Atheism. I have read the sacred books of the three Abrahamic religions multiple times, both during a period of personal doubt, when I was open to the possibility of some metaphysical being, and after I had created a system of belief that was founded on intellect and reason (read here: not a slight against those who use “faith” to direct their belief, but rather, as a delineation as to why I believe what I do).

A brief interlude about faith: I cement my understanding of the world on fact and reason; therefore, I necessarily set aside faith as a luxury that has no place in concrete intellectual concerns, and for this alone I make no apologies. Faith is, by definition, a belief in a premise without logical proof. Notice the definition does NOT say “a belief in something even though there may not be proof”, the language here is very specific. The lack of proof is necessary for faith to take hold, and I afford faith absolutely no domain in my life, for intellectual reasons.

The scope of arguments in which I find myself besieged and beleaguered include: the nature of my lack of faith, my personal beliefs regarding the lack of soul or lack of an afterlife, the overwhelming evidence supporting the fact of evolution versus the intellectually stunting and dangerously ignorant dogma of Biblical creationism (again, here, the definition is specific, as not to broadly insult or slight my friends. The facts, as few and far between as they may be, are thus:

1) The Earth is not 6000 years old. To turn a blind eye to the mountain of evidence that is supported by scientists and intellectuals belonging to every possible religious sect in the world requires either a staggering ignorance regarding the basic principles of the sciences concerned, a fabrication of amazing proportions (i.e., Satan planted fossils to throw modern scientists off the trail), or a leap in faith so wide it completely overshoots logic to the point of being absurd.
2) It is literally impossible for one man and one woman to populate the Earth to the extent in which we find modern populations. Explain the principles of genetics or biological reproduction to a child and they would tell you the same.
3) Thanks to the ongoing genome project, and advances in modern gene technology, we are capable of watching in near-real time the process of evolution taking place, both in model organisms as well as in our own phylogeny.

All of that aside, the most commonly created argument against my Atheism regards morality. It is, in fact, a two-pronged approach. The distillation of the argument goes:

A) If you weren’t raised in a religious background (or do not now consider yourself religious), how can you consider yourself moral? Where does your morality come from, if not from religion?

-and (this one, more frequently)-

B) If you don’t plan on raising your children to follow a specific sect, how can you possibly instill a sense of morality or ethical culpability in their impressionable young minds?

I was inspired to address this question after a conversation I had with a good friend last night, and I feel I’ve nailed down my response as well as I can at this moment. I find myself agreeing, for the most part, with Richard Dawkins, both in his books The God Delusion and The Selfish Gene. When he responds to an argument posited by Stephen Jay Gould, he writes:

Similarly, we can all agree that science's entitlement to advise us
on moral values is problematic, to say the least. But does Gould
really want to cede to religion the right to tell us what is good and
what is bad? The fact that it has nothing else to contribute to
human wisdom is no reason to hand religion a free license to tell us
what to do. Which religion, anyway? The one in which we happen
to have been brought up? To which chapter, then, of which book of
the Bible should we turn - for they are far from unanimous and
some of them are odious by any reasonable standards. How many
literalists have read enough of the Bible to know that the death
penalty is prescribed for adultery, for gathering sticks on the
sabbath and for cheeking your parents? If we reject Deuteronomy
and Leviticus (as all enlightened moderns do), by what criteria do
we then decide which of religion's moral values to accept? Or
should we pick and choose among all the world's religions until we
find one whose moral teaching suits us? If so, again we must ask,
by what criterion do we choose? And if we have independent
criteria for choosing among religious moralities, why not cut out
the middle man and go straight for the moral choice without the
religion?

In my estimation, this cuts directly to the quick of the argument. Who are the religious to attack the non-believers on the grounds of their morality? Where in the history of human evolution or social development has there been a structure that can be blamed for more hatred and bigotry than religion? In the years during the human age, whether they be measured by the thousands or the millions, religion has been the primary tool that has been used to excuse all the horrors that we have been forced to endure. As Dawkins puts it, “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully. Those of us schooled from infancy in his ways can become desensitized to their horror”. I would ascribe most, if not all, of these attributes to religion in general. However, to say that I am extrapolating those qualities of the major religions to encompass all people supporting or ascribing to those religions is a fallacy that doesn’t merit a response. The point that is being made is simply: Who are the religious to act with prejudice or malice regarding secular morality, given their track record thus far? Or, as Bill Maher famously soliliquozes at the end of Religious: “If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence, and sheer ignorance as religion is, you'd resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a mafia wife, for the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers.”

