The Impact of Secondary Christian Beliefs on Morals

[maruli marulaki]

Disagreements with my partner made me think about individual differences in how ex-christians become atheists and what defines their morals.

I think that there are primary and secondary christian beliefs. Most atheists agree on having discarded the primary christian beliefs of the existence of a god, an afterlife and the circumstances of life and death of a guy called Jesus as told in the bible.

But there are also secondary beliefs defining how good christians have to be, to behave and to think. These secondary beliefs can be summed up as the precept to give and to sacrifice more than to receive and to expect and to suffer more than to harm others. This precept makes perfect sense when derived from the primary belief in an afterlife and rewards by a god after death. But it makes no sense for atheists whose life ends at death.

Unfortunately the immersion in a christian culture and a christian upbringing sometimes has the effect that those secondary beliefs and precepts are taken for granted as the only possible way to be. Therefore some people become cognitive atheists, but in their morals they remain christians.

Only by overcoming also the secondary beliefs someone can become a full apistevist with morals derived from the principle of fairness and justice, of a balance of giving and receiving, of living according to Epicurus’ principle of not harming and not being harmed.

This can lead to the absurd situation that a christian atheist claims to be morally superior to an apistevist.

Has anybody experienced something like this?