The Importance of a Moral Atmosphere

As an atheist, I have many complaints with Christmas but often around Christmas there's a suggestion that this is a season in which you might try that little bit harder to be kind. When most religions formulate the laws, these are supposed to be coming from God though and that gives you quite a strong incentive to curb your behaviour. A moral atmosphere can be terribly helpful in just reminding us of ways in which we want to behave but frequently don't behave. We naturally see that there are the best bits of Virginia Woolf which will marry up with the best parts of Dr Johnson and we have no problem doing that. It would be like someone saying, look, I quite like the work of Virginia