Where do atheists get their morals from?

[Neil]

I'm not too god damn lazy to find this out. Nobody answers the question. Nobody has given any answer on how you can find out which bits of the old testament laws are to be ignored and which are to be followed. Nobody has given any answer on how you determine which bits of the bible are allegorical and which are literal.

etc.
etc.

Why do you assume some parts are literal and some not?
I'll give you a clue.
Only the Torah, the first five books in the Tenach or "Old Testament", is direct word from G-d, to be understood literally.
The rest are comentaries.

But that's the part that is the least accurate.

[Siege]

I'm not too god damn lazy to find this out. Nobody answers the question. Nobody has given any answer on how you can find out which bits of the old testament laws are to be ignored and which are to be followed. Nobody has given any answer on how you determine which bits of the bible are allegorical and which are literal.

etc.
etc.

Why do you assume some parts are literal and some not?
I'll give you a clue.
Only the Torah, the first five books in the Tenach or "Old Testament", is direct word from G-d, to be understood literally.
The rest are comentaries.

But that's the part that is the least accurate.

Pleaze. What do you know?
You can't even tell Sefaradi from Ashkenazi.

[Neil]

Pleaze. What do you know?
You can't even tell Sefaradi from Ashkenazi.

Those are the parts that are falsifiable.  Like the way the whole beginning has been shown to be false.

I can't tell you from and Arab, but that's just because there's no difference.  The Israelis as a whole are a lesser breed of Jew, more prone to Middle Eastern behavior (Judaism, for example).

[Scipio]

Where do atheists get their morals from?

God. 

I laughed, I admit.  Viking's original post assumes so many facts that it's essential immune to logic.

I don't like being wrong, can you mention a few of them so I can be less wrong next time? No need to mention all of them, but can you at least mention one of them?

All humans have a natural evolved morality combined from instinct and societal norms.

[Viking]

If you believe all the things in the first sentence, then you are a fundamentalist literalist.

Well yes. I find it hard to understand how you can be anything other than a fundamentalist literalist if you actually belive in god and accept what the various religions say about what god wants from you. How can you ignore the creator of the universe when he calls?

What you don't seem to realize is that there are people who consider themselves religious who don't believe all of these things.

Well, given that the content of the OP is all about how most normal people decide for themselves what is moral and pick and choose from whatever book is the local holy book for the justification they need, ignoring what contradicts their natural morality I venture to suggest that I do. They choose to accept the dogmas they are willing to accept. They get neither their faith, religion or their morals from their religious texts, they merely twist and manipulate their existing texts to fit into the faith, religion and morality they already hold.

They are making this stuff up for themselves while they insist that others take the book as truth. This is what makes them lying amoral scumbags. They claim this comes from god, telling this to children, while ignoring what doesn't suit them. What I do not understand is how you can actually believe there is a god while striking out the bits of his message to you that doesn't suite you?

The catastrophy happens when the children and innocents are told to read the book and are told it is true read the bits about killing people for eating shellfish. I believe that is what happens in the mind of a suicide bomber, he lets the book override his own natural morality.

If you are reading through your holy book, supposedly sent by god to be a guide to you in your life, and you find a passage and you find yourself thinking that you can safely ignore that while telling others that it is true and good then you are a lying amoral scumbag.

You also don't seem to take into account the possibility that some people aren't that swift and don't fully understand the implications of what they profess to believe.  Being less than the brightest bulb is nothing to boast about, but it doesn't make a person a "lying amoral scumbag"

The thing about ignorant naïfs is that they tend to tell the truth and be too stupid to dissemble. The ignorant naïf would have given an honest answer that was consistent with his or her belief. This is not what the defenders of the faith are doing here. The naïf would have tried a sentence of the kind 

I think God changed his mind on killing shellfish eaters but not on killing homosexual because......

We don't see that. The question is "how do you know god changed his mind on eating shellfish?" the answer? "OMG Viking hates religion!!!!!111oneoneone"

The strawman fallacy gets thrown around a lot pretty loosely, but I have to say there seem to a bunch of them littered around in this thread.
It's typically the case that in order to refute an argument effectively, you have to really understand it as from the opposing POV - sometimes that can be difficult for particularly repugnant views, but the danger of not doing so is just talking past the other side or bashing down strawmen.

I have yet to see any post here of the kind "I think you are wrong in the OP because of X, Y and Z". They either just say I'm wrong without saying how or they say I have it in for religion without addressing the issues I raised.

I think I get this response since if I'm right their religion is BS. Morality is effectively the last leg religion has to stand on in the west. That is why the response is so vociferous.

What is wrong with the argument I made? Is there some unstated premise that I use which I can't justify? Is there a logical problem in my reasoning? What?

Also I concur with those who raise their eyebrows at the notion that universal morality is genetic.  Certainly if one is arguing from a rationalistic perspective, a claim like that should come amply accompanied by scientific evidentiary support.

My case is that it is genetic and memetic. Our moral sentiments are composed of instinctive, evolved and learned morality. We have identified instinctive behaviours to like all children, men actually have an instinctive behaviour to belive any baby he thinks might be his looks like him. Playing musical chairs with newborns in hospitals can be done legally and ethically and has been done. Our attachment to puppies and kittens is much the same since they share the infantile attributes we often ascribe to babies and feel protective of. This is merely one example of many.

What I possibly did not make clear (I thought it was obvious) is that I am talking about a descriptive morality and ethics, not a normative one (at this point your use of the word "rationalistic" becomes uncomfortable to me given is meaning opposed to "empiricistic" rather than the often confusing use meaning using reason).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_ethics

This is a quick overview, but the thing is that this is a developed field, Huxley was working on this in the 19th century. The problem is testing the hypothesis since no conceivable experiment that is both ethical, legal and likely to be completed within the lifetime of anybody alive is possible. This field only becomes controversial when religion is allowed to opine on it.

