That actually looks very good when written down, putting it into practice is another matter entirely.
Yet, millions of atheists are "putting it into practice" every day, and the funny thing is, we're doing it better than most of you Christians. If the content of the jails is any indication.
When we throw off that cape of civilized behaviour
Who is claiming we need to overturn civilization? When people actually think about it, the vast majority come to the same conclusion - it's better to be civilized than not.
Your mistake is that you conflate belief in a fairy tale with understanding of what it takes to run a society.
I'm sure you have read "The Lord of the Flies" by William Golding, it is used in many Lit. classes in High Scool.
Yes, I have. Did you miss the fact that it's a story about how the elite use stories about the supernatural to manipulate others to do their bidding? Apparently so.
But you seem to be overlooking the fact that the supposed morals that the athiests have come up with were originally given by the christian outlook on life.
I'm sorry? Every culture as "do not steal" and "do not kill"; they predate the Bible by thousands of years.
This has been so for the last 2000 years.
Oh, right, because there were
absolutely no civilizations whatsoever before they wrote the Bible. Funny, I must have missed that little factoid in World History.
Anything you can think of that uplifts humanity and gives it rights and responsibilities was brought about by that same christian faith which is now supposed to be "fairy tales".
I disagree. The best stuff predates the Bible. And a fair bit of your "Biblical morals" have actually the opposite effect; they are used to enslave and oppress elements of humanity. What's uplifting about telling two gay men that they're abominations that God hates? What's uplifting about telling black people they've been marked by God for slavery?
It looks like you're biting off the hand that fed you.
I'll bite away. There's nothing in the Bible that benefits us only in the context of Christian belief; and eliminating that basis of Christian belief removes much in the Bible that is harmful to our society.
As for being the most succesful, I think 2000 years of history is quite an achievement, don't you?
It's pretty good, but that 2000 years hasn't been all good times. The history of modern democracy, in practice, is maybe 200-300 years. A lot of your 2000 of Western Civilization has been the oppression of peoples and the tyranny of the elite. It's awesome that that gave birth to participatory government, but remember that that only happened when we pulled religion out of politics.
Humanistically speaking western civilization (based on christian principles) was the 1st to abolish slavery in the history of humanity.
Oh? That's news to me. Last I checked, Western civilizations put prisoners to work, drafted men into military service against their will, and instituted other acts of unfree labor. We don't always call it "slavery", of course, but the principle of coercing labor against the laborer's will still persists.
I'm glad we've made progress. But we weren't the first society to eliminate unfree labor; no society has, yet.
We cannot say that christian influence in society was not a positive modifier.
Compare, if you would, the length of time considered "the Dark Ages", when the Christian church held sway, with the length of time elapsed since the Enlightenment. On the balance, the Christian church has been a force of oppression, not of freedom.
Look at the old Soviet Society and see how a "moral and athiestic" society behaves itself. They were all for man being his own "god".
Then they weren't atheists, now were they? If you believe that the State is God, God is the State, then you're not an atheist. How can you be?
If you want to see how an atheist society can function,
look around you. (Er, I see you live in Portugal, so what I mean is, look around
me.) America is full of atheists, and somehow, we do
just fine. Better than the theists, in fact.
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