How can atheism have morality?

a reply to: NovemberHemisphere
Honestly, I don't see what you are taking issue with.

FlyersFan, never said one way was better than any other, just that children fall under the influence of the people that raise them.

How "good" or "bad" that may be is a personal problem.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: NovemberHemisphere
Honestly, I don't see what you are taking issue with.

FlyersFan, never said one way was better than any other, just that children fall under the influence of the people that raise them.

How "good" or "bad" that may be is a personal problem.

I take issue with the false equivalencies. I'm tired of idiots attempting to attribute so many things to an incredibly simple concept as absence of belief. You cannot attribute someone's morality to atheism, a simple lack of belief that we are inherently born with does not affect someone's character. Telling a small child things like- they will burn for eternity and all men are inherently evil or a supreme cosmic designer personally acknowledges and loves them- all attribute to negative personality traits (and thus morality). Writing christian fan-fic and pretending it's a legitimate, thought out opinion doesn't make you sound smart or enlightened, it's a sad display of mental illness and delusions of grandeur. Religious people prepare their children for a reality that doesn't exist during crucial periods of their development.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere
I'm tired of idiots attempting to attribute so many things to an incredibly simple concept as absence of belief.

Maybe it is just me but that seemed to be what FlyersFan was also saying.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere
That's just dishonest, false equivalencies again. .

Nope. You are dead wrong.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere
I'm tired of idiots ...

I"m not an idiot.

I'm tired of militant atheist arrogance thinking they are somehow morally superior when they simply are not.

Definitely not "same/same", as you so lazily put it.

It wasn't 'lazy'. It was the truth. And for someone who claims to be morally superior to others, you sure are a snotty little guy. Great example you are showing of 'atheist moral superiority' /sarcasm.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere
atheism alone cannot corrupt but theology certainly can,.

Poppycock. BOTH can corrupt. An atheist can abuse another person because they believe there is no consequence just as much as a religious person can abuse another person because they think their religious text book says it's okay. Your statement is just arrogance and false.

A theist will always- no matter what- in the back of their head think they are working towards a better afterlife, or some kind of divine mandate- they never help anyone purely out of empathy like a rational person

Poppycock. Man ... you sure are full of hateful nonsense.

The truth once again ....
atheists can be moral people.
atheists can be immoral people.
religious people can be moral.
religious people can be immoral.

same/same.

Atheists and religious people get inspiration for morality from their own conscience
and from outside sources - secular rule of law and/or religious texts and/or
society in general etc etc

same/same.

You are welcome to your hatred of religion. It doesn't make you somehow morally superior to a person who has religious beliefs. To claim so is retarded. BOTH groups of people get their moral inspiration from their own conscience AND from outside sources such as secular rule of law or behavior of those in society around them or religious/inspirational texts.

A religious person who is a doctor and volunteering to help others because their conscience and inspiration tells them it's a good thing is the same morally as an atheist who is a doctor and volunteers to help others because their conscience and inspiration tells them it's a good thing.

Your arrogant militant atheist "i'm morally superior' attitude is no different than the militant religious morally superior attitude that the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims have towards atheists. You've proven the point .... SAME/SAME ... both with the good attitude that can be found in both groups, and with the bad attitude that obviously can be found in both groups.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: NovemberHemisphere
Honestly, I don't see what you are taking issue with.

Yeah ... it's really weird.

FlyersFan, never said one way was better than any other, just that children fall under the influence of the people that raise them.

Yep. There ya' go. I never put one group as more morally superior than the other. There are good and bad people in both groups, and both groups of people get their moral inspiration from themselves, from others, and from the world around them.

How "good" or "bad" that may be is a personal problem.

Yep. Exactly. There are good people and bad people in both groups. What people in a group believe or disbelieve doesn't make them morally superior to the people in the other group.

Fundamentalist Christians and Muslims hate atheism and try to make arguments that atheism is morally bankrupt. Militant atheists hate religion and try to make arguments that religion is morally bankrupt. Both extremist groups act exactly the same way and both are wrong.

If I'm reading this thread correctly, the premise of this thread was that the person didn't think Atheists could have true morality. That's false. The same goes for those with religion, they can have true morality. Anyone saying otherwise is just being arrogant and cheerleading their own side and it's disingenuous which is NOT 'morally superior' behavior .

As I said, the premise of this thread has been answered and the thread should die.

a reply to: FlyersFan

I totally agree, but you're not the thread popo, threads die when they do, what's bothering you about it?

