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I think the loss of belief in some sort of ultimate judgment did give a certain type of person who is restrained by a fear of punishment rather than any ethical

• ChainOfFools 3y ago
  If there is a moral code regarding killing in which atheism comes out as the stronger, more compassionate philosophical system, it would be the one that points this fact out, without an afterlife or any sort of reincarnation this existence is the only one you've got. And to deprive someone therefore of a meagre 90 or 100 years, the only glimpse they'll have out of potentially hundreds of billions of years underscores the preciousness of life and why it should not be taken.
• 0134340 3y ago
  That's a nice hypothesis but it breaks down when you historically look at just how many people were killed in the name of religiuos jihads, crusades, witch trials (including all the individual people killed for rather benign reasons but against religious doctrine). The religious are just as guilty of using fear to kill others. I will give you that there are surely some who can say fear of gods kept them from killing but in fairness surely there are some who were set free from those gods and realized they didn't have to persecute others just because a religious doctrine says, even if their sympathies said otherwise to the doctrine.