Snyder Than You

agirlcalledchris:

“Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.”

— 10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked (via hellbentforleather)

You only need to look at some of the leading “conservatives” and “religious leaders” of the last 20-30 years to see that even that “flimsy belief” doesn’t restrain a lot of the religious from sin.

For me, it’s the recognition that anyone, including me, is capable of heinous things. The methods of torture and murder that my imagination has conjured would make Sun Tzu and modern horror writers proud. Why I do not act on such things is not merely this “flimsy belief” in a “made up” deity, but I think that the existence this deity explains why I have a conscience even better than it explains the water cycle.

To simplify, it’s not that the morality requires a deity or that the deity demands a morality, but that the morality attests to a deity.

Of course, I think that actually still plays into the original quote. Oh well.