Atheism and morality are not compatible Thread - The Debating Society

I was having an argument with CureOptimism about atheism's system of "morality" and how by it not accepting a moral source, is unable to declare anything as being good or evil, right or wrong such as bestiality.

How can an atheist argue that bestiality, pedophilia or a murder is morally wrong when the atheist world-view teaches that morality is subjective by human standards?

CureOptimism explained subjective morality "means that we all have our own particular brand of morality" meaning that you basically decide what's right and what's wrong without true objective morality showing how this is contradictory, without a true source of morality, how can an atheist really argue something is "evil" if someone else is arguing something is good for their society?

By his own logic, he's argued that an atheist can make anything morally right or wrong. In this atheist worldview then, morality isn't a real concept just values a person assigns to something that can easily change in "subjective morality" whilst "objective morality" is constant. Simple fact is that without a moral authority figure, "right and wrong" doesn't exist, it's just a human deciding what's right and wrong based on their beliefs. I'm sure Hitler thought he was a good person.

No I'm not arguing for bestiality or any of the other things here, I just find it amusing how an atheist can take a moral high ground against anything when a true morality system doesn't exist in atheism shown by their differing standards and views of what's "right" and "wrong" showing that they decide based on their beliefs. In this system, if a society deems pedophilia morally right, then without objective morality and a source for morality (moral authority figure such as a god), it cannot be considered evil along with everything else. Without a source for morality, there is no such thing as good or evil.

Right and wrong can be subjective. Many humans justify killing animals even though it puts the animal through suffering. The "concept of right and wrong" deciding by your society differentiates throughout time, society once found it morally acceptable to cut the hands of thieves and kill people for little crimes.

Governments think they're doing "right" when they oppress their people and make laws that religion and morality condemn.

You might say "what's wrong is what makes a person suffer" so back to the case of bestiality, if the animal initiates the sex with the human and doesn't suffer, your worldview cannot condemn this act and then the same can be applied to something as sickening as pedophilia (and has by paedophile-apologists who are incidentally atheists who have no concept of morality).

Subjective morality is shown to be flawed by this and again, without a god, "right and wrong" are simply artificial concepts decided by the society of the time. No one knows what is inherently good, we see that with little kids in Africa or the Middle East taking up guns and killing people because their people told them they're doing "good" by doing these things so they think they're morally right.

Edited by: HinduMan