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Originally Posted by DoOrDoNot
Then any appeal to the rightness or wrongness of an act is begging the question.
Not so. You and I appear to mean different things by moral statements. Yours has this ultimate deistic grounding, mine is local and transient. When you or I make an utterance like "it is wrong to murder children", while we are using the same language we mean somewhat different things by it. But that doesn't mean I am begging the question, because I am still referring to the local and transient sense in which I interpret and understand morality. If you wish, you can frustrated that I borrow moral terminology and wish we had different linguistic words, but that is very different.
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The problem is they cannot explain sufficiently why it is they do. The question is why is it good to increase human flourishing? If you are an atheist that believes in right and wrong, you haven't even started down the runway to living consistently yet.
Consistency is the wrong word. When I make a moral argument, I can be entirely consistent in my understanding of morality. That I agree there isn't some cosmic ultimate justification of why we should care about human flourishing might declaw
I've never met someone who doesn't care about human flourishing, although I'm aware rare cases of this exist. So we can presuppose that, and get to arguing about specific issues where my arguments where if I am clever and empathetic perhaps they will be persuasive and change the mind of my fellow humans. Whether the moral imperative of increasing human flourishing is or is not a fundamental property of the universe doesn't affect this. My arguments are exactly as persuasive or unpersuasive to the fellow human who values human flourishing.
Let me make it more personal. You presumably believe in human flourishing. Do you think it is impossible that I could present an argument on why some specific action should be taken in pursuit of this goal that persuades you? If yes, I have no reason to care about the "grounding" issue.
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I don't even know if it's possible to live like a nihilist. The closest I can come to is a serial killer or Walter White type character, but both have elements of pure hedonism.
No one ITT has yet claimed to be a nihilist. You are imposing that we must be - against our objections. Yet, presumably you believe that none of us are serial killers of walter whites. You have a bad imagination. I'd presume I live a life that behaviourally is on par with a standard reasonably moral life in our society.