Valyia I have to apologize for my extended absence. In between work, illness, and my car breaking down I have been rather busy as of late. However, since I find myself home recovering from pneumonia today, I wanted to make sure that I got back with you on this issue.

"As far as morality is concerned I don’t get it through assessments or measurements of the world. I take it from my scripture. That’s why I said I don’t suffer from the subjectivity crisis."

Except that that leaves you with a two possibilities that simply don't get you away from the subjectivity crisis. Either you particular book is true, and you are basing your morality from your gods subjective perception instead of your own, or your book is false and you have adopted a morality based on the perceptions of a group of men no more capable and far less informed than yourself. Either way, you haven't evaded subjectivity, you have merely adopted another entities perception. What you have done, quite literally, is move the problem out precisely one step and pretend to have solved it; while actually having done no such thing. There is nothing to state, and no good reason to assume, that the perception of a god would be any less arbitrary or less subjective than your own.

"Having said that, I think I will sum up your argument for you…in order to take this forward… I think this loop of subjectivity and objectivity is not taking this discussion far."

If you manage to do it, this time, without creating strawmen... I might just applaud.

"This is what I gather your basic points are.

1. We make use of our perception to derive morality."

Yes, and a lot more besides. Perception is how we derive experience and knowledge itself, morality is a part of that.

"2. This perception is subjective."

Indeed.

"3. However, for all practical purposes we rely on perception…and we find that it’s working out well for us to run our daily lives."

We are rather forced to rely on our perceptions, we are not exactly spoiled for choice, it is pretty much the only way to perceive and experience the reality we live in.

"4. Therefore… although perception is subjective, it can be fairly relied upon to make judgments to derive our morality from."

You missed a critical step. You forgot to address why we are able to rely upon it at all. Which is that while our individual perceptions of a thing may be subjective, the thing itself isn't, and so with enough investigation and application of tools that don't rely on an individuals perception, we actually CAN come to a decent understanding of the thing.

"5. And this morality is bound to change from time to time. This should not be seen as weakness, but rather strength, because it is through this method that mankind has made all the great strides in knowledge."

Indeed. I have to applaud the fact that up until this point, I have found no obvious strawmen, I hope this trend continues.

"If you agree with them… here are my problems in your argumentation:

1. Moral questions at the fundamental level arise because of two clashing interests. Let me take the example of the individual vs group. Giving charity is good for the group, but bad for the individual (no one wants to lose money)."

Why go with charity? Because it seems slipperier than other conflicts? However, is it really? Last time I checked people gave to charity voluntarily, and I don't hear you condemning people who don't give as immoral. So, how is this any kind of moral dilemma?

"2. Arriving at an objective (convincing) way of analyzing why one interest should be compromised for the other is extremely hard to arrive at."

It actually isn't that hard, ask yourself two questions:

Can I afford to give?
Do I want to give?

If the answer to both is yes, then by all means give, but otherwise it is probably best that you don't.

"3. Even if such an analysis is made, it is even harder to make people implement it. "
(redacted for length and whining)

The problem here is that you are taking a completely voluntary issue, and trying to "make people implement" your voluntary actions. If you want to make some charity mandatory, which social welfare does, then do it. Otherwise, you can't really blame someone for deciding not to give their money to or toward something they don't believe in or care about. At the moment all you are really doing is whinging about how 1) The rich don't give and 2) The giving of small amounts does nothing to really help.

Well:

1. Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, two of the richest people who have ever lived, give more annually than the GDP of many countries. They even run charities predicated on transparency, which we will talk about later, so you can actually see what and how much goes where.

2. Charities, real charities, realize that it is about numbers. They manage to get millions in donations by not just relying on rich people to donate vast sums of money, but by vast numbers of people donating small sums of money.

"So, first of all, giving charity makes me poorer."

I have never thought of it that way, myself. I always considered it an investment.

"I don’t see any solid reason as to how exactly my charity is going to make the society a better place."

That is rather terrible. Perhaps you should find a better charity, one that actually shows where you money is going and what for, or perhaps you should just stop giving if you are that pessimistic about it. I think your problem may be expectations, I don't expect my donations to "fix society and the world", I am quite happy enough if I know that it has actually helped even a single individual.

"Living a comfortable life has nothing to do with being good…as I can see from very obvious examples in society."

You could have a point. COULD. If only you ignore the dishonest and greedy poor people, or the honest and good comfortable people. As it is, you are mostly being irritable about the existence of dishonest and greedy people that are comfortable, as if they should exist despite being in every socioeconomic class.

"If more people in the society did not believe in a God that would reward them for good and punish them for bad…the society would become a much worse place. Thankfully, a majority of the people in the world still believe in god"

A. This is actually an argument from consequence, which is a logical fallacy by definition. Even if it were true that believing in god made people better, which is quite imminently arguable by statistics, that would not make god real or the belief in it justified.

B. Using the aforementioned example, charity, we begin to see a problem with your argument. In my country 74% of all charitable giving is done to religious organizations, and by all our best assessments, only about 32-33 cents on the dollar actually go to people or projects they stated it would. Compared to many secular charities that are transparent with their finances and show that anywhere from 70-85 cents on the dollar actually leaves the bank toward their stated goals. Hmmm...

C. We judge societies by statistics, with what we call social health factors:

http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2005/2005-11.pdf

So, we have a contention now, you have literally stated that atheism has a NEGATIVE correlation to morality. Would you like to prove that assertion, or should we dismiss it as an attempt to poison the well sans evidence? Hmm... I shall use my suuuuper secret powers of precognition to help here.

Me: Atheism has in inverse correlation to violent crimes. We are LESS likely to kill, rape, assault, or maim others than a religious person(excluding Jainism).

You: That doesn't mean anything!

Round and round we will go, you claiming to have the moral high ground, and never being able to prove it. Me, merely stating that atheists are at least as moral as religious people, and you claiming that it proves nothing. All the while, no practical application of the term morality can be demonstrated by the religious except semantically redefining the term to exclude atheists, and we will get nowhere.