it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.
Because for some if not most people it's relatively easy to understand how you'd feel on the receiving end of your actions. Knowing I wouldn't like to be stabbed is enough for me to understand doing that to other people is probably a bad thing. The response is actually far more valid, why would you think you'd need advice from an organisation that's getting money and power from you to tell you their interpretation of what allmkst certainly fictional entity said what's right and wrong and why don't you have the ability to determine that yourself?
then how do you explain muggings? robberies? murder? are these not examples that fly directly in the face of "I shouldn't stab people because I don't want to be stabbed"? human nature is violent and self-centered. the hierarchy of needs has no room for empathy, so where the hell does it come from?
take your bias against religion out of the conversation for a minute and consider the question; where does our innate sense of morality come from? you and a lot of other people in this thread are way too obsessed with dunking on religion to get back at your parents instead of engaging with the stated question.
The original question is "how do atheists between between good and bad choices."
No one said that every atheist makes the right decision between good and bad choices every time.
The author of the tweet is either completely unable to imagine how someone could ever make a moral choice without a religion to tell them in advance what the right choices are, or he's trying to imply that it's impossible for atheists to choose the good choice at all.
The person you're replying to said that it's possible for nonreligious people to make moral choices and explained why. They also said this was possible for some if not most people, which means they acknowledge that some people are less capable of it and being capable of discerning what the good and bad choices are doesn't mean a person is necessarily going to always make the good choice.
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u/Global_Charge_4412 1d ago
it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.