How do good and evil exist if one does not believe in a higher power? Any logic or emotion that renders something "wrong" really has no basis. We all inherently know that murder is wrong, but without a higher power, how is that legitimate? What if one person disagrees? Why is he not right to kill as he pleases? Thank you.

Your question reminds me very much of a quote from the Russian author Dostoyevsky: "If there is no God, everything is permitted." Crime and Punishment is his wonderful novel. The main character proposes to do exactly as you say, commit a murder just to test the limits of ethics. Spoiler alert: it doesn't turn out all that well. Can there be ethics without a higher power to act an the heavy, the enforcer? I certainly think so, knowing many ethical atheists. There are any number of schools of thought that can give us ethics without religion. Three popular options are deontology, utility, and virtue. Kant, the deontologist, thinks that respect for rationality is a reason to be moral. Mill, the utilitarian, thinks that arriving at a greater good is a reason to be ethical. Aristotle takes another route: we ought to organize our lives not around a set of rules per se, but around developing well-balanced characters . Imagine you talk with your own Raskolnikov, who is set on...

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At this point I am so familiar with a) The human propensity for religious belief b) The history and basis of the world's major religious belief systems and c) The apathetic functioning of the universe, that intellectually I am unable to adopt the anthropocentric vision of the universe as presented by the monotheistic traditions. However, watching my muslim friend pray and fast during this month of Ramadan, I am struck by how much peace, happiness and purpose her beliefs bring her and contrast it with the emptiness and meaninglessness which I feel. The fissure between our worldviews is a constant source of alienation between us. 1) Would it be ethical for me to attempt to persuade her of the veracity of atheism (regardless of whether or not she is won over to this worldview), despite my knowledge that this may adversely effect her positivity about life? 2) Failing this, should I try to swallow the blue pill of theism and attempt -emotionally rather than intellectually- to force myself into believing it's...

My Atheist Friend, I advise pursuing other options because the two you outlined don't seem to reflect your genuine values. Either one wouldn't really be true to you. I say this because I suspect option 1 violates your sense of ethics - either because you are committed to your friend's right to religious freedom or because you don't want to cause her a depression. (In addition, I predict option 1 will have a low success rate, if 'success' is measured in talking her out of her faith.) Option 2 violates your sense of yourself and your most deeply held beliefs. You would literally be going through the motions. There is nothing wrong with that, and many take comfort in ritual, but I think it might feel like more of a sham for a true atheist. <So I advise option 3: explore existential atheism, which is the philosophical school most aligned with the views you have described. Jean-Paul Sartre is a wonderful author who advances this view. Sartre's philosophy is that once we realize that the...