There is no 'humanity', there is but only your own subjective experience. Crimes committed against "humanity" are crimes committed against yourself. Everything you do unto others, good or bad, you do unto yourself. How can one ask for a fairer deal than this?

Do you have it? Do you have an absolute answer for every moral question possible, never get stumped or unsure of the right thing to do?

That's not really relevant to this discussion. I don't see any compelling evidence for God, but I don't claim all theists are therefore atheists.

But it is not as if we are talking about hypotheticals only. Typical views that could qualify are some atheistic forms of religious humanism, spiritual Buddhism, animalism or various pagan beliefs.

OP has it backwards, when you believe you have moral certainty from your God authority all is permitted.

Lesatat asked for an alternative, and I gave one, that does not imply a "God" imposed morality system.

To say that humans will never agree on "anything" means they would also never agree on God existing, let alone a God-imposed morality system, or any absolute morality system.

If agreement is not important for the absolute system, then my presented alternaive is valid because it can be objectively assessed by an external obserfver given that the observer is capable of evaluating the criteria.

That's a moral law you just stated

You just created a horrible logical circle, do you see why?

No, I think I provided a non-god-based morality example, and at the same time showed that it is no better or worse than a god-based one. All that is needed is a set of criteria which can be independently assessed. Well-being is one such criteria.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KaGqVbAzjng

He asked, if not a god-based absolute morality then what? You suggested a relative morality, based on what people agree upon. In other words, he asked for an example of absolute and you gave him the definition of relative. Lol. Look up absolute in the dictionary if that helps.

The problem is that while there are various moral theories that posit moral facts, along with those that deny them, you seem to have assumed they fail. There is a large body of philosophy dealing with this question and you disregard it seemingly based on not much other than you not being aware of it.

Feel free to offer up a better argument. Make me aware! I can't bear to continue on as a shameful ignoramus!

It's a complex question and I have doubts as to whether you have any interest but if you do Metaethics an Introduction by Andrew Fisher would be a reasonable place to start.

That you are proud of your ignorance and certain of your position are reasons for me to not be interested in getting into the discussion with you personally.

I was clearly being sarcastic.

If you read my original post I was posing a question. I'm only really interested in hearing answers on this forum. It's not a good response in general to say "read this book."

I've read tons of atheist authors and know most of the arguments. It's one thing to be unaware and uninterested, and it's another thing to hold a position based on reasoning.

Our moral foundation is not based on anything external. It's based on our nature. Ideally, religion would teach transformation but it doesn't know how to do that so it focuses too much on morality, which causes its followers to lose their way.

You were clearly intending sarcasm, you managed however to accurately describe your understanding of the topic of moral theory.

Your responses in this thread do not suggest you are interested in learning about moral theory despite making claims about morality. Your mind seems made up and made up ignorant of a good deal of work on the topic. The book is not recommended because it is written by an atheist. It is a book describing various moral theories, theories you may want to learn about if you really are interested in answers to these questions.

You are entitled to your opinion, but a personal attack isn't an argument so I'm not going to keep defending myself. It's a waste of energy

You can't expect anyone to give you cliff notes on three millenia of moral philosophy in a forum post.

I never asked for those cliff notes my man. I've already read them.

If you are so well versed in them, give an answer to the question. It's a forum for debates, not a book club.

Answer: I don't agree.

Permitted comes with an implied authority. If that authority does not exist than that particular usage of permitted looses its meaning.


Makes sense.

Fine, everyone's different.

This is what emotions like guilt are for.

Society says its wrong because of a common base of emotions and feeling regarding moral issues. One might expect that all social animals have evolved similar set of morals to improve survival of the group.

What you seem to be saying is that its believing God does not exist that is horrifying. God existence is irrelevant here just what you think. I guess most atheists do not find it as horrifying as you – everyone is different after all.

Its a common to be confused by people who think and feel differently than you about stuff. Just accept it.

Methodological reductionism is useful. It's not always necessary. I wasn't reducing 'humanity' to a single individual subjective experience. Rather, I was denying the existence of humanity, by drawing on a philosophical school of thought which doesn't value 'the objective'.
X does something to hurt you. Whether X is doing so knowingly is largely unimportant, just as its unimportant whether the rain has ruined your finely styled hair today on purpose, or not. Whether and what you learn from the hurt, and how you deal with it going forward, has more importance.
If it's a moral law, as you have claimed here, then evidently: without God, all is not permitted. For example. It is not desired or permitted to hurt oneself on purpose is it? outside of particular bedroom scenarios...^_^

I think what seems obvious to me and others, is that without a god (you can substitute "universal order" or something else if god is distasteful to you) there is no structure or certainty in the universe. Forgetting morals for a second, it would also negate the idea of truth in general. To my line of thinking, logic would fly out the window with god as well, since logic is atemporal. Sure, I could be wrong, and I'd love to be convinced otherwise.

If you take the universal order out of the picture, then to me the only possible epistemology would be perspectivism, what Nietzsche loved, which is just taking life at its face value from many different perspectives - using our senses to get a lot of different glimpses and then piecing it together. I love that idea, and it can be useful regardless of whether there is a god or not.

I think some atheists in this thread realize this, and that's why they keep turning to subjective experience. Which is fine. But if you're going to hold a position, you should be honest with yourself about it, and realize its limits. I think an atheist can't talk about universal laws. Also it would be difficult to correlate one's own subjective experience with that of another, which is a pretty crucial aspect of philosophical debate. Having a philosophical debate, obviously, presupposes that there is some sort of universal truth to be found, and that we are even talking about the same thing.

Ignore everything I just said if some of you atheists are actually to some extent deists who just don't believe in a personal god.

Lol. At least you have a sense of humor.

I feel a moral responsibility to help people see the logical conclusions to their views. It's part of being a good man, the same way I feel a responsibility to stop and help if a child is injured, or help a slow person with a math problem.