Well, given that the bible is a work of fiction, it's probably not a great source of information regarding morality, or anything else. It's plagiarized and cannibalized every ancient text that came before it. It's also been frequently rewritten to reflect whomever was financing the monks who were doing the transcribing. The King James version is an excellent example of that.
Next time anyone tries to claim Hitler was an atheist, feel free to tell them they are mistaken. Hitler was obsessed with christian relics and the supernatural "power" of god.
He was a lot of things, but an atheist wasn't one of them.
There are A LOT of super intelligent people on this site, and I'm sure many will be happy to share their thoughts with you on this, and a great many subjects. There is also quite a bit of information which might be helpful to you on the internet. Just be mindful of which sites you frequent. While "conventional wisdom" declares that those who frequent porn sites are risking computer viruses, it's actually religious sites which are the most dangerous culprits. Make sure you have a good anti-virus program before you start your search. Good luck, and welcome!

The bible was written to control the people.

Do you think that humans were capable of morality prior to the existence of the Bible? Even reading the Bible shows it to be pretty vile. So many Christians refer to it as the good book but honestly if they had ever read it from cover to cover I think that they would be disgusted for ever thinking of it as good.

I default to Christopher Hitchens point on this. "Good people do good things, bad people do bad things, but the best way to make a good person do bad things is make it a religion." If the theist you are talking to is not being antagonistic, you could explain how empathy is your compass. If I do something bad I can empathize with the people it affects and that feels bad. Good the same way. Plus, isolation is the best you can get from being bad, prison or death, the worst.

How could the bible be the basis of anything good if when squeezed the blood in its pages stains your hands?

You can see the embryo of morality in animal behavior, so the Bible is definitely not the source of it. In fact, it was precisely because of Christianity's paucity of morality in the Bible and among it's practitioners, both lay and clergy, that I started on the path through Agnosticism to Atheism.

Morals, or mores, are just the way people as social animals organize themselves for maximum efficiency. A deistic text may codify that, but morals pre-date that. If you observe other social animals, like dogs or elephants, you will see they have their own moral rules.

As a Christian, you have probably observed that what Christians call the "Law" part of the bible is a bunch of rules, many we would disagree with today, that let a society operate without screwing anyone over too much. There are rules for a good harvest, control of infectious disease, a building code, commercial code, judicial ethics, etc.

My statement has always been, “I don’t need god to tell me to be a good person.”

Hi Tendix! I'm an atheist, but I don't think I'm very evil - I donate a percentage of my income to charity every year, I try to help people, I'm kind, I've never been cruel to an animal and I try to persuade other people to be the same. All in all, I reckon if I met Jesus we'd probably get on pretty well (and He'd love my bubbeh's homemade challah). Unlike those Christians you mention (and I'm definitely not including questioning Christians there; you're the best kind!) I have these morals because I think it's good to be a good person and I care about other living beings, not because a book told me.

Morality is something found in all cultures... even cultures where bible is not the book so if there is morality without the bible... That should be your answer to your question.

I'd say that the Bible is full of stories written by men claiming to speak for God using the moral compass of some people of the particular era and that people today, after numerous rewrites, edits, translations, etc., cherrypick the bits they like or have already deemed to be moral and throw out the obviously immoral bits, either ignoring them entirely or explaining them away as bing for a different time or before the new covenant or whatever. While atheists use logic and reason to determine what helps and hurts people, developing secular ethical frameworks that try to maximize the good and consistently protect people's rights and liberties, Christians jump through hoops to try to bend the Bible into something that can be considered moral.

The bible is more often than not an excuse people use for immoral actions... for example Hitler was actually a religious fanatic... he exterminated the jews (and many more) because he believed it was god's will...

Let's see. No. Not true. Hitler was a Christian.

Religious people cherry pick from the bible.

In the immortal words of Simon & Garfunkel in The Boxer:

All lies and jests
Still a man hears what he wants to hear
And disregards the rest...

Hitler was a Christian.

Thank you all for your responses. It's refreshing to see intellectual comments.

If you take an interest, there are many goodies in the Bible that prove that things not moral at all. “A woman should lust after the endowment of a horse with the emissions of a donkey” (not quite exact words) is in the Bible, try telling that to tons of hardly literate peasants, and what do you get?

Think of it in 2 ways.
1 if I do not know of the Christian teaching and
Live a sin full life do I go to he'll.Surely the answer
Is no.
2 Given the above statement is it not aChristain
Duty not to preach to people of there personally
View as they may have or living a sinful live so therefore you are condemning the to hell

The Abrahamic god goes about murdering children, in the seven plagues of Egypt, to entire Genocide, James' conquest of the Philistines and Canaanites to conquer the land that we know as Isreal, which is not their homeland. To a chosen race, the Hebrews. None of this speaks of morality, but of group of peoples, throughout the ages, that placed their dominance over others. Through the guise that is nothing but a Santa Clause figurehead.

That is a fallacy that Christians use to convert followers. They say You must be one of us or you are evil and have no morals, Jesus is the only way.

The Bible is a bit schizophrenic, you have a vengeful god in the OT and a totally different god in the NT. The early Christian fathers had a problem in getting their guy into the deal with god and how to make Jesus become his most recent mouthpiece.

Only way to do it is to use prophesy from the OT about a coming messiah and hijack it. You would of course have to hold your nose against all the bad stuff ,the NT is nothing less than a remarkable turn around of Jewish history and the covenenants with their God. Readng round the history of it i was astounded by the switch in the theology, basically Jesus is reinserted into history right back to Adam then to the beginning of the Universe (from Paul and John in particular). The entire Jewish story for a 1000 years was all in preparation of the moment Jesus was born. God now has a new spokesman with a new morality,how they got away with it is quite astonishing.

there, not equipt to back themselves up with there claims apart from talking about parts of the bible. you know if you have morals etc. people who know everything are fools. every other living thing is a none believer. is grass evil or hamsters?

Morality existed long before the dogma of religion. It is not hard to imagine family and tribal units having a basic set of 'do's and don'ts' in the early stages of human development

Be prepared with the facts. You do not need to win an argument, but you need to put forward your view point with facts. Like the factual error that hitler was an atheist. He was not. He was a Catholic who believed in a false theory of aryan supremacy.

No. the bible is NOT the basis for morality for any thinking person! If are are to become the kind of person each of can and should be, each of seriously pursues the question of what constitutes a rational and effective basis for morality, and formulates his or her own serious answer to the question.