Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[Mister Agenda]

All the arguments based on "it is not really in our best interest to be selfish" only provides subjective morality and not any objective framework that goes beyond a certain sets of conditions. Depending on the society we live in, you can get wide variations of opinion between the "morality" of a host of actions.

You seem to have 'objective' and 'universal' mixed up.

How do you define "good" as in someone as a "good person"?

A good person is a person who does good things. They help people, they exhibit virtues like patience and integrity, they don't treat people as means to their ends. Do you define a good person differently?

In other contexts, we define something is "good" by how well it achieves its purpose.

Do you know what equivocation is?

With naturalism, people have no intrinsic purpose--they are an assembly of atoms that experienced an unlikely chain of events.

Purpose isn't an intrinsic quality of anything. Conscious agents are the only things that can ascribe purpose to something, including themselves.

Morality becomes a matter of opinion and is relative and/or subjective.

Especially if you stop your ears and chant 'la, la, la' every time someone tries to impart a tiny smidgen of centuries of moral philosophy to you.

You can't leap from the "is" to the "ought".

You're right about that. You're wrong if you think a deity resolves that conundrum.

In our evolution, was it always wrong to murder, rape or steal?

Nope. In your posts, do you have to telegraph your next point from a mile away?

Animals do these acts every single day without being "evil". Did the unlikely leap to self-awareness suddenly endow us with a moral framework when a moment before it had not (or not to the same extent)?

Nope. 'Sudden' isn't a good word to bring to a discussion about evolution, as a rule. It was a long, arduous, and painful process; and the inklings of our moral sentiments would have been present before we invented language.

Would this not be proof of the subjective nature of morality.

I'm really quite mystified at what your 'poof, suddenly we're moral' scenario would prove if it were true. Conscience gremlins?

Some of you have mentioned societal goals (or any goals) that can help get from the is to the ought.

I dare you to quote someone here saying that. I don't have much patience with people who misrepresent others.

What if someone does not want those goals--has no desire to do what others consider "good"? There is no objective grounds for saying that person is "bad".

There are no ABSOLUTE grounds for saying that person is bad. There aren't any ABSOLUTE grounds for saying someone is tall, either, but we can objectively say one person is taller than another or one person is taller than most people, or one person is too tall to go on this ride. We don't need to know what 'absolute bad' is to know if someone is not so bad that we can't tolerate their selfishness or so bad we can't have them running around loose.

Of course everything goes smoother when everyone cooperated and does not kill, harm or steal. But that does not define what is good and thereby create an "ought".

You've suddenly become fixated on this 'is vs. ought' thing. Did you imagine this was news to us and therefore some way to get a 'gotcha' in on us? Science can tell us how to get what we want, it can even tell us what we should want to get what we want, but it can't tell us what to want in the first place. 'First Oughts' are axiomatic, they can't be derived empirically or logically, they come from our nature as human beings. It is self-evident that it is good for human beings to be free, happy, healthy, educated, fulfilled, and safe. I've found that axiom gets me pretty far, morally speaking.

For these reason, atheism seems to me to lead you to moral anti-realism (moral nihilism).

The actual reason seems to be that any posts to the contrary can't make it past your blinders.

However, we all ACT like there is objective morality. Baby studies indicate that we are born with a rudimentary moral sense.

Thanks for mirroring a point we've made to you multiple times back at us.

Why do people engage in self-sacrifice for others (even to the point of death)--sometimes for people he/she has not met? This is certainly not biological evolution speaking.

It most certainly is. If you misunderstand the field this badly, maybe you should read more about it. Surely you're aware that it's not only humans who will behave that way?

Do we all act like there is objective morality because it is convenient or expedient or is there really objective morality?

Their really is objective morality. Not absolute, not universal, but objective. Some things really are better or worse than others. Neither a degree in moral philosophy nor a degree in theology should be required to figure that out.

If there really is objective morality, it did not come by naturalistic means.

That's your claim, which you've failed to support.