Atheism and Ethics

[Lucian]

We pick up and drop moral principles at our convenience no matter what the metaethical reality is.  So I don't think that any moral anything is binding in that way, or that there's a "moral force" if that's what you mean.  You can report a fact.  You can't make people care about facts or even that fact if they otherwise do care about facts.  I like to think we're persuadable - but we're also specifically incompetent...so......might be a wash, lol.  

Ok, so I mean binding in that there is an ought built into it. It isn’t just a fact about harm existing and being able to be put on a scale of most harm to least harm, it means you ought not hurt people. That ought is not something that cares about your opinion on a given act in many instances (although it could be relevant in some). That notion of morality making claims about what you should do is kind of the whole point to me of a moral realist view, it is binding but not in some mechanistic manner. That is what the error theorists or the expressivist denies.