Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

Moreover, there appears to be something clearly, intuitively wrong about this forumalation, namely that neither instruction nor favoring capture the essential "moral" nature of morality. If I take something I own and break it, it has a bad result, but the result is not "morally bad" in the sense it would be if I took something from someone else and broke it. The essential "moral" aspect, the goodness or badness of acts, appears to be nowhere in evidence in your conception. What makes a god's instructions moral, qualitatively, and not a society's? (And yes, you've used the dense term rationally compelling, which still doesn't account for the moral dimension; things can be rationally compelling without having a moral value or character. At present, I'm not even sure of your meaning with that term, so I suggest you unpack its meaning. I have a rationally compelling reason not to endanger my life by smoking cigarettes, but not a moral one. And if you intend to lean on Kant's conception of a categorical imperative, please indicate this. Doing so, even implicitly, will, however, vacate the need for a god.)

Er, I have several times 'unpacked' what I mean when I say that moral instructions are rationally authoritative.

If morality instructs one to do a thing then in virtue of this fact - in virtue of the fact morality has instructed you to do it - you come to have reason to do it. So, morality 'confers' reasons. I have said this possibly hundreds of times now. 'Confers'. Morality 'confers' resaons. This word is important. You cannot confer something someone already has.
So, you want to smash a vase. Great. Then you have a reason to smash that vase (given an instrumentalist conception of practical reason, anyway). But you do not have 'moral' reason to smash the vase. A moral reason differs from the reasons generated by your desires. For the reasons generated by your desires are not reasons you'd have irrespective of your desires. They are reasons you have precisely because you have the desires you do. So, you have reason to smash the vast precisely because you desire to. It is your desire that generated the reason.
But moral reasons are different. if morality instructs you to smash the vase then you have reason to smash the vase irrespective of your desires. So, whether you desire to or not, you have reason to smash the vase. That's what is distinctive about moral reasons as opposed to other kinds. All other reasons are conditional upon you having the relevant desire. Moral reasons are not like this. Morality 'confers' reasons. If morality instructs you to do a thing, you thereby come to have reason to do it.

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[quote='LostLocke' Just curious...

How does morality instruct?
[/quote]

By being an agent. That's the point. I don't know of anything other than an agent that can issue a real instruction. Morality - if it exists - consists, in part anyway, in real instructions. So morality must be an agent, then.