Atheists Have No Morals

 https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/atheists-have-no-morals.html 

Yes?

I'm from Western Europe where atheism is common and unremarkable. We have much lower crime rates and general levels of social dysfunction than more pious states. All my family were and are atheists. We didn't call ourselves atheists. We just had no interest in gods and all that stuff. Nevertheless, my upbringing was far from anarchic, disorderly, licentious abandon. The family culture valued thoughtfulness and care for others.

When it came time for me to choose a career, I chose to become a teacher, because it was the best way I thought to use the skills I had in order to help others. I thought that it was a worthwhile occupation. Nobody goes into teaching for the money!

Despite not being affluent, and despite being retired, my wife and I make regular substantial (for us) contributions to charities, and large (for us) donations for emergency appeals from anywhere in the world.

My wife (also an atheist, or a "recovering Catholic") has worked without reward in England, for teaching people for whom English is a second language. She has also worked for an association offering art therapy. We have given foster care relief for someone who fostered a pair of abused brothers. We have worked intensively with an autistic boy, over a number of years. He went from never making eye-contact or speaking to smiling and joking and speaking full sentences, which only began at the age of seven. He is now quite an accomplished and gifted artist. We have worked with a Scottish boy with Alzheimer's, here in France. We wasn't learning French easily, because his lack of ability to interact socially meant that he had little motive. Most English-speaking kids who come here to France learn good French very quickly*. We have taught French, English and mathematics to children without any particular problems, just because they wanted to learn. We are always ready to help people in any way they need. And we have never charged a penny for what we do.

The reward is that doing all this stuff makes us happy. Studies have shown that, unless you have a personality disorder, after your basic needs are taken care of, what makes people happiest is not more possessions, wealth and power. It is the satisfaction gained by helping others. 

Morality does not come from religion. It cannot. What makes anyone decide that it is the best course to follow a set of religiously based moral commands? That idea must have come from outside that set of religious commands. In other words, people must have had their own independent moral sense in the first place. Anyone who follows religious commandments out of fear of what happens to them if they don't has no moral compass. People call them sociopaths or psychopaths on a leash. It's the only justification for such a leash I can think of.

Evolutionary thinking sheds light on why we are moral creatures. Short version: We are an interdependent species. We have to (mostly) behave well towards each other, otherwise we could not be able to survive and persist. 

Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality

Recommended reading: https://www.amazon.com/Bonobo-Atheist-Search-Humanism-Primates/dp/0393347796

*English kids who go back to England having learned French by attending French schools and having French friends are told by their teachers in England that they are not speaking French properly! Connards!

Oh, and I, of course, maintain an educational blog which is free! ;)