In his debate with Christian philosopher William Lane Craig (and confronted by Craig's moral argument), atheist philosopher Massimo Pigliucci was forced to concede the actual implications of atheism and metaphysial naturalism regarding morality:I agree with Dr. Craig when he cited Dr. Ruse, a philosopher of science. There is no such a thing as objective morality. We got that straightened out. Morality in human cultures has evolved and is still evolving, and what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and so on. And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong? Now a better way of putting this is that it is not the same as to say that anything goes; it is not at all the same. What goes is anything that works; there are things that work. Morality has to work. For example, one of the very good reasons we don't go around killing each other is because otherwise the entire society as we know it would collapse and we'd become a bunch of simple isolated animals. There are animals like those. (emphasis in blue added).
Let's critically examine Pigliucci's fully consistent atheistic/naturalistic view on morality:
1-Pigliucci accepts Craig's citation of naturalist Michael Ruse according to which there is not objective morality. Morality is subjective (ontologically dependent on human persons, creations of the human mind).
I think this concession speaks strongly in favor of Pigliucci's intelectual honestity, because other apologists for atheism try to argue for objetive morality when they actually know that such thing is extraordinarily implausible if atheism is true. These atheists are intellectually dishonest and sophistical charlatans.
As atheist and naturalist infidels.org philosopher Keith Augustine has compellingly argued "I think there is a certain degree of plausibility among atheists in the view that without some kind of transcendental intelligence in the universe, there can be no objective moral laws... It seems to me that all ethical codes must ultimately be man-made, and thus there could be no objective criteria for determining if human actions are right or wrong. Admitting that moral laws are man-made is equivalent to acknowledging that ethical rules are arbitrary and therefore human beings are not obligated to follow them... given that moral subjectivism is just as logically viable as moral objectivism and that moral objectivism is implausible if a scientific naturalism is true, I think that there is a good case for the nonexistence of objective moral values". (emphasis in blue added)
This is the correct position for a naturalist to take. If naturalism is true, then moral objetivism is plausibly false. (Hence, if you have strong reasons to think that moral objetivism is true, then you have an argument for the view that naturalism is plausibly false).
2-Pigliucci also defends a version of ethical relativism, when he says " what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door and certainly is not moral for the guy across the ocean, the Atlantic or the Pacific Ocean, and so on"
In other words, what is moral is relative to individuals and cultures. Therefore, there is not an absolute morality (i.e. moral values and duties which are valid and binding for all human beings).
It implies that if killing atheists were moral in some cultures, other cultures could consider such behaviour as inmoral. And you don't have any independent and trascendent objective moral standard to criticize (on moral grounds) one culture over the other, because as Pigliucci ask: "And what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong?"
Pigliucci clearly has realized and fully understood the ethical implications of naturalistic atheism.
3-Pigliucci tries to avoid the obvious chaos and destruction that his moral view implies appealing to a pragmatic justification of morality: "Now a better way of putting this is that it is not the same as to say that anything goes; it is not at all the same. What goes is anything that works; there are things that work. Morality has to work. For example, one of the very good reasons we don't go around killing each other is because otherwise the entire society as we know it would collapse and we'd become a bunch of simple isolated animals. There are animals like those."
In other words, killing innocent atheists is bad not because killing as such is objectively wrong, but because it doesn't work for the purposes of social existence. It's a purely pragmatic justification of moral behaviour.
Note, by the way, that such pragmatic justification doesn't work either, because something "works" only in connection with the agent's ends. For example, shooting a gun "works" in order to kill someone but not in order to cure cancer, or swing in a pool.
The particular ends of the agent will determine the means appropiate to get such ends. If you change the ends, the means could loss their "working" property (regarding the end in question).
Now, you're in position to see why Pigliucci's pragmatic justification of morality is wrong. Imagine an atheist guy who WANTS to destroy society. Inspired by Pigliucci's atheistic moral theory, that guy can say "Well, morality has to work. And given that according to my professor Pigliucci what is moral for me is not necessarily moral for you, and given that I want to destroy the whole of society (myself included, because I hate myself too), I'm going to kill with bombs all my fellows atheists. My view is fully consistent with my dear professor Pigliucci's views on morality because:
1-My moral values are relative to myself, and nobody can say that I'm wrong because there is not any objective foundation for such judgment.
2-My moral decisions "work" for me, because I want to destroy my fellows atheists and the society in general, and putting bombs in skeptical and atheist meetings and public places is a very effective method which works in every case in order to get my purpose.
3-Obviously, I'm also respecting professor Pigliucci's point that "anything goes" is false. Morality has to work according to the ends of the agent. In this case, I'm an agent whose ultimate purpose is precisely destroy society. And the methods that I'm employing works marvelously. So, my position is fully consistent with my dear professor.
You can see that the above insane atheist guy is being fully consistent with Pigliucci's atheistic moral theory. Given that theory, you cannot say that such individual is wrong because (Pigliucci says): "what is moral for you might not be moral for the guy next door". So, if for you is not moral to kill atheists and skeptics, then perhaps such action is moral for other people (like the guy in the example).
And you cannot say anything against such person because (as Pigliucci's explicitly says): "what makes you think that your personal morality is the one and everybody else is wrong?"
You only could complain that a given morality doesn't work. But this is not the case for the guy in the example, because his moral actions are very effective to attain his personal ends (namely, the destruction of society). So, that guy's morality WORKS!
You can realize the obvious absurdity of Pigliucci's (fully) consistent atheistic moral theory. We have to congratulate Pigliucci for his intelectual honesty in accepting the actual logical implications for morality of his worldview. But it doesn't change the dangerous implications of such position.
Materialistic atheism and metaphysical naturalism is an essentially inmoral and extremely dangerous worldview. It's mostly based on an extraordinary hostility and visceral aversion towards religion (specially Christianity), and such monumentally intense hatred is manifested in the rationalization of their irrational and dangerous beliefs like the ones defended by Pigliucci and all the others naturalists and atheists that I've discussed in my blog.
For more strong and irrefutable evidence for the inmorality of metaphysical naturalism and materialistic atheism, see this link.
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