Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

We can't make something right or wrong. Try it. Solve world injustice by just instructing yourself to promote world poverty. That would make world poverty 'morally good' if your view is correct. So just try it. Try it right now - issue an instruction to yourself to promote world poverty and see if world poverty ceases to be unjust.

I don't think you read my post. There was a part about the rest of humanity in there somewhere, and the part about the pain of others. Obviously, world poverty would still be wrong, because subjectively I feel that I would not want that, and if more people had it, it would add to my suffering.

So in your view the wrongness of promoting world poverty consists in the fact you dislike world poverty and instruct yourself not to promote it? Yes?

Well, that instruction lacks inescapable rational authority. You only have reason to comply with that instruction if you happen to want to. if you stop caring, then you lack any real reason to comply.

This is an enormous difference between your instructions and the instructions of morality. They are not one and the same.

IF atheism is true, then the only instructions that really exist are yours and those of other people. But none of those instructions have inescapable rational authority. None of them, then, can be one and the same as the instructions of morality. Consequently, if atheism is true moral instructions do not really exist. They appear to exist, but appearing to exist and existing are different.