One argument is that Christians rely on a written set of rules, while atheist don't.

Well some militant atheist do so too by following the law as their highest form of morality. They are the ones to cause a lot of suffering and it's all legal.

How good would our driving be without traffic rules and training?

Some might conclude that the only way to be good at it is by adhering to the written rules and that without it, it would be pure chaos.

I know you sort of already answered that, as we all get trained in morals just by growing up in a society with moral values...

The more i think about it I feel like it's a sort of chicken, or egg question...

What was first, moral values or religion?

originally posted by: Terpene
threads die when they do, what's bothering you about it?

The premise of the thread has been completely addressed and it has now gotten so damn dumb. Just a pile of cheerleading sides and insulting other posters.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Let's not be them...

Care to adress my last two sentences?

a reply to: Terpene

Your question can't be answered. We know that humanity as we know it is tens of thousands of years old. We know that there are religious statues that are 40,000 years old that have been found. Religion could be even older than that but that's the first that they could actually make things. We do not know how people behaved in the caves ... if they helped each other and gave food to other people in the herd who no longer could go out and hunt/gather for themselves, doing so out of sheer 'goodness' ... or if the people in the herd just let the old and infirm die (and maybe eat them afterwards) because they couldn't contribute anymore. We don't know what came first. We don't know how people acted back then.

One argument is that Christians rely on a written set of rules, while atheist don't.

To say that Christians are ONLY acting morally because of a book of rules is wrong. Christians have many inspirations ... themselves, others around them, society standards, secular rule of law, and their religious values. For a militant atheist here to claim that christians are only moral because of a book ... that's just dumb.

a reply to: FlyersFan

To say that Christians are ONLY acting morally because of a book of rules is wrong. Christians have many inspirations ... themselves, others around them, society standards, secular rule of law, and their religious values. For a militant atheist here to claim that christians are only moral because of a book ... that's just dumb.

Agreed...
but what sets them appart is that a substantial set of morals is dictated by a book, that's what's unique about their moral set compared to everyone else that's also influenced by all the mentioned factors...

You ditched my question gracefully... But the devil is in the details

a reply to: Terpene

Some people need a guide to life, faith gives them comfort and solace.

Some people believe we are just biological robots in a meaningless universe.

Most people just go along with the crowd and try to fit in.

The rest try to manipulate others using whatever means they can.

originally posted by: Terpene
but what sets them appart is that a substantial set of morals is dictated by a book,

When I go to the grocery store and buy extra canned goods for the soup kitchen in the city, I do so because I know that there are kids going to bed hungry at night and that tugs my heart so I want to try to put a dent in that problem. I don't do it because I think God is going to reward me for doing so. He may, He may not. That's his business. All I know is that I don't like the thought of kids going to be hungry because they don't have enough food so I do something about it.

To try to claim that I only give to the food kitchen because God mandates it in a book ... that's ridiculous. And that also insults Atheism in a round about way. Think about it ... If the ONLY reason Christians behave morally is because their religion tells them to, then that means if you take away their religion they'll be immoral, which also means they'll be atheists while being immoral. So the natural progression of saying that Christians ONLY behave morally because of religion is to also say that atheists are immoral.

Theists can be moral. Theists can be immoral.
Atheists can be moral. Atheists can be immoral.
Both are inspired by themselves, others, secular law,
and theists also are inspired by religious text.
Neither is morally superior.
It's all very INDIVIDUAL.

Side note - a reminder of those 'superior atheist morals' that was claimed earlier by others .... I can easily find examples of immoral theists (like Hamas mass murdering, raping, etc), But I can also easily find examples of immoral atheists mass murdering in the name of their disbelief and political ideologies. If they were 'morally superior', they wouldn't be doing it.

Immorality and morality, in theism and atheism. Same/same.

Atheist Myth - No One Killed In The Name of Atheism
By July, AD 1796, nearly 500,000 Vendean Catholics were killed. All of these theists were killed at the hands of atheists.

Stalins Atheist Regime Killing Spree

Mass Killings Under Atheist Communist Regimes

Marxist-Leninist Atheism

100 Years of Atheist Communism and 100 Million Dead

Persecution of Christians in Atheist Eastern Block - up to 20 Million Dead

Encylcopedia of World Problems - Atheist Communism

Many More Have Died At Atheists Hands
...estimates the loss of human life from atheistic communism to range from 40 million to 259 million with a median estimate of 110 million.

