Robyn Lebron Atheism and Morality Atheists can hold any number of spiritual beliefs because they are never told what to believe For the same reason, atheists can hold a wide variety of ethical beliefs, ranging from the moral universalism of , which holds that a moral code should be applied consistently to all humans, and at the other end of the spectrum, moral ǡ which holds that morality is meaningless For most religious theists, their faith practices provide the basis for their entire understanding of morality and moral values Many are convinced that atheists who don’t believe in any gods and who have no religion couldn’t possibly have a basis for morality or even understand what true moral behavior is Many go further and argue that it leads to immoral behavior The book by Gora, first published in 1972, introduced an alternative use for the phrase Having grown up in a hierarchical system with a religious basis, Gora called for a secular India and suggested guidelines for a positive atheist philosophy, meaning one that promotes positive values Positive atheism entails such things as a being morally upright, showing an understanding that religious people have reasons to believe, not proselytizing or lecturing others about atheism, and defending oneself with truthfulness instead of aiming to win any confrontations with outspoken critics “Philosophers Susan Neiman and Julian Baggini assert that behaving ethically only because of divine mandate is not true ethical behavior but merely blind obedience Baggini argues that Atheism is a superior basis for ethics,”4 claiming it is necessary to evaluate the morality of the imperatives themselves to be able to discern, for example, that “thou shalt not steal” is moral without someone else telling you that Atheists believe that much of what passes for Christianity today seems to be more culturally determined than scripturally determined Their argument is that Christianity is what Christians do, and what Christians doesn’t necessarily correspond to the alleged teachings of Christianity ̵ ǡ Ǥ ~ 382 ~