Atheism is Morally Bankrupt

My Position is that Atheism is morally bankrupt. It is unable to lay a foundation for morality and in fact has positive inducements for evil. This will be strictly philosophical no use of historical examples or personal experience will be used, as interesting as such topics are they are not within the preview of this debate. I will show that atheism is morally bankrupt and that its earliest practitioners openly admitted as such. My initial argument, in round one, will not rely on Christian or non-atheist sources, but will solely come from atheists themselves. My opponent must prove 1) that atheism is able to philosophically justify objective morality and 2) provide defeater to falsify the claims made the atheists I will subsequently provide, which I will refer to as the founding Fathers of Atheism. The basic argument is this: If one is an atheist (A), then one objects to transcendent foundation of morality i.e., God (B). If one objects to transcendent foundation of morality i.e., God (B), one lacks the ability to justify conventional morality. (C) If one is an atheist (A), one lacks the ability to justify conventional morality. (C) This argument is valid. It is based on the Hypothetical Syllogism. The question is it sound? All sound arguments are valid, but not all valid arguments are sound. To prove this argument is sound, i.e., the premise are true, I will provide the beliefs and arguments of the early 18th and 19th century atheists. Marquis de Sade Philosophy of the Bedroom, "Yet another effort Frenchmen , if you would be Republicans." "No, we want no more of a god who is at loggerheads with Nature, who is the father of confusion, who moves man at the moment man abandons himself to horrors; such as a god makes us quiver with indignation, and we consign him forever to the oblivion whence the infamous Robespierre wished to call him forth." Rape: "The transgressions we are considering in this second class of man's duties toward his fellows include actions.. prostitution, incest, rape and sodomy. "It is certain, that rape, an act so very rare and so very difficult to prove, wrongs one's neighbor less than theft, since the latter is destructive to property, the former merely damaging to it. Beyond that, what objections have you to the ravisher? What will you say, when he replies to you that, as a matter of fact, the injury is trifling indeed, since he has done no more than place a little sooner the object he has abused in the very state in which she would soon have been put by marriage and love." Theft: "Lay partiality aside, and answer me: is theft, whose effect is to distribute the wealth more evenly, to be branded as a wrong in our day, under our government which aims at equality? Plainly the answer is no: it further equality and, what is more, renders more difficult the conservation of property." "Thus convinced, as you may be, of this barbarous inequality, do not proceed to worsen your injustice by punishing the man who has nothing for having dared to filch something from the man who has everything: your inequitable pledge gives him the greater right to it than ever." Murder: "These truths once admitted, I ask whether it can ever be proposed that destruction is a crime? " No, surely not; for, to prove that, it would be necessary to demonstrate matter inert for an instant, for a moment of repose." "Well, let her do the destroying, they tell you; one ought to let her do it, of course, but they are Nature"s impulses man follows when he indulges in homicide; it is Nature who advises him, and the man who destroys his fellow is to Nature what are the plague and famine, like them sent by her hand which employs every possible means more speedily to obtain of destruction this primary matter, itself absolutely essential to her works." Frederick Nietzsche The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals, Issue 677 "To speak of right and wrong per se makes no sense at all. No act of violence, rape, exploitation, destruction, is intrinsically "unjust," since life itself is violent, rapacious, exploitative, and destructive and cannot be conceived as otherwise." The Gay Science Holy cruelty. " A man who held a newborn child in his hands approached a holy man. "What shall I do with this child?" he asked; "it is wretched, misshapen, and does not have life enough to die." "Kill it!" shouted the holy man with a terrible voice; "and then hold it in your arms for three days and three nights to create a memory for yourself: never again will you beget a child this way when it is not time for you to beget." " When the man had heard this, he walked away, disappointed, and many people reproached the holy man because he had counseled cruelty; for he had counseled the man to kill the child. "But is it not cruder to let it live?" asked the holy man." Twilight of the Idols "When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. For the latter is absolutely not self-evident: one must make this point clear again and again, in spite of English shallow-pates." Lenin The Economic Content of Narodism and the Criticism of it in Mr. Struve"s Book "One therefore cannot deny the justice of Sombart"s remark that in Marxism itself there is not a grain of ethics from beginning to end; theoretically, it subordinates the "ethical standpoint" to the "principle of causality"; in practice it reduces it to the class struggle." Margaret Sanger Woman and the New Race "Many, perhaps, will think it idle to go farther in demonstrating the immorality of large families, but since there is still an abundance of proof at hand, it may be offered for the sake of those who find difficulty in adjusting old-fashioned ideas to the facts. The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it. The same factors which create the terrible infant mortality rate, and which swell the death rate of children between the ages of one and five, operate even more extensively to lower the health rate of the surviving members. Moreover, the overcrowded homes of large families reared in poverty further contribute to this condition. Lack of medical attention is still another factor, so that the child who must struggle for health in competition with other members of a closely packed family has still great difficulties to meet after its poor constitution and malnutrition have been accounted for." We see that one thing unites all these thinkers murder and death. Theirs is a religion of Thanatos, Nietzsche and Stirner supplies the reasons for an atheist morality if God is dead, then morality that derives from God, which is all morality, is without foundation and must be rejected. If our existence and our struggles are merely material than no moral consideration can come into play? Do Lions or Wolves consider the morality of disemboweling Zebras and Caribou? No. Or in other words If Man is merely an animal (A), than morality is not a consideration (B). If morality is not a consideration (B), then nothing is forbidden. (C) If Man is merely an animal (A), then nothing is forbidden. (C) This argument again is a valid hypothetical syllogism. If man and the universe are purely material, if God does not exist, if all that governs man is "nature," then one can have no recourse to the rapaciousness of man. The atheism itself has cut of all possibility for moral discourse. In fact most atheists are not really atheists at all, for as Max Stirner points out in The Ego and His Own: "But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing in fact has taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered form of the fear of God. Our atheists are pious people. If in the so-called feudal times we held everything as a fief from God, in the liberal period the same feudal relation exists with Man. God was the Lord, now Man is the Lord; God was the Mediator, now Man is; God was the Spirit, now Man is. In this three fold regard the feudal relation has experienced a transformation. For now, firstly, we hold as a fief from all-powerful Man our power, which, because it comes from a higher, is not called power or might, but "right" " the "rights of man"; we further hold as a fief from him our position in the world, for he, the mediator, mediates our intercourse with others, which therefore may not be otherwise than "human"; finally, we hold as a fief from him ourselves " to wit, our own value, or all that we are worth " inasmuch as we are worth nothing when he does not dwell in us, and when or where we are not "human." The power is Man"s, the world is Man"s, I am Man"s" "Here we come upon the old, old craze of the world, which has not yet learned to do without clericalism " that to live and work for an idea is man"s calling, and according to the faithfulness of its fulfillment his human worth is measured" Most atheists are in fact half-Christian. To describe such atheists a meme has developed calling them Atheistkult. When man supplants God man defines morality and since man is mutable and subjective his morality is as well. If morality is mutable and subjective no answer can be given to the immoralist. In conclusion I content that my first syllogism as well as this second syllogism are both valid, in virtue of their structure, and sound, in virtue of the truth of the premises that compose them. There soundness is confirmed by the testimony and content of atheists themselves. Atheism is unable to provide a foundation for moral action as de Sade, Max Stirner and Nietzsche show. I have provided warrant to believe the truth value of my premises and my proponent must provide a defeater to them. Atheism also provides inducements for evil as de Sade, Max Stirner and Nietzsche show a sort of anti-morality replaces traditional morality. Therefore atheism is morally bankrupt and provides positive inducements for evil.