Those who are antipathetic to atheism sometimes assert that atheists are inherently immoral, as morality is derived from God via scripture and therefore a rejection of religion denies the atheist from that moral frame of reference.
It’s particularly important to debunk this argument because it cynically attempts to impugn the character of atheists as a form of “straw man” argument, to distract from the pivotal issue of the existence of God (and, in some militant cases, to try and intimidate others who might be questioning their faith).
There are some fundamental flaws to the argument that atheists must, by definition, be amoral. The first is the assertion that morality is derived from God via scripture, as this as an objective morality. The notion of an objective morality is philosophically questionable, as we know that moral viewpoints have shifted and evolved over the years. What society once viewed as morally acceptable is not necessarily so today. Even then, we can see differences in moral outlooks between countries and cultures in the present day. Almost every major conflict in the world today is between parties who each believe they have the moral high ground (whether we agree with them or not). Few consciously take a contrary view out of malice aforethought.
The usual response to this is that the God’s morality, as described in scripture, is not the same as human morality; it is divine and absolute. This falls immediately foul of another problem, which is that scripture contains some things that most of us (religious or not) would not consider morally acceptable today. This is unsurprising as human morality changes over time…but this is conflict with the assertion that it’s origins are from divine morality. How does one square that circle?
Ah, well, we’re told that due to its age, scripture cannot be interpreted literally, it needs to be contextualized for a modern setting. Once again, we run into a fundamental problem because if our morality is founded on these religious sources, how can we re-interpret these dictates except by drawing on an external moral frame of reference? We’re forced to conclude that our morality cannot originate solely from the teachings of scripture and hence the argument crumbles.
Infamous baby-eating, mass-murdering despots were all atheist
Let’s now turn to another facet of the amoral atheist argument, which seeks to substantiate the position by asserting that one or more infamous villains from history was atheist (Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.). This isn’t even true in most cases. Hitler, for example, was not an atheist and most white supremacists, particularly in the US, are most certainly not atheist. Further, many of the cited communist leaders opposed religion not on atheistic grounds but because organized religion was perceived as a threat to the state’s power monopoly.
Leaving aside the factual uncertainty over the religious beliefs of the specified villain, this is a simple logical fallacy – correlation does not imply causation. That’s like asserting that because cost serial killers are white, most white people are potential serial killers! Trait based generalizations are almost guaranteed to be flawed. Besides, even if one of these historical villains were atheist, they were not carrying out their heinous deeds in the name of atheism (unlike, I might point out, some atrocities carried out under the banner of religion).
Atheism is unrelated to morality
In conclusion, the argument that atheism engenders immorality is founded on entirely groundless assumptions and a number of logical fallacies. It really carries no intellectual weight whatsoever. I propose that this argument is so popular simply because it aligns with the proponents world view and hence confirmation bias prevents them from questioning it.