Atheists who announce "I'm good without god"

[polymath257]

I understand the moral argument: that all people have certain moral feelings and the claim that this requires a higher power that is identified with God.

My point is that this argument is deeply flawed. We have some common sensitivities because we are a moral species and have evolved to work together to some extent. Those aspects on which we agree are those that tend to evolve in social species; they are the rules that tends to keep social units functional. I point out that even other species have the basics of fairness and compassion. This shows that no 'higher power' is required, just the known aspects of how life evolves.

The objectivity of morality, such as it exists, is simply that some patterns of interaction are more likely to lead to survival in social species. Altruism is, to some extent, purely a matter of such evolution.

The argument isn't that people have moral feelings.  If they are just subjective feelings selected of a just so story, then there is no right and wrong, and morality could be entirely different.  The social conventions of those who believe black people are lesser humans and should be slaves, or that the unborn may be killed, or societal conventions of Nazi Germany is no more moral or immoral than a society that cares for the poor, and who believe in not harming another.    You can't call another society immoral and stay consistent within this framework.  I find that very few people can act as if morality is subjective, and those who do, we call sociopaths and question their mental health.  Under what you defined here, rape could be considered moral, as long as those who are preyed upon, don't interfere by killing the attacker or the child.   I can't agree to that.   I think that you can measure a society or a person as being more or less moral.   That it's not just based on the feelings or emotions, and that one that does have feelings that tend towards immorality are immoral.

Once again, there are many shared values because we *evolved* to have those values because they work for survival. That is the only sense in which they are objective.