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Originally Posted by photon
It's also a lot easier to just follow a set of right vs wrong rules that someone said you have to follow or suffer eternally vs having to figure it out for yourself and do it because it's right (and not to avoid eternal damnation).
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Very few people - religious or not - independently develop a moral code. Morality and social norms are set out for all of us by our society. And Christian morality is so deeply embedded in Western society’s values that we no longer even recognize their origins.
Tom Holland (another atheist) lays out this persuasive argument in Dominion.
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REVIEW – TOM HOLLAND “DOMINION: THE MAKING OF THE WESTERN MIND”
…Holland’s final chapters explore the paradox that, in the west at least, we live in a post-Christian world but one that is so permeated by the ideas and principles that he traces over the course of his history of Christianity that we are like fish swimming in the water of Christian thinking – so used to it that we do not notice it is there. So the Beatles could sing “all you need is love” and not need to explain what that means or why it “makes sense”. Or rich, self-indulgent rock stars can put on a concert to preach compassion and aid for an African famine and see a global audience raise millions of dollars to help strangers on the other side of the planet. Both messages would be at least rather odd to the citizens of ancient Rome or Athens, but they are perfectly normal to us; so much so that we struggle to articulate why.
https://historyforatheists.com/2020/...land-dominion/
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