Atheism and morality

[Creed of Heresy]

Correlation does not equal causation.

Really? Then I guess you'd also say that the decline in number of pirates isn't the cause of global warming.

Well yeah.

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I'm only gonna address certain points because I have come into this argument late and honestly some parts of what you said simply do not comprehend. I'm not sure if that's a failing on my part or yours.

One argument goes as follows (this argument does NOT establish that moral instructions are those of a god, but it gets us on the way):

1. Morality is composed (at least in part) of instructions and favourings
2. Only an agent - something minded, something capable of believing and desiring - can issue instructions or favour something
3. Morality is composed of the instructions and favourings of an agent (or agents)

Premise 1 is non-negotiable. I'm just defining what I'm talking about. If you mean something else by morality - if you are talking about something that doesn't instruct or favour - then you're just not talking about what I am talking about.

My head's starting to hurt already.

Premise 2 seems solid to me. After all it is absolutely certain that agents can issue instructions and favour things - for I am one and I can do those things. And nobody has yet come up with an example of a real instruction that has no agent behind it as a source. Indeed, it seems quite apparent then whenever we discover that there is no agency behind some apparent instruction that the instruction is, well, merely apparent and not real.

Still don't see what you're getting at, here...

The second argument goes as follows.

1. Moral instructions have inescapable rational authority (they are instructions that anyone to whom they apply has reason to comply whatever his or her ends).
2. Only the instructions of an agent who has an immense amount of control over our interests in an afterlife would have this feature.
3. Moral instructions are the instructions of an agent of the kind described in 2.

Premise 1 of that argument articulates a conceptual truth about morality. I am happy for someone to dispute it, but I want to see their evidence that it is false (there's stacks that it is true).
Premise 2 - well, challenge away. But so far as I can see satisfying this condition does require positing a god and an afterlife. There seems no other plausible way of doing it.

This still doesn't establish the existence of a god. But what it does do is establish that our moral sense data is defeasible evidence for a god. And it establishes that morality and atheism are incompatible. Not moral sensations and beliefs- those are perfectly compatible with atheism - but those sensations constitute a hallucination if atheism is true, and the beliefs are all false if atheism is true.

You're not entitled to have this argument fail. You're not entitled to there being some error in it. Be open minded and follow reason, not fashion.

Ok, I'm just gonna cut through the red herrings and fling up a wikipedia article quote because apparently you think morality is something that it isn't.

The development of modern morality is a process closely tied to the Sociocultural evolution of different peoples of humanity. Some evolutionary biologists, particularly sociobiologists, believe that morality is a product of evolutionary forces acting at an individual level and also at the group level through group selection (though to what degree this actually occurs is a controversial topic in evolutionary theory). Some sociobiologists contend that the set of behaviors that constitute morality evolved largely because they provided possible survival and/or reproductive benefits (i.e. increased evolutionary success). Humans consequently evolved "pro-social" emotions, such as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to these moral behaviors. Conversely, it has been argued by other biologists that the humans developed truly moral, altruistic instincts.

On this understanding, moralities are sets of self-perpetuating and ideologically-driven behaviors which encourage human cooperation. Biologists contend that all social animals, from ants to elephants, have modified their behaviors, by restraining immediate selfishness in order to improve their evolutionary fitness. Human morality, though sophisticated and complex relative to other animals, is essentially a natural phenomenon that evolved to restrict excessive individualism that could undermine a group's cohesion and thereby reducing the individuals' fitness. On this view, moral codes are ultimately founded on emotional instincts and intuitions that were selected for in the past because they aided survival and reproduction (inclusive fitness). Examples: the maternal bond is selected for because it improves the survival of offspring; the Westermarck effect, where close proximity during early years reduces mutual sexual attraction, underpins taboos against incest because it decreases the likelihood of genetically risky behaviour such as inbreeding.

The phenomenon of 'reciprocity' in nature is seen by evolutionary biologists as one way to begin to understand human morality. Its function is typically to ensure a reliable supply of essential resources, especially for animals living in a habitat where food quantity or quality fluctuates unpredictably. For example, some vampire bats fail to feed on prey some nights while others manage to consume a surplus. Bats that did eat will then regurgitate part of their blood meal to save a conspecific from starvation. Since these animals live in close-knit groups over many years, an individual can count on other group members to return the favor on nights when it goes hungry (Wilkinson, 1984) Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (2009) have argued that morality is a suite of behavioral capacities likely shared by all mammals living in complex social groups (e.g., wolves, coyotes, elephants, dolphins, rats, chimpanzees). They define morality as "a suite of interrelated other-regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate complex interactions within social groups." This suite of behaviors includes empathy, reciprocity, altruism, cooperation, and a sense of fairness. In related work, it has been convincingly demonstrated that chimpanzees show empathy for each other in a wide variety of contexts. They also possess the ability to engage in deception, and a level of social 'politics' prototypical of our own tendencies for gossip and reputation management.

Ok, so...in the face of evolutionary scientists bringing forth this evidence that makes a lot more sense, your arguments that commit the logic fallacy of begging the question ring very hollow and your statement that "Atheism is not compatible with morality" rings about as hollow as my schizophrenic room-mate's claims that 500,000,000 people are out there specifically hunting for him for the sole purpose of killing him and that they tell him so via forum posts wherein they ban him from rap battle websites for posting images of baby gore porn.

Try to form a coherent argument without begging the question and jumping to conclusions based on presuppositions, and then I'll take you seriously when you use the word "reason," alright? You're trying to make morality something it isn't. You yourself have no evidence of your own claims and then you demand I must reject them. Well, ok, I reject them. I reject them on the grounds that they come from the natural imperatives of natural selection and social dynamics that has resulted from us evolving as a very socially-reliant species. That's a reason that makes MUCH more sense than your claims that "morality must come from an agent" and that there is a god responsible for creation and a goddess responsible for benevolence. You have no proof of either of these claims so your entire argument rings hollow from that point onwards, anyways. Everyone else may want to rise to dismantling your points everywhere but I'll stick with just demolishing the foundations to let the rest crumble.