Moral argument my version - proof for God.

[Link]

The problem is that people here aren't "just denying" it.
Instead, they are dissecting your argument point by point and refuting it.

You're the one that is in denial.

You definitely would have chosen Pharaoh's arguments as defeating Moses, you can't distinguish between truth and falsehood, you see two sides go at it and think it's that they are on equal plane, when one has clear proofs and the other is in clear denial.

 

[MikeF]

Ow boy. You're really going to make me spend time to try and explain it, are you?
I'll do my very best to try and be clear what I mean without being to lengthy, because in all honest: entire books can be (and are!) written about this subject.
First things first:
Yes, that is a very correct assumption. Morality is a thing, or becomes a thing, the second you have more then 1 human occupying the same space in a cooperative relationship working towards a common goal.
I refer to them as "rules of conduct" at times, but I can see how that might be confusing. I don't necessarily mean laws and matters of legality - as those aren't necessarily about morals, although they will certainly overlap.
Morality first and foremost is about human relations. How people treat other people.
So a question I ask is, what exactly distinguishes a moral act from an immoral act. What is the difference? And perhaps more importantly in context of this post, is that difference subjective or objective?

I say it objective. The difference, at bottom, is about suffering vs well-being.
That which is detrimental to well-being / increases suffering, is what we label "immoral".
That which is decreases suffering / increases well-being, is what we label "moral".
This might sound simplistic, but in case you don't necessarily agree, I challenge you to come up with an act that can be reasonably argued to be immoral, while it does NOT increase suffering or decreases well-being (in short or long term). I tried and failed.

So, morality is, like I said in my post, undetachably linked to well-being and suffering.
Knowing this, it seems to me to be perfectly possible to use objective reasoning to determine what is and isn't moral.

Try and create a reasonable argument from which the conclusion follows that torturing babies is moral, without using "what-if" premises or hypothetical scenario's, off course.

This is not to say that moral reasoning becomes easy, because it really isn't. It can be, depending on subject/context, but it overall it isn't. There is a LOT that comes into play when considering what "well-being" is. It's not just about being healthy for example. It's also about psychological health, societal health, etc.

Another aspect here is the whole idea of the "in" and "out" group. This is how racists rationalize their racism. The race they hate, is the "out group". They aren't considered on the same "level" as their in-group.

The method / morality I'm talking about, has no "out-group". All sentient beings are part of the "in group".

So, from that perspective, there certainly are right and wrong answers to moral questions. And that's how moral reasoning becomes an objective process imo. Because well-being and suffering, can be objectively evaluated. And as science progresses, we become better and better at such evaluation. We, for example, understand a lot more today about the detrimental effects of psychological abuse then we did 100 years ago.

I call it "pseudo" objective, precisely because human morality is dependend on humans existing. Humans just happen to be a social cooperative species. It didn't have to be that way. But as it turns out, it is. So morality isn't found under a rock (which would make truly objective imo, but then it exists externally to humans, which is not the case).

An analogy I just came up with as I was thinking about this, with the whole subjective / objective thing, is music.

Musical taste is subjective. Some people like metal, some people like classical, some people like blues, some people like it all.
But what about music theory? Is that subjective as well?

For example....

Regardless of your musical taste... do you think any human is going to find this pleasant to listen to?
You don't need to know the first thing about music to immediately realize that vocals are terribly off-key, the music is off-beat. It's just pretty objectively terrible all round. Nobody would sign this band. Nobody would record this band. Nobody would play this music in his car. Except when on pot and in for a good laugh, perhaps

But is music theory "objective" in the sense that the laws of motion are "objective"? No, absolutely not.
But it's not really "subjective" either, right? This song here, makes your ears bleed - regardless of your musical taste. It makes you cringe. It makes you feel ashamed in their place. It makes you uncomfortable. It makes you ask yourself what on earth went through these guys minds thinking they are good enough to play a gig.

And all that, without knowing a single note of music yourself.

I feel like the same is true, somewhat, for morality. It's like music theory. It's not objective: ie, you don't find it under a rock. But it's not exactly subjective either.

There is no "argument" to be made why metal sounds better then reaggae.
But there most definitely is an argument to be made for why murder is immoral, why psychological abuse is immoral and why helping those in need is moral.

And if someone thinks he can make a valid argument as to why helping systematic psychological abuse or rape or whatevs is actually moral, I'ld like to hear it! But I won't be holding my breath.
Did this make sense to you?
I'm sorry if it is a bit chaotic.

My views on this are inspired in large part by Sam Harris' book The Moral Landscape, which I really recommend. I don't necessarily agree with everything he says, but it certainly gives a fresh perspective that at bottom makes a lot of sense to me.

First, let me say thank you for taking the time to answer in the manner and length you did. I think that's great. It all made perfect sense.

Secondly, I loved how bad that performance was!

Now onto Morality:

We are on the same page. The difference between us is in when the label ‘objective’ is used. For me, Morals or morality, is first and foremost subjective. The creation of the moral standard or prohibition is a subjective choice. However, once the moral goal or standard is decided, either individually or as a group, we can then talk about objectively meeting that goal or standard.

If morals are purely subjective, we have to start somewhere when we create them. I see your ‘suffering vs well-being’ metric simply as a model or framework with which to begin intersubjective negotiations. For we can imagine a number of scenarios where something may be a boon for one person and suffering for another, or for one group over another group. Choosing this metric to build a moral framework is still a subjective choice.

Now onto some of your challenges:

“I challenge you to come up with an act that can be reasonably argued to be immoral, while it does NOT increase suffering or decreases well-being (in short or long term).”

Of the top of my head, sex comes to mind, but even though this is an actual moral position, you are going to argue that it is not reasonable. That this task is hard simply means that your metric is a good starting point for deciding on moral values.

“Try and create a reasonable argument from which the conclusion follows that torturing babies is moral, without using "what-if" premises or hypothetical scenario's, off course.”

This is an interesting scenario, because you have chosen to limit the torturing to babies, not to people in general. Presumably you foresee too many ways in which torturing of an adult could be considered moral, based on some action by the adult. The baby, however, is incapable of being anything but innocent. There is another issue at play to also be considered, and that is that there is an instinctual drive to protect and care for infants. Since our species has a reproductive model that relies on producing one offspring at a time with intense support and protection, we would not have gotten very far if we were indifferent to babies. Especially since they require effort.
What if we consider another innocent creature. Say a rabbit. Would it be immoral to torture rabbits? What about medical research? Would that qualify as morally acceptable torture of an innocent creature? It certainly has been considered such.

“And if someone thinks he can make a valid argument as to why helping systematic psychological abuse or rape or whatevs is actually moral, I'ld like to hear it! But I won't be holding my breath.”

For this scenario, I think the ‘in-group’/’other’ dynamic comes into play. As you described above, historically, often societies do not extend moral parameters to those considered ‘other’. That you have made the choice that your moral framework shall apply to humanity as a whole is a subjective choice. I think we both recognize how cruelty can be normalized in a culture or society.

