Why Atheism and Morality Are Not Incompatible

Of course, atheism and morality are entirely compatible. Since my family's Catholic, I'll use our religion and Bible for my argument.

The Bible and Christian followers say that, if we don't believe in Jesus and God, we are evil, not good people, and will probably burn in Hell. I am often told that I need to read the Bible and follow it like Gospel or I'm a sinner and will burn in Hell.

Yes, the Bible and Jesus do tell us many good morals. Jesus teaches us through his parables, which are only stories with morality lessons. The Ten Commandments gives us some good morals to live by.

Why do we NEED religion to teach of these moral beliefs? I don't believe that we do. We already know what we should and shouldn't do. We should all know not to kill, lie, cheat, steal, commit adultery, etc. We don't need religion to be good, law-abiding people.

What about all of the religious people, who learned morality in the Bible, and are bad people?

Most mafia members are strict Christians, yet they kill, sell drugs, weapons, steal, and more.

What about the Catholics and Protestants that have been fighting for decades?

Going with Muslims, does Allah tell terrorists to kill people to be rewarded in Heaven?

I've been ripped off more by so-called religious types way more than any atheist. Why is this?

If religion is so good and teaches us morality, why do so many religious people not abide by the moral lessons they are taught? Why do many people kill in the name of religion? I don't see where any religion tells us that killing is good or allowed.

Learning our morality from religion is no guarantee that people will abide by that morality. This teaches us one important lesson. That is that no matter where we learn our morals, only good people abide by good morals. It doesn't matter where we get our morals, good people will be good people and bad people will be bad people.

With this being said, how are atheist morals any different than religious morals? There are good and bad atheists and there are good and bad religious followers. It doesn't matter where get our good morals, as long we follow them.