Where you get your moral from, atheist?

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Video is fully translated to English - Sherif Gaber, a Egyptian youtuber, is one of the most known ex-muslim atheist youtubers in the Arab world.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhRlwHGOgJs

Couldn't find a version in English, so I don't know what he's saying.

But to answer the question, I get my morals from considering the effect my behaviour may have on others. Whether or not those morals coincide with what scripture says about what any deity wants is another matter. I would say that where there's a divergence, the humanist method is better because it's direct - I think there's a lot of Biblical talk about sin that ignores the sinned-against, to its detriment.

There are plenty of people who have morals, who are atheist, and plenty more who lack morals of any sort. At least with religion there is a sense that people want to be good in that community, in my experience anyway.

People often assume that atheists are less moral, but evidence demonstrates that this is not the case.

https://today.uconn.edu/2017/08/think-a ... -killers/#

Youtube offers subtitles, it is not enabled by default.

Click on « cc », he always translates his videos.

So far, I agree with what he’s saying - that morality is innate. I don’t think think that the Golden Rule influences human behavior so much as the Golden Rule was influenced BY human behavior. Being decent is beneficial from an evolutionary perspective.

On mobile:

This.
"Social darvinists" tend to forget that humans evolved as societes, not as lone individuals.
Our moral sense is something that helps us to sacrifice short-term individual gains for long-term gains of the whole society and be happy about it.

I think my problem is that I watch YouTube videos on Invidious (to avoid the tracking and ads), which probably doesn't have a translation feature.

I think I’ve become a more moral person since I’ve become an atheist. One example: my religion followed the Bible strictly, so there was a lot of homophobia going on. I could never be as homophobic as I needed to be. It’s a pretty strange thing to feel guilty about not feeling hateful, but that’s where I was.

Life is much easier now that I can follow my own moral code and not be restrained by this imaginary and unsavory character:



Mental freedom frees up a lot of space for other things.

My religius upbringing wasn't that crazy, catholicism has its "hate the sin love the sinner" concept running (actually, catholicism is so big that you can find all kinds of attitudes there) and before I met my first openly gay collegue, I was just prejudiced by the picture of gay activists - not realising activists of all causes and colors are a special bunch.

However, I relate to becoming more moral after giving up religion, too. I was made believe lack of religion means lack of purpose and nihilism and I found out it was completely untrue. If there's no god to judge me, there's also no god to clean up after me - so I might not be judged by some eschatological being but all the good and bad I do will be what I will leave after myself. That's somehow way more motivating than any vision of judgement.

Maybe that's just me - I generally find out I perform way better when motivated from inside.

I make them up myself based on my own judgement.

That's no worse than God making up his morals based on his own judgement.

One time I got into an argument with a Catholic who said my made up morals aren't based on anything. But since God made up his morals, they're not based on anything either.

When an atheist behaves morally, it's not done out of fear of divine punishment. When a theist behaves morally, it might be. I think the atheist shows a more genuine, less selfish form of morality. There's more likely to be a heartfelt regard for the well-being of others.

I second. To answer the initial question: I'm an avid reader and I'd say a good part of my "morality" or spirituality comes from what I've learned from humanist writers and philosophers. The rest comes from a personal motto influenced by the above and from learning IRL from well-advised people: always work with your heart first and foremost (not simply or mainly for the benefits, whatever they may be). And work (or contribute) with the highest sense of ethics to safeguard the people who are more vulnerable than you.