You did not address the role of instinct in regards to morals being objective. As you are aware, we, like other small group social mammals (monkeys, apes, canines, lions) have pre-wired instinctual instructions that set the foundation for a lot of human social behavior. I think this is what gives many that intrinsic, universally objective feeling to morals, and relates to your music analogy. These core traits have been honed through millennia of trial and error. Unfortunately, this pre-wired set seems mainly to apply to those ‘in-group’. Could this pre-wiring be considered an objective source for morals? Perhaps. Outside of this, I see the mere act of creating a moral standard as subjective, and once created, one can address it objectively.

 

[Rise]

@Rise the moral argument Craig uses has two components. "If God doesn't exist, then objective morality doesn't" (1). The 2nd component is "objective morality exists" (2)?.

Usually he argues a lot for 1, and somewhat argues for 2, but for 2, he appeals to emotion. For 1, he appeals to intellect. Together, they are a strong argument.

My argument can be summarized to his 2 facts and conclusion as well, but I went out of my way to prove (1) so it's a lot of premises to prove it. We can go another route, which is to assume God doesn't exist, then explain why morality won't exist objectively either, which is what Craig does. But what I did was show it's eternal with using contradiction, assume Creator can create it from not existing before, then we run to problems. These problems are also used to disprove command theory and these facts are accepted by philosophers when disproving command theory. I use it to prove God.

You haven’t corrected the error in your logic.
Point #4 is still unproven.
Your argument still depends on assuming it is true.
Your argument can only get past point #4 if you are arguing with an atheist who shares your assumption as true that objective morality does in fact exist for certain things.

Not all will agree to your assumption.

But if you encounter someone who shares that assumption then by definition they can’t be an atheist because there is no materialistic explanation that could ever exist to create the concept of object morality.

They might not want to admit it, but that’s where they are forced to go.
By merely agreeing to concede that point #4 is true they have already required themselves to believe in God if they want their belief system to be logically coherent with itself.

So it makes the rest of the argument you tried to create irrelevant and unnecessary. They have already admitted to theism by admitting to any objective moral standard at all.

Because objective morality by definition requires that someone gave humanity a purpose and design. A source beyond humanity.

If morality arises out of humanity as it’s source then it’s not objective but merely subjective.

You can’t get objective morality without a transcendent source beyond materialism.

 

[Rise]

@Rise the moral argument Craig uses has two components. "If God doesn't exist, then objective morality doesn't" (1). The 2nd component is "objective morality exists" (2)?.

Usually he argues a lot for 1, and somewhat argues for 2, but for 2, he appeals to emotion. For 1, he appeals to intellect. Together, they are a strong argument.

My argument can be summarized to his 2 facts and conclusion as well, but I went out of my way to prove (1) so it's a lot of premises to prove it. We can go another route, which is to assume God doesn't exist, then explain why morality won't exist objectively either, which is what Craig does. But what I did was show it's eternal with using contradiction, assume Creator can create it from not existing before, then we run to problems. These problems are also used to disprove command theory and these facts are accepted by philosophers when disproving command theory. I use it to prove God.

In addition to what I already said, the structure of your argument is also fallacious for another reason:

You are trying to prove morality and God are transcendent by pointing to God as the originator of morality and morality being transcendent, but you argue that in a way that requires you presupposing morality already exists as a transcendent force which God is bound to abide by and cannot violate. That contradicts the claim that God is the source of morality and the determiner of what defines moral.

 

[MikeF]

I said there is more to proving something exists than only using the laws of logic and mathematics. You are operating from the false presumption that anything real or true can be proven by math and logic.

On a technical note, you forgot to add empirical evidence/observation. At its most basic level, what we learn about the world first comes through our senses, what we see, hear, feel, and taste/smell. Our sense perceptions are the first step in our empirical evidence gathering and we start the moment we are born. We can go beyond our senses by adding in specialized tools and equipment to gather empirical information unattainable through our senses alone.

This gets into the philosophical area of what is called proper basic beliefs. Which is that there are certain things we know are true but which are impossible to prove by the laws of logic or mathematics (ie science).

Again, Philosophy may restrict itself to logic and mathematics, but science uses both and adds empirical evidence to the mix.
As to the concept of proper basic beliefs, I would ask, “Has anyone, now or historically, held a strong belief that you knew was wrong or incorrect?” If you said yes, then this disqualifies proper basic belief as a valid support of an argument. We human beings are flawed and fallible creatures. We can draw incorrect conclusions, we can be self-deceptive, we can be socialized and indoctrinated into a set of beliefs, regardless of whether the beliefs are valid. We are susceptible to confirmation bias, optical illusion, and other psychological errors. For all of these reasons we can never simply trust our own feelings and intuition. We must always support what we feel with empirical evidence and intersubjective corroboration/confirmation. The greater the empirical evidence and intersubjective corroboration, the greater the confidence we will have in the belief.

For instance:
- the fact we exist.
- the fact that we live in a physical reality, and this isn’t all just an illusion.
- the fact we have free will and consciousness.
- the fact that we live in time and have a past, and weren’t just created 2 minutes ago with a fake past put into our mind.
- the fact that truth and logic exists. You can’t prove logic exists with logic because that would be circular reasoning. But we generally all know truth and logic exist.

And I do not have any problem with your list above since all are supported through empirical evidence and intersubjective corroboration.

And, likewise;
- the fact that we all have a shared inner sense that there exists objective right and wrong. We all generally experience and know it. But we can’t prove it exists with logic and math.

And here, we can prove through empirical evidence, that this inner sense of right and wrong is based on our behavioral instincts. That is what is so great about scientific inquiry, as it helps us figure these things out instead of blindly assuming.

But you can’t prove objective morality with mathematics and logic.

Outside of core instinct, morality is subjective. That is why it cannot be proven to be objective.

The Bible tells us why you can’t because it says morality does not flow out of those laws. Those laws did not create morality.
Those laws are only useful for proving behaviors of the universe because the universe is governed by those laws. Which makes sense if God created the universe to abide by certain laws that examining the universe in light of those laws would help us to prove certain things about it’s function are true.
The Bible tells us morality does not come from the laws that govern the universe, but come from God’s design and intended purpose for us.
Now, we might be able to deduce what our purpose is by looking at God’s creation to figure out what his design and intention was, but that’s not the same as saying our purpose came from the laws of the universe.
Therefore, we wouldn’t expect the laws of logic and math to be able to tell us what morality is because those laws don’t govern morality and aren’t it’s source.
The Bible says we don’t even need to do that because God gave us an inner witness to what our purpose is, what morality is, and we were born with it.
This fits with what we observe about our reality: that we all have a shared sense that objective morality exists, and further scientific observation of babies supports the idea that people are born with a certain sense of morality.

