Atheism

You put yourself in the mind of the person or people your choice affects. If they would think positively about your choice, it's generally good, if negatively, then bad.

This isn't rocket science

Penn Jillette has a good explanation. I don't agree with a lot he says, but this is pretty spot on. (The clip goes kinda off the answer after about a minute)

tl;dw: If you I don't believe in a god, what's stopping me from raping and killing anyone I want? And the answer is: I have. I already have. I have raped and killed everyone I want to rape and kill, and the answer is............. zero. There are zero people I want to rape or kill. And the question becomes: Who are these people walking around with lists of people they want to rape and kill? Why do we consider THEM the sane ones?

Let's be honest, they do so by adhering to cultural norms with the exact same devotion and lack of scrutiny that religious people do.

"Why do we do it this way?" "We've always done it this way!" "Why is it wrong?" "Because it's just wrong!"

The very small subset of actually moral people decide between good and bad choices not depending on social norms, not depending on laws, not even depending on morals or ethics, but by what motivations their actions arise from, whether they come from Ego or understanding.

You can never know whether an action is good or bad, you can only know whether your motivations are good or bad.

It's a simple 2-part equation to determine what is a good/bad choice (socially)

Golden rule (do unto others...), combined with a little social intelligence to understand that if I were someone else, I might want different things.

Generally, shooting people with paintballs is bad, but there are scenarios where someone is okay with getting shot with a paintball (like when playing paintball) so shooting them with a paintball in that circumstance is "good".

Honest answer:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative

Evangelicals are just psychopaths, kept in line through fear.

Since religious morality is made up by people it comes from the same source as atheist morality. Humans!

Religion tends to make it easy for people to insert shitty stuff and claim it is a divine mandate. Atheists have to make a case for why something is right or wrong.

Ironically, biblical morality is absolutely fucked in the head.

Killing women because they didn’t scream while they were raped (probably because the uncle or father or brother raping them was either choking them out or holding a knife to their throat or something worse.)

Killing infants and unborn children because someone 3 generations ago did a thing.

Stoning teenagers for being, you know, teenagers.

It really is a good thing morality doesn’t come from god.

It’s much easier to be a good person when you aren’t indoctrinated from birth with some book of ancient myths telling you who to hate.

"I don't need the threat of eternal punishment, we've got punishment at home." --Me, a bad person.

The thing is, you can "debatebro" yourself into most of morality, save for stuff like "homosexuality is evil".

I made a video about this because it comes up so much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfgXj_V33Pw

It's scary how many christians will pretend "my particular interpretation of god said so" is objective morality. People actually defend rape, slavery, and genocide.

I rely on sense and reason, personally. I aim to reduce overall suffering because I find suffering unpleasant and I empathize with others, and also because working together is mutually beneficial. It's not a choice between emotion and utility, it's both.