You prove my point. You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person. These are two different worlds.

Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference. That there is some superficial overlap (a tree? presents?) doesn't allow you to claim the morality of atheists as religion-derived. That's ludicrous. It's like saying the local butcher taking apart a pig is adhering to Aztec rituals and their morals because at some point in both 'ceremonies' someone holds a heart in their hands.

In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.

> You won't find many atheists (if any) that will take Jesus as in any shape or form a historical person.

Raises hand: Atheist here who thinks that a historical Jesus is at least plausible. Obviously not a son of god, though, that would have been embellishment by later generations.

This. The existence of Jesus says nothing about his divinity or the validity of Christianity. We have more evidence for the existence of Muhammad. Does that make Islam the 'correct' religion? We have even more evidence for the existence of Joseph Smith. Does that make Mormonism the 'correct' religion? We have video recordings of L. Ron Hubbard, along with many people still alive who have met him. Does that make Scientology the 'correct' religion?

Exactly. The possible existence of someone names Jesus ~2000 years ago gives zero validity to anything. But we don't even know that. It takes faith to believe in Jesus as a historical figure. There is as much evidence as for the existence of Harry Potter.

Jesus definitely existed as a person, we have records from the time mentioning him

That is overstating it a bit; there are mentions decades (but not centuries) after his reported death.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus has a good overview of the non biblical sources.

You're right, after looking it up it was Muhammed who we have records mentioning either during life or within ~30 years[1]. For Jesus it definitely came after.

1- https://i.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/religion#wiki_...

> In fact, the source of morals among atheists seems to be a permanent puzzle for many people with religious background, simply claiming them as religion-based misses the point completely.

I don’t have a religious background and it’s still a puzzle for me. Best I can manage to explain it is through a combination of tradition and genes (“human nature”), and tradition is often indeed derived from historical religious environment. Moral is mostly universal but not completely - for one example the attitudes towards hard work at the expense of everything else vary greatly across different cultures and religious traditions.

Amusingly, there's the same trap here as with the "who created the world" problem.

Sure, religious people get their morals largely from their religion. But where do the morals of the religion come from?

You’re right of course - religion and tradition feed on each other. I’m imagining it as a dynamic system with feedback loops, etc. where organized religion plays the role of the mechanism that slows down change and provides stasis. We’re only a couple generations into our “post-religious” society so the jury is still out on how this great decoupling will play out exactly.

I don't think moral is universal at all - 'You shall not kill' vs cannibal societies and honor killings, monogamy vs polygamy, eating animals vs vegetarianism, slavery vs abolitionism, democracy vs. tribalism, patriarchy vs. equality, mothers' rights vs unborn rights, etc.

It's not only not universal, but it's highly fluid (which it couldn't be if it was universal).

I always preferred to look at morals as survival strategies for societies. From this point of view they do not have to be universal to work - its enough that they skew the probablity a bit towards survival of given group and the rest is just some version of Darwins Game of Life.

Obviously they don't have to be universal to work, that's my whole post - they aren't, and humanity was pretty successful in settling every last piece of this planet.

I'd still suggest the overlap isn't incidental. Religions need stable or expanding societies to procreate. So ideology that leads to stable or expanding societies is strongly selected for. Religions with written texts have surprisingly low mutation rates in their ideology, but when conditions begin to favor different behaviors to promote stability, polygamy for instance, the ideology changes quickly.

As a reference to my biases, I'm a theistic agnost, I don't know, but I believe. The life of pie or secondhand lions explain the why pretty well.

But you're only arguing about proliferation of religion, you're not saying anything about the overlap?

>Atheists don't derive their morals from these stories, that's the difference.

The notion that atheists--or Christians, for that matter--ground their moral reasoning in first principles, completely free of unexamined assumptions and social convention, is so laughable that I'm amazed anyone here is seriously suggesting it.

Wow, you destroyed that strawman!

If that's a straw man, then what would a more charitable interpretation of your comment look like?

There is zero overlap between your comment and the quote you provide, so I wouldn't even know where to start fixing your comment.

