Objective morality makes atheism improbable

The rest of Con’s argument is in the comments section (I urge you to read it—it is the initial part of his argument). - Some initial remarks of mine Unfortunately, it appears that Con will not be contributing to rounds 3 and 4. However, I’m afraid that a three-round debate with 60 mins per round is what I stipulated, and what I in fact expected. (e.g. For that reason, the arguments I deployed in my opening were not quite as fleshed-out as I would indeed have fleshed them out in a ‘one-round debate’). I won't continue the debate in the way I had originally stipulated, obviously, but I also don’t want to leave Con’s arguments un-rebutted, and I reserve my right do so (as I stipulated in the conditions of my debate). I will now provide some responses to Con’s points. - Is atheism really consonant with objective morality? Con’s arguments in this section, from what I can tell, consist of the following claims: 1. There are atheist philosophers who claim to ground objective moral facts in objective non-moral facts about the world (e.g. Sam Harris). 2. There are moral objectivists who have been skeptical of religion, including Kant and Nietzsche, who have formed accounts of morality [grounded in an atheistic worldview]. NB: This is my attempt to interpret his claim charitably. 3. Aristotle’s philosophical worldview allows for morality. [Here I’ll just include his words: “Because [according to Aristotle] reality is absolute, and reasoning is the means by which we understand reality, it follows that reasoning is equally absolute. Once we have this rational foundation, we move on applying reasoning and understanding to morality. Therefore, atheism and objective morality are both derived from the same rich rational philosophical background.” To me, claims (1) and (2) do not affect the reason I gave for my premise 2 (that if atheism is true, morality does not exist). This is because the fact that a philosopher believes a certain proposition, generally does not constitute even prima facie evidence for that proposition. (For example, eminent late philosopher David Lewis believed in a plurality of concrete worlds spatiotemporally separated from our own. Cf. His Plurality of Worlds (1984). Unfortunately, this does not constitute prima facie basis for believing in those worlds!) I am confused about why Kant and Nietzsche were brought up, because (note: this isn’t an argument, just a comment on my part) many philosophers I know would not want to be associated with their respective views of morality, given their utter implausibility on both the theoretical and practical level. With regard to claim (3): Aristotle was not an atheist; he was in fact a firm believer in teleology and the existence of an unmoved mover, who was the foundation of the purposeful universe. To me, this is utterly at odds with an atheistic worldview, and so, I don’t see this as even the beginning of evidence for atheism’s ability to accomodate objective morality. Some comments on Pro’s counterarguments Pro makes several claims here. (1) My claim: “given atheism, physical reality has no underlying purpose,” is a non-sequitur. He then seems to reinterpret what I say as being the following: “If atheism is not true, then God must magically imbue life with purpose and meaning. But that is an implausible view of why life has meaning. Therefore, atheism being true does not make the purposefulness of life any less explicable than theism being true.” I can only say that this is an utter straw man. I did not claim that God must ‘cause’ meaning/purpose of any of the sort—I only claimed that if atheism is true, physical reality is (prima facie) purposeless. To the rest of Con’s case: I must confess that I struggle to find any more counterexamples to my case. Con indeed makes several accusations about my premise 2 failing to follow (and indeed contradicting) my premise 1, but I’m not sure why he thinks this is so.Some last remarks I’m running out of time, so I’ll conclude. My case has been a negative one: namely, that on atheism, objective morality cannot be accounted for. This give us prima facie reason to consider atheism improbable. My three reasons A, B and C for premise 1 were uncontested, and my reason for premise 2, namely that there is no prima facie reason to think that norms can be derived from facts, all remain unrebutted. I haven’t made a positive case for any particular non-atheistic metaphysic or otherwise, because that is not what I am setting out to prove. To me, my conclusion—that atheism is improbable—is at least as strong as the reasons I gave in favour of premises 1 and 2. In any case—I urge a vote for pro for whatever you think deserving. Thanks for taking your time to read and vote.