Reddit reviews Morality: An Introduction to Ethics (Canto)

I’m no philosopher, and wouldn’t be able to articulate it as well as others have. If you truly care, there is a wide variety of literature on the subject.

https://fivebooks.com/best-books/kenan-malik-on-morality-without-god/

http://ebooks.bharathuniv.ac.in/gdlc1/gdlc4/Arts_and_Science_Books/arts/philosophy/Books/Elements%20of%20Moral%20Philosophy.pdf

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Morality-Introduction-Ethics-Bernard-Williams/dp/0521457297

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/052143971X/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_yewmAbY8W8TGR

First, a clear implication of your question - if nothing else, implied by the use of the term "good book" - was that you were looking for the atheist equivalent of the Bible.

One of my points, then, is that the Bible doesn't live up to the characterization of "good book", let alone "definitive" (because its interpretations are so diverse). As such, you're asking for something that millennia of religion didn't succeed in coming up with.

> I'm precisely asking for a moral guide that is not religious.

Yes, that was rather clear from the "for atheists" bit of your first sentence.

What you actually asked for, though, is "a definitive 'good book' for atheists". One sense in which this appears to be requesting something similar to like the Bible is the "definitive" part. A definitive book implies absolute morality, because otherwise it can't possibly be definitive.

> And why would the fact that there are bad moral guides necessarily mean that all future moral guides are bad?

Until humanity figures out a credible way to come up with an absolute moral system that applies across all cultures across time and space, the problem again is your stated desire for a "definitive" answer. I am suggesting that future attempts at moral guides are unlikely to be definitive.

> To answer, many moral problems are tough. some people with no religion are interested in gaining moral wisdom, from a non religious source. I think a book like this would be good for that.

There's a huge body of literature on morality and ethics that is based on secular thought. But there's none that can qualify as a definitive moral guide, just as there's no such book for the religious.

Much of the literature on morality focuses around studying morality itself, rather than trying to prescribe a morality. There are many introductory books in this space. One you might try is "Morality - An Introduction to Ethics".

The reason books prescribing morality are less common is because morality is much more culture-dependent, relative, and fluid than most people recognize. Without constraining the book to a particular culture or context, it would be difficult for such a guide to be useful. Instead, books about morality tend to discuss how to grapple with moral issues, and reach moral decisions on your own.

I think this one is a nice place to start.