I was perhaps a bit sloppy in the title of my previous thread, so it got off-track from what I was expecting. As such, I am trying to start over and clarify here.
“Believers” claim that moral authority comes from God and that since atheists “don’t believe in God”, that somehow allows them to simply do whatever they want without respect to ethics.
So my query then becomes from whence do the ethical values of atheists derive if not from God.
I know the answer, of course. This thread is more to provide an education for the theists in this forum, although atheists, like Democrats, have a notoriously rebellious streak in many case and so there may indeed be some debate about the source of ethics.
Believe it or not it is possible to glean simple and pure wisdom FROM a book such as The Bible if you are searching for a template. What could possibly be wrong with Jesus telling man to "love one's neighbor as oneself"?
There's nothing wrong with pretty much anything in the Ten Commandments either, although some may split hairs on things like adultery and idolatry. But even then, I can't think of a single atheist I know that doesn't agree that boinking your neighbor's wife is a ****ed up thing to do, and one does not NEED a holy commandment to understand that.
I can only speak for me but perhaps a few think it's fair game IF the neighbor treats his wife so badly that he deserves to lose her. Others guffaw at the fact that some churches have made an industry out of posting graven images and multiple dieties, so the command to not do so is already largely ignored.
Maybe God could have said something like "don't confuse spiritual love with idolatry" and it might have been more effective, but that is not a commandment, that's just good advice.
Aside from that, the Ten Commandments are a large scale
"Don't Be A Jerk" set of rules, aren't they?
Don't bear false witness, don't murder, don't steal, don't lie, don't fantasize about taking your neighbor's stuff, honor your parents, these would be elemental truths and commandments under any society. Murder, theft, false testimony in court, elder abuse, all of these are actual crimes that can put you in prison, and with good reason.
Even if one does not believe that a figure called Jesus existed at all, the accounts of his life are full of things any rational person would aspire to, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, healing the sick, sacrificing one's worldly desires for the chance to achieve real spiritual enlightenment.
Even cynical types often admit that we are too much a slave to our material things and that some degree of perspective is in order to remind one that excess wealth and devotion to material possessions have the potential to become a form of prison or self-induced exile.
Jesus wants us to prosper but his definition of prosperity starts from a different place than the route taken by jaded oligarchs.
When wealth is achieved through nefarious or bloody and predatory means, that wealth is not a blessing but a curse.
Looking at The Bible through the eyes of an atheist does not dispose of those things in scripture that stand on their own merits. It is the atheist eye that culls the hypocrisies and plumbs the depths of historical revisionism in an attempt to clarify the evidence that appears when it is clear that scripture has been amended to suit financial and political goals.
The Bible is, unfortunately, one of the most abused texts in all of recorded history. Generations of wealthy and powerful potentates have excised parts that were at cross purposes to their politics and added entire sections out of whole cloth while grossly altering the meanings of other sections in service to the same objectives.
But so much of the good in The Bible remains, and it behooves the atheist to preserve it if for no other reason than to acknowledge that which is acknowledged in The Bible, the notion that man is far from perfect and should always aspire to be better.
The Bible is an attempt at a purely ethical construct and if it fails in some areas, it shines in others.
To be mindful of that is to be a good person, atheist or not.