Then what do you mean by your remark about how atheists "derive" their moral beliefs? rayiner's comment was about the religious origins of certain beliefs and their persistence in Western societies--not about whatever explicit justification contemporary atheists or believers might offer for those beliefs. In your comment you seem to be disregarding the former question to focus attention entirely on the latter.

I don't write at all about how Atheists derive their moral beliefs, I don't know what you are referring to - show me, if you can.

I also don't write about how Atheists would justify (religious) beliefs - and why would atheists have to justify religious beliefs? Now that is laughable. The whole point of Atheism is to no longer rely on beliefs, much less having or feeling the urge to justify other people's beliefs.

Also, rayiner doesn't write about that at all. What they claim is that the fact that certain cultural customs prove the original Christian origin and persisting influence of Christianity of these customs, ignoring that sitting around a pine tree with your family and celebrating that days are finally getting longer predates Christianity by hundreds or, more likely, thousands of years.

Rayiner in their reply to my post completely ignored that the whole point of my post was about 'cultural legacy' vs 'organized religion', so I don't feel particularly bad that you think I did not address their comment enough. Also, I can't change that they are hijacking the thread to praise Christianity over Arabs.

It's late, but for the sake of thoroughness...

I should explain that I meant belief in a very ordinary sense of the word. As in, I believe capital punishment is wrong, or, Mike doesn't believe in the existence of aliens.

>What they claim is that the fact that certain cultural customs...

rayiner argued that the "cultural legacy" of Christianity is about more than just custom. They're saying that certain values--equality, moral universalism--are widely and deeply held throughout the modern, secular West, and that those values (or rather the great weight that Westerners assign to them) are a legacy of Christianity.

It's not a ridiculous position. Plenty of serious thinkers have argued along similar lines--Nietzsche, Weber, Foucault, Charles Taylor, Marcel Gaucher, Ivan Illich. No doubt there are lots more.

Oh a new thing in this thread, a bait-and-switch-appeal-to-authority-straw-man! But I'm glad you finally found the point you want to argue that doesn't even require reading the post you reply to and called 'laughable'.

I'll humor you anyway and just refer to [1] that thoroughly debunks the position that those values originate in any way as a legacy of Christianity. You're welcome.

[1] https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/701478

I don't cite those names as authorities whose views on the historical influence of Christianity--which differ greatly in their particulars, by the way--demand acceptance. I'm presenting them as evidence that the subject is worth reading up on, whether by you or by someone else who happens to read these comments.

Thank you, that's an interesting paper. Looking at the "morality-as-cooperation codebook," though, I see a great deal that contradicts orthodox Christian doctrine--for example, Giving preferential treatment to (members of) your group. Assuming that the opposite belief--that you should "love your enemies, bless them that curse you," etc.--has gained any adherence in the West, that ethic must have originated in something else (maybe a religion?) besides the code of reciprocity your paper's authors have assembled.

The mid winter family-oriented festival predates Christianity. The party at the darkest part of the year is indeed the original point.

Indeed. I'd be surprised to find a single culture on this planet that did/does not celebrate that days are finally getting longer.

Even among equatorial people's?

You got me. I should have specified that a certain threshold of day-night length difference would have to be exceeded to be subject to celebration.

I'm glad I specified the planet, or else someone would have pointed out planets without a tilted axis.

[Edit] Fair point, though. I asked for a single counterexample and you delivered.

> Sharing, caring, family, food, etc

I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.

Even tribes of cavemen cared for each-other. We have evidence of people being cared for and living for years with crippling iniiries. They could not care for themselves let alone help the tribe.

Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.

If there was actually a correlation between religion and morality, then we would see less crimes like murder/ robbery /rape in religious societies. If anything, the opposite is true.

> I really dislike religion claiming monopoly on morals.

Where's the monopoly? A discussion on the moral values of religious rituals doesn't preclude anything. I don't even belong to a church.

It seems you think (perhaps subconsciously) that religion has a monopoly on morals. Why else are you bringing that into the discussion and arguing against it?

> Even animals care for each-other and protect each-other, can't claim culture or religion there - its a basic feature of evolution.

Religious morals are an instance of mutual care emerging through social evolution in an animal - the human, specifically. And humans call it "culture", because humans like to invent words to describe specific instances of phenomena.