Actually, it's way funnier than that, because most religions are strongly in favour of moral relativism and subjectivism. When the standard for what is moral is the opinion of some guy, that is clearly just a subjective opinion, and when different cultures refer to different guys for the opinion, that is clearly relative. Just adding the further nonsense claim that your guy also created the universe, or something to that effect, seems to be an effective rhetorical device, but doesn't change that it's just a guy's opinion, not an objective fact.

I’m not following, sorry.

Anything I can help you with?

I think the former may require the latter. I’m not sure how an atheistic (in the literal sense) population could resist the forces of selfishness and tribalism over generations (again, this isn’t to say that religious people are unwavering, but I think religion does function as an anchor that keeps a population’s mores from drifting too far). As for whether most non religious people are moral relativists, perhaps they aren’t individually because they’ve settled on a morality that is palatable to them, but in aggregate I posit their morality (moralities?) drift more readily than religious persons.

And as a reminder, this is all speculation and I completely understand that you may not agree (I may not agree by the end of this thread!).

> I’m not sure how an atheistic population could resist the forces of selfishness and tribalism

First you're going to have to explain how religious populations avoid those.

Hint: they don't.

I had already addressed this in a sibling subthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19975618

Anyway, they do; that they do so imperfectly is not a counterargument, since (as I've mentioned several times), religion serves as a bulwark in this regard, not a panacea.

With better education. Better reasoning skills prevent stupid applications of instincts.