[Viking]

I'm not too god damn lazy to find this out. Nobody answers the question. Nobody has given any answer on how you can find out which bits of the old testament laws are to be ignored and which are to be followed. Nobody has given any answer on how you determine which bits of the bible are allegorical and which are literal.

etc.
etc.

Why do you assume some parts are literal and some not?
I'll give you a clue.
Only the Torah, the first five books in the Tenach or "Old Testament", is direct word from G-d, to be understood literally.
The rest are comentaries.

Joan, this is the naïf giving the honest but obviously unsophisticated and stupid answer that I would expect. I'm not getting this level of comic gold from BB or Raz.

[Viking]

All humans have a natural evolved morality combined from instinct and societal norms.

I take it you didn't read the next five paragraphs were I try to justify that assertion?

[Siege]

I'm not too god damn lazy to find this out. Nobody answers the question. Nobody has given any answer on how you can find out which bits of the old testament laws are to be ignored and which are to be followed. Nobody has given any answer on how you determine which bits of the bible are allegorical and which are literal.

etc.
etc.

Why do you assume some parts are literal and some not?
I'll give you a clue.
Only the Torah, the first five books in the Tenach or "Old Testament", is direct word from G-d, to be understood literally.
The rest are comentaries.

Joan, this is the naïf giving the honest but obviously unsophisticated and stupid answer that I would expect. I'm not getting this level of comic gold from BB or Raz.

Whatever.
Don't ask if you don't want an answer.

[mongers]

Well, given that the content of the OP is all about how most normal people decide for themselves what is moral and pick and choose from whatever book is the local holy book for the justification they need, ignoring what contradicts their natural morality I venture to suggest that I do. They choose to accept the dogmas they are willing to accept. They get neither their faith, religion or their morals from their religious texts, they merely twist and manipulate their existing texts to fit into the faith, religion and morality they already hold.

They are making this stuff up for themselves while they insist that others take the book as truth. This is what makes them lying amoral scumbags. They claim this comes from god, telling this to children, while ignoring what doesn't suit them. What I do not understand is how you can actually believe there is a god while striking out the bits of his message to you that doesn't suite you?

The catastrophy happens when the children and innocents are told to read the book and are told it is true read the bits about killing people for eating shellfish. I believe that is what happens in the mind of a suicide bomber, he lets the book override his own natural morality.

If you are reading through your holy book, supposedly sent by god to be a guide to you in your life, and you find a passage and you find yourself thinking that you can safely ignore that while telling others that it is true and good then you are a lying amoral scumbag.

....

But you're making the assumption that if there is a god/gods then all holy books must be the literal 'word of god'

Assuming there is a god, there could be all sorts of reasons why there is a given holy book associated that god; for instance for all we know it might just be an experiment in 'chinese whispers' by that particular god.

[Neil]

Whatever.
Don't ask if you don't want an answer.

He did want an answer, one that would allow him to feel superior to you.  Viking is a bigot.

[Viking]

I'm not too god damn lazy to find this out. Nobody answers the question. Nobody has given any answer on how you can find out which bits of the old testament laws are to be ignored and which are to be followed. Nobody has given any answer on how you determine which bits of the bible are allegorical and which are literal.

etc.
etc.

Why do you assume some parts are literal and some not?
I'll give you a clue.
Only the Torah, the first five books in the Tenach or "Old Testament", is direct word from G-d, to be understood literally.
The rest are comentaries.

Joan, this is the naïf giving the honest but obviously unsophisticated and stupid answer that I would expect. I'm not getting this level of comic gold from BB or Raz.

Whatever.
Don't ask if you don't want an answer.

I'm sorry, I was rude to you here. I did ask, you did answer and I just mocked you, that was wrong of me.

[Siege]

I don't care. You are still an asshole and hurt my feelings.
I will get my revenge, in this life or the ne...
Wait, there is only one life.

[Scipio]

All humans have a natural evolved morality combined from instinct and societal norms.

I take it you didn't read the next five paragraphs were I try to justify that assertion?

http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/object/bioethics.events.20120330.conference

[Viking]

But you're making the assumption that if there is a god/gods then all holy books must be the literal 'word of god'

Assuming there is a god, there could be all sorts of reasons why there is a given holy book associated that god; for instance for all we know it might just be an experiment in 'chinese whispers' by that particular god.

Why should I not make that assumption. The book is the only thing we have heard from god for X hundred years. If you think one of them is true then you take it seriously. All religions are distinctly lacking in sentiments of the kind "we have this book and we think it is a pretty good effort at understanding the will of god, we might be wrong, but we leave it up to you to decide if it is the word of god or not." Religious books have one thing in common they neither caveat, equivocate or hedge. It's only when the books are proven to be unadulterated BS that attempts to explain the errors away like your chinese whispers example are brought forth.

If you accept the chinese whispers experiment analogy you have no good reason to treat any holy scripture as anything but made up fiction. You can't have it both ways.

[Viking]

All humans have a natural evolved morality combined from instinct and societal norms.

I take it you didn't read the next five paragraphs were I try to justify that assertion?

http://bioethics.as.nyu.edu/object/bioethics.events.20120330.conference

Well, I'm not going to comment on that until I have watched (all 16 hours of) that. I have bookmarked it though. I can't help but think a quick abstract of the talk would be useful though. Maybe you can enlighten me how a series of talks with titles that suggest that morality is a function of the brain does not support the assertion that morality is evolved? Perhaps you don't think the brain is evolved?