Morality

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Alright guys I'm going to 

But I really want to know everyone's personal perspective on some of this.   

Richard Dawkins stated this that there is no good, no evil, DNA just is and we dance to it's music.  Agree or disagree on that piece?

What is your opinion on some of these other famous quotes on morality?

When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality… Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one’s hands.

- Friedriche Nietzsche (atheist), Twilight of the Idols p.12

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me ...
Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.
- Kai Nielsen (atheist), “Why should I be moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21, 1984: 90

Outside human desires there is no moral standard.
- Bertrand Russell (atheist), “What I believe” p.62, 1957

In this naturalistic worldview, when you state something is good/evil, right/wrong, isn't that just pure subjective opinion that ebbs/flows with societal/cultural acceptance and personal opinion?  If so, on what basis can one judge any act as wrong/evil both in different cultures/societies or different eras without it merely being personal preference and thus have no grounding in truth.

Yes, when I say ‘this is good’ or ‘this is evil’, it is purely subjective and cultural. There is NO basis on which I can judge an act evil in another culture or era.

But these things are a little more than personal opinion - cultural mores carry a great deal of heft. By way of example, there have been many cultures where killing deformed infants by exposure was not only permissible, but encouraged as a moral duty. You and I would find such a practice repugnant and immoral, because of the era and society in which our morals were formed. Conversely, a Republican Roman would be aghast at the idea of allowing such a child to live -  it would strike her as cruel and inhumane do so.

On a grand scale, morality is both malleable and subjective. Within a particular culture, it can be said to be objective and all but immutable.

FWIW, the observed fact that there are different moral standards in different cultures, while not an argument against the existence of gods, makes a pretty compelling case that morality is a human creation, not a divine one.

Boru