100 Years of Atheist Communism and 100 Million Dead - Bolshevik plague that began in Russia

Some 32-45 million Christians were killed in various atheist communist uprisings in that same time period.

League of Militant Atheists
At this Second Congress of Atheists, Nikolai Bukharin, the editor of Pravda, called for the extermination of religion "at the tip of the bayonet.'

And just so we are clear ... every day atheists commit murders just like people who believe in God.

Chapel Hill Murders

Chapel Hill Shootings

10 People Who Give Atheists A Bad Name

SOutherland Springs Shooting

originally posted by: Terpene
You ditched my question gracefully... But the devil is in the details

I didn't ditch it. I really don't think it can be answered. We don't know what came first ... morals or religion. Humanity is tens of thousands of years old. So is religion. We don't know how people behaved tens of thousands of years ago or what their religious beliefs were etc etc. The people all living together in caves may have helped the weak and the sick out of inherent 'goodness' ... or they may have let them die because they were no longer useful to the herd and then they ate them. (there is evidence of that in human bones found from those time periods). We just don't know how morality evolved.

Full disclosure. I haven’t read through all posts in this thread, so my perspective might well have already been covered. That being said, I doubt this is a chicken and egg issue, whether one’s leanings are towards utilitarianism or religion. Rather, I’d wager it’s a necessarily inherent property of social beings. Meaning, it’s mostly automatic rather than selected or conscious. That, of course doesn’t mean conscious beings can’t elect going against it.

a reply to: FlyersFan

Morals are memetic in nature, as an alternative to genetic. Memes define us as individuals trough societies cultural standards.

Even cannibalistic tribes have a set of moral values.
they don't usually eat their own, but you can be kicked out if you don't follow the moral values...

All societies have a set of moral values, they probably wouldn't exist without them.

Institutionalizing morals has always had great benefits for the epochs and regions in which new moral codexes were accepted. Depending on the morals, it was very detrimental to others.
most of them fail to adapt and loose relevancy.
Many a slave master has cited the Bible to justify his business. The relevance as moral foundation has been downwards ever since. There is no denying that the western moral values are still heavily influenced by Christianity. It has brought lots of good but there is alot of room still that somehow won't be filled since forever...

Moral codex usually mix and change over time, unless you have dogmatic factors that hinder the organic evolution.

Memes have to be seeded and spread to have an impact, Christianity is engaged in memetic warfare since 2000 years, the others are about to catch up...

originally posted by: FlyersFan
Yep. There ya' go. I never put one group as more morally superior than the other. There are good and bad people in both groups, and both groups of people get their moral inspiration from themselves, from others, and from the world around them.

Militant atheists hate religion and try to make arguments that religion is morally bankrupt. Both extremist groups act exactly the same way and both are wrong.

I put one group as being 100% responsible for their own morals and the other as outsourcing their morals, the group that takes 100% moral responsibility will be morally superior or inferior in the context of equal behavior. You can't be a "militant atheist" without being a staunch anti-theist, it's logically impossible to be a "militant atheist" based on atheism alone. Christianity IS morally bankrupt... case in point- the scripture specifically says you will burn in hell for not believing in their specific 'god', no matter how good a person you were or how many people you helped, you're going to hell. Meanwhile, rapists and murderers are offered salvation and redemption, as long as they accept jesus and 'god', they get eternity in heaven. So, based on fundamental scripture we have a situation where a lot of good people are in hell (the majority of 150-300k years worth of mankind) and out of the privileged minority of humanity who do get eternity in heaven, a large portion of them will be murderers and rapists.

"Christians as a whole make up about two-thirds of the inmate population in the facilities where they work. Protestants are seen, on average, as comprising 51% of the inmate population, Catholics 15% and other Christian groups less than 2%"
(www.pewresearch.org...)

"Of these people, less than 1% (. 07%) of inmates identify as atheists."
(en.wikipedia.org...)

There is a very obvious, immoral reason why evil people flock to theism...

Poppycock. BOTH can corrupt. An atheist can abuse another person because they believe there is no consequence just as much as a religious person can abuse another person because they think their religious text book says it's okay. Your statement is just arrogance and false.

