Theism offers a more likely context than atheism for affirming moral realism.

A preliminary point that is important: I can't but help but note Con's highly questionable strategy here that's been deployed all throughout this debate; in multiple instances Con appeals to other possible versions of atheistic moral realism(s) - often times with just a quick passing mention to some position or the other (and often times they are mutually exclusive) as if that's enough to up hold his end of the burden of proof in resolution. But, clearly it's not enough to just mention several positions in passing with little to no argumentative support and then say "Aha! Well you haven't refuted this version of atheistic moral realism I have mentioned, so therefore the resolution claim has not been fulfilled!" If Con argues for the claim as a way to show that I have failed to meet my burden of proof then that is a perfectly legitimate strategy; mentioning several positions in passing is not. In a probabilistic case (or a case based on likelihood) one need not rule out every single alternative in order to establish something as unlikely given certain fact(s).Atheism and moral realism1) Con's point here is bizarre, what exactly does the fact that there have been atheistic moral realisms for thousand of years have to do with the the question of whether the conjunction of the two is absurd or not? If my arguments are correct, that would merely show that they're wrong about the prospects of such a conjunction.2) Con's prima facie case for the plausibility of atheistic moral realism still stands insufficiently motivated because of my arguments against the project of reducing moral properties to natural properties. Con hasn't sufficiently refuted them as I detailed.Personal DignityIt's fair to assume that Con agrees that it's reasonable to believe in something like personal dignity if moral realism is true (at least he didn't object to it earlier) so that rules out eliminatvism.I already gave a brief case for why non-reductivism leads to epiphenomenalism; it's was up to con to challenge it earlier if he found it insufficient. Saying it is insufficient without any argument does nothing.Con hasn't actually argued for reductionism here though. He just appeals to the possibility that if reductionism is true, then qualia aren't non-reducible. Well, that's trivially true. The question is whether it's true or not. My case of qualia inversion gives us prima facie case to suppose that qualia are irreducible because it seems possible. It's up to Con show why that prima facie appearance is in fact misleading. And, in fact, that qualia do not feel like a brain state does indeed seem to establish that qualia are not reducible to brain states. If we go by standard definitions, physical states that are wholly explainable through the language of physics with a wholly third-person enterprise, while qualia have an essential first-person, subjective element to them. These are mutually exclusive, therefore they cannot be the same thing.PersonhoodCon says "Necessary truths and values are never instantiated because they're necessary." but that is entirely question begging in that he assumes the truth of his position in order to to assert this. This is because in my first round I gave numerous considerations as to why moral values and obligations should be thought of as instantiated through personal beings. And that includes necessary moral truths. If they are instantiated by a necessary being like God than they never "came into existence" as it were. By "instantiated" I simply mean this: " it is impossible for a property to exist which is not had by some object". [1 ]Con appeals to my source in order to note a possible response to my utilization of G.E. Moore's Open Question Argument; unfortunately for Con the sentence right after the one he quoted gives an excellent rebuttal to this line of thought: "Again, however, Moore could respond. The property of being water is that of having the underlying structure, whatever that is, of the stuff found in lakes, rivers, and so on; when this structure turns out to be H2O, the latter property “fills a gap” in the former and makes the two identical. But this explanation does not extend to the case of goodness, which is not a higher-level property with any gap needing filling: to be good is not to have whatever other property plays some functional role. If goodness is analytically distinct from all natural properties, it is metaphysically distinct as well." [2] So, if Con wants to press his objection further, he needs to show how the property of "goodness" (for instance) is "filled out" by the role of some naturalistic properties as in the water = h20 case. Con's mere passing mentions of Ayn Rand's meta ethics and evolutionary moral realism didn't refute anything because he never actually argued for them. In any case, they are cases of reductionistic naturalistic moral realism and so my case against that sort of atheistic moral realism applies to them as well. . Con's "simple" explanation of how we come to know moral truths ("through reason") on the evolutionary picture (sans God) is weak. [3] In essence, Sharon Streets notes that evolutionary forces have had a tremendous impact on our (as she calls them) "basic evaluative tendencies" which by that she means our tendency to generally value certain things instead of others. Things like valuing actions that helps one children, for instance - we tend to think that is a good thing. These "basic evaluative tendencies" are the sort of thing we reason from whenever trying to find out the truth of some moral proposition or the thing we take for granted as a basic moral truth. The problem is that evolutionary processes with respect to moral truths is "non-truth tracking" - that is, there seem to be no proposed evolutionary processes that can be plausibly taken to be reliable detectors of an independent moral truth. The proposed evolutionary processes can adequately explain why humans have the moral judgement and attitudes and valuations they do without appealing to the truth of these judgements, valuations, and attitudes. This is because we already have an excellent evolutionary explanation of why we would have these moral judgements (etc.) - because they contributed to reproductive success. Take again, the penchant we have for valuing taking care of ones own children as good. This would naturally promote reproductive success by leaving more descendants. The people who do so would certainly be more reproductively successful than those who think taking care of their own children is bad. Note, nowhere do we need to appeal to the truth of these judgements and that recognizing the truth of these judgements helped aid reproductive success; truth or falsity has nothing to with it. We'd expect that evolutionary processes would push us in such a way as to value certain things that promote and motivate reproductive success regardless of the truth of the alleged independent value. That was Darwin's whole point. Had we evolved in such a way as hive bees where their conditions for reproductive success and survivability are different from humans we'd easily have different moral judgements. The fact that these evolutionary forces are so pervasive on our moral faculties gives us good reason to think that they did not evolve to reliably detect the truth of independent moral facts. And as it is said, if the best explanation of P (moral judgements and the like) doesn't require the truth of P then there is no reason to believe that P.Cosmic CoincidencesAgain, Con's parity argument and attempt to generalize the argument into one of general skepticism is weak because my argument isn't just based on the thesis that because our cognitive faculties evolved due to evolutionary pressures that mainly "concerned" with adaptability and the like. Moral truths are particularly singled out because the evolutionary processes involved in the development of a moral faculty (in the context of naturalism) and our moral judgements the truth of these judgements need not be invoked to explain these judgements as I explained above. That is, considerations about evolutionary theory and it's impact on our basic evaluative tendencies give us good reason to suppose our evolved moral sense isn't reliable and we can't have moral knowledge (on naturalism). In the matter of our cognitive faculties generally and pertaining to us having knowledge generally these sort of considerations don't have much bite. In a simple mundane example, it obviously be advantageous for our perception faculties to be generally reliable in detecting sorts of things like physical objects. That is, the truth of our perception is involved in explaining our reproductive success. Or in the case of basic mathematics it'd obviously be advantageous to know whether it's 1 or 2 tigers chasing you. This same sort of explanation can't be applied with a moral detection faculty as has been detailed. In such cases as general, basic religious beliefs we have good reason to think that the sort of proposed faculties involved in the formation of general religious beliefs - the hyperactive detection device - are not generally speaking, unreliable. [4] And even if it turns out to be unreliable, Con's parity case still would fail due to the fact the evolutionary mechanisms involved in the formation of religious beliefs are different than the ones involved in the formation of moral beliefs. And the ones with moral beliefs are what we are concerned with.Sources[1] http://en.wikipedia.org...[2] http://plato.stanford.edu...[3] http://as.nyu.edu...[4] prosblogion.ektopos.com/CogSciandRelBel.doc