Desire vs Moral

In the previous post I wrote about 1st class and 2nd class desires, and how they move us into action. I want to briefly elaborate further on that.To recap, 1st class desires are those that are formed by our subconsciousness, like the desire to eat and fornicate. They are essentially the forces that drive us in an animistic way. In addition to this, we have desires that are subconsciously caused by our environment, for example when we see that a neighbour or friend has something desirable (new car, woman) this can also create a desire in us for such a thing.
One could say that the notion of free will is a delusion, and that we are just an instrument of our desires. In fact, when we feel hungry and start thinking about food, this is a thought imposed upon us by our subconsciousness. We merely have a free will about the way we satisfy this desire for food, not whether we eat or not. With sex this is a bit different, as we are theoretically able to live without it. It's another thing if resisting this desire on the long term is wise or not.
What sets us apart as humans from animals is the concept of the 2nd class desires, which we can form about the 1st class desires. Animals act on their desires impulsively, they don't reflect and aren't self-critical either. If a bear or a wolf is hungry he will hunt for a prey, kill it and eat it without reflecting on whether the prey agrees to this or maybe is somebody Else's property. The animal doesn't know about it and consequently isn't bothered about such issues. In contrast to this, humans have these 2nd class desires and not only do they characterize us as a species, but also form a great part of our personal, cultural and social behaviour.
The 2nd class desires characterize us in the way that, as I set out in the previous post, we can form these desires which thus become the embodiment of our free will. We can want to want or want to not want, based on ethics, given to us by society and religion. Let me explain.

There is no way or need to fight the primary desires, as they are created by our subconsciousness. We cannot fight what happens in our subconsciousness. But what we can do as human beings is consciously control these primary desires. One way to control them is to form 2nd class desires. Like I set out before, our 2nd class desires are desires that we consciously form about our (unavoidable) 1st class desires. By forming these desires and evaluating them, we achieve a sense of free will about which primary desires to satisfy (and in which way) but also which desires to suppress. Which desires we give in to and which we suppress depends on our ethics. Everyone has a complex framework of ethics which helps us decide which desires we can give in to and which to resist. But it would be wrong to say that we base our decisions only on ethics. Apart from what is morally wrong, which applies to the world around us, we must also deliberate about what is right or wrong for us personally . Spending money on buying new shoes for example can be perfectly right, but not if it's our last money and we cannot buy any food as a consequence. You could think about this as 'intimate ethics'. So in deciding which desires move us into action we must not only consider our own interest but also the interests of the society we live in, and often make a compromise between the two.
The complex way in which we do this gives character to us as a person and also to our society as a whole, because what we do or not do, and the reasons for this, shapes us as a person. And what we do as a people collectively also shapes society of course, which leads us in a circle, because isn't it mainly society that shapes what we do? Society is an important influence on how we shape our 2nd class desires, in other words, we decide to act on our primary desires.

A very important aspect of making decisions about these 2nd class desires is our conscience. Human beings are susceptible to conscience, which separates them from animals just like having 2nd class desires. But 2nd class desires and conscience are not the same. It is natural for us as human beings to have 2nd class desires, even if they are very primitive and not guided by moral, and doesn't have to concern itself with anything except ourselves. Second class desires come from within us like primary class desires, but unlike the latter, we can conduct critical thinking about the former.
Conscience, on the contrary, comes from outside and is not innate: it must be formed. This happens within the family and later in society. Conscience therefore always concerns itself with the wishes, desires, entitlements etc of the world around us and the people in it. The conscience can be seen as a mental institution (an institution within the mind that is) which enables an individual to live after the moral rules of the society that the individual lives in. It has a strong influence on our 2nd class desires
A strong influence on our 2nd class desires, by means of conscience, is religion. More specifically, religion mostly tries to create a 'bad conscience' to keep us under control, by damning things like anti-conception, masturbation, eating pork etc. In that sense, religion often suppresses what is natural or beneficial to us, most notably sexual desires: religion is good in that for some reason. The parts of conscience that religion correctly suppresses are things which people with a decent moral wouldn't do anyway.
As such, an atheist is not to be defined as an immoral person, but as a person who doesn't allow his conscience to be spoiled by religious dogma and therefore suppresses morally correct desires. An Atheist derives his moral from the society he lives in and in a certain extent from critical thinking. The extent to which he will form his moral by critical thinking depends on personality traits, like to which extent he is inclined to go against what society tells him to do or not do. If a person conducts his behaviour within the moral framework of his society (i.e. taking into account the wishes, desires and entitlements of others) this is enough morality. If a religious moral framework demands more than the societies' moral framework, the religion demands too much.

I mentioned earlier that there is a sort of moral circle, in which we as a people influence the societies' moral framework, and the societies' moral framework influences us, including the framework passed by religion. By critical thinking, meaning critical thinking about religious moral, we can put question-marks to such morality which is in conflict to our well-being as a human species. In such a way we can evolve as a society to a better framework of moral. If people behave differently from 'normal' behaviour, and this behaviour is approved, others will start mimicking this behaviour and changes can be made, while society will reject or punish individual behaviour deemed as inappropriate. This is a slow but continuous process, a 'moral evolution', which moved great parts of the civilised world out of a moral from the middle ages. Some parts of the world, unfortunately, are stuck in the middle ages, because they don't think critically about the moral their religion gives them and instead just 'follow the leader' like a flock of sheep.

Not all religious moral is bad: the ideas to not steal, kill or fornicate your neighbours wife are good ideas, which should be embraced by any society. And this is exactly the point: they would be embraced by most societies anyway, with or without religion, because they can harm society as a whole. It has severe consequences to the economy and the people if everyone would kill and steal without inhibition. And because nobody wants to find their neighbour in bed with their wife, we as a society reject adultery. So the people in a society collectively agree that this is reject-able conduct, and no deity is needed. These morals were already in place before Christianity, Islam or other religions came into this world: religions just adopted moral and rewrote it as 'God's will'. This goes to prove that we do not need religion to have a moral framework. Moreover, religion can hold back the development of a moral framework like it did with science for many centuries. Thus, we need to abolish religion as a means to reach a moral framework. Our moral framework should depend on our will (that is, the will of us as a collection of people in a society) and not on God's will.