I do have a real and consistent reason for behaving morally, it's just one that doesn't require a supernatural foundation. I was raised in a happy family, one that reinforced that conventionally 'good' behavior, and that rewarded appropriate social behavior. I lived with good role models who offered love without conditions, who taught by example rather than with fear or threats. I live now in a family and with a community of friends who do not demand obeisance to superstition in order to give respect. I am rewarded materially and emotionally for moral behavior.What's important in atheism is it takes away religion's ability to make truth claims about the natural world and the workings of science. The argument from social reinforcement would be a lot more convincing if there was any research to back it up, but that' s beside the point. Once you've taken the truth claims out of religion, what you have left is not amoral atheism, but art and culture. The how and the why of justifying the ways of humanity to itself. From Antiquity to the Present day, this is something that we all share and participate in. Art for art's sake, art for reason's sake, art for passion's sake, art for and against the grain, for thousands of years. And I would argue that it is this third way that we should lead the discussion.
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Listening to: Sufjan Stevens - Variation On "Commemorative Transfiguration & Communion At Magruder Park"
via FoxyTunes