You have now introduced a specific set of religious scripture to support your argument. Do you not see any issue with that? First you would have to demonstrate the validity and truth of the document, including why it would be more valid than any other competing scripture. We do not have time to debate this, but it greatly weakens any argument supported in this way.

To support an argument for a creator entity based on scripture, which is based on the assumption of the entity one is trying to prove exists seems circular reasoning.

2. You operate from the false assumption that morals are subjective. Which then causes you to falsely claim theism and atheism are on equal ground.
I say “false assumption” because we generally all have a proper basic knowing that some standard of objective morality exists, just as we have a basic knowing that our free will exists.
And unless you are willing to jettison a belief in those things (which most atheists aren’t) then Atheism is burdened with the requirement of offering an explanation for these known phenomenon by materialistic means. But it logically can’t.
Theism, specifically Christianity, does offer an explanation for this experienced reality of objective morality. An explanation that is consistent with what we know.

Again, proper basic knowing is not a valid source of justified knowledge for all the reasons mentioned above. There are lots of comments on this and other threads that soundly support the argument that morality is primarily subjective. You also do not account for the presence of instinctual behaviors.

Let me put it this way with an analogy: if we all know apples fall from trees because we observe it then we need an explanation for why this happens. Simply claiming it doesn’t happen, and that we must be seeing an illusion, only because your worldview doesn’t allow for such a phenomenon as gravity to exist, doesn’t change the fact that everyone generally knows apples are in actual reality falling from trees in the exact same manner.
As such, an explanation is still required for the observed phenomenon. You don’t explain a known phenomenon by just telling yourself it doesn’t exist.

Excellent! You have supported my argument, showing the need for empirical evidence/observation as well as intersubjective corroboration, and demonstrated your support for science. Well done!

Likewise, atheism still has a burden for explaining the known reality of objective morality if it wants to deny the only known explanation for it.

You fail to acknowledge that sometimes, something can’t be shown because it's not true. Morality can’t be shown to be objective because it is subjective.

 

[F1fan]

We know it’s true. But you can’t prove it without presuming God exists first.

Wait, how do you "know" it's true when you have to presume the most critical part exists? You contradict yourself here.

That’s why atheism has never been able to solve the dilemma of how they justify their sense of morality without God.

Actually atheism is very good at explaining morality without the usual religious assumptions. And the usual religious assumptions don't help theists argue for any functional moral absolutes.

It is true that morality comes from God and is not arbitrary, but the way in which you try to argue that is illogical and doesn’t work.

This is only true in religious theology, not factually or objectively.

 

[F1fan]

True.

The "old school" italian mob was a bit different though. Sammy Gravano was one of them.
He makes a big deal about how he only killed "their own". He goes out of his way to make a distinction between "legit people"/"citizens" and "gangsters".
This went so far that when he organized a hit, he would cancel it immediately if the guy turned up with his wife or kids or whatever. Because they had nothing to do with it and he felt they didn't need to see what was about to happen as it would be too traumatizing.

It's fascinating to hear such a guy speak. On the one hand, he talks about killing like I talk about brushing my teeth or changing my pants. And on the other hand, he is constantly aware of the suffering he causes by doing so.

In this one interview, he said that he had high moral standards. The interviewer laughed and said that that is pretty funny coming from a guy who admitted to 19 murders....
To which he replies "sure, but those were our people... this was the life they chose. It's also the life I chose. If I break the rules, I'll get hit as well."
And then he went on explaining how when he first became a mafia associate, and then certainly when he became a made guy, he completely assumed that by the time he was 40 either he would be dead or be sentenced to life in prison.

I find that extremely fascinating from a human psychological perspective. On the one hand, he indeed says and does things that tell me he is a honorable, stand-up guy with indeed high moral standards and actually rather loving and warm personality. At the same time, he's like a serial killing psychopath.

There are stories on his channel where he talks about the old days. At first he is like a funny loving warm grandpa telling a funny story. Then it gets serious and you can literally almost see him transform. His "aura" changes completely and it's instantly a guy that I wouldn't want to meet in some dark ally. And then the serious part is over, and he's that nice loving grandpa again.


Very very weird.

Psychologists would have a field day studying that man.

There's a certain logic and sense to what he is saying. It's not like parents in the neighborhood were worried their kids would be killed by the mob in a random shooting. Those guys killed their targets. And oddly enough these were guys who the police wanted off the streets in jail, or would shoot dead themselves if there was a shootout. So a lot of fuzzy morals going on here.

I'm reminded of the character of Mike from Breaking Bad who has a very ethical criminal code. I've heard in polls that he is one of the most popular of all the characters even though he's a hired killer. I suspect what people respect about his character is that despite being a killer he does it as a duty and always for some purpose. The mob and Mike all represent the moral ambiguity of society.

 

[Aupmanyav]

However, @TagliatelliMonster stated that morality was objective, and I was asking @TagliatelliMonster what exactly was meant by that.

You can put it in that way too. Morality is objective if the object is the smooth operation of a particular society. We can play around with the words subjective, objective.

 

[Aupmanyav]

There's a certain logic and sense to what he is saying. It's not like parents in the neighborhood were worried their kids would be killed by the mob in a random shooting. Those guys killed their targets. And oddly enough these were guys who the police wanted off the streets in jail, or would shoot dead themselves if there was a shootout. So a lot of fuzzy morals going on here.

I'm reminded of the character of Mike from Breaking Bad who has a very ethical criminal code. I've heard in polls that he is one of the most popular of all the characters even though he's a hired killer. I suspect what people respect about his character is that despite being a killer he does it as a duty and always for some purpose. The mob and Mike all represent the moral ambiguity of society.

Same about Robin Hood and grandpa Dacoit Man Singh in India (Man Singh (dacoit) - Wikipedia, 1890-1955, his son, Tehsildar Singh, also was a dacoit).

Below: Tehsildar Singh (Man Singh's son)

"They were not dacoits. They were bagis (revolutionaries). They helped us in the times of need", says Ravinder, a villager. This is just as well. Man Singh and other big dacoits of the 1950s carry a Robinhood image for the people of the Chambal area. Local legend puts them down as heroes and men of valour. Villagers maintain Man Singh and his men did not plunder and rob indiscriminately. Like the legendary Prince of Thieves, Man Singh was said to loot the rich and distribute the goodies to the needy. If any poor farmer faced any problem, especially in raising funds for the marriage of his daughter, Man Singh was said to step in and make the necessary arrangements. The villagers have not forgotten this philanthropy even if it was their grandparents who benefited from it."
The Sunday Tribune - Spectrum - Lead Article

 

[Rise]

Wait, how do you "know" it's true when you have to presume the most critical part exists? You contradict yourself here.

You didn't understand what I explained about the philosophical concept of "proper basic beliefs".

Proper basic beliefs are "self evident" by definition.

