Firstly, not all religions require a God or gods. I'm defining religion here as anything that is faith based. Good and evil (morals) are faith based concepts (religions).

Secondly, if you want to look at it philosophically, then
no one does anything wrong. If they truly believed an act was wrong they wouldn't do it.

I don't know, try talking to someone like bunny. I don't actually hold this position, but I have seen it defended quite well on this forum before. It goes something like: moral values are essentially axioms, and as such they're true whether they're accepted by an individual or not. Nobody can hold an objective moral value; they exist outside of thought as universal truths.

when was that? i've never seen bunny do more than argue that it's a logically consistent enough position to qualify as a hypothesis.

I have had this kind of discussion before, though I dont claim to have anything more substantial than various appeals to reasonableness. Certainly no proof of objective morality (and no answer to those skeptical about claims of non-empirical knowledge). This was in debate with people who broadly shared my view on what constituted a moral claim though - the only difference being whether such things could be viewed as statements.

In your case, it seemed the first required step was to persuade you it was a meaningful claim. Given I failed there, there didnt seem much point to proceed to attempt arguments for what you considered an inherently empty or absurd claim.

i see, thanks. yeah i still have no idea how a moral statement is capable of being objectively true or false independent of minds. i can't begin to comprehend what you are even claiming. guess that does make me a non-cognitivist or whatever.

Or me poor at articulating my view - I'm afraid my philosophy is somewhat hedonistic. I'm happy to drill down into my beliefs a certain distance, but once I get to the foundations I dont have much interest in justifying those (and I suspect it is that foundational level where our disagreement originates). It's no doubt born of a certain arrogance, but I cant help thinking that if I could only explain it better you'd agree with me.

At some point, you may be able to bring up the topic of moral objectivism with Original Position. I think our views are similar (though different on details) and he is better equipped to understand your objections than me, I suspect.

If you challenge yourself, I'm sure you'll come to ideas that are at first scary, but ultimately liberating. After all:

"People draw conclusions when they tire of thinking."

For the atheist, the argument from evil is a defeater (if sound) of theism, whereas your position just explains why we have certain moral instincts from a biological perspective. Personally, I don’t find the latter as a direct denier of what theist’s believe, even if it’s proved true because you’re not really claiming that “objective morality doesn’t exist,” but just offering an explanation for why we think it does.

I was just thinking the atheist needs to assume ‘objective morality is real’ to make the argument from evil work. With a proposition like ‘genocide is never morally justified’, don’t we need to assume that (i) p is objectively true, (ii) there is objective truth and (iii) there is objective mind? In other words: no objective mind, no objective truth; no objective truth, no objective morality; no objective morality, no argument from evil.

My point, though, is arguing what amounts to, “genocide appears wrong, therefore God is not good,” doesn’t seem all that compelling.

I dont think this is a necessary supposition, provided the atheist doesnt equivocate over 'good'. In other words, even if good is subjective, the atheist can still claim that allowing natural evil is not good (by anyone's subjective definition) and that therefore God doesnt know, doesnt care or cant do anything about it.
That's not the argument.

The argument is "Genocide appears wrong, therefore God is not all of these: omnipotent, omniscient, omnibenevolent."

I've done a fair bit of challenging. What I mean is things like:

"Logical deduction, coupled with empirical observation is the best method we have for arriving at true beliefs."

I cant demonstrate that to anyone without begging the question, but I dont particularly care. My philosophising is for my own benefit really. There are moral statements that I place in a similar category to this one (where the best defence I can give is "LDO").

No, because the argument from evil is meant to reveal an inconsistency in a Christian theist position that does assume objective morality. I don't need to take a stance one way or the other to make this argument.

This is correct. A nihilist could still present both the evidential and logical forms of the argument from evil as hypothetical arguments. E.g. If you accept Premises A & B (which she as a nihilist rejects, but you as a theist do not), then you should regard Conclusion C as either implausible or impossible.

I wonder if you took it the wrong way when I said atheists could be God's tiniest children. I think that's a compliment but maybe you didn't take it that way.

What's more precious than a tiny child? All the theists can get combative enough to start to view atheists as their adversaries but that wouldn't change an atheist's potential to be God's child, right?

God has a lot more mercy and patience than most people do.

Sure, but my point of contention is with “appears,” or any of its derivatives. Unless we say the proposition “genocide is evil” is unconditionally true I don’t see the argument being very persuasive. To a psychopath genocide may not appear to be evil, so how could we counter their position without an appeal to some sort of absolute standard or imperative to obey?

1. If gratuitous evil exists, then God does not exist.
2. Gratuitous evil exists.
3. Therefore, God does not exist.

The theist can accept (1) and reject (2), thereby avoiding inconsistency. So, without an appeal to objective morality and without circularly assuming (3) is true, how can the atheist compel the theist to accept (2)?

It's persuasive to anyone who shares the view that genocide appears evil.

Someone telling me the world is being run by an omni3 god has some explaining to do when it comes to animals suffering as they lie trapped under a landslide for hours before succumbing to death.

It's not proof, but the argument rests on which is more plausible - an omni3 god doesn't exist or that allowing the agony that animal experienced was not really evil (or that it didn't really suffer, or whatever your chosen refutation is)?

Well, I think what you’re saying is a justifier for why one elects atheism over theism, but again, I don’t see it as a refuter of the theist position. As I’m sure you’re aware, Christians just claim that God makes all wrongs right, hence gratuitous evils, ones that cannot ever be justified or righted, don’t really exist.

I agree it isn't a disproof. I do think it's a challenge to the theist position however - anyone advocating the existence of an omni3 god has an obligation to answer it, I think.

I don't claim that there aren't answers. The plausibility of those answers is the issue, in my view.

I think the answers are plausible; some just don’t strike me as all that compelling. For example, that God is so powerful he can turn evil into good seems more like a byline for a David Copperfield show than a theodicy. However, if we take seriously the claim that we do possess an eternal nature or soul, then the happenings in temporal existence, while appearing real, are no more real than what happens in our dreams. In other words, they’re experiences but not substantive or real experiences from the p.o.v. of an eternal soul or God.

That position has some merit, in my view. Nonetheless, I think we're straying from the point here:

I think it's consistent for atheists to raise the problem of evil and I think theists have a difficult task in answering it. I don't think it's strong enough to be a disproof, but I think it's a real problem in reconciling any theist position.

I agree with Socrates when he said:

No one is voluntarily unjust.

Those who perpetrate genocide believe they are right while they are doing it.

Suppose a theist believes (a) God exists and (b) objective evil exists. She then goes on to agree with the atheist that (a) and (b) are irreconcilable and finally abandons her belief in (a). Now she’s left with the problem of reconciling (b) with (c) a godless world. Which, as I’ve argued (no objective mind, no objective evil), is equally problematic for the anti-theist.

I dont find it impossible to reconcile. I take objectively existing evil to be a brute fact (like arithmetic, modus ponens and Quantum Physics).

Having said that, maybe she'll take the (common) view that, now she's abandoned (a) she should abandon (b) as well.

Again, this is easily convertible into hypothetical reasoning. This is not a problem for a nihilist. Watch:

1) If God exists, then morality is objective in our world.
2) If morality is objective in our world, then gratuitous evil exists in our world.
3) If God exists, gratuitous evil doesn't exist in our world.
4) Therefore, if God exists, gratuitous evil both doesn't and does exist in our world.

Alternatively, you can just recast the argument of evil into the "argument of gratuitous suffering."

1) If God exists, God would prevent the gratuitous suffering of infants.
2) The gratuitous suffering of infants is not prevented.
3) God doesn't exist.

Neither of these arguments presuppose that morality is objective.