Conscience possible without God

RE: What If?

Regarding Pierre Chenier's questions of morality without God, he unfortunately appears to have the cart before the horse with his last question: "Does that mean that conscience is a useless trait that developed from some misguided religious teaching?"

I am an atheist. I was brought up in a happy, well adjusted, atheist family. I have a conscience. I did not get it from religious teachings as, in my years, I have never had any -- except for later in life when I started reading into it to see what all the fluff was about. Personally I believe most of the Judeo-Christian laws came from the conscience, not the other way around. The conscience is a great social evolution that allowed us to work much better in large groups, which was incredibly important for physically ungifted primates like us.

The argument of 'without God it would be ok to murder' has always concerned me. Not that it might be true (it isn’t), but that the religious people seem to believe it is. I am a little frightened of people who have to be told by an authority figure not to commit heinous acts against others. They couldn't come up with this on their own?

If you need examples, look around the world. Many different creeds grew up in independently and still managed to come upon the same basic laws of decency. The North Americans before Columbus had laws against murder and they had never heard of the Christian God, so don’t get too almighty about being the bearers of morality.

Every culture has had missteps (Mayan sacrifices, Christian pogroms against Jews, wars). Why is it all similar? Because that is human nature and you don’t need a God to explain any of it.

Johnathon White