Can Athesists Be Moral?

The answer is yes, non-believers can act morally. However, Assistant Village Idiot points out that the morality of hard-core atheistic-Darwinists is not grounded in any foundation since according to this view, human beings exist due to accidental and fortuitous circumstances. Thus, our morality is a by-product of our imperative to survive:

Do you begin to see why the nonbeliever’s insistence that they can be just as moral as the next guy is true, but it is a truth with no value? It helps the group to survive, but really, why should we care? It helps us to survive individually, but why should we care about that, either? It’s an opposable thumb, the loss of a tail, a purple flower. ..

This morality protects its young, but what would be the objection the morality which ate its young? By habit and training that feels very wrong to us, and nonbelievers are as quick as anyone to say it is simply wrong. They don’t do those things, and it is moral that they don’t. They can avoid those things as well as believers.

Perhaps this whole picture is correct, and all of morality simply a dorsal fin. But if so, then everything is permitted, just as Dostoevsky said. That the current crop of nonbelievers don’t eat their children should be a matter of great rejoicing. But what if next year’s crop slips into some other odd branch of this survival tool we call morality and develops post hoc reasoning why eating Junior is okay? It’s no good to even comment on whether that would be moral or immoral. Everything is permitted.

The Christian answer, as I have suggested, may be no truer than the others. It may be just one more variation of photosynthesis. I offer here no defense of that. Perhaps there is some other explanation outside of mankind – no, it would have to be outside of life itself – no wait, it would have to be outside of this accidental planet and even the accidental universe – that would make something in morality real, and true, and valuable. But absent any such, there isn’t anything that qualifies as morality – and there is simply no meaning beyond the masturbatory for a nonbeliever to give himself any credit for having one equal to the believer’s.

In other words, why is survival in and of itself of the group or individual of the most paramount value if there's no meaning to our existence in the universe? If we're just the sum of our parts, a bag of cells with no soul, why does maximizing survival for all individuals matter? What is the foundation to the non-believer's morality? The answer is there can be none; the logical extension of atheism eventually leads to the rationalization of taboo cultural restrictions.