Moral Values and Duties Cannot Be Objective if Atheism is True

Hi Philosurfer! Thanks for accepting, and for your thoughtful notes. On Atheism: Discussing the definition of atheism might be a fun discussion in its own right - I also hope it does not sidetrack us. I am aware of the diversity of definitions for atheism, but I chose this particular definition purposefully. In my proposition I intend for atheism to equate to God not existing. I can restate the proposition this way: "Moral Values and Duties Cannot Be Objective if God Does Not Exist". If I were to accept a definition of atheism which includes mere lack of belief with no positive truth claim, then "Atheism" would have no truth value and the ending clause in my proposition "if Atheism is True" would not make any sense. For that reason, I ask you to accept my definition of atheism, which I think is a mainstream, reasonable definition, for the specific purpose of this debate, though I recognize the diversity of definitions of atheism out there. I will use the rephrased proposition in my arguments if that helps. Hopefully we are on the same page! OK: my case for the proposition "Moral Values and Duties Cannot Be Objective if God Does Not Exist". 1. MORAL VALUESMoral values are objectively true if they are true regardless of whether anyone actually believes in them - this restates the stipulated definition. You could also say that it is the fact of the matter that [objective moral value X] is true, and persons or groups are either correct or incorrect in their belief in this fact. What makes a moral value or duty objective? I contend that a transcendent, supernatural, personal foundation of morality is needed, and that such a foundation is impossible if God does not exist. In the following explorations, I will be assuming the position that God does not exist, to see if any foundation for objective moral values and duties can be found without appeal to God. Let's consider a serious, widely-agreed-upon example. Rape is bad. Is it objectively bad or subjectively bad? I would want to say it is objectively bad, because I would want to reject a rapist's attempt to claim that this value does not apply to him. I would want to say it applies to him regardless of what he thinks because it's objectively wrong. Suppose I was faced with an entire community of people - perhaps even an entire culture - who claimed that rape is morally permissible. I would still want to say that value transcends their cultural beliefs, insisting that rape is still wrong despite what they think. What if that pro-rape culture succeeded in somehow killing or brain-washing everyone else on earth, such that the only remaining people now believed that rape was ok? I would still want to say that rape is wrong even though everyone on earth in this awful scenario believes differently. To do this I would need to appeal to a standard that sits above and beyond the beliefs of any particular person, group, or culture, and does not depend upon consensus or social convention. In short, consensus, or majority opinion, does not establish objectivity - we need a transcendent foundation. If I still want to establish the value "rape is bad" as objective, rather than subjective, I need to establish a foundation for it's objective truth elsewhere. Can I do this by grounding it in nature? Can I look to our shared evolved social instincts for grounding the objectivity of morals? Evolution certainly seems to have provided to many species like baboons and dolphins different levels of innate cooperation, and even altruism. They take on varying degrees of self-sacrifice for the group. Dolphins even seem willing to help other species, as when they help drowning humans to shore. We, as advanced primates, may just have a highly-developed set of social instincts upon which we build our moral structure. Natural selection indicates that these altruistic instincts evolved because they conferred survival advantages upon those species, like any other evolved trait. However, random mutation and natural selection are not aimed at developing true ideas in the brains of creatures, they are aimed at culling traits with low survival value and preserving traits with high survival value. For this reason, creatures can evolve instinctual ideas that actually run counter to the truth about certain states of affairs, if they are useful for survival. A human in the savannah may mistake an antelope in the grass to be a lion and run away. Instinct led to a false but useful idea. It's safer to run from any noise in the brush than to risk death. If evolution is not aimed at truth but rather survivability, how can an evolved moral value be objective? If we rewound the tape of human evolution and ran it again, a creature with different moral instincts may very well have developed. Darwin said "If . . . men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering." How, then, can we judge any of our own evolved moral instincts to be somehow objectively true? They might well have been different. Evolution of social instincts cannot establish objectivity. Can we look anywhere else in the natural world for the foundation? I think not. There are many facts to be observed in the natural world - much to learn about how things work via science - but what we learn from science is a wealth of description of what IS. Not whether it's GOOD or BAD. Nature simply is, and does not itself comment on what OUGHT to be. Nature cannot establish the objectivity of morality, thus we need a supernatural foundation.2. MORAL DUTIESMoral duties are prescriptions for how we ought to live, applying moral values to us by way of requirements and prohibitions. Moral duties are objective if they are binding upon us regardless of what we think. Moral values without accompanying moral duties might not have any impact on us. Duties are crucial to our normal sense of morality.Moral duties need to be somehow imposed upon us, such that we ought to do X, and ought not to do Y. But who or what imposes moral duties upon us? Why should we think we "ought" to do anything? Some familiar possibilities pop up.Can society ground moral duties? Societies certainly make it their business to enforce standards of conduct, built upon philosophies of right and wrong behavior. But are any of the enforced duties objective? It seems that the authority of a society to impose moral duties depends upon popular assent, and/or compelling power. This does nothing to establish objectivity. How about nature? Well, behavior patterns in nature seem to be devoid of any moral aspect. As William Lane Craig often points out, when a lion kills a zebra, it kills the zebra, but it doesn't murder the zebra. There's no moral dimension to actions in nature because there are no moral agents. How are our actions any different?Much as we need a transcendent, supernatural foundation for moral values, we need the same for moral duties. In addition, I contend we need that foundation to be personal as well. Something which serves to impose moral duties upon us must be able to measure all possible behaviors against an objective standard, and output the "shoulds" and "should nots" of morality, which implies intelligence or at least unimaginable computational power. That something would also need to, in some sense, care about moral behavior, must will that moral duties be imposed - in sum, must have volition, or else the imposition of moral duties is inexplicable. Something that has volition and intelligence is inherently personal.Thus to establish objective moral values and duties we need a transcendent, supernatural, personal foundation. God uniquely fits this description, and nothing else does. That is why I believe moral values and duties cannot be objective if God does not exist.