Again- it's your inability to comprehend. I did not say 'atheists can not corrupt', I specifically said 'atheism alone cannot corrupt'- and that is true. We are born with an inherent absence of belief in countless things- you're trying so hard to make atheism into something more than that. It is not a belief system or any kind of moral/philosophical guide- it is the simple absence of belief, that's it. Atheism is literally a baseline characteristic, theism is an entire ideology/moral guide based on controlling behavior through fear and guilt. It directly asserts what is moral based on a false history and an entity that does not exist (if the abrahamic god did exist- they wouldn't be considered moral by any sensible standards). Objective morality does not exist- the entire abrahamic ideology is based on literary fiction, authoritarianism, false dichotomies, invented absolutes and corruption. The concept of atheism is not even 1/10th as complex as theology- you cannot attribute anything to atheism that can also be attributed to theism because atheism is absence of belief, and that's it. Because that is literally the only thing atheism entails and because theists obviously posses belief, there is literally not a single thing that you can attribute to both atheism and theism- they are not at all equal conceptually or ideologically. Theism entails countless concepts and conflicting philosophies.


A rational person does not have to believe in consequences from 'god', that idea is so stupid in fact I would assert that not even 'true believers' fear the consequences of 'god' as much as they fear real-world consequences from society. When was the last time you heard of someone being smited or punished by 'god'? The natural consequences from society for abusing another person is enough to stop most people- people generally only do evil things when they feel certain they can get away with it, which is why children are so commonly abused inside churches that have unsupervised access to them.

Your arrogant militant atheist "i'm morally superior' attitude is no different than the militant religious morally superior attitude that the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims have towards atheists.
It doesn't make you somehow morally superior to a person who has religious beliefs. To claim so is retarded.
Anyone saying otherwise is just being arrogant and cheerleading their own side and it's disingenuous which is NOT 'morally superior' behavior .

Atheists have nothing to outsource their morality to- they are forced to be personally responsible for their morals and behavior- not inherently superior morality. If a theist and atheist are equally moral, the atheist is by default more authentic and genuine in terms of being responsible for their own morality and behavior. In the context of doing good things, I see the ability to do those things through self-governance and empathy alone as being more benevolent than having ulterior motives. Conversely, in the context of doing evil things, the atheist has nothing to outsource their morals or behavior upon, therefore they are more personally responsible for their evil deeds than a theist (who could easily outsource their behavior to 'satan') with equally evil behavior. A theist doing evil or good things cannot be held as personally responsible as an atheist because a prerequisite of being a theist is to place responsibility for ethical decision-making on to an external entity. You either believe in 'god's will' or you don't, there is no in between.

The premise of the thread has been completely addressed and it has now gotten so damn dumb. Just a pile of cheerleading sides and insulting other posters.

Having 'sides' is mostly a thing with theism, it is a necessary false dichotomy to segregate believers from non-believers. Atheism is too overly simplistic a concept to 'have a side to cheer-lead for', again showing your fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism actually entails. The reason you do not believe in all other known theologies and 'gods' is because that is the natural state of being- you're not just born with beliefs in your mind and left to choose one. Once you introduce the belief in 'god', you introduce this imaginary thing that you can outsource literally anything to, encouraging intellectual laziness. Nobody has ever been killed in the name of atheism alone and if you think they have- then you do not understand what atheism entails. Estimates show that approximately 100-120 million have been killed for christianity and 900 million- 1.2 billion have been killed for islam. Realistically, we only have accurate estimates for war casualties after about 1900 when better record keeping methods existed, so take causality estimates before 1900 with a grain of salt. Stalin also replaced all of the clergy that he killed/exiled. He established a new national church of Russia because he understood the importance of using christianity to gain support, extending his control from Moscow to the satellite nations. Theism can worsen or improve morality (at the cost of sanity), atheism alone cannot.

originally posted by: FlyersFan

To say that Christians are ONLY acting morally because of a book of rules is wrong. Christians have many inspirations ... themselves, others around them, society standards, secular rule of law, and their religious values. For a militant atheist here to claim that christians are only moral because of a book ... that's just dumb.

Think about it ... If the ONLY reason Christians behave morally is because their religion tells them to, then that means if you take away their religion they'll be immoral, which also means they'll be atheists while being immoral. So the natural progression of saying that Christians ONLY behave morally because of religion is to also say that atheists are immoral.

It's not that christians behave morally only because their religion tells them to, it's the fact that when they choose to do a morally good thing, they now have an imaginary ulterior motive to choose from. Empathy alone is no longer a necessary motivator to help others and you can never be certain even if they claim it is only out of empathy. When an atheist is doing something good for another person with nothing in return, they don't have any other motivators to outsource, it's only empathy. If you take away their religion, you take away their ability to outsource their morality and personal responsibility, so how ever they behave they will have to fully own up to it now. Christianity allows more scenarios and excuses to behave immorally than it does to behave morally. Theology is neither necessary or sufficient for morality.

