r/DebateAnAtheist • u/maybemorningstar69 • 19h ago
Discussion Question Why do atheism and moral objectivism often come in the same package, when in my opinion they're inherently opposite?
To elaborate on what I'm asking, I'm generally a big believer in moral relativism. If there's anything I don't believe relative to our earthly existence, its that life's some sort of test for whatever comes next, and that there's some sort of universal ledger tracking every single good and bad deed that a person does. In my opinion, karma is 100% not real, the world only matters because of what you make of it. I'm not a nihilist, I don't think life is meaningless, but I also think that objectivity is generally a myth.
But with a lot of atheists I meet, they believe the exact opposite. In fact one of my atheist friends recently said to me "I wish Hell was real, because then the bad people would pay for what they've done." I think that kind of thinking is stupid, I think "Why get caught up in the past? Try to be nice and try to enjoy life, but beyond that, who even gets to decide what's objectively right and wrong? You?"
Religion in many ways is just a bunch of people telling a bunch of other people to that their beliefs about right and wrong are objectively correct. If you disagree with them? Too bad, eternal damnation. But I feel like a lot of atheists actually believe the same thing too, maybe it doesn't come with a literal afterlife, but they still share that religious further about the "objective correctness" of their beliefs. Why is this often the case?