Atheists have a personal morality vs. a fear based morality

Originally Posted by monumentus

Agreed. But until you can show there IS such a purpose then this is a big "What if" an is just hypothetical. In the interim here in reality we realise that "morality" is nothing more than a fancy label we give the rules we come up with together to help us live together as best we can.

I do not agree it has to be seen as entirely arbitrary however. There are many things like Science which can at least give us some frame of reference or guidance. If we lay out our goals then we can couple those goals with things like Science to get some pretty defensible "oughts" from the "is's".

I think one issue is that morality - similar to things like "beauty" - is often seen as theists as something which exists in and of itself as some kind of seperate thing from us. When in fact in reality it appears to be nothing more than a fancy label we give something in order to elevate it.

A real difference I see however is that theist morality attempts to take the work out of our hands and put it - often set in stone (sometimes literally) - in the hands of their imagined god. This is dangerous as it really is us that has to make the decision - have the conversations - do the work. It is further dangerous because morality should be a changing thing - not set in stone metaphorically or actually - and should change with the changing requirements, needs and development of our species. Imagining an objective stoneset morality works against that I think.