Nonsense. Human beings are animals, true, but we are animals with a brain that can reason, and that makes all the difference. Civilization is the result, and was only possible because we have developed, through thousands of years of trial and error, an ethical system that allows people to live together without killing each other all the time.
If atheists feel guilt, it is simply the result of their God given conscience speaking to them. Rejecting God does not dispose of the conscience.
Guilt is an empathic response from seeing the suffering of others at our own hand. Some species of ape have been seen to demonstrate empathy too, so perhaps they are God's children too? Believing in God doesn't change the evolutionary origins of empathy or guilt.
At the most, an atheist can make a logical argument for protective laws based on a herd protection theory. But abiding by those laws themselves would make no logical sense, if they knew they could get away with violating them and achieve personal gain by it.
And what difference does believing in God make? David Vitter, Duke Cunningham, Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Richard Roberts, and on and on ad nauseum... All staunch Christians, by all accounts, and yet they too tried to "get away with it."
While there will always be people who can break laws with impunity, a society can only tolerate so many of them before law and order breaks down and almost everyone suffers. That is patently obvious from even a cursory study of history. Unless you can guarantee to be one of the few who is not affected by a lawless society, then it makes no sense at all to ignore the laws of your society.
Any atheist that is ethical is either too dumb to understand their own religion, or they lack the faith of their own convictions.
Atheists understand their beliefs just fine, but it's obvious that few Christians around here understand the first thing about what atheism entails.
Someone has the opportunity to kill you tomorrow, steal all you own, and get away with it. Forgetting conscience, there is no logical reason for them not to do it if you and they are only an animals. Animals kill members of their own species all the time for far less.
Its called survival of the fittest.
A truly ignorant statement concerning the history of mankind. Most all civilizations not based on Christianity have failed to hold up the Golden Rule as a virtue, let alone practice it. It took 1900 years for Christianity to completely reshape Western Civilization to the point that treating others as you would be treated became so accepted that silly atheists could claim that its "just natural".
I'm flattered that atheists have chosen to borrow the tenants of Christianity and call them their own, but it doesn't change the facts. Without a divine moral code that rests on there being something greater than oneself, there is absolutely nothing beneficial about being ethical when no one is looking.
I'll never knowingly trust an atheist with my welfare or the welfare of anyone else. They ultimately have no underlying principle greater than their own welfare. Assertions to the contrary can logically be explained as subterfuge to gain false trust.
Again your logic is totally flawed. Person A's decision to follow the law provides zero protection to person A from person B. Or are you arguing that all rape victims had it coming?
For someone who's only belief system is logic and reason, you appear to lack a firm understanding of either. You will find little natural empathy in any of the greatly successful ancient civilizations. In point of fact, empathy was more often than not considered to be a failing to be avoided.
Had you been an atheist among the Tartars or Spartans you would have just as quickly called their values your own and explained them as evolutionarily natural, just as you now explain away Christian values.