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Monday, April 14, 2008
This seems to be a common topic among Atheist bloggers. However, I feel that it is important at this point in time for every one of us to do something like this. We are a minority and the public perceives us in a negative light because we don't have a sky daddy of our own to punish us for our wrong doing. If only our morality was judged by the size of our representative population in prison..
First, I'd like to state that I'm still defining what it means to be moral to myself. Like any rational being, whose morals aren't written in a contradictory manner in a 2000 year old book, I'm still trying to figure out what is objectively right and wrong. Would you kill 10 to save 100? If a child was running at you with a suicide vest intent on detonating it in your vicinity would you shoot them? Is pirating music immoral?
When I was younger I wasn't a very moral person. I did whatever I could get away with. I was very nihilistic. Eventually, I came to realize society couldn't function like that, I began to understand the importance of morality. Not believing in a god (I didn't know what an Atheist was yet) meant that I wasn't bound to any specific set of morals, I found my own as I went. Some were very obvious, killing for instance. But what if someone gave me too much change back when purchasing something? It's their own fault that they can't do math, right? It's still stealing though.Over time, I developed my own evolving moral code along with coming to grok Atheism. Then I found out that during my moral exploration I had managed to become a Secular Humanist without even knowing what it was..
When I'm not busy serving my country, I volunteer with a few local homeless organizations, everything from helping to organize fundraisers to re-tiling their pantry's floor. I am a moral Atheist, without any god or demon watching over me or threatening to send me to some dimension of endless torture, and I'll let you in on a little secret, we are just as moral as anyone else, except we divorce less.. :)
