I have written about this before, saying: "We often hear the argument from religious individuals that without
religion there would be no guide for our morality. It is an absurd
argument, that likely says something about that individual's lack of
real morality."
Those who look down on atheism seem perplexed at the notion that one could have a set of morals that are not handed down by a book that is claimed to be infallible (even if those same folks often ignore the lessons therein which are no longer deemed socially acceptable).
Then we get a news report like this one. A Georgia couple is accused of attaching a shock collar to their daughter and forcing her to live in a chicken coop as punishment because they believed they were "doing what the bible says."
When you forfeit your sense of morals to a book, judgement goes out the window. As I said before, when one bases his or her "entire sense of morality on the teachings of that book, anything not
directly forbidden is on the table. Slavery was not only not forbidden,
this so-called holy book wrote out rules for how to beat your slaves.
Hence the many deeply religious people who participated, supported, and
ultimately fought a war over slavery."
