Atheist Accountability

The accusation "Y'all just want to sin" that comes from Christians may be accompanied by the statement "You don't want to be accountable to (my) god" and this in turn means that you are a depraved individual that good people shouldn't trust. I've been writing this week about atheist morality and my rejection of the category of sin for a code of behavior that weighs benefits and harms, and today I would like to examine considerations atheists, namely me, make when making decisions.

For a start, there is truth in saying that I don't want to be accountable to a god, although the wording is not quite the way I would say it. I don't believe in any gods, so there's nothing to be accountable to. From my point of view, gods are creations of humans and generally people construct a god who agrees with their viewpoint, so what Christians usually mean is "you don't want to be accountable to the moral standards I have in my mind that I attribute to a god to give them an undeniability." Christians can tap dance around this all they want, but there is no one moral standard for Christianity. There is even division over what god thinks of the LGBTQ population and abortion, and you can say they aren't True Christians^tm till the four horsemen of the apocalypse show up on the horizon, I am not going to be the arbiter of what is the correct way of being a Christian, so you guys need to go have caucus until you get your story straight. Don't worry, the rest of us will be here going about our lives.

The fact of the matter is, atheists don't have to be accountable to your ideas to be good people. Not being accountable to your idea of what a deity wants does not mean not being accountable at all. There are ways of being accountable to society, others and ourselves that need not involve a god.

In other words, atheists do have moral codes. Just ask us how we make moral decisions. Don't assume we don't have one or ask "if" we have morals.

I am not trying to speak for all atheists, but there are some general lines of moral reasoning that involve harm and benefit that atheists take into consideration when weighing right and wrong behavior. Generally, the course of action will be determined by the situation, and there won't be blanket "this is wrong at all times statements" (there are some exceptions to this, rape, assault and slavery come to mind).