Atheism and Morality

On 19/12/2016, we got an very interesting online discussion on “Atheism and Morality”

We had to read an article  on "Atheist also have a definite Moral code” which was taken from 'Speaking Tree' column of The Times of India, pg 12, 19 Dec 2016.

We had to express our views about that.

Here were my views:-

I agree that atheists also have a definite moral code.

If we see the dictionary meaning of the word ‘moral’ or ‘ morality’,  it means “derived from personal conscience: based on what somebody's conscience suggests is right or wrong, rather than on what rules or the law says should be done. (Microsoft® Encarta® 2009. © 1993-2008 Microsoft Corporation.)”

Thus we can say morality has nothing to do with religion.

As Christopher Hitchens have stated “Morality comes from humanism and is stolen by religion for its own purposes.”

 “Nature has endowed us with free will” as Sumit Paul stated, but religion binds us by rules ad defines what is right and wrong. Morality is a choice and it depends on situation and it differs from person to person, culture to culture.

The writer of this article have proved that atheist have morality with help of many examples.

There many examples of religious acts where morally the acts are wrong but from the religious point of view they are correct.

For example:- The attacks of 9/11 or 26/11 were morally incorrect but for the religious extremists it was a religious act; it doesn’t matter for them whether it is right or wrong.

Morality comes from sense of experience.

We have examples of many Bollywood films like Oh My God! and P.K, which comes with a message that morality and religion are different things.

Morality comes from humanism. Non- believer can be moral or immoral. Similarly, Believer also can be immoral or moral.

Read the article and express your views about this in the comment section.