Like it is self evident that we have free will, that we exist in a physical reality, or that the laws of logic and math are true.

You can't prove these things, but you know they are true and real.

Likewise, objective morality falls into that category.
In fact, science confirms this shared objective morality, but simply tries to write it off as evolutionary in nature.

But then you can't call it true morality and can't say it's truly objectively right or wrong. No product of materialism can be moral by definition because everything is predetermined by the laws of physics based on the starting conditions of the universe when everything was first set in motion.
Your illusion of morality and illusion of choice is just particles bumping together in a certain way that determines you respond how you were destined to by the arrangement of your particles in relation to the other particles around you. It was all predetermined from the big bang if materialistic atheism is true.

Morality by definition requires choice, which requires free will, which doesn't exist in a materialistic atheistic universe.

Objective morality also, by definition, requires a decision maker outside of humanity to impose upon humanity an intention of design that they should follow. Otherwise it won't be objective by definition. If morality originates from within humanity then it just becomes subjective.

But if materialistic atheism is true then subjective morality doesn't even exist, because it doesn't originate from the free will minds and decisions and experiences of people, but is merely the automatic predetermined byproduct of the arrangement of all the particles interacting together in a way that gives the illusion of morality.

Which is why morality is such a problem for materialistic atheists that understand the true logical implications of their belief when taken to it's ultimate conclusion. Because so few of them are willing to profess that no objective morality exists, and none of them actually live as though it doesn't exist, nor would they even dream of trying to advocate society be structured as though it doesn't exist.

Actually atheism is very good at explaining morality without the usual religious assumptions. And the usual religious assumptions don't help theists argue for any functional moral absolutes.

You haven't given a single example or argument to justify your claim.

Go ahead and try to explain morality from a materialistic atheistic standpoint. I will show you why your argument is fallacious when you try.

This is only true in religious theology, not factually or objectively.

It's not clear to me what you are trying to say. You need to be more specific with what you are trying to argue here.

 

[Meow Mix]

Divine command theory is proven false by philosophers because of similar premises in my argument. If there are no moral truths, this argument fails. 4 is a strong moral fact though, that I don't think anyone would really want to deny. Argument from evil also won't make sense without 4. So Atheists who argue by argument from evil and deny morality being objective are trying to have their cake and eat it too.

For example you stated hell is an unjust concept in another thread. How do you conclude that without moral facts being true?

I'll say this: I don't subscribe to DCT, obviously, as an atheist. But if God or gods exist, I'm not sure it can be "proven false." I'm not sure I agree with that. Which is weird to say, since I definitely do not think DCT is true. I think these are different things though (proving false and not thinking something is true).

A noncognitivist like myself isn't trying to both have and eat their cake: this is because we doubt there are moral truths in the first place. We can still have opinions on what is just and unjust, and argue for those opinions. Those opinions are based on our values, which we don't consciously choose to have or not (but may be influenced by nature, nurture, and exposure to new information).

 

[TagliatelliMonster]

First, let me say thank you for taking the time to answer in the manner and length you did. I think that's great. It all made perfect sense.

Secondly, I loved how bad that performance was!

Now onto Morality:

We are on the same page. The difference between us is in when the label ‘objective’ is used. For me, Morals or morality, is first and foremost subjective. The creation of the moral standard or prohibition is a subjective choice. However, once the moral goal or standard is decided, either individually or as a group, we can then talk about objectively meeting that goal or standard.

If morals are purely subjective, we have to start somewhere when we create them. I see your ‘suffering vs well-being’ metric simply as a model or framework with which to begin intersubjective negotiations. For we can imagine a number of scenarios where something may be a boon for one person and suffering for another, or for one group over another group. Choosing this metric to build a moral framework is still a subjective choice.

Now onto some of your challenges:

“I challenge you to come up with an act that can be reasonably argued to be immoral, while it does NOT increase suffering or decreases well-being (in short or long term).”

Of the top of my head, sex comes to mind, but even though this is an actual moral position, you are going to argue that it is not reasonable. That this task is hard simply means that your metric is a good starting point for deciding on moral values.

“Try and create a reasonable argument from which the conclusion follows that torturing babies is moral, without using "what-if" premises or hypothetical scenario's, off course.”

This is an interesting scenario, because you have chosen to limit the torturing to babies, not to people in general. Presumably you foresee too many ways in which torturing of an adult could be considered moral, based on some action by the adult. The baby, however, is incapable of being anything but innocent. There is another issue at play to also be considered, and that is that there is an instinctual drive to protect and care for infants. Since our species has a reproductive model that relies on producing one offspring at a time with intense support and protection, we would not have gotten very far if we were indifferent to babies. Especially since they require effort.
What if we consider another innocent creature. Say a rabbit. Would it be immoral to torture rabbits? What about medical research? Would that qualify as morally acceptable torture of an innocent creature? It certainly has been considered such.

“And if someone thinks he can make a valid argument as to why helping systematic psychological abuse or rape or whatevs is actually moral, I'ld like to hear it! But I won't be holding my breath.”

For this scenario, I think the ‘in-group’/’other’ dynamic comes into play. As you described above, historically, often societies do not extend moral parameters to those considered ‘other’. That you have made the choice that your moral framework shall apply to humanity as a whole is a subjective choice. I think we both recognize how cruelty can be normalized in a culture or society.

You did not address the role of instinct in regards to morals being objective. As you are aware, we, like other small group social mammals (monkeys, apes, canines, lions) have pre-wired instinctual instructions that set the foundation for a lot of human social behavior. I think this is what gives many that intrinsic, universally objective feeling to morals, and relates to your music analogy. These core traits have been honed through millennia of trial and error. Unfortunately, this pre-wired set seems mainly to apply to those ‘in-group’. Could this pre-wiring be considered an objective source for morals? Perhaps. Outside of this, I see the mere act of creating a moral standard as subjective, and once created, one can address it objectively.

In spirit, I think we certainly agree. We just express it somewhat differently.

I'm going to highlight a few things.

I see your ‘suffering vs well-being’ metric simply as a model or framework with which to begin intersubjective negotiations. For we can imagine a number of scenarios where something may be a boon for one person and suffering for another, or for one group over another group. Choosing this metric to build a moral framework is still a subjective choice.

To this, Sam Harris would say "if you are telling me that morality and ethical questions, aren't concerned with suffering and well-being, then frankly I don't know what you are talking about"

We can indeed imagine scenario's where something is good for one and bad for another.
Or where you have two options and both screw another group over. These are moral dilemma's. This ties into what I said that moral reasoning isn't always easy. It's quite often very hard and sometimes there simply are no right (or wrong) answers. Or we don't have enough data / facts to be able to determine the right or wrong answer.

People, especially theists, also frequently misunderstand me when I talk about "objective morality". They think I mean a set of rules which never changes. Not at all. I'm more talking about the process. In essence, it's not unlike science. Science is objective, yet changes all the time - as we gather more facts and gain more understanding. Morality imo isn't much different in that regard.

