Does Atheism Lead to Nihilism?

[Thumpalumpacus]

The statement has been made that any morality from God is also subjective. From your favorite Christian philosopher WLC:

God's moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the two great commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind, and, second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On this foundation we can affirm the objective goodness and rightness of love, generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and condemn as objectively evil and wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and oppression.

So what? You still select the religious outlook that best suits your moral code.

If these attributes necessarily flow from the greatest conceivable being, they are not subjective.

Yes, they are, even if we accept for the sake of argument that huge "if". Assuming your premises for sake of argument, your "objective" morality is still the whim of a subject -- your god. Thge only thing you've done is moved the source of your morality to the ineffable, probably to gain access to rationalization by fiat -- "God said so, it must be so."

If we are made in the image of God (having some of the same attributes: soul, personhood, sentient, capable of love, having free will, moral, etc.), we have within us an objective framework for moral values and duties.

Not so, for the same things your god forbids us as evil, he himself practices, according to his holy book. That in itself is proof that the Christian morality is subjective and relative as well. Additionally, the examples I presented earlier, of sectarian differences on moral issues, is real-world, no-Bible-bullshit-story evidence of the same.

Simply bleating over and over, "But you have to have god to be morally grounded" ignores those countervailing facts. you need to tighten up your argumentation, and remove this gaping hole.

Consequently, this is also the reason I don't think atheists go around killing people but rather explains why we feel we have intrinsic meaning, value and purpose; why we know what is right and wrong; why there is self-sacrifice; and why we feel there are such things as universal truths (what the "noble lie" otherwise provides).

I find your explanation utterly unconvincing, relying as it does on a completely undemonstrated being, and blithely ignoring the contraindications provided by, you know, reality.