Atheist moral code

[CapnAwesome]

Still it seems like moral is a very subjective thing, differing from individual to individual. The question is if there are one or more universal sources from where morals could be extracted.

Here is the thing, I think there is a difference between what is moral and what an individual perceives to be moral. I think when a lot of people say that morality depends on an individual they don't necessarily mean morality but rather they mean people's perception of morality. If everybody in a society approves of slavery, does that mean all of the unspoken arguments against slavery are suddenly rationally unsound? As Atheists we certainly don't say that what is rational depends on the individual or that rationality is subjective but for some reason it's extremely popular amongst Atheists to say that morality is subjective. Why? They are both human creations. So although I myself am a nihilist, I believe that there certainly could be morality independent of what individuals perceive, based on what causes the most good.

Like you said, it does lead down the slippery slope of utilitarianism, which is something that I strongly disapprove of, but at the same time it's easy to say for me that morality could exist as something absolute and natural.

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I don't think there are any universal sources of morality, given the contrary evidence we have on even one small planet for multiple, contrary moralities.

But again, you aren't talking about different moralities, just what different people perceive to be moral in large groups. Just because a large group of people say something is moral, doesn't make it so. Slavery wasn't moral before the 20th century. The people who said it was were wrong. Those same people who were wrong about the morality of slavery were equally ignorant and wrong about all kinds of stuff and it's easy to acknowledge their other wrongness but for some reason we can't say that they are wrong about moral issues when we cling to this idea that morals are subjective. All the same rational arguments that we make today about the evils of slavery applied just the same back then. In fact people made those arguments and those people were proven right in the end. The same way people who believed in evolution were proven right. I think Atheists don't like to acknowledge that there could be a natural law of morality because Theists believe in absolute morality and we are just a contrarian lot. If you do an action that causes more happiness in the universe, for yourself and other people, that's the moral choice.