For this scenario, I think the ‘in-group’/’other’ dynamic comes into play. As you described above, historically, often societies do not extend moral parameters to those considered ‘other’. That you have made the choice that your moral framework shall apply to humanity as a whole is a subjective choice.

Here, I don't really agree that it is a subjective choice.
It's more a consequence of "maturing" as a species, of gaining more understanding of the world around us.
The sum of our knowledge of evolution, anthropology, psychology, well-being, social dynamics,...etc, even things like economic globalization, in a sense kind of forces us psychologically to expand our "in group".

I don't feel like I have "chosen" to include africans in the "humans" group. I don't feel like I have "chosen" that I'm also going to have empathy for non-Belgian people. Or non-Caucasians. To me, this isn't arbitrary at all. It feels more compulsory then anything else.

Could this pre-wiring be considered an objective source for morals? Perhaps.

From our perspective, I'ld say that it does. At bottom, this relates to empathy. And it's exactly those things that give us this urge to think morality is important enough to care about it. This is why I said that morality is like an inevitable emergent property of the human condition.



So in summary, yes: the starting point is not truly objective. But from that point on, it's perfectly possible it seems to me to use objective reasoning to obtain answers to moral and ethical questions.
And while the starting point isn't truly objective, imo it's also not really subjective. At least not in the sense that for example musical taste is subjective.

More like how musical theory is subjective. It's dependend on human minds - certain frequency combinations are pleasant for us, while others make us cringe. And which is experienced as which, kind of depends upon how our ears and brains work. So it kind of comes down to our biology. It's "hard-wired" in there, if you will.

Fascinating subject though.

 

[MikeF]

In spirit, I think we certainly agree. We just express it somewhat differently.

I'm going to highlight a few things.



To this, Sam Harris would say "if you are telling me that morality and ethical questions, aren't concerned with suffering and well-being, then frankly I don't know what you are talking about"

We can indeed imagine scenario's where something is good for one and bad for another.
Or where you have two options and both screw another group over. These are moral dilemma's. This ties into what I said that moral reasoning isn't always easy. It's quite often very hard and sometimes there simply are no right (or wrong) answers. Or we don't have enough data / facts to be able to determine the right or wrong answer.

People, especially theists, also frequently misunderstand me when I talk about "objective morality". They think I mean a set of rules which never changes. Not at all. I'm more talking about the process. In essence, it's not unlike science. Science is objective, yet changes all the time - as we gather more facts and gain more understanding. Morality imo isn't much different in that regard.





Here, I don't really agree that it is a subjective choice.
It's more a consequence of "maturing" as a species, of gaining more understanding of the world around us.
The sum of our knowledge of evolution, anthropology, psychology, well-being, social dynamics,...etc, even things like economic globalization, in a sense kind of forces us psychologically to expand our "in group".

I don't feel like I have "chosen" to include africans in the "humans" group. I don't feel like I have "chosen" that I'm also going to have empathy for non-Belgian people. Or non-Caucasians. To me, this isn't arbitrary at all. It feels more compulsory then anything else.




From our perspective, I'ld say that it does. At bottom, this relates to empathy. And it's exactly those things that give us this urge to think morality is important enough to care about it. This is why I said that morality is like an inevitable emergent property of the human condition.



So in summary, yes: the starting point is not truly objective. But from that point on, it's perfectly possible it seems to me to use objective reasoning to obtain answers to moral and ethical questions.
And while the starting point isn't truly objective, imo it's also not really subjective. At least not in the sense that for example musical taste is subjective.

More like how musical theory is subjective. It's dependend on human minds - certain frequency combinations are pleasant for us, while others make us cringe. And which is experienced as which, kind of depends upon how our ears and brains work. So it kind of comes down to our biology. It's "hard-wired" in there, if you will.

Fascinating subject though.

I enjoyed the deep dive. Thanks.

 

[F1fan]

You didn't understand what I explained about the philosophical concept of "proper basic beliefs".

Proper basic beliefs are "self evident" by definition.

Like it is self evident that we have free will, that we exist in a physical reality, or that the laws of logic and math are true.

Then you're closed to disputes about what these statements say then how can you present a valid argument when they aren't true?

For example it's questionable that humans have free will. No doubt humans can make choices but studies in psychology illustrate that many of our decisions and choices occur in our subconscious, not our conscious minds. So do we just let these dubious assertion go unchallenged and let people run wild with a bad argument?

You can't prove these things, but you know they are true and real.

Absurd. If you know something that can't be shown to be true, then how does an ordinary person actually know it? Are these people special? Are the they gods? Do they have extrasensory powers that ordinary people like me don't have?

The proper language is that you can't prove these things but you GUESS they are true. Knowing things requires objective confirmation . That means facts. You're trying to cheat and get away with claiming you know God exists but have no way to show you are telling the truth. So we throw it out.

Likewise, objective morality falls into that category.
In fact, science confirms this shared objective morality, but simply tries to write it off as evolutionary in nature.

No, the facts and work demonstrates morals come from the trial and error of organisms working and cooperating as they evolve over time.

But then you can't call it true morality and can't say it's truly objectively right or wrong. No product of materialism can be moral by definition because everything is predetermined by the laws of physics based on the starting conditions of the universe when everything was first set in motion.

This is a nonsense statement. You're obviously trying to rig an argument to shoe horn in your God and that it is the cause of morality. We see this trick a lot. You can't just make bogus and unfactual statement and think you can get away with it. When you make controversial statements that don't reflect science you need to do some work and show your statement is true. We understand you believe it's true. We don't care, it's not valid for a debate.

Your illusion of morality and illusion of choice is just particles bumping together in a certain way that determines you respond how you were destined to by the arrangement of your particles in relation to the other particles around you. It was all predetermined from the big bang if materialistic atheism is true.

This is another misrepresentative statement. I'll tell you what, you let atheists explain their view instead of mangling it in a dishonest way. You are trying to argue for morals and your God being behind it. It's not a good look that you are cheating in plain sight, unless you're trying to prove your God doesn't inspire good morals.

Morality by definition requires choice, which requires free will, which doesn't exist in a materialistic atheistic universe.

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean. Making choices (free of otherwise) is a material process in material brains. Morals can be religious like flying hijacked planes into office buildings or social like rounding up an ethnic group in your nation or deciding to donate food to the local food shelter. People will act in the way they think is moral. The religious think their God is behind it. Non-believers don't.

Objective morality also, by definition, requires a decision maker outside of humanity to impose upon humanity an intention of design that they should follow. Otherwise it won't be objective by definition. If morality originates from within humanity then it just becomes subjective.

Which is why this definition of objective morality isn't relevant. No outside decision makers are known to exist. If one does this certainly can't be tracked by observing various religious groups.

