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I keep up with Irregular Webcomic which is more like three comics. A few different stories update on different days. Irregular Webcomic often has some text beneath the strip to explain or clarify things or for the author to just talk about something. Unlike many other comics with this text, I actually read it for Irregular Webcomic.
The comic for today differs from the typical strip and doesn't advance any storyline. Instead it makes a humorous snark at places loaded with advertising. However, the text below the strip is perhaps more interesting. In it is an explanation why of there is disagreement about whether religion is necessary for morality (emphasis original):
I've never understood how religious people who are basically good can think like this. It seems clear to me that the vast majority of atheists (thus with no religious moral code) are basically moral people, extremely unlikely to swing at people with axes when the fancy takes them. If they weren't, the world would be a seriously dreadful place. How can the people who believe this sort of thing not see that?
So this has always puzzled and disturbed me. Until a few days ago when I raised the topic in conversation with a friend of mine. And he had an explanation.
Atheists, he said, need to find a moral direction from within. We need to examine our own values and beliefs in the context of human society, put some thought into them, and behave in ways that accord with what we decide is the moral way to act. There are various expressions of moral codes that work in this context. A simple one is "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." You don't need to believe in God to think about that and decide that yes, if everyone lived by that simple maxim, the world would be a nicer place. You don't need God to be nice to people. You don't need God to have morals.
Strongly religious people, on the other hand, get moral direction from the authority of God. God tells them how to behave, and God is the most important thing in their lives, so there's their moral code right there. They never have to think about their morals, because they are decreed from on high. They never have to go through a logical argument with themselves to decide that they should be nice to other people - they're just nice to people because that's what God says to do. If they never have to internalise their values and derive their own moral code, then it's not even something that they realise can be done. When a person like this looks at an atheist, they don't realise that the atheist has probably spent time (more or less consciously) to produce a moral code that they endeavour to live up to. All they see is someone without the moral code of God. They don't realise that there are other ways in which one can be a moral person. So they conclude that the atheist has no morals.
This is why religious fundamentalists are so scared of atheists. Everyone who believes is okay, because God will keep them in line, but those atheists, they'll probably stick a knife in you as soon as look at you. This is the problem with religious fundamentalist morals.
I've quoted that as it sums it all up quite well. He does go on to explain that when he says "religious fundamentalist" in this context, he means the extremists.
There are also extremist atheists who, using same logic, only reversed, see the religious as merely lazy and using belief as a drop-in replacement for actually thinking about things. For the religious extremists, that might be true. But the claim that everyone is either an unthinking sheep or a completely rational being isn't right. Religion doesn't make a person an idiot, and absence of religion doesn't make a person a genius. Nor does religion make one a good person or lack of religion make one a bad person.
