Atheism and morality

[Inigo]

Here's where you go wrong on both premises.

Your first premise is correct. What you understand by it, is not. Morality is composed of instructions and favorings. That does not mean that it instructs or favors. We are talking about the same thing. A system of ideas containing instructions and favorings regarding our actions and behavior. To deduce from "contains X" that is "does X" is deductively invalid.

Second premise goes wrong on the following point. The issue and the acquisition of an instruction are two different things. An instruction can exist which has both an issuer and an acquirer, but it doesn't require both to be an instruction. To consider the snail on a map analogy, even if a snail accidentally spells out the words "here there be gold" on a map, a map-reader will acquire an instruction of "go here for gold" even though there is no intelligent being issuing it. The instruction may or may not turn out to be correct, but it is an instruction nonetheless. Here the instruction is formed as a result of combining a fact with the receiver's own desires and beliefs. Similarly, the instruction "don't touch the fire" would be the result of a fact (fire burns) and your desire (not to get burned). You don't need an agent to issue the instruction.

Which is your conclusion should be, "morality is composed of instructions and favorings by an agent or for an agent or both".

It doesn't matter whether one says 'morality instructs' or 'morality is consists, in part, of instructions'. The conclusion is the same. Morality either 'is' a person or is the instructions of a person. Either way a person, an agency, a mind, is implicated. That's why I'm not particularly bothered which one I go for and don't mind which one I use as a premise. For what is undeniable is morality's instructional nature that is motivating the need to posit an agency of some kind.

You can talk about ideas 'containing' instructions all you want. You either mean by it 'morality consists, in part, of instructions' or you're just confused (I don't know what you're saying, anyway).

At some point that 'instruction' cheque needs to be cashed. At some point one is going to have to show how a real instruction can come into existence. I have a method that is tried and tested - an agent issues it. YOu, it seems to me, do not.

Anyway, you talk about the snail. In case someone suggests snails have beliefs and desires (and who knows, they may) let's talk about the tide arranging stones on the beach instead (that way we won't be derailed by side issues). As the tide goes out the stones, purely by coincidence, spell out 'go away!'. Is that an instruction? It appears to be. But it isn't, is it? Be honest, upon discovering how the stones have been arranged you would not, for one moment, continue to think you were really being instructed to go away, would you? Be honest. Someone who did we would think was attributing agency to the ocean or mother earth or some such.

Morality instructs (or, if one prefers, is composed of instructions). But they are real instructions. IF they are merely apparent instructions then that is just another way of saying morality doesn't really exist. There 'appears' to be an instruction not to disembowel people for fun - but there isn't really, there are just blind natural forces that produced brains that give people the impression that there are such instructions out there.
THe only way morality can really exist is if its instructions are real ones. And the only way its instructions are going to be real ones is if they are issued by an agent.