If God does not exist, then there is no moral law.

1. "Any action is permissible without the existence of a God." Even with a God, any action is certainly possible. God, if we supposed he existed for sake of argument, permits every evil action to occur as the world stands. You can then cite the "free will" argument. I would then say that God, be he all knowing, already knows precisely what each person would do before he created Humanity. He would have thus created us in Sin, not only leaving us to claim it for ourselves. You say there is no moral law without God. I say that God created both evil and good when/if he created us, therefore everything that has happened he wanted to happen. Therefore morality itself is a meaningless concept when God does exist. He created us knowing what we would do. He could have created a world where we did nothing but what he would like us to do. To say these things are not true is to say God had no choice in one of any number of matters, which is to say he is not God. 2. "If God does not exist, then there is no creator of moral law." Correct, and incorrect. Why should any one person claim dominion over moral law? Why should a God? If you boil all of our beliefs down to the core principle, it generally sounds something like this: "X action is good because it furthered the well-being of a conscious being." The worst racist in the world believes this, but he only argues of what a conscious being is. None of us terribly care if anything happens to a creature with no consciousness. Some of us would put "sentient" in place of "conscious," and say animals are not sentient, therefore they deserve no moral consideration. Humans as a collective are the authors of Moral Law. We make countries that attempt to define our moral law. Some of us disagree with particulars of the country's moral law. We then either attempt to clarify, change it, or we move to a country with similar laws. When it comes down to it though, nearly all of us believe in furthering the well-being of a conscious entity. Some of us simply disagree on the terms. Some of us have our religions pushing us from this concept. Religion can then be said to be an evil actor pushing us away from our Moral Law. It should be said that many Christians do not believe the Bible is the word of God. [1] They do this because the Bible does not match their morality. Who would, in this day and age, stone a woman for adultery? There are hundreds of similar Bible passages that are equally disgusting to our Human sense of morality. 3. "Many atheists believe that murder, rape, and torture are bad. But why? Who decides this?" Similar to above, we as a human collective decide. There is a misconception out there that Religion has a monopoly on moral authority. As sentient beings, we can decide this for ourselves. There is no need for 100% of humanity to agree on all principles completely, as long as the core concept is the same between all of us. One may always leave the society or civilization one finds themselves in, or attempt to convince others of their way if they disagree with common practice. See slavery as an example. God justifies this with many passages. He tells one how to treat their slaves and more! [2] Will you defend this? Will you claim that God has claimed it, our source of moral law, and therefore it is good? Most Christians would disagree nowadays. For any human who does not believe in increasing the well-being of conscious entities, we typically call them sociopaths or psychopaths. Because atheists believe in no God, we must believe that the brain dictates much of what and who we are. This is backed up by brain damaged individuals losing abilities and otherwise acting in ways they never would have without said damage. [3] That being said, if some humans disagree with the core concept I've laid out, we have no way of knowing without testing them whether they speak the truth, or are simply damaged in the brain. 4. I can name hundreds of actions done in the name of God that would be considered evil by the vast majority of society. Can you name one good a nonbeliever would not do without God? 5. You claim God is a source of Moral Law, yet most if not all the "laws" (commandments) set forth in the Bible are later, within the Bible itself, contradicted. Humans who believe will claim that their interpretation of the Bible can be flawed, but not the Bible itself. If that is true, how can you ever be sure that you have the correct interpretation? Slavery again. Christians used to tout that is was proper under Godly authority. Now they preach the opposite. How is God a source of Moral Law when his laws are up to interpretation from Humans? You can claim that if a God existed, and he gave us his moral system that it would be Moral Law. I would reject this on several grounds, but lets say I accepted it. It could not be something left up to interpretation from those it claims have no authority to create Moral Law. Therefore, the Bible cannot be a source of Moral Law. 6. If God floated down and told us all his real, complete, precise moral laws today. We would have no reason to accept this. God is a being who is all-powerful, all-knowing, omnipresent, all-loving, all-good. There are millions of kids being raped or sold into sex slavery as we speak. He knows it. He watches it. He feels it. He does nothing to stop it. All of these attributes cannot be true at the same time. You say he would not infringe on the rapists' free will. This does not a moral act make. We have no reason to trust a God who would have created Eden, knowing she would commit original Sin, and punish her for it, forcing her to have sex with her children to propagate life. We would have no reason to trust a God who would have watched the world afterwards giving Humanity no Bible for a "moral law" and then blaming them and killing all but one family with a single flood, forcing that family to commit incest to propagate human life, still giving humanity no source of Moral Law. We would have no reason to trust a God who would have watched the world with folded arms as famine, genocide, and hundreds if not thousands of other religions crept up across the world while giving them no reason to believe in Him. To say that a God would watch this world and do nothing and be any kind of basis of Moral Law is the most disgusting, despicable view one can have. It is to say that all the atrocities committed by Man were known by someone who had the power to stop it. Stop from ever creating it, or create all of life without the desire for Evil, and did nothing. We are his playthings. He watches with folded arms, entertained, at last not the only being in the universe to feel pain and loneliness. The worst voyeur in the history of all existence. One who observes a crime being committed and does nothing, does not call the police, does not allow the victim to slip away through a miracle. He watches as children die of bone cancer. He watches as all your children are stillborn. He watches, he punishes. But he loves you. -- [1] - http://www.creationconversations.com... [2] - https://en.wikipedia.org... [3] - http://braintumor.org...