Well thought out, well informed writing. Great post!

And yeah, I read about Price before. Poor guy.

I was reading that same blog and wanted to respond with somthing very much like what you've just posted here, was saddly locked. My own thinking is very much in line with how you describe your thinking, derived from naturalism.

A code of ethics is entirely it's own animal from a spiritual inclination. Having one does not mean the other is, or must be present. Think peanut butter/jam sandwich, a comon combination of two things that really have no connection to each other at all. 'cum hoc ergo propter hoc' I believe is the fallacy. This might be the most important point to take away. I think it's mainly from this misunderstanding that Hollowshields post was coming from.

I remember being a moral atheist before I was a Christian. People that insist that all atheists cannot believe in morality or view humans as nothing more than animals, I've noticed, are of an extreme dogmatic variety that so desperately wants their reality to become the reality that they'll attempt to make sweeping generalizations about groups they don't like in order to make a label have significantly more negative connotation overall. The massive holes in the "all of morality stems from Christianity" argument is that it takes into account that ethics have existed long before the first written Bible text, and were evident in cultures that had zero exposure whatsoever to Christianity.

I've seen atheists do this too. Usually ones that subscribe to the overly-confident New Atheism movement; In their minds, you're only a Christian if you're one of the Evangelistic hyper-religious types that believes that the Bible is the infallible word of God and that all bad people are doomed to some eternal hellfire simply for being rational, completely ignoring Christians like me who realize that the only "qualifiers" of being a Christian are that you believe in God and follow Christ. These people do exactly what Hollowshield did in his post: attempt to pigeonhole an entire group into a single definition, not because that's the reality, but rather because that's what they want the reality to be, because anything else proves their preconceptions completely wrong. So it really works both ways.

The short of it is that sweeping generalizations are stupid.

Good post and fair enough, if an atheist believes in some kind of supernatural spirit or afterlife pursuing an objective set of morals then I would concede that it is possible for an atheist to have morals. But then that would still be something of a religious philosophy

But what this comes down to, and I realized it just after making that blog and before anyone posted, is semantics. Frankly I would not label anything not believed by someone to be an objective moral standard as "good" or "right". Why? Because for something to be truly righteous there must be an objective standard (at the very least thought to exist by the person trying to be righteous) to base it on. To define "good" as such leaves no room for it to be subjective.

It is when you redefine "good" and "right" to mean anything that brings you pleasure or comfort that it becomes subjective. However, I would argue that atheists use it in a way that often keeps the objective meaning intact. If an atheist is to say "murder is wrong" and want to justify locking someone up for 80 years then I also want to hear them say "I want to lock this guy up for life because he does not make me feel safe in society. If he is roaming the streets I will be uncomfortable.". Or if it's for vengeful reasons I'd like to hear them say "I want to lock this guy up for life because it makes me feel powerful and that brings me pleasure".

So well, we're both right in a way, I guess. Depending on how you define "good" and "right" and "moral".

I saw that post too. Things like that always irritate me, because it highlights how little some people understand non-believers and how reluctant they are to try. I may have stopped believing in religion and grown indifferent to whether God exists or not, but that doesn't mean I threw all the values I was taught out the window.

On the contrary, I am a happier and more moral person now than I ever was as a Christian. I no longer feel the need to condemn myself or others, to justify everything I do on a religious basis, or try to live up to the impossible standards of sanctimonious peers. And as far as basic ideas of right and wrong and concerned, I still have religious and non-religious friends who are mostly on the same page.

With all due respect to a well-meaning Hollowshield and everyone else: arguing that "real" or "absolute" morality is exclusive to religion is so self-evidently wrong that it's a pointless exercise.

Good post. However, there are a few things here that are slightly off.

This, mostly:

"Just because morals are invented by humans doesn't mean they don't exist."

This is really not true. "Inventing" morals is not the same as, say, inventing a physical object, such as a clock. Should you invent a clock, it would actually be a spatio-temporal object.

Morality, on the other hand, is not a spatio-temporal object.

While a naturalist may be able to theorize a cause for the feeling we know as "morality", that would not include the actual existence of morality beyond those feelings.

It's a bit inconsistent to say you are a moral nihilist and then suggest that morals do objectively exist.

With all due respect to a well-meaning Hollowshield and everyone else: arguing that "real" or "absolute" morality is exclusive to religion is so self-evidently wrong that it's a pointless exercise.

I'm sorry but your post is a perfect example of how people continuously comment in these blog posts without understanding what is being discussed.

Even Evilshy just stated that there are no absolute morals. Hence why he considers himself a moral nihilist.

Hollowshield wasn't discussing whether atheist's behave morally. He was talking about how atheists claim absolute morals don't exist and then behave as if they do exist.

Do you even know what "absolute" morality means? It's not about whether people behave "good" or "bad", it's about whether there is even a "good" or "bad" to conform to.

You're missing the point and sidestepping the argument.

I absolutely loved this post! I digested every word. Very good read by far! How I did not find this before is way beyond me.