Theists: Hitchens Wager

[Angrboda]

Seeing the true nature of goodness and loving it for what it is.

Obey a true leader.

I think you're making assumptions here. If goodness and truth are objective, then there is no barrier to the atheist in doing these things. If goodness and truth are just the subjective opinions of God, then even if an atheist is unable to do these things, it completely undermines the theist claim to superiority for their ethical worldview. More, if God does not in fact exist, then the theist isn't doing these things either.

Regarding CL's claim that atheists can't assert an objective ethics, I think she is quite literally 180° backward on this. Theists believe that their conception of ethics based on God's goodness is objective when in fact it is not, and they are simply confused about the nature of a God based morality. It is the theist who actually does not believe in an objective morality. Theists will assert they do, and then mumble something about God's necessary goodness, but then in trying to connect that to the concept of objective morality, they resort to a bunch of hand waving and meaningless nonsense. God's morality is supposedly based in his nature. When we refer to things that our constrained by our nature, we are referring to the manner in which our psychology limits what we are capable of doing, not of the limits of the body. And so God's goodness is also a psychological fact, and therefore subjective. Theists will argue that his perfection and necessary character somehow magically transform a subjective fact into an objective one, but it's an argument that has no actual substance, and if true, would be one that they inconsistently deny to the naturalist.

---

Name one moral action or statement that a believer can perform or state that an atheist can not.

Any action motivated by love for the Lord. Checkmate.

How is an act motivated by love for the Lord different from one that is objectively moral and motivated by a love for the truth?

Love for the Lord makes you holy. If love for the Lord makes you moral, then so be it, but then I would argue that the theist's ethics are not in fact moral.

But then, Christianity is a religion based on the notion that having certain thoughts are a crime, which pretty much undermines their moral claims overall.