Atheism and Ethics

[Lucian]

I'm using it as a standard, and it's easily the most common standard on earth.  You think "an objective standard can be applied to it"... I have to ask, what do you think realism is saying if not that?

Ok, we are talking past each other
Harm exists. I agree. 
We can say we ought to minimise harm unnecessarily and that we can apply a standard we can morality against such actions. Wonderful
We can say that this is some sort of binding principle true regardless of what people believe.  Balderdash; no such binding principle exists, indeed there are no universals that have any kind of ethical normative force. 

There is the disagreement in an oversimplified form between a form of moral realism and someone who denies it like I do. Moral realism without that latter part and a discussion of normative force (not normative ethics) just isn’t moral realism as far as I understand it, and perhaps that is just me being ignorant
[/quote]