From atheism to tentative agnosticism

[MikeTheInfidel]

Well, the same is true for morality. A disposition to experience the world as a place that contains external instructions with which we have inescapable reason to comply has no doubt conferred an evolutionary advantage on those who have it. It does not follow that any such things exist. The advantage was conferred by the mere appearance of such things. So, the hallucination of morality conferred the advantage. No need for morality to actually exist. And indeed, my whole point is that it doesn't seem possible for it to actually exist in the absence of a god.

The problem with your statement here is that you appear to be assuming morality is a thing separate from conscious beings. It isn't. Morality is not part of the nature of the universe. It isn't a self-existent thing, independent of minds. It has never been a set of external instructions; the instructions have always come from human beings. If all living things ceased to exist, so would morality.

Morality has never been the province of a god. Humanity simply has a long tradition of insisting that it is. The concept of morality was hijacked by theists and turned into a model of obedience and disobedience.

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I know you said that before. But as I explained - or tried to - all you are referring to is moral phenomena, not morality itself. I am in no doubt that moral sensations and beliefs exist and that there is some causal story one can tell about them. The point is that morality doesn't seem capable of existing without a god. Moral sensations and beliefs, yes. Morality itself, no. ... Moral sensations and beliefs are not the same as morality itself.

As I explained, morality is a human construct. It's a label we give to evolved behaviors and cultural norms. It isn't something external to us; it's our invention. Our moral sensations are evolved instincts which helped our species survive. Our sensations are not pointing to some greater truth about the nature of existence, any more than our sensations of being hungry or tired are.

Your arguments seem to imply that you're distinguishing between moral sensations, which are real, and 'morality' as this brute fact of the universe which needs to be explained and can only be explained by a god. I think you're wrong to assume morality is not just something we made up as a species. What reason do you have to think that morality is anything but the invention of conscious beings? What does morality look like in a universe with no life in it?