Atheist "Morality"

One of the major points that comes up in nearly any discussion I've ever had with atheists is how "atheists can be just as moral or more moral than anyone else. We don't need
some fairy godfather to tell us how to act." In bouts of what seem like real-life examples of "methinks (they) doth protest TOO much," I've had atheists even start "screaming"
this at me despite my not even talking about morality.

However, I recently had an experience that shows the difference in what atheists claim is their "equal" morality and Christian morality. Now, this was by no means a major
event, but as a real life example, the kind that most common people may have run into on their own, it works.

I was in Lowe's buying a few five gallon buckets of paint. I also bought some other things, and when I was finished shopping, I went to the cashier to pay. While she was
scanning my purchases, she accidentally did a quantity of 10 for my paint instead of the light bulbs I had. My total came to over $800, and when she saw that, she realized she
made a mistake, so she deleted it and hit the "total" key again. I paid and got my receipt, but then stopped. It turned out that after deleting the 10 paints, she forgot to
charge me for any paint, so I could have walked out with $160 of free paint (I purchased two 5 gallon buckets).

Now, here's where the so-called atheist "morality" and Christian morality can, and I'm sure, frequently, split. As soon as I noticed the error, I realized that to walk out
without paying would be stealing. It wasn't my error, nor my fault, but I did know that the error was made. I called her attention to it, had her charge me, and left.

To an atheist, though, their morality can be more "flexible." Where an atheist may say they think stealing is wrong, the simple fact that they create their own morality means
that they can alter that morality at will, whether the result is big or small.

To illustrate this fact, let's pretend I was an atheist who claimed that stealing was wrong. Once the cashier rung me out and I noticed that I wasn't charged, the result could
have been much different, while still allowing me to consider myself a "moral" atheist.

Once I noticed the mistake, I could have stayed completely silent and walked out. I could think "hey, she made the error, so it's not stealing," or "oh well, this store charges
so much for everything that I'm not stealing, I'm just getting some of my money back." I could claim that I wasn't stealing since I didn't hide anything, and that if the
cashier makes a mistake, that's just business, and maybe she should be trained better. I could then justify it saying that if the store cared enough, they would train their
people to catch such errors.

In other words, as an atheist, I could change what "stealing" was to benefit myself and still allow me to consider myself a "moral" person.

This is a huge weakness in the argument that atheists can be just as "moral" as people who believe that there are absolutes in what is right and wrong. Where a Christian who is
honest would have to admit that stealing is against God's will and trying to justify it only makes it worse, the atheist is free to make whatever excuses he or she wants to in
order to justify a behavior that benefits him or her.

A Christian knows that cheating on taxes is lying. An atheist can just say "they're stealing my money anyway, so screw them," as another example. Atheist morality has the
option of being twisted at will, since the one who is under it is the one who has created it. Atheists don't seem to understand that making your own rules and then claiming to
be "moral" because you follow them is ultimately meaningless. Who doesn't do what they want to believe is right? A part of human nature is to accept that whatever we think is
right *is* right, because we all want to follow our own desires. In the Bible, it mentions people who have this kind of "flexible" morality. The Bible says that these people
"do what is right in their own eyes." Atheists taking credit for following a morality they create for themselves is like a person taking credit for only eating food that they
like. The true test of whether a person is moral or not is when that morality goes against the person's desires and that person ignores their desires in favor of being moral.

Pedophiles can be moral. To listen to many, especially from groups such as NAMBLA, you'd think they were doing kids a favor by molesting them. All a pedophile has to do is be atheistic and tell himself that morality is a human concept. After that, he's free to determine that since he's just as human as anyone else, his ideas of what is morally right are just as valid as any other human's views. He can shun society's laws and values by claiming that they are unnatural, or outmoded, or old-fashioned and are hold-backs from "self-righteous religious nuts" and feel totally moral and justified by ignoring them and giving in to his perverted desires. He can justify his actions by saying kids grow up faster today, or are more mature, or that society has been "oppressing" their sexuality and that he is simply behaving in a way that helps them and is natural. Apart from an absolute right and wrong, morality is an imagined construct that can be "customized" by anyone.

Atheists, from what I've seen, never like to even consider this line of thought. They know that if they seriously think about it, they'd realize how vapid and meaningless their "morality" is when they see that they are doing nothing more than acting on their own desires and opinions about what is right and wrong. Not stealing something because you simply don't care to do so is not moral. Not stealing even when you really want to because you know it would be wrong to do so is moral. But, when you feel you are only accountable to yourself, human nature leads people to justify anything and everything, and still convince themselves they are truly moral beings.