But if materialistic atheism is true then subjective morality doesn't even exist, because it doesn't originate from the free will minds and decisions and experiences of people, but is merely the automatic predetermined byproduct of the arrangement of all the particles interacting together in a way that gives the illusion of morality.

Which is why morality is such a problem for materialistic atheists that understand the true logical implications of their belief when taken to it's ultimate conclusion. Because so few of them are willing to profess that no objective morality exists, and none of them actually live as though it doesn't exist, nor would they even dream of trying to advocate society be structured as though it doesn't exist.

I've never heard any atheist claim this. This is just a straw man, and more cheating on your part. And you get caught because there are atheists here checking your false claims in front of everyone.

I'm curious if you think it's moral to misrepresent what others think.

You haven't given a single example or argument to justify your claim.

That there are atheists who behave morally via their own thinking is millions of examples all over the world.

Go ahead and try to explain morality from a materialistic atheistic standpoint. I will show you why your argument is fallacious when you try.

Atheists don't operate with a materialistic philosophy. Atheists are pragmatic and like most other citizens in a community, including theists, cooperate and have a sense of what is fair. Most everyone learns that we need to have social order to function and survive ourselves. We learn to drive a reasonable speed in our cars even when there are no cops with speed traps. People find wallets and turn them in. This happened to me several time, and my motivation to return the wallets is both a duty to the person, that it makes me feel good about my morals, and that if I lost my wallet another person would return it to me. This is how the evolved impulses of cooperation and conscious sense of duty and good will guides our behavior.

It's not clear to me what you are trying to say. You need to be more specific with what you are trying to argue here.

You wrote this:

"It is true that morality comes from God and is not arbitrary, but the way in which you try to argue that is illogical and doesn’t work."

No it's NOT true to claim morality comes from any gods. Gods are not known to exist, even though you want to claim you DO know this. You make no effort to explain objectively and factually how you know a God exists. So your claim can be rejected outright. Morals are explained as natural biological impulses and pragmatic social and personal decisions.

Based on your claims thus far you seem to think religious theology is factual when it isn't. Your ability to discern factual statements from false religious statements is very compromised.

 

[Link]

I'll say this: I don't subscribe to DCT, obviously, as an atheist. But if God or gods exist, I'm not sure it can be "proven false." I'm not sure I agree with that. Which is weird to say, since I definitely do not think DCT is true. I think these are different things though (proving false and not thinking something is true).

A noncognitivist like myself isn't trying to both have and eat their cake: this is because we doubt there are moral truths in the first place. We can still have opinions on what is just and unjust, and argue for those opinions. Those opinions are based on our values, which we don't consciously choose to have or not (but may be influenced by nature, nurture, and exposure to new information).

I think the fact you still have those values shows you can't stop believing in objective moral truths even if you doubt them or go astray regarding some of them.

 

[Meow Mix]

I think the fact you still have those values shows you can't stop believing in objective moral truths even if you doubt them or go astray regarding some of them.

In response I would point out that I also value the color green and the taste of garlic bread.

Other than the garlic bread thing which is obviously objectively true (this is a joke), I think it’s clear that having values is not a good argument for mind-external objectivity.

 

[night912]

You definitely would have chosen Pharaoh's arguments as defeating Moses, you can't distinguish between truth and falsehood, you see two sides go at it and think it's that they are on equal plane, when one has clear proofs and the other is in clear denial.

Actually, if this story is used as an analogy, your actions match those if Pharoah's. Just like when Moses and Aaron's snake defeated those of Pharaoh's magicians, he ignores what happened and acted as if Moses and Aaron's snake had done nothing to the other magicians' numerous snakes. You're doing the same thing here, ignored how others who refuted your premises and acted as if nobody had said anything about your premises.

 

[Rise]

Then you're closed to disputes about what these statements say then how can you present a valid argument when they aren't true?

It's not clear what statements you are referring to, so I can't respond until you specify what statements you're referencing

I think you also misunderstand the concept of self evidentialism.

To say something is self evident is not to say you are "closed" to it being disputed, as though this were some matter of religious faith.

To say something is self evident is to say that it's truth is an experience of people so obvious and undeniable that it is simply known to be real by those who experience it - and furthermore it is something experienced universally by all normal people so we know it's not subjective to an individual. It's also something we can say has always been experienced as true by people, as far as we know. And we have no reason to believe the truth of those experiences will ever change either.
All of these are the hallmarks of an objective truth.

You also typically have trouble disproving or proving these truths by math and logic, so you end up just having to assume they are true and operate from there.

For instance, the scientific method itself is based on assuming true the self evident truth that logic and math are true. Even though you can't prove logic and math are true by using the scientific method (which is just logic and math) because that would be circular reasoning.

The only reason we have a category called self evident truths, instead of simply throwing them in a pile along with other unproven assumptions and beliefs, is because again it comes down to our shared experience which tells us this things actually are true in reality. We know them to be true from experience and we can’t deny that truth even though we can’t prove it, so we are forced to call them self evident truths because we aren’t willing to deny they exist.

Things that can be proven with the scientific method come out of the category of self evident to become called scientific truths. But those things which we know to be true but cannot prove must remain in the self evident category.

In fact, we could go so far as to say that there is another thing self evident truths share in common is that the consequences of denying their reality would cause disasterous harm upon the ability of us as individuals and as a society to function.

If you deny that math and logic exist because you can't prove it, then science, engineering, planning, etc, anything that depends on reason and calculation ceases to be done. If you truly live according to what you believe.

It is therefore not only not useful to deny self evident truths, but it's actually harmful.

This is why most materialistic atheists cannot bring themselves to believe that we have no free will and that objective morality doesn't exist. Not only do they know from their own experience that those things do exist, but they understand the dire consequences to society if we were to actually try to live according to a belief that humans have no choice, are just robots, and morality doesn't exist.

You could say that it's always dangerous to not live according to what is true. Living as though gravity doesn't exist is dangerous. It doesn't become safe to live in opposition to truth just because you don't know how to prove something is true. Ancient people may not have known how to prove with logic and math that gravity existed but trying to live as though it didn't exist was no less fatal to them. We could say the same is true of other self evident truths like objective morality and free will.

Atheists would have to deny certain self evident truths to be logically consistent with their worldview (like free will and objective morality), but the consequences of doing so violate what they know by experience to be true about themselves and the world around them. They also don't like the implications for society if they were to follow those believes to their logical conclusions with regards to there being no purpose and no morals constraining how we act with each other. They intuitively understand the danger just as they intuitively understand that objective morality must exist.

The dishonest atheist tries to have it both ways. They want to deny the basis from which we could justify an objective morality while still trying to hold to a moral standard which they claim is objective. It is an untenable position and an illogical one but one which they have no choice but to take because they don't want to jettison their necessary acknowledgement of free will and objective morality.

The honest atheist will admit they cannot believe in objective morality or free will, but will nevertheless still live as though both of them are true and advocate that others continue to live as though they are true as well. So it brings into question the validity of an atheistic worldview and it’s usefulness if they aren’t willing to actually live consistent with it.

