Atheism and morality

[simplexity]

No, because instincts either aren't instructions, or they are only instructional due to being desires, which are things that can only exist in a mind.

When something approaches my eyes I, by instinct, close them. I am not instructed to close them. They just close. So I assume you do not mean this by an 'instinct'.

Perhaps you are referring to certain desires or urges that may arise in us. Well, they can direct us in a very real sense. However, these do not constitute counterexamples as the desires in question are an agent's and so you have merely confirmed that you can't get instructions from something non-agential. The only kind of thing that issues instructions is a mind with beliefs and desires. YOu don't show that to be false by bringing pointing to a mind's desires. I know desires can be a source of directions.

What I was describing was the agents system itself. You can describe us as agents, but you just proved all of our points again. Morality does not require anything outside of our own system of awareness. It is a system of ideas generated from a a group of instincts and thought patterns(sometimes these are manifested as desires). At least this is the most probable. And if you try hard enough you can stop yourself from blinking when something is thrown at your eyes. You are merely going way beyond the basis of morality and assuming it is both rationally inescapable and provides instructions, which it does not. Every morality only contains instructions, it does not instruct. We, as agents are the only ones that can use these ideas(instructions/codes) to instruct one another, or ourselfs, ie reflect.

BUt, for the millionth time, if you identify moral instructions with our desires then you will not be able to account for the inescapable rational authority of moral instructions. Hence, moral insstructions need to have their source elsewhere.

Once again you are assuming without any reason that moral instructions have inescapable rational authority. I don't need to account for anything as moral instructions are simply not inescapably rational and they need not be. It is only a system of ideas regarding what we 'think' is right or wrong depending on our internal system. It does not even have to be slightly rational.