Whatever their "feelings" tell them.

If there is no God, then there is no morality because right and wrong don't exist.

If God doesn't exist, then the ends justifies the means in all things. Not a coincidence that Stalin believed EXACTLY that and led a political movement that expressly promoted atheism.

Right - but where does their sense of these things come from? What is the basis of their belief of right vs wrong?

I believe they would reference "sense of community" or "being part of humanity".

And they would be correct for the most part, as long as the base of "the community" remains moral and ethical.

Unfortunately, we are seeing "the community" become unstable, as words lose meaning and long-held values such as tolerance become twisted.

CC09LawAg said:

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Right - but where does their sense of these things come from? What is the basis of their belief of right vs wrong?

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Anything that affords the outcome they personally want is right. Anything that does not, is wrong.

They are rebellious and selfish. They detest authority.

This is liberalism in a nutshell. They are generally Godless people, which is exactly why they think this way.

CC09LawAg said:

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But even at that, there has to be some universal truth that the "community" has to agree upon, otherwise it's chaos.

Where do they derive this from? Other people? And if it's from other people, they are either basing it upon something or they're manipulating the others for their own means.

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I am referencing a community of believers. The community would then dictate morals and ethics.

When the community has a critical mass of non-believers then the moral and ethical guidelines become blurred . . . that is what is overall weakening the nation.

CC09LawAg said:

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Right - but where does their sense of these things come from? What is the basis of their belief of right vs wrong?

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Stoicism. There where moral philosophies that existed before Christ. Not everyone was a total heathen before Christ showed up.

Humans have strived to make order out of chaos since we first stood up.

Morality comes from God. We are made in His image with His moral law written on our hearts. People can deny it, and they do, but He is the root.

DallasAg32 said:

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Whatever their "feelings" tell them.

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"Feelings" have derived human morality and laws since the beginning. If you think Christian ethics have been static since the start then I have a bridge to sell you. And it's not as though the people running the Auto da Fe thought they were misinterpreting God. Philosophy as a discipline has been discussing how to define and ground ethics for millennia. With and without God. There's a lot of self-righteous ignorance in this thread.

CC09LawAg said:

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Where do non believers derive their moral compass from?

What helps guide them in their political beliefs about Justice, the rule of law, fairness, etc?

What do they believe should be the basis for a government's laws?

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I am happy to engage in this discussion and explain my point of view. As far as I can tell, your questions seems to be from a place of sincere curiosity.

I can be long winded in my responses sometimes, so before I invest my time, I have a concern: Some of the start of this thread feels like one of the threads on the politics board where someone asks liberals to defend 'x', and then the whole board proceeds to strawman-lecture liberals on what they believe, explain why its wrong, and why they are all terrible people ruining the country.

Now, I recognize that you are not responsible for the posters that have decided that I must be irrational, rebellious, selfish, and Stalinesque. But, I'd like to understand your take on their posts, because it will help me determine whether engaging in this thread is worth my time.

In other words, is this a thread where you would like to discuss secular morality with an open mind? Or are you looking to own an atheist and explain why we are all rotten hedonistic animals?

As you rightly point out, that there is no black and white objective standard that non believers look to when thinking about morals, ethics, or laws. There are a handful of sources that most non believers will pull from. And they likely pull from those different sources in different quantities or in different ways resulting in variation of what non believers think. I would also like to mention that my personal views of right and wrong and my views of what should be law are very different and informed differently.

Before I dig into what informs my views, I want to say that I try not to present my views as 'correct' or 'better' than anyone else's. Obviously, they appeal to me more, but, I am open to being wrong and I'm open to changing my mind. Being able to change my mind on a topic is a feature, not a bug. So, here is what I think informs my views (not necessarily in order):

1. Culture / Society. I think this is one of the obvious ones and has already been brought up by some of the posters above. And I think it applies to the religious as well, which is why an 18th century American Christian and a 21st century American Christian may not agree on everything. Even when we have a static and objective standard such as the text of the Bible, there are variations in what people believe and I attribute a lot of that to societal influence.

The culture and society that I've been brought up in has been massively influenced by Christianity and that absolutely colors my views. Concepts in Christianity that promote human dignity, moral responsibility to others, kindness, mercy, and charity are all ideas that I still value. While I reject the idea that Christianity 'owns' these values or that they are entirely unique to Christianity, I appreciate that some of these ideas, promoted by Christianity, are foundational elements in our society.

A question that has been presented to believers on this board in the past is: If you had, by chance, been born into a Muslim household in Afghanistan in a society that is 99.7% Muslim, what is the likelihood that you would be Muslim today and that you would share the values of that society? Its hard to answer that question, but I think most of us can recognize that the circumstances of where and when we are born absolutely matters. The uncomfortable suggestion here is that so much of what we all end up believing is almost accidental.

American society also definitely includes measures of skepticism of power and individualism and personal liberty. Americans, moreso than many other places in the world, have inherited a very strong sense of 'you can't tell me what to do!' type individualism that permits someone like me to question established norms without being excluded from that society. There is no shortage of times and places where any of us would be killed or persecuted for believing the 'wrong' thing.

All of this is important because I think it helps explain a current rise in non-believers in Western societies. For better or worse, when there is less pressure to conform to a single monolithic set of ideas, people are more free to choose ideas that they gravitate toward.