Immorality and morality, in theism and atheism. Same/same.

Atheist Myth - No One Killed In The Name of Atheism
By July, AD 1796, nearly 500,000 Vendean Catholics were killed. All of these theists were killed at the hands of atheists.

Stalins Atheist Regime Killing Spree

Obviously atheism alone did not motivate any such behavior- but I do find it funny what scripture has to say about people in power. Romans 13-1 "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God." According to this scripture, people like mao, stalin and hitler were ordained and put in charge by 'god' himself. According to christianity, 'god' apparently places those in authority in power, including corrupt and psychotic leaders. To the true believer- this makes 'god' responsible for the actions of mao, hitler, stalin, etc.
Food for thought...

Humanity is tens of thousands of years old. So is religion. We don't know how people behaved tens of thousands of years ago or what their religious beliefs were etc etc. The people all living together in caves may have helped the weak and the sick out of inherent 'goodness' ... or they may have let them die because they were no longer useful to the herd and then they ate them. (there is evidence of that in human bones found from those time periods). We just don't know how morality evolved.

Human mitochondria is hundreds of thousands of years old- "As of 2015, estimates of the age of the Y-MRCA range around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, roughly consistent with the emergence of anatomically modern humans." (en.wikipedia.org...)

Theology did not evolve independently or earlier than human morality, morality necessarily had to evolve independently. Theology is dependent on human morality, morality is not dependent on theology. Moral intuitions do not vary much across different religions all around the world- this is because morality operates independently from religion. Human morality not only predates any religion that exists today, it also predates any languages. Basic morality is also resistant to religious influence, individuals will reject religious rules that violate their basic morality. Human morality is the result of being a social species, cooperation is made possible by a multitude of mental mechanisms that virtually all mammals adhere to for survival. Moral codes are present throughout animal kingdoms- "some studies, for instance, have found that animals are sometimes willing to help others when there is no direct gain involved, or even a direct loss. Such apparently altruistic behavior has been shown by rats, pigeons, and several primate species." (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...)

"with regard to the phylogenetic origin, we show that even though full-blown human morality is unique to humans, several of its key elements are not."
"In particular, the element of prosocial concern most likely evolved in the context of shared infant care"
(www.frontiersin.org...)

And for someone who claims to be morally superior to others, you sure are a snotty little guy. Great example you are showing of 'atheist moral superiority' /sarcasm.

I never claimed myself or atheists to be morally superior. You simply cannot comprehend the concepts of moral responsibility and moral outsourcing while simultaneously ignoring the context of hypothetical situations like 2 people with exactly identical morals. I'll say it again- even in the context of evil behavior- the atheist is more directly responsible for their personal morality/behavior and are not able to outsource their evil deeds to 'satan' just as they cannot outsource good deeds to 'god'. It's disappointing to see you confidently incorrect while simultaneously struggling with basic reading comprehension..

In summary- It's an equivocation fallacy to assert that because an atheist did something bad, it must be because they are an atheist- it's impossible to do anything because of atheism alone, it has zero ideology. While a theist does not necessarily do something evil solely because of theism, the possibility of theism being the sole motivator exists and has been shown to happen throughout history. Theology has the extreme potential to be abused and doesn't solve or add anything to society that couldn't be attributed to a basic sense of community. Atheism is a rudimentary characteristic that is shared by virtually all of humanity to some degree, including theists (because they reject other theologies).

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere

That's like asking "How can children have morality?", which has already been proven that even infants can make moral decisions based on their very limited understanding of how *they* would like to be treated.

And kids are the cruelest... Your assertions are BS..

Still getting used to this archaic website and just now looking at my list of direct replies, lol.


I totally missed this one but I still wanted to address it. Simply put, I was obviously talking about infants, specifically. There is empirical evidence that babies are not intentionally trying to be cruel or malicious, but evidence suggests that they are capable of intentionally acting in kindness. It's one of the only concepts they have at that age- for example- a toddler might enjoy strawberries and realize sooner than you'd think that other people also enjoy/appreciate strawberries. Over time, children become who they are through a combination of learned behavior, environmental factors and genetic traits, etc. The studies and evidence I've reviewed show a clear correlation that humans are born with a natural inclination to help others- but only until it comes at too much of personal cost to help others. Once it becomes too costly to help others, new behaviors come into play. (www.independent.co.uk...)
My understanding of that particular study is that negligence can breed cruelty- "the results of the experiments suggest that personal cost is a key inhibitor to compassionate behavior in children, implying that reducing this cost may facilitate compassion."

