How is sex before marriage anything but a religious moral or anything at all, but a vestige of religious belief? Sex after marriage is an arbitrary virtue. If you want to wait until after, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with real morality.

70 - That's fine, if he had of said that he thought having sex at that point in their relationship was immoral. It was the fact that he used his religion as a reason, even though Atheists don't believe in sex after marriage. The FML here is that he was just making up excuses so he didn't have to bang her. Catch my drift? Sorry for the blunt delivery. :)

Atheism is NOT a belief. It is the ABSENCE of a belief in a deity. That's as far as it goes. As for personal morals, ideals, values, manners, behavior, it's all up to the individual. Most atheists who are such by choice and not by circumstance are intelligent people and in my experience are generally pleasant. There is nothing else unifying all atheists but the lack of belief in a higher being, so it's definitely possible for a group of them to be completely different people, with completely different views of the world.

123, If you are specifically asking about why atheists are such in the first place, I suggest you check out "The God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins. Even if your own beliefs go against the idea, I think it's always useful to open your mind and try to understand the way those most different from you think. Pretty much all arguments against atheism come from not understanding it, so it would be nice to see someone know what they're talking about for once.

You don't want to eat ham?

Clearly eating ham is against his religion.