Theism offers a more likely context than atheism for affirming moral realism.

Atheism and Moral Realism1) Con seems to suggest that I am arguing that atheism and moral realism are incompatible. However, I am not. I entirely agree that atheism and moral realism are compatible if one means "logically compatible". One can entirely agree that two propositions when asserted in conjunction with each other are logically compatible, but nonetheless, wildly implausible/unlikely. An analogous situation would be how most atheistic philosophers today would concede that the existence of God and the existence of evil are logically compatible - that is there is no logical contradiction in asserting the two propositions in conjunction, but they would nonetheless argue that the existence of God is wildly improbable and unlikely given the fact of evil. I am arguing in the same vein.2) Appealing to the fact that many professional atheist philosophers are moral realists does nothing to mitigate my arguments and show that moral realism on atheism is not unlikely and implausible. That'd be like Con appealing to the fact that many - if not most - philosophers in the early 1900's were logical positivists and this shows that their position was not absurd. We all know about the demise of logical positivism. For all we know, and I maintain that it is in fact the case, that these philosophers are mistaken about the likeliness of moral realism given their atheistic commitments.3) Con's appeal to the prima facie advantage of atheism over theism with respect to moral realism due it being based on naturalistic properties is entirely illusory. That is mainly due to the many considerations that point towards the failure of reducing moral properties to naturalistic properties. I will get into that in the next section. PersonhoodCon misconstrues my argument. I said nothing about truth statements in general which do not depend on the existence of people, I am talking specifically about moral values, obligations, and properties that seem to essentially depend on being instantiated through people. So, Con's argument against my apparent standard of absurdity and unintelligibility does not even get off the ground.Now, Con intends to avoid some of my arguments by appealing to the thesis that moral facts are reducible to natural facts instead of being irreducible. There are multiple problems with this move:4) It's an entirely gratuitous assumption to just assume that moral facts emerge and supervene on non-moral, naturalistic facts (such as sufficiently complex neurological/nervous systems). On the naturalistic, atheistic picture there would no reason to expect that given the the prior valueless, obligationless, moralless world these sorts of things would just happen to supervene on non-oral facts that humans just happened to develop through an unguided process. This would still fall prey to my argument from cosmic coincidences as well since there wouldn't be any reason to expect that we have moral knowledge either. (More on that later.)5) If one wants to assert that that some proposition that contains only natural, non-moral facts is synonymous (i.e. the same meaning) with some moral fact like the wrongness then that seems to be open to refutation by G.E. Moore's open question argument. [1]The problem, in short, is that if two propositions are synonymous than you should be able to substitute one proposition for the other without changing the meaning the of the proposition. The open question argument shows that this isn't possible if ones takes natural, non-moral facts to be synonymous with moral facts. For example, say a reductionist (utiltarian for example) says that x is good = x promotes pleasure. You can then ask an open question like "Is pleasure good?" This would reduce down to "Does pleasure promote pleasure?" on the reductionist interpretation. This is obvious nonsense, so that cannot be true.6) Suppose a reductionist wants to deny that naturalistic, non-moral facts are synonymous with moral facts and that they don't mean the same thing but are nonetheless reducible in some other way. Perhaps they will say that the naturalistic, non-moral facts explain what it is for something to be wrong but they don't mean the same thing. For example, the evening star and the morning star are both the same thing (Venus) but they do not mean the same thing.The problem is moral facts just self-evidently seem to be in an entirely different class of things than non-moral facts. Something being bad seems entirely and utterly different than anything than naturalistic properties, like, say, mass, velocity, up spin, or rectangular shape. If someone performs a wrong action that is obviously a different thing and we are trying to describe or ground that property of "wrongness" it seems utterly wrong headed to say that that moral property also has naturalistic, non-moral properties. It's like the fact that if I sufficiently grasp the concepts of "the Eiffel Tower" and "the U.S. constitution" that they obviously are not the same thing or even the same kind of thing. If one adequately understands the moral concept of wrongness it would seem we could just "see" that it is not the same thing as some specified non-moral, naturalist fact(s).The problem of the possibility of moral knowledge rears it's ugly head yet again. If moral facts are reducible to non-moral, naturalistic facts that would mean that we would or could go about gaining moral knowledge in the normal way we go about gaining knowledge of non-moral, naturalistic facts. This seems to make little sense. After all the way we go about gaining knowledge about non-moral, naturalistic facts is through some empirical method (e.g. the methods of science and observation and what not). But, again, this seems absurd because that is not the way moral knowledge is gained. We don't observe with our five senses that an act is wrong, nor do we scientifically test it.Personal Dignity7) Appealing to a strategy of my opponent - showing some versions of the "soul hypothesis" (I'm assuming he means dualism) - are implausible does nothing to show that all versions of dualism are implausible given the tight observed correlation between mental states and brain states. For example, on the emergent dualism advocated by the likes of William Hasker the substantial, immaterial self emerges from a sufficiently complex neurological system. [2]8) Con hasn't actually explained how appealing to the brain states would explain something like qualia. [3] The main problem with reductionist programmes in philosophy of mind is that it seems that no matter how much detail one gives of a corresponding brain state, one hasn't actually explained the existence of "what it is like" to be in that mental state.9) There are positive reasons to think that qualia are not reducible to brain states. To show just one we can appeal to the possibility of the inverted spectrum. [4] Which is the possibility that two people could have the similar physical make ups but experience difference qualia when looking at an apple. One would experience the normal "red" qualia while looking at the apple, but the other person could also be seeing "green" but calling it "red" because they have learned to react to qualia in the same way have the same behavioral outputs. If this is merely possible then this shows these sort of experiences can't be reduced to certain brain states - that is, they are irreducible.Cosmic CoincidencesCon misses the point of the argument which is what makes his sort of parity and tu quoqe argument fail. I am not arguing for the general unreliability of our cognitive faculties on atheism/naturalism with respect to everything (this isn't a Plantigan evolutionary argument against naturalism); rather it is of more limited scope. It is specifically pertaining to moral knowledge and the possibility of obtaining it on atheistic naturalism.As people like Sharon Street have extensively argued that it is massively implausible that there is a some way of "truth-tracking" moral facts given the standard theory of evolution.[5] The problem she notes (and Darwin did too which I showed with his quote about hive bees) is that the essential explanations of our moral beliefs and judgements that figure into the evolutionary history nowhere actually presume that these moral beliefs and judgements are true in order to make sense of them.A theist, on the other hand, is entirely free to assume in a non ad-hoc that evolution is in some sense guided and that there is a sort of telos (or "final end") for the products of this evolution, so it is not at all mysterious why such beings who are intrinsically valuable and can have moral knowledge would show up on on the scene.It is entirely surprising on a atheistic, naturalist view to see how such creatures could gain knowledge of these moral truths seeing as there is no direction or telos inherent in the evolutionary process on that view. Or, if there is, it would be an entirely ad-hoc add on.Sources[1] http://plato.stanford.edu...[2] www.lastseminary.com/dualism/Emergent%20Dualism.pdf‎[3] http://www.iep.utm.edu...[4] http://plato.stanford.edu...[5] http://as.nyu.edu...