2. Empathy. With few exceptions, we all have a sense of empathy and ability to understand and care about the feelings of others. It informs an innate responsibility to care about others facing harm, hardship, or injustice. For example, while I may not share your views and your values, I can imagine an action taken to/against you and I can understand why you might feel either helped or harmed by that action. And if I respect you and your personhood, this informs how I might treat you. That is to say I can treat you how you want to be treated and not how I think you 'ought' to be treated according to my values.

I think that empathy, as I describe it, requires humility. Recognizing and respecting your perspectives requires me to consider a viewpoint other than my own. And it requires that I not assume that my views are perfect.

3. Human Well Being and Suffering. There is definitely a limit to which I place value in utilitarianism on this topic, but ideas of promoting well-being and minimalizing suffering definitely drives my views.

4. Personal Experience. Around the time that I left the Catholic church 24-ish years ago, I was dating someone that was Jewish and had a good friend that had come out as gay. It just happened that these two people were about the most decent and honest and kind and charitable people that I knew. I experienced some pressure from friends and a family member to be concerned with converting both of these friends in the interest of their salvation. Pressure from people that couldn't hold a candle to the decency I saw in these condemned friends. . . . and so my experience is that wonderful and beautiful people come in all many different philosophical shapes and sizes. There is an obsession from some that we must believe the 'correct' thing and pray the right way in order to be good. If God is to judge us all when we die for what is 'in our hearts', then my experience suggests to me that what God you pray to may have very little to do with who gets saved.

5. Others. Reason and Critical Thinking, Biology, Secular philosophy, virtue ethics, and probably a whole host of other things.


In response to your example of looting and theft being bad. I think we can simultaneously default to that simple baseline of 'stealing is bad' while also trying to understand a more complex social dynamic - if one exists. Someone looting an electronics store and stealing TVs to sell out of their van is not very defensible. The proverbial parent stealing a loaf of bread to feed their children is more complicated. The action of the theft is still wrong, but consideration of the motivation or situation of the person stealing can inform our reaction. As my wife would say, understanding why someone does something is about 'understanding, not justification.' If people need to steal just to be able to feed their children, should we as a society be concerned? Do we have a moral responsibility to them?

Determining right and wrong is difficult. Even when you believe in an absolute and objective source for all of morality, there is disagreement on what is and is not moral. If there is an absolute moral standard, it still seems reasonable to me that we should all admit that we are not that absolute moral standard. And if we believe in that absolute standard, we are still trying to understand it through biased glasses and we are all influenced by our cultures, our experiences, our feelings, and our reasonings.

The absence of God in the equation is scary. The absence of an objective standard is scary. The idea that rape, murder, and anything else can't be taken as wrong by some objective and cosmic source is scary. On the other hand, it frees up to consider moral questions for ourselves. Things can be allowed or disallowed because we as a society talked it over and decided.

I think we would have to start any discussion on why an atheist or an agnostic believes and behaves the way they do with restating the obvious: atheists and agnostics aren't Christians. It may sound like I'm be facetious here but I'm not. I am an atheist, I am not a Christian. I do not secretly believe in your god or your religious claims. I do not believe in your god any more than you believe in the gods of Islam, Hinduism, or any other religion you might want to think up. If I act in a way you would judge to be moral, I'm not covertly hoping to please your chosen deity. So if you can't accept that very foundational point, I don't think you're ever going to be able to understand atheists or agnostics.

I strongly believe that any review of human history would show that the majority of people tend to share the moral and religious beliefs of the people and culture they were raised in. This isn't necessarily a good thing. Hate and prejudice endure in part because people are raised with them and taught that this is way the world should be. I don't blame a child for repeating the words of their parents, but at some point they have to grow up and take responsibility for their points of view.

So where does human morality come from in a world without gods? I believe it's rooted in our ability to feel empathy and to mentally put ourselves into the shoes of other people and see the world from their perspective. Humans are social creatures, we literally have to be in order for our species to survive. It takes years of care before a newborn human being is capable of looking after themselves. Remove that instinct to care for others and the species would pretty quickly die off. Of course any moral framework is going to quickly get complicated, but I think empathy is the common starting point.

I don't find arguments that Christianity is somehow superior because it offers an unchanging moral code to be very convincing in light of the fact that what Christians have considered to be moral has changed so much over the years. Everyone's morality is subjective, even if you don't want to admit it. If nothing else your morality is subject to your own understanding of an allegedly unchanging standard.

On a side note, I was amused by the idea that the founders of this nation would never have tried to justify looting and doing so was a sign of a corrupted modern philosophy. Also that the Boston Tea Party was both cool and justified and we should teach our kids that for the next 250 years.

nortex97 said:

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Exactly.

The remarkable thing here is that the Left's "debate champ" doesn't see the entire setup, which means he's ignorant of basic Christian theology, the natural rights theory of the American founders, and the criticism from Nietzsche to Weber to Foucault. Just doesn't know any of it. https://t.co/J8DPYsSkfY

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 11, 2025

Nicely done.

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If you are having a discussion with someone and you continuously offer steel man arguments about your discussion partner's position and are continuously met with "No, no, thats not what I'm saying", then maybe you are stupid. Or maybe just a jackass who is more interested in 'owning' an opponent in an argument than having a discussion or learning about another point of view. Just my thoughts.

Gotta love videos with the title format like " [Name 1] destroys [Name 2] in a debate!"