What are some reasons/factors that you think lead to a baby growing into a cruel child? There are definitely cruel kids out there. In my own limited experience growing up, the mean kids typically had mean older siblings and negligent parents- that may be enough to make any person hostile at some point in their life.

originally posted by: NovemberHemisphere

What are some reasons/factors that you think lead to a baby growing into a cruel child? There are definitely cruel kids out there. In my own limited experience growing up, the mean kids typically had mean older siblings and negligent parents- that may be enough to make any person hostile at some point in their life.

Thanks for replying, I was thinking boy that is going back some when I saw your reply. Let me ask you, are puddles cruel, or are any baby animals? The reason why kids are cruel is because they have no social restraints and awareness yet. Some do because their parents at the age of like 2 and a half worked on it already. My wife is Asian so at about the time they were talking she had them reading, spelling, and doing math. Growing up in a military life they also understood social norms very quickly. My kids were not that nasty brat at the grocery store.

It is interesting watching kids around 4 or 5 as they are all over the place to a point whatever they are/do is considered normal for that age, but damn they do some crazy stuff in behavior. I think parents who do not spend any time with them are basically seeing their kids grow up wild and social norms are learned later, sometimes painfully as they tend to end up being seen as acward or aggressive.

When kids get a little older the pack mentality kicks in. I still remember it from about 3rd grade on as kids tend to start splitting up into alphas and betas.

What we really do not understand is the old having a good life and a kid growing up bad, and a kid in a bad life growing up good, but typically good equals good and bad equals bad for the path of a person's life.

My point in all this is much of our morals are religious-based and faith is a very strong tool to use to set them in stone. Millions of people can recite the bible, but how many even know one line from Kant? I believe 80% of our morals are taught and are not inherent. The Greeks didn't use the words good/bad, they used something along the lines of what behaviors were positive or negative for society. The problem is also what might be great for me is really bad for you, so we need to have something in place to prevent those alphas from just taking what they want from the betas.

So far, religion has been the best answer. I'm not religious BTW...lol

originally posted by: Xtrozero

My point in all this is much of our morals are religious-based and faith is a very strong tool to use to set them in stone. Millions of people can recite the bible, but how many even know one line from Kant? I believe 80% of our morals are taught and are not inherent. The Greeks didn't use the words good/bad, they used something along the lines of what behaviors were positive or negative for society. The problem is also what might be great for me is really bad for you, so we need to have something in place to prevent those alphas from just taking what they want from the betas.

So far, religion has been the best answer. I'm not religious BTW...lol

That's insightful, I think anyone who has a parent capable of properly educating them before school is at an advantage for sure. I think the first 2-5 years of a persons life are the most vital, so your kids are fortunate to have a mother that values education. If you're not careful as a parent you may not realize what things are influencing your child the most- as the old saying goes "the tree remembers what the axe forgets". A parent can have just one bad day, lose their composure for just a moment and say something that sticks with that child for their entire life. A fleeting moment of emotions for the parents can be a lifelong sentiment for the child.


As for as your last point, I could see that being true on a small scale but on the grand scale the opposite is true IMO. The church, and theologies in general, are tools for the 'alphas' to concentrate unimaginable wealth and power. There is a reason why virtually every member of the corrupt United States government are theologians. All throughout the history of christianity, for example, it was clearly and concisely used as a tool for the elite to forcefully take the wealth and power they wanted through slavery and other means. Without theology they would have never garnered such wide-spread support- I believe the current capitalist system and extreme wealth inequality in the world are directly because of religion and other similar means of applying psychoanalytical tactics to the populous as a whole. For instance, look at all of the historical monarchs of Britain- the monarchs were subject to no earthly authority, deriving their 'right' to rule directly from the will of 'god'. Rights are literally imaginary- "god-given rights" absolutely do not exist.


I don't look at it like 80% of our morals are learned- I think our morals evolve into more complex philosophies, but they grow from inherent moral senses. Among children and young infants, moral sense inherently exists. A good parent will nurture that morality to continue growing through social interactions and exposure to various environmental factors IMHO. Providing a safe, neutral environment for your child's natural genetic traits to organically express themselves is the bare minimum of what a parent should be obligated to do IMO. They are essentially shepherds providing a safe, neutral or positive environment for them to grow in.