For example it's questionable that humans have free will. No doubt humans can make choices but studies in psychology illustrate that many of our decisions and choices occur in our subconscious, not our conscious minds. So do we just let these dubious assertion go unchallenged and let people run wild with a bad argument?

You are contradicting yourself.
If humans don't have free will then they can't make choices.
You admit humans can make choices and don't doubt this.
Therefore it's not questionable that humans have free will

You are proving what I said true about self evident truths by showing you believe in and adhere to them.

Quibbling over how much influence various factors have over people's choices doesn't change the fact that you either are making a choice or you aren't. You can't have it both ways.

Since you affirm the self evident truth that the ability to choose exists, you cannot logically hold to the position of materialistic atheism because that worldview affords no basis by which true free will can exist.

In a materialistic atheistic world there would be nothing but the illusion of choice as your actions have already been predetermined by the starting conditions of the big bang being constrained by the the laws of physics to reach the only result that is possible, like a given force acting upon a spread of marbles. How they will scatter is already predetermined by the laws of physics based on the makeup of their properties and the makeup of the properties of that which hits them. There is no agency for true choice without the ability to make a choice independent of the laws of physics that constrain this universe. Christian theists would call this your spirit or soul. Atheism has no alternative to explain this phenomenon, and their worldview makes it impossible for such there to be any explaning because it doesn't really exist according to their worldview.

Absurd. If you know something that can't be shown to be true, then how does an ordinary person actually know it? Are these people special? Are the they gods? Do they have extrasensory powers that ordinary people like me don't have?

You contradict yourself.
You just admitted there is no doubt that we have choice.
Therefore you are saying you know free will exists.

But you can't prove it does

So regardless of whether or not you want to call that absurd, the fact is you are engaging that "absurd" behavior yourself.

This gets back to what I said about the atheists who want to have their cake and eat it to. You don't want to embrace the logical conclusions of your worldview that would force you to have to deny truths you know to be self evident.

The proper language is that you can't prove these things but you GUESS they are true. Knowing things requires objective confirmation . That means facts

You didn't say you "guess" that free will (ie choice) exists. You said there's no doubt it does. Meaning you claim to know it exists.

And you can't objectively prove it exists.

In fact, your atheistic worldview makes the possibility of free will a logical impossibility. You have only the illusion of choice when your actions were predetermined from the point of the big bang by the laws of physics

You're trying to cheat and get away with claiming you know God exists but have no way to show you are telling the truth. So we throw it out.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of a strawman. Your are inventing an argument I never made and then attacking it.

I never claimed that I can prove God exists to you by claiming I know God exists.

In fact, I didn't even list the existence of God in my list of self evident truths, so I don't know where you are getting your strawman from.

No, the facts and work demonstrates morals come from the trial and error of organisms working and cooperating as they evolve over time.

You aren't describing morals by definition.

You're trying to explain why we seen to have a shared sense of morality, but explaining what you see is not the same as being able to declare something is right or wrong.

You can say a certain behavior leads to a certain outcome, but you can't say that outcome is objectively morally right or wrong.

On what logical grounds do you claim to be able to say any action is objectively morally right or wrong? You have none.

This is a nonsense statement. You're obviously trying to rig an argument to shoe horn in your God and that it is the cause of morality. We see this trick a lot. You can't just make bogus and unfactual statement and think you can get away with it. When you make controversial statements that don't reflect science you need to do some work and show your statement is true. We understand you believe it's true. We don't care, it's not valid for a debate.

You are committing the logical fallacies of Ad Hominem and Argument by Assertion.

Merely calling my argument "nonsense" doesn't disprove the validity of my logic or the evidence used.

You need to provide actual counter arguments to demonstrate why any of my logic is supposedly in error or why any of my facts is supposedly wrong.

You are additional committing the fallacy of argument by assertion when you triy to merely assert that my arguments are somehow in error without actually giving any logical reasons or evidence to show why you think they are in error.

You don't disprove the validity of my arguments by merely asserting they are invalid and expecting us to take for granted that your assertion is true.

This is another misrepresentative statement. I'll tell you what, you let atheists explain their view instead of mangling it in a dishonest way.

You are again committing the logical fallacy of argument by assertion.

Merely claiming that I have misrepresented something doesn't make it true just because you assert it is true.

You need to provide logic reasons why you think I have misrepresented something.

You won't be able to do that because what I have said about materialistic atheism is true. You are logically incapable of reaching any other ultimately conclusion about free will, that it is an illusion of the laws of physics predetermining outcomes, if you ascribe to a materialistic atheism viewpoint and actually follow that to it's only logical conclusion.

You are trying to argue for morals and your God being behind it. It's not a good look that you are cheating in plain sight, unless you're trying to prove your God doesn't inspire good morals.

Logical fallacies, argument by assertion and ad hominem.

Merely asserting an accusation of me "cheating" doesn't make it true just because you assert it is.

You cannot prove your claim is true with any logical arguments or evidence.[/quote][/quote]

 

[Rise]

I'm not even sure what this is supposed to mean.

It doesn't surprise me that you don't understand what that means because if you did you would realize why you're wrong.

Making choices (free of otherwise) is a material process in material brains

You contradict yourself.
A choice is not a choice by definition unless it comes of free will (ie the ability of the will to act independent of any physical laws of matter).

If all your actions are merely the result of the material in your brain then by definition it's not a choice, never was a choice, and can never be a choice, because your actions are merely the result of the laws of physics carrying themselves out through the particles of your body - and thus the outcome of your action was predetermined at the big bang which set everything in motion according to the laws of the universe.
Those same laws continue to restrain the particles and energy all the way up to the point where it eventually (in your view) turns into biological machines. You are constrained by materialistic determinism and any belief of choice is just an illusion on your part.

Which is also why nothing can be said to be moral at all, because you don't have the capacity to do any different than what you were predetermined to do - and no one can be held responsible for their actions because they had no choice in the matter.
Morals can be religious like flying hijacked planes into office buildings or social like rounding up an ethnic group in your nation or deciding to donate food to the local food shelter. People will act in the way they think is moral. The religious think their God is behind it. Non-believers don't.

Which is why this definition of objective morality isn't relevant. No outside decision makers are known to exist. If one does this certainly can't be tracked by observing various religious groups.

[/quote]

There can logically be no such thing as different definitions of objective morality because then it would not, by definition, be objective.

Just like there can't be two contradicting definitions of objective truth. It wouldn't be objective then. And it wouldn't be truth either because truth is singular and noncontradictory by definition.

What you are describing is subjective morality by definition.

Furthermore, your claim that it's not relevant is also false because your claim is based on the false pressumption that there needs to be evidence of a moral assigning creator for this definition to be relevant.

