“If I want to be treated in some way, I better treat others in the same way. [..] Law of the nature – every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If I slap someone I will get slapped back.”

Quite – I call this Karma. “Bad” actions create bad reactions. It doesn’t just apply to one’s own actions however: it’s about having faith that it applies to others’ actions too. If someone behaves badly toward you, the chances are they behave the same way toward others, and they’ll get their just deserts in due course.

As well as preserving the peach, belief in this principle is also beneficial to the individual. It makes it much easier to forgive and forget (one of the saner ideas in Christianity), instead of seeking revenge every time someone does something to offend or harm.

You don’t need to punch the guy that maliciously bad mouthed you to your boss, because the truth will come out, he will look a fool, and one day he’ll do the same thing and it will backfire badly on him. A career criminal has a strong likelihood of being in-prisoned, badly wounded or killed as a result of his chosen path.

Critics may question how strictly Karma is actually enforced in the real world. If we have faith in some sort of deity, fate or Karmic force, this ups the likelihood that comeuppance will be forthcoming – but as atheists we can’t rely on this.

I’d certainly argue that an individual’s negative behavioural traits will almost always have repercussions to them at some point, but in reality they may get away with treating others badly for years, possibly a lifetime (though how many true friends will they have on their death bed?). Given this, faith in Karma could be seen as naive.

My justification is that it doesn’t really matter, because belief in Karma will make your own life happier and more trouble free (call it blissful naivity if you must!). Having faith that the laws of nature/society will catch up with an offending individual allows you to worry less, hold less grudges, and avoid a snowball of tit-for-tat actions.

Of course, the same could be said about many religions. If the teachings are positive and benefit the individual, what’s the harm even if the theological basis for the religion is population-control hokum? And perhaps I could entertain this if a religion existed that wasn’t stuffed full of chinese whisper interpretations, cultural specific notions, self-serving instruction (both to the artificial spreading of the religion, and to its institutions/leadership). But it doesn’t – instead for every forgive-and-forget wise teaching, there’s a kill-the-infidels negative counterpoint.

Wikipedia has some interesting commentary on Atheism and morals:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism#Atheism.2C_religion.2C_and_morality

“Sociologist Phil Zuckerman analyzed previous social science research on secularity and non-belief, and concluded that societal well-being is positively correlated with irreligion. His findings relating specifically to atheism include:

- Compared to religious people, “atheists and secular people” are less nationalistic, prejudiced, antisemitic, racist, dogmatic, ethnocentric, close-minded, and authoritarian.

- In the US, in states with the highest percentages of atheists, the murder rate is lower than average. In the most religious US states, the murder rate is higher than average.”

My own take is that empathy is the chief moral motivator. Sometime in our evolutionary past we developed the power to empathize, which leads us to caring for the individual to our right or left and caring for our society at large. I see morality essentially as the avoidance of harm. Much more than a ‘fight or flight’ mentality, empathy allows us to envision the consequences of our actions towards those around us versus the more self-centered view that thinks chiefly one’s own well being. This would be a more complete view of evolved morality since it does not require vengeance or legislated punishment to aim one’s actions in a harm-free direction.

But then again, maybe I’m just a softie.

You have only to step outside monotheistic thought patterns to understand how much western atheists and theists alike operate on the narrowest bandwidth of “knowledge”.

If your model of religion is based on the big-3 near eastern monster-theisms, you won’t even understand truly Western (Roman or Greek) philosophical theories and practices so vigorously suppressed by byzantine jack boots of a near eastern church militant.

1. There is no inherent relationship between religion and morals.
2. Xian “ethics” is not ethical at all.

Xian ethics is irrational, otherworldly, and impractical. It promises much, and delivers nothing. Jesus’ “interim ethic” couldn’t outlast one generation of true believers. After all, the world was about to end. (Sermon on the Mount — search term: interim ethic)

The fideistic irrationality of Paul of Tarsus with its anti-intellectualism, misogyny, and revenge seeking has poisoned the West for 2,000 years. After all, the world was about to end — but it didn’t. (Read 1Cor1:20-26 NIV)

Chinese culture was far luckier. From that very rational, this worldly, and practical book, The Analects [Conversations], attributed to Confucius.

Five hundred years before mythological Jesus and hysteric Paul, Confucius was eons ahead of contemporary xian (jewish/islamist) thinking:

6:20 Fan Ch’ih asked what constituted wisdom. The Master said, “To give one’s self earnestly to the duties due to men, and, while respecting spiritual beings, to keep aloof from them, may be called wisdom.”

Get the point? No relationship between religion, “spiritual beings” and ethics, “the duties due to men.”

15:23 Tsze-kung asked, saying, “Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” The Master said, “Is not ‘reciprocity’ such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” [trans. S.R. McIntyre 2003]

What follows? No religion police!

No prelate, priest, pastor, rabbi, imam is needed to dictate human behavior. All ethics is irreducibly social (but not utilitarian). Harming others cannot be generalized; otherwise, no culture could exist.

There’s no need to invoke modern evolutionary theory (or memes) — unless they’re Lamarkian — each generation of persons teaches the next.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/480619/where_morality_comes_from_one_atheists.html?cat=47