Without God there is no objective basis for morality.

Morality need not apply to everyone I have conceded that I believe that morality can be individual and need not apply to everyone and submit that a universal moral code is not necessary for an objective morality. Morality is not considered universal under definition one or under many other definitions including my opponents. If you want to argue that morality must be universal to be considered objective then I would definitely disagree. I included the second definition of morality to point out that rational arguments are used to compare moral codes and to acknowledge it is a commonly held belief that morality may be universal. I agree with definition two in that perfectly rational individuals with omniscient knowledge of a situation would likely arrive at the same or similar moral decisions. A general very loose universal framework for moral behavior is likely even with our limited knowledge and fallible rationality. Rational people are not arguing that murder, sexual assault, slavery, child abuse and theft are good for society. Universal human rights have worked very well to promote general well being in Western society. I think this basic framework can be accepted by rational people and represents an existing universal moral code. Again, morality need not be universal to be objective. I don’t want to spend any more time on this unless my opponent can make the case that an objective morality is necessarily universal. Morality is independent of individual opinion and cultural norms I agree this is central to the issue of objectivity and a point of disagreement. Personal opinion and cultural norms are often important in forming moral codes. The moral code is still good or bad, it works well or it doesn’t. I am arguing that the quality of these moral codes is independent of bias. I would argue for instance that honor killings are not beneficial to a society and should be abandoned. Even if I am wrong personal/cultural opinions are not relevant. Honor killings occur when you kill a family member for bringing dishonor to a family often because they are a victim of sexual assault [4]. Some cultures agree this is beneficial but this does not make it so. More difficult problems are also defended using facts about reality with respect to accomplishing a goal. Was it mainly cultural bias that decided the Supreme Court Roe vs. wade case or court cases concerning same sex marriage? These issues can clearly be resolved independent of opinion and cultural norms. There are relative elements related to morality but moral codes are still objective The goal of your personal code is relative to your personal strengths and preferences. The information available to you to decide on a goal is heavily dependent on your culture and so are the preformed moral codes from which you will borrow ideas. There may be exceptions to certain rules under certain situations such as a life or death emergency. This is an attempt to make the code more closely relevant to the facts of reality not our personal bias. This does not affect the claim that your code is objectively affective, ineffective or indistinguishable from the alternatives. Morality need not be absolute to be objective You can demonstrate that one strategy works better than an alternative but not that your strategy is the ‘best.’ I have brought up universal human rights as a great idea to support a mutually beneficial moral code. It works better with respect to the alternatives and this can be supported without appealing to bias but there may be better options and there are likely many ways to improve and expand the idea. Special pleading is pivotal to the argument that morality is not objective There are objectively good and bad strategies to find a job, bake a cake, run a marathon, raise children, manage an office or even for hailing a cab. There are likely personal and cultural reasons that this assertion that morality is not objective is so pervasive but again, this does not make the claim true. Is there another similar issue where people deny that a strategy to accomplish a goal is not objectively good or bad? Why is morality a special case? Morality is not the reason for taking an action Morality does not provide the motivation for acting. The motivation is from the desire to achieve a goal and this is why a moral code is objective. The moral code can be judged independent of bias to determine if it is effective to achieve the goal. Rationality is a method for identifying truth to the best of our ability Rationality is often muddled by personal and cultural bias. This is why the scientific method depends so heavily on consensus to identify truth. Reason is a method that is often used explicitly to avoid cultural bias. Truth claims should be judged by as many people and utilizing as many methods of evaluation as possible. The greater the consensus that an idea is rational the greater our confidence should be that it approaches objective truth. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org...