A question I often ask them is, do they really believe that communities without Christianity or folks free from any sort of belief in deities are all nihilistic savages without conscience, principles or ethics?
Of course, historical evidence would refute any such assertion and may even suggest that theocracies are consistently far more oppressive, brutal and totalitarian than those with a secular foundation.
My view is that the common misconception that "religion" is synonymous with "morality" (and that without the former you cannot have the latter) is the flaw that supports the continued stereotype and bias otherwise loving folks have against atheists by default.
Art, music, imagination, philosophy, emotions, politics and religion are not the least of these ideas.
The difference found in a non-theistic system of morality is that the pretense of an ineffable supreme being giving human action sanction is completely removed and the human family is then left to decide for themselves what is practical and what is successful for a peaceful and orderly community to thrive and prosper.
I find that Secular Humanism and Ethical Atheism benefits from the abandonment of such superfluous and problematic pretense and allows the individual to be culpable for the joys, failures and ambiguities in life as a result of their actions.
If morality is not based on rules handed down by a divine authority, and we are left to decide for ourselves what is practical and useful for the human community to thrive, what humanistic principles exist to further this goal?
The simple answer is to be socially responsible, culturally tolerant, personally ethical, informed by science and critical analysis of the empirical and, as human beings, emotionally moved to compassion and altruism.
These principles are derived from practical experience and our own inherent human capacity to feel empathy and act accordingly to protect, serve and to help others.
It should be noted that these are aspirations and we should recognize that things will not always go our way in spite of our best efforts. The important thing is that we are culpable for our own failures and successes and accept those ambiguities that come within the dynamics of this one existence.
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