Atheism and morality

[sapphi_snake]

The Fury said:

mai said:

As people have mentioned not quite right. Morale is a very pragmatic phenomenon that society needs to survive, most of moral prohibitions and guidelines are based around natural rules that could be easily explained (sometimes even biological rules, such as ban on incest in most cultures), of course, eventually some of them became imperatives that not necessarily need to or even could be explained.

True while many are morals can come from either the need to survive or as sapphi_snake said 'Greek philosophers' it is religious that spread these morals and religion that put them down in writing for generations to follow. 

Take examples from differing faiths. Older faiths would regularly do sacrifices both human and animal, while in our western society which is based on mostly old testament laws and morals we would see these as morally bad, in those faiths at those times, a sacrifice may not have been as seen as bad but something to 'please the gods'. It is the faiths and religions that are defining what is moral.

It is recently when atheism has taken hold that many of those morals, like sacrifice was seen by newer/old testament faiths and others as more barbaric and immoral, that what the faiths see as immoral just aren't anymore as defined by understanding.

The old testament influence didn't exist up until Christianity (that's 4th century AD). Also the Greeks and Romans didn't perform human sacrifices.