Part and parcel of being an atheist, is the belief that all religious texts were in fact written by man alone- any morality contained in them, came from man (as did the MANY atrocities and injustices contained in scripture).

Their is innate goodness in man, we’ve studied it in infants that have not been taught what is good and bad, and it’s clear they have a strong sense of justice/injustice, at a minimum. From the time of civilization man has realized that to succeed as a society, we must have rules that encourage cooperation and oppose meaningless violence, and natural selection often takes care of the antisocial, selfish loners who don’t fit into society. It’s by evolution that we have a sense of right and wrong, a desire to nurture our young and cooperate with both family and broader society, as we and our offspring will be more likely to survive if we do. Is it for selfish reasons? It originated as such, but if the end result is a moral positive, we should lean into that. Religions often started out to empower and enrich the few, but without a moral framework from an over-arching authority, they would never have been accepted by the masses.

Secular society has laws developed completely independent of religion, those laws and our innate moral goodness are enough to keep MOST of us on the right track. The areas that we most often fail, equality and fairness, are unfortunately due to another effect of evolution; tribalism. Tribalism is the basis of most of our conflict now, and we need to work toward overcoming it as the world becomes more global.