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Line 10: − − It is worth pointing out that virtually no significant moral philosophy since the Enlightenment has depended on religion. In fact, the entire force of the Enlightenment was a reaction against the Medieval tendency of searching for truth in revelation from the divine. That is to say, rather than revelation, nearly all recent philosophers have tended to find the sources of ethics more or less corporeal objects, like reason, passion, or empathy. Such morality is not necessarily the morality of an atheist, it is merely an ethical system built without God- equally used and useful to theists and skeptics alike. As such (if morality can come from reason instead of from God), the misconception that atheists have no moral system is just that.
→Atheist morality
Although it is difficult to generalize about atheism because it has no creed in a way that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam do, atheists typically hold that no religious text can be the only source of morality; they do not look for their morality in revelation, but rather in reason or some other internal force. However, many atheists believe that religious texts contain useful ideas and principles, such as the [[Golden Rule]]. Such people would, however, assert that useful principles entered religion because they are useful, and not the other way around. As atheists do not believe in any form of deity, books purported to be based upon the revealed words of such deities are not considered to have any more inherent moral authority than books written by people, as they consider them to be one and the same.
Although it is difficult to generalize about atheism because it has no creed in a way that Christianity, Judaism, and Islam do, atheists typically hold that no religious text can be the only source of morality; they do not look for their morality in revelation, but rather in reason or some other internal force. However, many atheists believe that religious texts contain useful ideas and principles, such as the [[Golden Rule]]. Such people would, however, assert that useful principles entered religion because they are useful, and not the other way around. As atheists do not believe in any form of deity, books purported to be based upon the revealed words of such deities are not considered to have any more inherent moral authority than books written by people, as they consider them to be one and the same.
== Atheist Population ==
== Atheist Population ==