[Liberty Wins]

"Take up basket weaving perhaps?"

Look, this is very similar to the debate between believers and non-believers. (Whoa, now don't accuse me of saying you all are atheists!)

There used to be a very familiar phrase in our culture - - the "fear of God." Personally, I like to think of God in his kind, benevolent form, but I have to admit when I read in the papers about some horrific crime in which a kid was murdered for his sneakers, or something similar, that phrase comes immediately to mind and I wish fervently that the murderer had had the "fear of God."

So, if you don't believe there is an afterlife, and you are just the product of other organisms that arrived by chance, what difference does it make if you lead an upright life? It is far easier to lead a selfish life (until you get caught).

[JeffAtlanta]

So, if you don't believe there is an afterlife

Islamic terrorists believe in an afterlife and it is the primary thing that empowers them to be suicide bombers. The "fear of God" has no useful benefit if you use religion to justify bad behavior.

In these threads, for example, we often see creationists that think that they are justified to lie for God.

[Coyoteman]

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

Quotations from Heinlein's address at the U.S. Naval Academy April 5, 1973

• I now define "moral behavior" as "behavior that tends toward survival." I won't argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word "moral" to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define "behavior that tends toward extinction" as being "moral" without stretching the word "moral" all out of shape.

• Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

• The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she'll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college—and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child… and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.

• Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.

• The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called "patriotism."

• Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.

• Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on… as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you've had it, you're done, you're through! You join Tyrannosaurus rex, one more breed that bilged its final test.

• "Patriotism" is a way of saying "Women and children first." And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely.

Food for thought. Source.