Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

All we are talking about in this much too long thread is altruism. Which has been studied in a lot of non-human species.

"Morality" is nothing more than the instincts of a social animal relating to how it should treat members of its own group.

No we're not and no it isn't. The existence of altruism is not in any serious doubt. People are altruistic all the time. Hell, even I am sometimes. But the mere existence of altruism does not establish the existence of morality. Altruistic acts are sometimes morally required, sometimes morally permissible, and sometimes wrong (for instance, taking time out of your schedule to help a friend kill someone he dislikes is altruistic but very immoral). When altruistic acts are morally required they are, well, 'required' by morality - morality is instructing us to do them. When altruism is morally permissible morality does not mind us performing them. When altruistic acts are morally wrong morality is instructing us not to perform them.

But only an agent can issue instructions, so morality is an agent. Furthermore, if morality favours us acting altruistically on a given occasion then we come to have reason to do so (moral instructions confer reasons). This could only happen if the instructor has an immense amount of control over our future welfare such that she can see to it that our interests are compromised if we do not comply. An agent with that amount of power over our interests would need to have control over our interests in an afterlife. And an agent like that is someone we'd call 'a god'. Thus morality requires a god.

Altruism exists. But for altruism to be 'moral' requires the existence of a god.
If you think it obvious that altruistic acts are sometimes morally required then you should accept the existence of a god. If you think it obvious no god exists, then you should accept that your impressions and beliefs about the morality of altruistic acts are hallucinations and 'false' respectively.

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Have we differentiated morality from instinct anywhere in either of these threads?

If it is the fact that morality instructs and that therefore we need an instructor then we need to find an example of something else that no-one would put down to a God but that also instructs, and not always in our own interests.

The answer came to me this morning:

Fashion!

Well, I keep saying what I understand morality to be (instructions and favourings that have inescapable rational authority). And I keep distinguishing morality itself from moral sensations and beliefs (which I term 'moral phenomena'). But most seem to ignore these important distinctions and continue to think that all one needs to do is provide some kind of causal story about the development of our disposition to have moral sensations and form moral beliefs to have accounted for 'morality'. When in fact all that person is doing is explaining the existence of moral phenomena - something whose existence is not in doubt. But unless one identifies morality with moral phenomena (which would be as cretinous as identifying a belief about a chair with a chair) one is saying nothing about morality itself.

you are absolutely correct in thinking that to challenge my premise that morality is an agent one would need to provide an example of an instruction that has not been issued by any agent yet is a real instruction nonetheless. And then one would need to show that morality could be made of the instructions of this alternative kind of thing and that those instructions would be ones that have inescapable rational authority. It is a tall order. Good luck!