In actuality, this definition is relevant because of the self evident nature of objective morality. Everyone's shared sense and experience that such a thing actually exists, and isn't just a subjective illusion, forces us to ask what could logically impart a true objective morality to our being.

Materialistic atheism cannot provide any answer for our self evident belief that true objective morality does exist and some things can be truly said to be objectively wrong independent of what people subjectively believe about it. Materialistic atheism offers only the illusion of objective morality in the form of shared evolutionary biases towards certain behaviors. But that doesn't say anything about whether or not it's truly objectively morally right or wrong. Only to say that one set of behaviors is theorized to be more advantageous for survival than others. But who is to say survival is a morally right or wrong? You can't. It's objectively neutral by that worldview.

I've never heard any atheist claim this.

What I said does not depend on you having heard it before in order to be true.

I gave you the logical reasons why that is the only consistent way for a materialistic atheistic to view the world.

It flows out of what they say they believe taken to it's logical conclusion.

It remains true unless they are willing to give up a commitment to materialistic atheism. But as long as they remain committed to materialistic atheism there is absolutely no other logical conclusion to reach but that things like free will and objective morality are an illusion.

To do otherwise is to contradict your a priori commitment to materialistic atheism with regards to explaining creation. But then you are just holding two contradictory viewpoints trying to have your cake and eat it too.

This is just a straw man, and more cheating on your part. And you get caught because there are atheists here checking your false claims in front of everyone.

I'm curious if you think it's moral to misrepresent what others think.

You again commit the logical fallacies of Ad Hominem and Argument by Assertion.

You provide no logical arguments or evidence to demonstrate your claim is true. Merely asserting that you think I have committed the fallacy of a strawman, “cheated” something, or that others have supposedly “checked” my claims, doesn’t make it true just because you assert it is true.

You need to cite specific things I have said or argued and then explain with specific logical argumentation why you think your claims are true.

That there are atheists who behave morally via their own thinking is millions of examples all over the world.

You are engaging in the logical fallacy of “Irrelevant conclusion”.

Whether or not atheists behave subjectively morally according to their own idea of morality does nothing to disprove any point of argument I have made.

Atheists don't operate with a materialistic philosophy.

That is precisely my point.

You don’t live consistent with your worldview.

And you aren’t willing to go where your worldview logically must conclude. Because you don’t find the implications of that palatable.

Atheism requires you to violate the truths you know to be self evident if you want to be intellectually consistent with what atheism claims.

Atheists are pragmatic and like most other citizens in a community, including theists, cooperate and have a sense of what is fair. Most everyone learns that we need to have social order to function and survive ourselves. We learn to drive a reasonable speed in our cars even when there are no cops with speed traps. People find wallets and turn them in. This happened to me several time, and my motivation to return the wallets is both a duty to the person, that it makes me feel good about my morals, and that if I lost my wallet another person would return it to me.

You are again engaging in the logical fallacy of irrelevant conclusion.

Whether or not atheists can act in moral or cooperative ways does nothing to disprove any point I have argued in either this post or my previous posts.

 

[Rise]

This is how the evolved impulses of cooperation and conscious sense of duty and good will guides our behavior.

As I already said: Creating an evolutionary explanation for why we appear to have a sense of collective objective morality does not change the fact that under materialistic atheism no objective morality actually exists.

You have no basis upon which to claim anything is actually objectively immoral or moral.
You can’t objectively say anything hitler did was immoral.

Because you can’t say something is a violating of that which is suppose to be unless you can first say how things are suppose to be.

And there is no way things are suppose to be without a designer/creator making the decision about what the intention of his creation is.

Under materialistic atheism, nothing is suppose to be a certain way. It just is the way it is, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s one way or another because no one created it with the intention that it should be a certian a way.

You wrote this

"It is true that morality comes from God and is not arbitrary, but the way in which you try to argue that is illogical and doesn’t work."

No it's NOT true to claim morality comes from any gods.

You are committing the fallacy of argument by assertion again.

Craig put forth arguments, and I put forth similar ones, which demonstrate that morality doesn’t actually exist with a transcendent creator.

You haven’t refuted those arguments.

If you believe it is self evident that objective morality exists then you are forced to conclude that a theistic creator is the only explanation we have for that.

If you want to deny that objective morality exists, then there’s no sense in talking about where morality comes from because you deny that morality even exists.

Gods are not known to exist

Your claim is disputable.

As Craig pointed out already in his arguments, the self evidential experience of God is a valid way of knowing God exists, because we know from other areas of life that self evidential experience is a valid way of knowing truth.

There are lots of self evident truths you take for granted and live by as though they are true. Free will. Objective morality. The fact that logic and math are true and unchanging. Etc.

Another speaker I heard once put it best somewhat like this: “I know my wife exists. I see her, I interact with her, I talk with her. You might be skeptical of my wife’s existence because you haven’t had these experiences, but I don’t need to change what I know to be true to conform to your lack of experience”.

And in case you get confused: I am not trying to argue in this instance that you need to accept as true that God exists based on my experience; but am merely pointing you the fallacy of your argument that you think you can assume there’s no way of knowing God exists. When the fact is you can know that as well as you can know a lot of other self evident truths that can’t be scientifically proven.

You make no effort to explain objectively and factually how you know a God exists. So your claim can be rejected outright.

You haven’t been paying attention to much then.

Craig put forth four arguments (cosmological, teleological, moral, and self evidentialism) that scientifically and logically demonstrate that God existing is a more likely than atheism as an explanation for what we observe.

You haven’t refuted any of those arguments.

Morals are explained as natural biological impulses and pragmatic social and personal decisions.

If your claims are true then you aren’t describing morals. It fails to meet the definition of morality. Which requires free will choice and an authoritative declaration about what the intended operation of creation is.

What you describe is not actually morality in the true sense of the word, but merely a set of behaviors that are believed to maximize survival. But survival as a concept is neither moral nor immoral without someone to declare how things ought to be.

Who is to say the extinction of the human race is morally wrong?
Who is to say that multiplying and thriving of the human race is morally right?

There are people like Bill Gates who stand up in front of a TED audience and say the ideal situation on earth would be to have zero people. How are you going to tell him his belief is objectively morally wrong? You can’t. It’s just your opinion against his. You can’t prove which one of you is valuing the right thing.

How are you going to tell Hitler what he did was wrong?
He disagrees. He thinks he’s doing the right thing.
He thinks what he’s doing will make humanity better off.
You disagree.
How do you say who is right?
It’s just your opinion vs his and you have no way to prove anything either way under atheism.

Based on your claims thus far you seem to think religious theology is factual when it isn't.

This statement of yours doesn't even seem to be relevant to anything I've actually argued, let alone accurate.

Your ability to discern factual statements from false religious statements is very compromised.

You commit the logical fallacy of argument by assertion.
You assert you think my discernment of what is factual is compromised but you offer no logical reasoning or evidence to show any error in my facts or arguments.