the biggest problem being atheist?

I am an atheist, and I have never cheated, stolen (although good Christian high school students stole lots of things from me), or intentionally hurt someone. I will admit that I have mocked people, but then I have been mocked by the people I have mocked, so it all balances out the same way.

I do try to serve humanity; every season I go through my clothes and give at least a few things to charity, which I intend to continue when I have children of my own. I also donate money to charity; this year it all went to St. Baldricks in the name of the daughter of a friend who lost her battle with cancer (none of this is claimed on my taxes). I do this because I know it's ethical; I grew up poor and remember the joy of finding something nice in a thrift shop and want another person to feel that same joy if I can. I adopt animals from shelters because I help to keep them off the streets and allow veterinary care to those animals who need it. I do these things knowing they are right.

No, I don't fear being answerable to God, because I am answerable to myself. If I knowingly do something wrong, I get physically ill to where I can't get better until I do the right thing. It's an awful feeling and, because I don't like to feel it, I don't do it.

There are a few enormous problems, as others have already acknowledged here, including interference in lawmaking and wellknown influences via society and culture, oppression of females and others, divisiveness and incitement of wars (with out a actual, rational groundwork for it), the protecting again of scientific advances, and the dominionist worldview, during which persons suppose that the Earth was made for human consumption, basically. In my view, the most important difficulty I see, which pretty much is an underpinning of all the relaxation, is the problem of the denial of purpose in religion. One thing this implies is that sacred texts, rituals and different practices are approved as a result of their mystique, rather than any critical analysis of accuracy. Commencing from that factor, the point of interest goes to finding approaches of explaining these present sacred objects of thought or matter, rather than searching for truth. When actuality is set aside in desire of dogma, this units up a further neural configuration within the mind, which starts to compromise the character's basic valuable thinking capacity. After a at the same time, a entire different scheme of common sense gets mounted in that individual's intellect. If he's accused of now not being logical, he's going to discuss with his subjective, created "common sense," and will not understand why people are claiming he isn't being logical. This is, almost, mind harm; the mind of this sort of individual is not functioning in healthy solidarity with the physical world, but has developed its possess requirements of analysis, centered on the subjective, created mind-world of the devotee. And so it becomes no main issue to suppress and abuse females, decapitate infidels, limit using contraceptive defense in a sickness-ridden region, declare that a scientific discovering is invalid in view that it contradicts sacred scripture, wreak tremendous disruption of ecosystems within the title of human advancements, and so on.

No, the biggest problem being an atheist is definitely the bigotry targeted at us by believers, like the people who think atheists want to hurt people with impunity just because there's no divine punishment.

Atheists believe in *real life consequences* for actions. If you hurt people, they won't like or trust you. Besides which, unless you're a sociopath, you'll feel bad for hurting them.

Do you really need to be bribed with rewards and threatened with punishments in order to treat other people decently? Compassion and empathy for the suffering of your fellow human beings doesn't move you at all? That's frightening.

We can't do whatever we want, and we are held accountable for our actions - accountable to our families, friends, employers, and communities. Cheating, mocking, hurting do have consequences. The social consequences are usually enough to teach children not to do this. We have empathy, and because we realize we wouldn't like it when people do these things to us, we do not do them to others. We do things for other reasons than pure enjoyment - our self-esteem being one of them. Being held in good regard by our communities. And just doing the right thing because it is the right thing brings its own rewards.

I find it terrifying that so many people claim they would be doing wrong all the time if not for fear of punishment. That's very low on the moral scale of development.

That's one of the big differences between an Atheist and a Theist.

An Atheist will do the right thing for no reason other than it being the right thing to do.

A Theist will do the right thing in order to get a reward.

In any case, from what I've observed in life, Theists are just as likely to "cheat, hurt, mock, etc." as Atheists.

We're just as accountable as everyone else. We're accountable to other people and to ourselves.

It's quite childish that you need a carrot and stick to convince you to be a good person. If you are good only because of your belief in an afterlife then you have the morality of a psychopath. I'm quite glad you're not an atheist. I've heard Christians say they would go around murdering people if it weren't for their fear of Hell and hope to get into Heaven.

Yeah, you do realize that those same things apply to so called 'Christians'?

Atheists are as 'good' as anyone or as 'bad'. Not having some magical overlord doesn't change how people behave.

My conscience tells me what is right or wrong, not some promise of reward or threat of punishment. I feel sorry for Christians, who only seem able to tell right from wrong if it's written in a book, or more commonly, told to them by religious leaders.

I am accountable to the people around me. I don't need a reward to live an ethical life.

Edit:

If you need to be threatened with eternal torture in order to keep from cheating, hurting, or mocking people then you're what's known in psychology as a sociopath.

It's a myth. You've been told that humans need some kind of ultimate accountability in order to stay on the straight and narrow, whereas the truth is that humans are perfectly capable of self-regulating.

We naturally react to certain kinds of behaviour in different ways. What determines how we react includes the pack-instinct humans have, as well as our upbringing. The "evil person", i.e. the person who is aware that he is committing acts of evil and continues to do so deliberately, is also a myth. People are bound by their own social instincts.

Really, the only sensible way to look at Christianity, as well as most other successful religions, is a scam. They manufacture a need for their services. Christianity tells you that you are evil, and that you need God, that without him, you will just continue to commit evil acts. It's simply not true, and one can see this for themselves if they spend some time in communities of people of a different religion, or without religion.

Most atheists are moral and ethical.

We are that we because we were raised with morals and ethics and choose to live in a society, rather than be isolated from it.

Why do theists need the fear of punishment to act in a moral and ethical manner?