One can have morals without God

I agree with both the definitions and the rules. To answer your questions as briefly as possible: 1) I am agnostic so I make no claims as to whether or not there is a God, but I debate from the position that there is not, as I do not believe in any of the traditionally defined gods. 2) Came to being via the big bang/evolution. 3) Man is a highly evolved mammal. 4) Very briefly: awareness and compassion/minimizing suffering, desire for a highly functioning society (essentially, we are all better off if we refrain from harming one another). 5) Generally speaking, greed, self importance, ignorance and lack of empathy. 6) I'm not sure, but I do not believe eternal judgment takes place. 7) In a contained sense, yes (meaning, they teach us the nature of ourselves and our surroundings so that we may improve as a species). Now, onto your arguments: I. Yes, human existence was caused by chance. This in no way means that there is no basis for morality, however. We can witness social structures both in our own species and in others (1), many of which have developed some sort of moral code. Thus far, we are unsure of where these morals originate, but research and speculation lead many to believe that morals came both from necessity (2) (social animals require both structure and empathy to successfully live in groups) and empathy in and of itself. II. I struggle with moral relativism, and so this will be difficult for me to adequately explain. On the one hand, I do not believe in a universal morality in the sense that an outside being (God) has laid out for us what is "right/good" and what is "wrong/evil". I do, however, believe that humans (and other species, in fact) have developed a basic morality over time, and so, despite the existence of individual morals, it is still possible for one to go against basic human morality. In regards to your statement about something being true and untrue at the same time, I believe you are oversimplifying to reach this conclusion. When applying the idea of moral relativism to a society, one must keep in mind that the standard will not change drastically from one individual to the next, but from one situation to the next. The simplest example of this is the act of killing, as I talked about in our previous debate. Most humans will agree that, in a general sense, killing is wrong/immoral. When we delve deeper into it, however, we find that it is only viewed as wrong in specific situations (murder is almost always considered immoral, while military action, abortion, self-defense, accidental killing and euthanasia are hotly debated). Our moral standard seems to be based largely on intent, making a universal morality almost impossible. III. Going against a societal norm is not necessarily immoral. Human morals likely developed from our status as a social species, meaning that whatever minimizes suffering and maximizes efficiency is morally correct. IV. Incorrect. Again, morals can be judged based on minimizing suffering and maximizing efficiency. (1) . http://en.wikipedia.org... (note that this article does not cite sources, so I normally wouldn't use it as a reference. However, it offers a list of animals with distinct social structures, and these links *do* cite countless sources) (2) . http://books.google.com...