Featured Why Atheists cannot account for Objective Moral Truths

Ultimately we are exploring the Creator / Creation relationship. This is why we entertain the (yes, ridiculous) hypothetical, if "if God does not exist"

 

"Why should the long term holistic pleasure of human beings be sought after?"

It is what is called a "bedrock desire" or "bedrock purpose." Meaning it doesn't really make sense to ask "why?" as there is no purpose beyond it.

That is like asking "why should the glory of God be sought after?" Any 3 year old can keep asking "why, why, why" into infinity, but at some point we have to land on bedrock desires beyond which that question is no longer meaningful.

One reason that human happiness is a bedrock desire is that humans cannot NOT seek it. Your own happiness is something you seek all the time no matter what. And so the goal is to align your pursuit of happiness with what objectively will make you happy.

Another reason that human happiness is a bedrock desire is that, even if we include the glory of God as the highest end, human happiness cannot be ignored. We cannot imagine a scenario that we would call "good" in which God is glorified but all human beings everywhere for all time are being tortured and in misery forever.

Cockroaches do not have the capacity for rationality or happiness that we do, and so they have far less capacity for purpose.

 

Why do we despise and take umbrage at a genuine Psychopath who feels no sense of guilt or shame?

Not sure what the objection here is. Because he is doing evil things?

How does the atheist insist that others should embrace the morality they personally adhere to?
How do they impose their "own morality" on others?

They need to make arguments that they are objectively correct that their vision of morality will lead to life and happiness for all human beings.

It is not their "own morality." It is the morality given by human nature.

A theist can insist that there is an authority who has a right to be obeyed and can require moral values and duties of others.
All an atheist can really do is act upon or prefer an unguided evolutionary tendency of some kind.

Both are seeking the same end: human life and happiness. So what is your point?

Psychopaths are a minority and abnormal.
Ditto a dwarf or a giant. What makes the latter two acceptable and the former unacceptable?
Majority preference?

Size is an accident of human nature. Not essential to human nature. Psychopathic tendencies actually violate the essence and the goods of human nature.

Who is to say that the psychopath isn't an exemplar of an emerging evolutionary change within human neuro-psychology which will one day result in even greater survival and possibly holistic thriving of the human species?

Again, we can judge his actions according to the goods of human nature (life and happiness for all) as the standard.

 

Here are excerpts from an article that offers some clarity on the matter:

For the sake of further clarity, I’ve divided this article on ethics into two parts. In the first part, using the metaphor of a house, I offer a brief overview of the categorical differences between behavior, ethics, and meta-ethics. The second half of the article explains the implications of this metaphor for the ‘New Atheist’ worldview, as exemplified by Richard Dawkins.
…
Here’s the point: If Dawkins is correct on these matters, then Dawkins is denying that the house has a foundation. Without a foundation, the main floor and the roof collapse into the resulting hole. In other words, if Dawkins meta-ethical theory is correct, then none of his ethical statements are particularly meaningful or true. All human behavior would exist in an amoral vacuum.​

https://reasonsforgod.org/moral-clarity-and-richard-dawkins/

 

Of course atheism is wrong and puts man in the place of God.

But that missing purpose or missing basis for purpose is also the missing basis for morality that the atheist needs in order to claim objectivity.

See this link (and post #34 above) for more explanation: https://reasonsforgod.org/moral-clarity-and-richard-dawkins/

 

'I think' I'm in agreement with you, have been for many years.

 

One tip: in a conversation about proving the objectivity of something, you don't want to ask the question "says who?" That question shows that you are presupposing a morally subjective and relativistic framework. The objective framework asks "what is" not "who says."

"Purpose" requires an intelligent mind to give a thing "purpose".

This isn't true, but even if it was, then human beings would qualify. Human beings have intelligent minds. So thanks for giving validity to human nature being a basis for objective purpose!

Atheism ends in unguided and purposeless rote facts: It arrives at no moral facts.

You are arguing in a circle...circling back and repeating points already responded to. Your definition of "moral facts" is incorrect, and you have to give a reason why my definition of "moral facts" is insufficient.

Why can we not ignore human happiness?

Read this from Pascal: “All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.”

Who says humans should be happy?

Again, you committed the mistake of asking "who says." And again, can you imagine a world in which all human beings everywhere are experiencing everlasting joy and call it "evil"?

 

Of course we know that Atheists are guided by "objective morality" based on the natural order of creation.
1) Political power flows from the barrel of a gun.
2) You cannot debate with a tiger when your head is in its mouth.
3) “That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
4) “All thinking men are atheists.”
5) “To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?”
6) “belief is the death of intelligence.”

Everybody lies, Two wrongs make a right. Might makes right. Do others before they do you. Nothing more natural than an apex predator.

 

Paul sums the gist of the law:

7 What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Howbeit, I had not known sin, except through the law: for I had not known coveting, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet: Ro 7

From the eastern philosophy of Taoism:

"There is no greater sin than desire,
No greater curse than discontent,
No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself.
Therefore he that knows that enough is enough will always have enough."

Would you say this is an atheistic recognition of natural law, or objective morality? I would.

 

From the perspective of Paul's quote and the one where Taoism says;

by seeing contentment as a virtue, like where the Bible says, in I Timothy 6:6;
"But godliness with contentment is great gain.

7 "For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out.

8 "And having food and raiment let us be therewith content",

then I can see where the natural man might be able to reevaluate their inclination to lust and gain more and more than enough, etc., as frivolous, after sowing to gain more and always seeming to reap less than the effort it was taking and in that way, making a life decision to 'be content with enough', so that may be an example of what you say it is here:

I still don't believe they could ultimately make a valid claim of them accounting fully for that moral value, honestly, as if it wasn't really generated by the law of a Law-giver, Who gave them their ability to reason at all and Who upholds the continuing operation of the aspects of 'cause and effect', 'what goes around comes around', and 'you reap what you sow', etc., that the uninitiated kids these days call, 'Karma', per the OP.

They may have learned to eskew coveting, in the natural realm, but it would have also been by one of the proofs of the existence of God, in the Spiritual Realm. Because, He makes, the, 'you reap what you sow' mechanism function.

However, from the perspective of the law as you say;

I'm guessing that his recognition of the Spirituality of the law and the revelation from God that he had broken it, happened to Paul's soul, when God showed him that he had been inordinately desiring and coveting things and aspirations that to God was sin. The sin of coveting.

So, as opposed to 'finding the route of least resistance', psychologically, as the atheist may recognize and say they are establishing as their own impartial morality, to 'not covet', from which to adjust their behavior, I see the schoolmaster driving Paul to find satisfaction for this infraction he was no by apparently surprised and convicted that he was quilty of, when he was shown in his heart he had been violating a law which was given by God in His Ten Commandments, making him a law-breaker of that God.

There is more that I think Paul esteemed from having learned he was coveting, directly in his conscience and soul and that is that he was a guilty sinner who then was assuming his newly found position of being a law-breaker, against his Creator.

That is more than him just arriving at a normal knowledge of the reality of coveting in his life, naturally, as unnecessary that prompted him to make an adjustment in his goal setting, or something.