Fair is foul, and foul is fair

There couldn't be atheism if there wasn't religion. 
Unless atheism is the one hard done by and religion arose in contrast to man.  Think of the outrage of Lucifer with God in Milton's Paradise Lost -  is the question then who is the genuine devil ?

Is it Jehovah or the Other - Man's image - Lucifer, as it were, his lucid self - Who was first ? - To paraphrase Nietzsche - 
"Was it man who invented God, or was it God who invented man ?"  but this would exculpate the crux moral argument - That of which one is better.  Which is perverted against the other ?  Which one death and which life ?  

When we envisage the two natures as unanimous with neither perverted against the other, then we have to accept total resignation, the annihilation of Buddha; and presume to have no choice or judgement or moral action (pre-determination). 

Dualism is only edified by this equivocation, because the escape from dualism is the recognition of the preference for the good - which is an undeniable dynamic without which there wouldn't be any use in having a sense of discrimination beyond purely animal instinct which brings us back to the moral notion - that of truth over falsehoods, rather than the reverse, falsehood over truths.

Anyway, with regards to Buddhism this is not original. if you look at the earliest texts (Pali texts) there is the strong emphasis on right over wrong action.

"Here's an equivocator, that could swear in both the scales against either scale; who committed treason enough for God's sake, yet could not equivocate to heaven"  -  Shakespeare, Macbeth

Perhaps in a world post-religion, but that couldn't truly be a world without religion, even it chooses to rub out its past in some kind of Atlantean deluge, or a Utopian Calvinist Tabla Rasa - a place, a promised land prepared by the puritan work ethic to be cleaned of all original sin to hasten the return of Christ to judge all, the living and the dead.  

Let us not make a case for religion; before making a good one against it.  That is, to explore the negative dialectic.

It is unsurprisingly very simple to query and find faith hugely lacking in evidence of meaning.  In a positivist sense, it is nothing.  Unlike science and its dependence on the evidence.

Which leads us to ask even when you believe in nothing, how can you actually negate God ?  

Other than being the cure for and negating religion, what is atheism itself ?

This question has been raised in philosophic argument before, and one answer was: that the outcome and foundation of Atheism can only be Materialism, and thus philosophically nihilistic.

As regard ethics, I have no trouble with the assertion that perhaps ethics came from woman.

On the other hand why did the question of truth bother to rise at all ?

Beyond the pale white ghost

Angel Gabriel and Muhammed

We are in war.  And as a little of it leaks onto our doorsteps there is utter disbelief at the outrage.   What is our supposed sanctity?  Our taken for granted right to total freedom ?  We maintain one rule for us in the enlightenment west, with its freedoms of expression, and another for those on the margins.

Are we not all living on one world?  In the west we still live in the pale.  On the other side, beyond the precipice, is beyond the pale.  War beyond the pale can never be won if it isn't recognised that there is a fine fuzzy line between here and there.   One world, one war, one suffering, a common humanity.

Why the surprised outrage?  That this horror dared cross that line into our prosperous and self righteous enclave.  Is there a division between our supposed paradise of sophomoric consumerism, our moronic inferno of Disney, and that hell out there of lunacy and carnage ?

In the Calvinist concept we are preparing the new Jerusalem for Christ's return by toil of the protestant work ethic.

What else explains this huge conceit of innocence?