In this post, atheist Jerry Coyne says (supporting and interpreting Jason Rosenhous's opinion) that "while science can inform moral judgments, in the end statements about right or wrong (or, in Ruse’s case, whether one should feel ashamed of an action) are opinions, based on subjective value judgments"
Consider the following moral judgments:
-The the rape threats, sexism and misogyny coming from male atheists and skeptics against atheist Rebecca Watson (skepchick) is morally good
-Atheist, magician and skeptic James Randi's soliciting sex from a young boy is morally good.
-Supporting the systematic social outcasting and discrimination of atheists from society is morally good
-Killing atheists, skeptics, secular humanists and naturalists for fun is good
-Scientific knowledge is morally superior than superstition
-Torturing little babies for fun (and without any other reason) is always morally wrong
-Discrimination, torture and systematic killing of atheists (just for their unbelief) is morally wrong
If Coyne's moral subjectivism is true, then all the above moral judgment are not objectively true nor false, because in the end, they're just opinions, based on subjective value judgments. Being subjective opinions, they have not ontologically objective grounding beyond mere opinions or personal evaluations.
I agree that IF atheism were true, then Coyne's position is likely to be correct. There is absolutely no reason to think that, given atheism, an objective realm of valid and binding moral values and duties aimed at rational and free persons would exist. As atheist Richard Dawkins points out:
"In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference... DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music". (River Out Of Eden, p.133)
Such an universe, which is the one to which contemporary scientific atheism is committed to, provides absolutely no reason at all to think that "design, purpose, evil or good" are intrinsic, objective aspects or features of the constitution of reality. On the contrary, given atheism, such a features seem to be pure psychological, mental illusions or constructs that we tend to project on the real world in order to make sense of it.
Therefore, if you think that there are objective moral values and duties which are part of the fabric of reality (and not mere illusions or projections of your subjective consciousness), which are valid and binding regardless of our anybody's opinions, you have an independent (and powerful) reason to think that atheism is false.
As the late and first-rate atheist philosopher J.L.Mackie conceded: "If ... there are ... objective values, they make the existence of God more probable than it would have been without them. Thus we have ... a defensible argument from morality to the existence of God." (The Miracle of Theism, pp. 115-116).
An objective moral realm valid for free and rational conscious persons which, like the physical realm, is an objective part of the fabric of reality is exactly what we would expect from a worldview based or grounded on a powerful spiritual person, like in theism (in which the person in question, namely God, constructs the reality with a personal purpose in mind: creating a bunch of free, rational and spiritual/personal entities, capable of recognizing the non-physical dimension of creation, like the moral realm, and freely choosing to submit themselves to such moral order or realm in order to get continuous self-perfection and spiritual evolution toward God, as the most perfect, good and holy conceivable being).
But in atheism, such a absolutely moral-spiritual dimension makes absolutely no sense, it doesn't fit well with the blind mechanical physicalism essential to scientific naturalism, and looks like sheer superstition or wishful thinking, as Coyne and many others correctly realize.
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