Atheists who announce "I'm good without god"

[polymath257]

No, morality is the rules we adopt to promote human well being. Right and wrong are words we use to drive the point home, nothing more. Those rules come from our evolutionary past: they are the rule that promote well being *in humans*. Bonobos or chimps or dogs may well have very different rules based on *their* evolutionary past.
I consider most philosophical discussion concerning 'what something is' to be seriously flawed. They tend to assume an outdated concept of ontology. It is much better to determine the epistemology since that has practical aspects.

You don't think that the nature of something determines how you handle it?

Let me put it this way. I consider almost all of metaphysics to be bunk. By putting out prejudices on our initial investigations, we stray from the path of wisdom. By assuming that the division into subjective and objective is necessary and useful, the discussion already gets warped. The same happens whenever 'necessary existence' or 'contingent existence' are phrases used. These are simply divisions that make it MORE difficult to figure out what is going on rather than being helpful.

Stand back and look around a bit *before* speculating about what is necessary or subjective and perhaps different divisions will be more natural and helpful.

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Society itself evolves. In societies, we have tried many, many bad ideas; and those societies that married themselves to them suffered for it, particularly when they overrode our 'moral sense' of innate understanding about things like fairness and reciprocity that even other social primates have. We don't 'cull the weak' because not only do we perceive it as unfair to kill people for things they can't help; it's a bad idea that doesn't actually promote our survival as a species. The key characteristic that's the basis of human survival is our ability to cooperate. Even ancient tribes found a use for the weak or old, finding a way to make those who could be perceived as useless, useful is part of our strength as a species. The tribe that kills off its old people as soon as they have trouble keeping up loses their wisdom. The tribe that finds a way to help them keep up knows what to do when they run into a situation that hasn't come up since 50 years ago. The tribe that finds a way to help them keep up has babysitters.

There's a reason why the 'arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice'. As time goes on, we very slowly find better ways to order our societies for the benefit of both the society and the people in it. It's frustrating trial-and-error; but the ethics and morality we've arrived at today is better overall  than what prevailed 3,000 years ago, or 200 years ago. Things that used to be considered fine are now considered reprehensible. And there are things considered fine today that will be considered reprehensible in 50 or 100 or 200 years. And those people in the future will be, to at least some degree, better off for it.

You said this much better than I was able to. very nice!