General question about the possibility of objective moral truth

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Michael, I have been participating on this forum, off and on, for about three years. As another has pointed out, the objectivity and subjectivity of morality has indeed been extensively discussed. However, that repetition has allowed me to make a careful study of how atheists generally respond when asked about the source of moral guidance.

It never fails to amaze me what total dicks, you theists who think you're erudite, are to us. I guess the good news of people like you is that, by talking like an asshole, you forfeit the right to call us arrogant and "too intellectual", like most of your less-intelligent compatriots like to do. You do forfeit that right, right?

Their first approach is to present various straw man arguments they feel undermine biblical and/or theistic sources and standards.

They re-present the Eurythro dilemma which is only problematic for polytheistic religions and does not apply to monotheism.

You meant the Euthyphro dilemma, I'm pretty sure, referencing Plato... but it has no distinction between polytheism and monotheism, in that it only asks which end is which, the cart or the horse, in declaring morals are from god(s) or god(s) are from morals. So it probably felt good for you to throw out a complex word, there, pal, but at least get it right. It's not atheists who presented this idea, or who worry about this idea, because it asks the question of whether something is inherently good because God commanded it. Obviously, we think there are no gods, so this has nothing to do with us.

The point to Mosaic laws governing slavery and harsh punishments inconsistent with modern sensibilities willfully ignoring specific dispositional eras and the Moses’s temporary appointment to the divine council for governing an ancient Hebrew theocracy.

They accuse God of crimes against humanity ignoring the need to eradicate the institutionalized injustice and perversity of irreversibly corrupted cultures and how that requires choosing between what is bad and what would be worse.

Etc. Etc.

"Dispositional" eras? WHAT!?!

You mean, I presume again, "dispensational eras", which is just an evangelical apologist's way of trying to explain why God didn't just tell the Hebrews, "don't own people" while He was telling them not to make graven images and not to covet. It's excuse-making, and ridiculous on its face.

God already prohibited things everyone else did at the time of the dispensation... e.g. eating bacon/shellfish, or worshiping multiple gods, or making idols. It'd hardly be a difficult thing to expect the Eternal Lord Creator to tell the Hebrews, "Lo, for even as thou wert slaves in Egypt, whom I freed from bondage, Thou shalt have no people as captives, nor ever permit other human beings to be owned in the lands which I have given thee, having delivered thee from slavery out of the land of Egypt. Thus saith the Lord." (Easy peasy, and why your dispensationalism -- seriously, learn the word, so I don't have to teach you your theology, next time-- does not explain jack-all.)

Next they try to fill the absence of God with unsupported secular values. They have four general takes: absurdism and social cohesion, moral instinct, and enlightened self-interest. Only the absurdists have a consistent moral theory; all the rest irrationally hold mutually exclusive beliefs, as follows:

Those who refer to the evolutionary advantages of social cohesion nevertheless deny that humans have an essential human nature.

Those who appeal to positive emotional instincts, like empathy, ignore other less noble sentiments like disgust, covetousness, and envy.

Those who look to enlightened self-interest do not acknowledge a hierarchy of values terminating in a highest Good.

So while many atheists often portray themselves as the paragons of reason and defenders of logic, their own attempts to source moral values reveal how they must plagiarize religion rely on whim and sentiment to justify their favorite moral theories.

I'm not exactly sure what "unsupported secular values" means, in this context, so I'll leave that one alone. I'll just address your four "general takes" in order:

1) Absurdism, or the belief that there are no inherent moral values, is indeed consistent, despite Kierkegaard's objections to the idea. Where he posited that "[t]he absurd terminates negatively before the sphere of faith", we would argue that faith is a person's psychological opiate against the pain of recognizing that humanity, the society we build (for better or worse), and the way we treat each other in this finite life, is all that is, and all that we have. Without "objective", external morality, it is up to us individually and as societies, to determine what is suitable to our own moral conscience, as we are raised to believe in various values as being necessary ones, while others are common to all selfish yet thinking beings who wish to get along together in this world. However, I'm guessing that you refer to Camus' notion that we are just all one step away from killing ourselves... which is, frankly, the absurd part.

2) Of course humans have an "essential human nature"... we're humans. Why would you think we'd argue anything else? Why even present this argument? I'm assuming you mean "sin-nature", the preferred religious apologetics term for this concept, but it's pretty clear from evolutionary psychologists who've looked at this issue (even before the term was invented as a field of study) that humans are a competing set of motivations, some of which are selfish and some of which are social instincts, which of course some individuals lack (we call them sociopaths, specifically because they do not develop this instinct for social empathy and cohesion that the rest of us evolved). How each society decides to balance the selfish desires of each individual with the need for group cohesion essentially defines morality, or "what is moral" by the perspective and terms of that society.

3) Ignore? Um, no. We don't ignore them. We assume them. See above.


4) I have no idea what, "look to enlightened self-interest" or "a hierarchy of values terminating in a highest Good" even means, let alone what you think it means. On the hunch that you mean you feel that the Bible or some other Holy Book contains the best possible moral guide for "highest Good", I'll refer you to the dispensationalist bull-hockey that you tried to peddle, before.

So in essence, that entire load of tripe you posted boils down to "God made morals and atheists inconsistently try to claim they are moral but they're really just stealing their morals from the Godly". Am I getting all that?

Because if that's what you're trying to say, you're not just wrong, you're an asshole.