The Moral Argument is Sound

IntroductionMy thanks to Pro for an excellent opening round. I’ll get straight to the point.Pro’s case - Justification for P1P1. If God does not exist, then objective moral values & duties do not exist. What reasons has Pro given us to accept P1?The first is that God is the most plausible grounding of moral values. As Pro puts it, “Objective moral values are most plausibly based in a maximally great being, for if a being is ontologically maximally great, then it intuitively follows that his moral nature is maximally great.”There are a few problems with this:Begging the Question - grounding moral values in God fairly obviously begs the question. The conclusion of the moral argument (God exists) is assumed in the justification for P1 (God’s nature is the foundation of moral values). Why? Because using God’s nature as the foundation for objective morals assumes that God exists, which is what the argument has to prove, not assume.Subjective moral values - Pro asserts that moral values come from God’s nature (Divine command theory), and any moral theory which grounds morality in the nature of a subject (God) is, well, subjective. So, if Pro derives moral ontology from God, then morality, given that it is dependent upon an agent, would be subjective. By contrast, objective moral theory crucially holds that morality is INDEPENDENT of any agent, including God, so P1 seems false by definition (1). Irrelevance - Lastly, even assuming God’s nature was the best grounding for objective morals, even this wouldn’t substantiate P1. Pro’s first premise is NOT that God is the best grounding for objective morals, but that without God, no such values would exist. These are 2 very different claims, and Pro’s justification here would simply only allow him to affirm the former, while the latter is what P1 actually claims, and cannot be justified by this approach. As such, Pro’s first justification seems fallacious, false and futile.The second reason Pro gives is to accept P1 is that moral duties and obligations are absurd, given atheism, and that consistent atheists should accept P1 as a consequence of their worldview. With respect to moral duties:Atheist moral duties - Irrespective of whether or not atheism is true, I still have moral obligations to other beings, simply because of cognitive abilities like self-reflection and moral intuitions. Thus my duties as a (somewhat) rational being is simply to act in accordance with these principles, in order to be rational. In fact, I would further claim that asking why I should be rational is a self-defeating question for obvious reasons. I see no reason whatever to think that the finitude of life dissolves such obligations. If anything, things like fairness become even more important precisely because life ends at the grave, and there will be no do-overs. Also, as we’ve seen, appealing to God begs the question anyway.As for the claim that atheists are ideologically committed to P1:What’s the problem? - I don’t know of any thing even approaching a good justification for this. Many Christian and atheist philosophers alike also recognise that the claim one cannot have justification for objective moral values without God seems totally unproven, if not outright wrong. Christian philosopher Richard Swinburne, for example, repudiates P1:“Some moral truths are clearly moral truths, whether there is a God or not: it is surely wrong to torture children for fun whether or not there is a God.” (2) Likewise, atheist philosopher Walter Sinnott-Armstrong seems bemused when confronted with this argument, laughing off the first premise, “ . . . In fact, many atheists are happy to embrace objective moral values. I agree with them . . . This admission implies nothing about God, unless objective moral values depend on God. But why should we believe that they do?” (3) Furthermore, secular morality of this kind has been going on for literally thousands of years, with moral philosophy full of atheist moral realists. There is certainly no logical incoherence or even a hint of tension between the belief that atheism is true, and that objective moral values exist. So I ask again, what’s the problem? Again, Pro’s second justification seems not only very probably false, but plainly absurd.Third, Pro claims that “it's just not obvious that atheism provides as sound a foundation for objective morals”. Argument from ignorance - Here, Pro falls fouls of argumentum ad ignorantiam:“It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted"… In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used to shift the burden of proof.” (4)As well as this, Pro also again begs the question. Also:Climbing Mount Impossible (5) - P1 states that if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. This means that Pro must affirm that there is no possible way to account for such morals without God, as this is what P1 entails.How can Pro justify such a claim, without either passing the buck, or begging the question? I have no idea. He certainly hasn’t even begun this task, let alone completed it, from what we have seen thus far. Even the possibility that atheistic moral realism might be true (given the deductive form of the argument) compels us to reject P1 as simply unproven, if not unprovable. As the philosopher Stephen Law points out, with regards to P1, the onus is on the theist“ . . . to show that ALL such atheist-friendly accounts are wrong, even the ones we haven’t thought of yet, and don’t forget, as theists so regularly do, that they needn’t even be naturalistic. (6) Therefore, unless and until Pro can give us a defeater for atheist-friendly objective moral values, his argument again falls at the first hurdle. Given Pro’s total failure to do this, we are compelled to conclude P1 is flagrantly without warrant.In conclusion, we can see P1 is clearly unjustified. Not only this, but given some of my responses, it seems P1 is almost certainly false. As such, the resolution is negated.Justification for P2P2 - Objective moral values and duties do existMoral mirror - The problem I have here is not with the truth of P2, but with its relationship to P1. Pro justifies P2 from an intuitive, prima facie position. The massive problem for Pro is that this itself seems like a denial of P1. Why? Because it is an AF account of morality! In fact, not only is Pro’s reasoning for P2 compatible with atheism , it is almost identical to the justification given by atheist philosopher Peter Cave,"whatever sceptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound… Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop." (7)More than this, it seems ANY justification of P2 which doesn’t beg the question would have to be compatible with atheism by definition. As such, the argument seems to suffer from being either inherently unjustifiable, or necessarily false.ConclusionIn my first post, I have outlined 8 criticisms of Pro's argument. In order to carry the resolution, Pro must respond adequately to each objection. Many of these, I suspect, are simply unanswerable.Sources1. http://commonsenseatheism.com...2. Richard Swinburne, Is there a God?, P143. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Bill Craig, God? Debate between a Christian and an atheist, P334. http://en.wikipedia.org...5. A play on a similarly titled book from Dawkins6. Stephen Law vs. Bill Craig, (1:08:30)7. Peter Cave, Humanism, p.146.