Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

No. You instead have to acknowledge that morality is a nuanced, multifaceted, often self-contradictory collection of social rules, that differs somewhat from individual to individual, but broadly boils down into a generally accepted but shifting and amorphous mass of principles which tend to lead to a functioning society and tend to get enshrined, in part, in enforceable laws. They don't need to be justified or rationalised - they don't need to be categorised as objective or personal. They are a social phenomenon, whose origins are of mild interest philosophically, but are of no particular relevance in the face of the obvious fact that they are generally and very broadly shared by a large majority of humanity.You seek to encourage us to reduce a discussion of morality to absolutes (such as your assertion that all life is equal), so that you can seek to argue trite contradictions with us.But morality is full of contradictions and full of complexity - trite questions such as why we eat animals and not each other are meaningless. The answer is that most of us think that's OK. Suck it up.

Perhaps we can short-circuit this.Dawn - are words real ?

Do they have a reality outside our perception of them ?

And I would agree - I don't think words have a reality outside of our perception.And yet, you and I would undoubtedly agree that we are conversing in English - a shared language. Our individual perceptions of that language will differ slightly - the same word may import a different meaning for each of us - or different words may mean the same thing. And yet it is a shared language - a shared system of conveying meaning using sounds and written representations of sounds - which we both understand and use and refer to in our day to day lives.And words and languages change over time. The language of Elizabethan England is familiar to us through Shakespeare, and is very different from the English we use today. And yet it is still recognisably the English language. Go back further in time, and you would need to start calling what was spoken by a different title - but it would still be a language - a system of communicating thoughts and ideas, which has no reality outside of the perceptions of its users, but is still real and incredibly important and useful to them.There is no absolute standard for a language - no perfect ideal to which it has to conform - it evolves and changes over time. And it is rarely used in precisely the same way by every speaker of it.And there are of course many different languages - sharing many features, but differing as well.And this is why words and languages are good analogies for what we are saying about morality. They are both evolving, changeable human inventions. They have no objective reality - but instead are subjectively real. And there is a sufficient degree of common usage that they can be identified and recorded - as written words or as laws, in each case. And just as we have different languages or words, so we have different sets of morality in different societies and times - slavery can be seen as moral in one place or era, and reprehensible in another.We cannot say that any one morality is better than another, because their subjective reality doesn't need that. There is no absolute morality, and there doesn't need to be one in order for shared group moralities to the exist, be valid and enforced. In just the same way as there is no one perfect language, and there doesn't need to be, in order for shared group languages to exist, be valid and spoken.

Ah, but that is not what I said. I said "I don't think words have a reality outside of our perception." Words and language do have a reality - they have a subjective reality which is shared amongst a group of us.The English language is a real language - it really exists - and you and I are conversing in it.If you seek to dismiss the reality and existence of subjective morality, because it's not painted green and affixed to a pole, then you have to dismiss the reality and existence of words and languages. If subjective concepts are non-existent realities, to use your expression, how is it that we are conversing ?

It has been explained, patiently, repeatedly and carefully, that morality is not objective but subjective. And societies come to a consensus as to what is and isn't moral, from their citizens' shared views as to their own moralities. These tend to be based on a concept of uninvited harm to non-consenting third parties, with a number of balancing factors, as Tangle has referred to, but there are other factors too.But it's a consensus of subjective moralities that shape a society's wider moral code.And the evidence for our society's view that killing babies is, you know, fucking vile, is that you would get locked up for life for doing it (or executed, if that's your society's chosen maximum punishment for breaking a law). And the evidence that this is a view widely held by civilised societies is that the UN and the international court of justice frown on it too.I have a moral code of which I am proud. It's one which broadly conforms with my society's consensus as to what is right and proper. I am extremely pleased that I don't have to take my instructions from an un-proven all powerful being, who thinks there can be any justifiable reason to murder children.You, on the other hand, are left trying to justify the psychopathic genocides and infanticides of your unproven God.

You assume a need to prove a moral code to be correct - try demonstrating that need. No one arguing against your position is of the view that a moral code can be, or needs to be, proved correct. You are tilting at windmills. To me, yes.You missed the thrust of my point though. My moral code is one that has not been passed to me by a supposedly superior being. It's my code, and I face the world's opinion of it squarely in the eye, no excuses.If there were a god, who manifested himself and told you to kill all of the children in your home town, my guess is you'd do it.Me, I'd tell him to go screw himself.

Post 917 was an answer to all of your questions. Each one of your questions was "how do we determine which of the following moral positions is correct ?" My reply was that we are not stating that a moral position is correct. Each of your questions presents a straw man.We arrive at our individual moralities, through a number of ways. Our societies reach consensuses as to those moralities, through mutual understanding, argument, debate and social change. The wider international community does the same amongst its constituent societies. That's how it works. There's no yardstick, no standard to measure "correctness" against - just various consensuses, subject to debate, argument, occasional conflict and above everything else, change.You're asking me the equivalent of whether I think Sasquatch 's fur is black or brown; or whether his teeth are yellow or white; or whether he's got blue eyes or green. The thing is, I don't believe there's a Sasquatch.

Of course not. They want to survive.

I think I've detected the pattern here. Every day you wake up, and every day you come on here and repeat the same falsehoods about what evolution is: And every day, we correct you and explain, for example here, that evolution is mutation within a population, which is guided by natural selection.And every day after, you come back and ignore what has been patiently explained to you.The difference with Groundhog Day, I guess, is that Bill Murray came to an epiphany and started to spend his time educating himself and becoming a more rounded person. You seem content to be condemned to repeating your mistakes.