Of course, to truly make a defense of my morality, it isn’t sufficient to merely attack the attackers. That is a policy that has resided for too long in the hands of the religious majority, and one that is only useful in tearing down another person, instead of building up oneself. My morality is based a simple ideal on which I feel ALL morality should be based: altruism. I believe in acting in a selfless manner, for others’ good, as well as for my own. It’s really that simple.

What astounds me, however, is the inability for certain people to accept the principles of altruism as an acceptable alternative to religion, Why is it so outlandish to accept that a child can be taught to “do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing”? Why does it seem to so many people that the only option for teaching morality is to fall back on a roughly 2000-year-old work of fiction? In a best-case scenario, the social rules and contracts drawn up in the Bible are marginally outdated, with little to no practical application in a modern society. The majority of the permanent and incendiary moral questions that are being debated nowadays weren’t even thought to be possibilities during the period of time in which the Bible was written. Which doesn’t even take into account the fact that the majority of the Bible is written in such vague terms that anyone can interpret the message to be for or against anything they want. This is why the Bible is being used even now as a defense for and against slavery, for and against abortion, for and against polygamy, domestic abuse, murder, etc. Interpretation can be used to justify or attack anything you want, there are no concrete truths when it comes to morality. The closest thing we come to a “concrete list of moral certainties”, the Decalogue, are just as weak.

The major world religions can’t agree on what they say. The Talmud lists the first four as declarations on how to worship God, establishing that he is jealous and insecure in his power. Many Christians consider “I am the Lord your God” as a preface, not as a commandment, as other groups do. Even commandments such as “Thou shall not kill” are up for interpretation. Some say the word “kill” actually means “murder”, because at the time, it was socially acceptable (and therefore, not punishable), to “revenge kill” a person who had killed a family member. The lines are muddled even in the “top ten”. Which brings me back to my original question: Did I really need a 2000-year-old work of fiction to tell me not to kill? Or to steal? Or to commit adultery? Obviously not. For whatever secular reason you want to use, “eye for an eye”, “social repercussion”, “golden rule”, “PUNISHMENT”, it doesn’t matter. If you really relied on such an old doctrine to tell you what’s right and wrong, without using any modern social cues or guidance, then there is a larger problem at stake.

In quick summation: I hope that my children will have inherited the integrity of character and intellectual fortitude from their mother and I that they are able to understand a basic premise such as “do the right thing”. And if they aren’t able to wrap their heads around the concept of being a good person for the sake of being a good person, I would hope that I wouldn’t find it necessary to rely on such a flawed and piecemeal list of partial millennia-old laws. I would be able to use my wife’s moral responsibility, as well as my own. I would use intellect, reason, and altruism to teach my children the difference between right and wrong, just as my parents used with me. To feel that my children were only doing the right thing because they were concerned about a series of ultimate rewards and punishments would make me feel like a failure as a parent, or at least as a moral compass.

My children will know to do the right thing, and not because they’re afraid of a God watching them at all times, like some over-indulged Santa Claus (whether they believe in that God or not); not because they’re concerned about their everlasting soul getting into heaven (whether they believe in one or not); not because they are worried about being punished in Hell (whether they believe in it or not). Not even because they are worried about going to prison, or letting down their parents, or looking bad in the eyes of their peers, or feeling ashamed, or having someone hurting them.

My children will do the right thing because they will be intelligent enough to understand the concept of “the right thing”. They won’t need to be coerced or bribed or punished or frightened or lied to or manipulated or condescended to as the major world religious do every day. They will be good people because their parents are. Period.

There are two ways in which scripture might be a source of morals
or rules for living. One is by direct instruction, for example through
the Ten Commandments, which are the subject of such bitter
contention in the culture wars of America's boondocks. The other
is by example: God, or some other biblical character, might serve as
- to use the contemporary jargon - a role model. Both scriptural
routes, if followed through religiously (the adverb is used in its
metaphoric sense but with an eye to its origin), encourage a system
of morals which any civilized modern person, whether religious or
not, would find - I can put it no more gently - obnoxious.
To be fair, much of the Bible is not systematically evil but just
plain weird, as you would expect of a chaotically cobbled-together
anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated,
distorted and 'improved' by hundreds of anonymous authors,
editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each
other, spanning nine centuries. This may explain some of the sheer
strangeness of the Bible. But unfortunately it is this same weird
volume that religious zealots hold up to us as the inerrant source of
our morals and rules for living. Those who wish to base their
morality literally on the Bible have either not read it or not under-
stood it, as Bishop John Shelby Spong, in The Sins of Scripture,
rightly observed.