Morality is the ability to differentiate between right and wrong behaviours. It is only possible where an animal has enough autonomy to choose.

Morality is impossible without opinion. Blindly following rules is amoral at best.

Lastly and fairly ironically, your claim that "in order to call anything evil, an objective moral law giver must exist" is itself mere opinion. What's more you can demonstrate no OVJECTIVE evidence for that opinion, and your arguments arecwoefulky illinformed. Whereas all the atheists on here have to a greater or lesser degree offered objective reasons for their opinions on morality.

For example empathy for the suffering of other humans as a basis for morality is not mere opinion, it's demonstrably a better way to live our lives tgat maximises human well being, and doesntrequires vapid appeals to the vanity of an unevidenced bronze age deity.

You simply don't understand the topic you're trying to make assertions about.

AJ777,

"Otherwise good and evil are mere opinion."

Everything is an opinion. If enough people agree on an opinion it becomes a consensus which makes it true for the group. You and I can have different opinions about an issue. But if enough people support our different opinions they can both become true for our respective groups and the groups will take actions on those beliefs, even if those beliefs are pure non-sense. How you get to reality is another issue.

The OP was not worded properly to give the desired answer.

edited for grammar.

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, so I don't know what you mean by "standard of empathy".

Your question of choice might just as easily be asked of any theist. Whose deity, whose religion, whose version of that religion etc etc? Religion no more has objective morality than atheism.

My moral view may encompass many ideals, but it won't be tied blinkered and without choice to archaic superstition in the mistaken belief it has to please an imaginary deity. That's not morality as it doesn't encompass any individual sense of right and wrong.

If I'm not reasoning what is right or wrong, then I'm not being moral, just blindly following archaic rules from bronze age patriarchal societies, whose view of morality beyond basic taboos that all human societies have, with or without religion, like rape theft and murder, is useless in 21st century post industrialised countries.

AJ777: "Whose standard of empathy should we use, whose societies morals and rules are best?"

Hopefully not yours. The posts you have made so far speak of a "standard of empathy" which would not be mine own. I would rather trust myself over ANY obsolete, irrelevant, barbaric, savage, offensive, and unsubstantiated, immoral Bronze and/or Iron Age religious text about an imaginative Sky Faerie, a Magic Lich Virgin, and Rather Comical Spook.

rmfr

AJ777, you assert that these things ‘must’ exist. How do you know this? Please demonstrate it.

AJ777: "If one action can be known to always be immoral such as torturing children for fun, then objective morality must exist. If objective morality exists, a moral law giver must exist."

Again, and I still fail to understand why you cannot comprehend this, the ONLY "moral law giver" is the majority of people who feel that torturing children for fun is an immoral act. Thus, us lowly humans create the laws against such. NOT your imagination. Do you wish for your fictional deity to torture children? Read the Bible and come back and tell me how many times your Sky Faerie tortured and killed children and commanded children to be put to the sword.

I guess like all Religious Absolutists, you have blinded yourself to the true truth. Anything that goes against your beliefs, you are taught to ignore.

“Quoted from Wild Tangents 3: A Compilation by RMF Runyan”

“If it does not conform to what was taught during their indoctrination process, then they are to deny it by looking at evidence through God Glasses, which is nothing more than confirmation bias. (There are even Absolutist-made YouTube videos about God Glasses. Just do a YouTube search for “god glasses.”) Confirmation bias is where you simply repudiate anything that stands against your beliefs, even if it irrefutably counters those beliefs. You only affirm those things that you think you can rationalize from your indoctrination process to make sense for your position. Using rationality and logic, this means it is nothing more than playing “make-believe,” and it is not even a sincere belief most of the time. It is a delusion called, “Let’s play pretend.””

“The Absolutists usually begin the training from early childhood through a controlled, systematic, totalitarian indoctrination process which utilizes mental rape, emotional molestation, and psychological terrorism when a child’s mind, especially in the ages of 4 to 14 years, is at its most susceptible and most vulnerable to cultural conditioning. I know this for fact because it is the ghastly, abhorrent, and terrifying nightmare I endured as a child for seven years. Tyrannically dictated norms of fidelity are imposed such that children are trained to vomit conflicting ideas and to never consider their veracity. And I look back at this and, to this day, wonder how in hell I could have allowed those horrible savages to brainwash me that way. Although it never truly took, I was worn to the point I gave up and succumbed. I had to play pretend just to keep them from continuing to ostracize me, excommunicate me, abuse me.”

“Absolutists are trained to react to ideas, and to reject them no matter what they are told, presented, and/or taught. They are taught to never question their beliefs. Militantly trained to maintain and preserve the faith. And, due to this designed abusive training and indoctrination process, they shall do so with apologetics, beguiling dialectical semantics, distorted and perverted data, emotional whiny-ass pleas, and sometimes divinely-inspired violence. Worst of all, their conditioning is so ingrained that most never question why they need to defend their belief at all. This form of indoctrination, no matter its intended outcome, is actually “child abuse” in the form of psychological terrorism. All of which is immoral in any moral landscape. However, due to the First Amendment, religion gets a free ride to practice all the immorality they wish. One only has to prove it is religious to prove it is not immoral.”

“An indoctrination process which teaches you to never think for yourself, but to close your mind against all things except for what some sky-faerie in an obsolete and irrelevant and barbaric and savagely immoral Bronze Age religious text commands you to think. For me, that is the most heinous of acts, especially to do it to children. To convince children that they are born evil/sinful is unconscionable (not guided by conscience; unscrupulous; not in accordance with what is just or reasonable). What kind of immoral monster is going to tell their children that they are born evil/sinful, born of evil/sin, born into evil/sin, born from evil/sin and must have an imaginative Sky Faerie and Magic Lich Virgin to save them? You stupid, idiotic, and retarded Religious Absolutists have it so damned backwards. Evil and sin had not one damned thing to do with it. Children are always born from love (well, 9o% at least). I for one, always told my daughters they came about from the absolute love my wife and I had for each other because we were SoulMates. Literally ONE soul, ONE heart. It was an Act Of Pure True Love between SoulMates that created my daughters. NEVER that bullshit diarrhea you Religious Absolutists spew.”

“And no matter whatever you may say to the contrary, this is child abuse. Ask Richard Dawkins.”

Does any of this see familiar? Think Critically about it. That is if you can think critically...

As for your "moral law giver" MUST exist, please provide OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE else, The Nine Razors:

1. Sagan's Razor: Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
2. Hitchens's Razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
3. Arakish's Razor: NO EVIDENCE = NO EXISTENCE.
4. Xenoview's Razor: Objective claims requires objective evidence.
5. Randomhero1982's Razor: If it's not evidenced, it's bollocks.
6. Cognostic's Razor: Any dweeb can make an assertion.
7. LogicFTW's Razor: You MUST first prove your religion/claim is not a con.
8. CyberLN's Razor: A nice vinaigrette must be served with any word salad.
9. Tin-Man's Butter Knife: Any ridiculous nonsense presented will be countered with opposing ridiculous nonsense of an equal or greater amount.

• Cognostic's Shovel: When someone starts slinging bullshit at you, get a shovel and sling it back.

Remember, until you can provide OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE, nothing you have written even comes close to causing to believe your fake, fictional, fantastical, and fignation of imagiment "moral law giver" exists.

And always remember this: As a Scientists I want only OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. As an Atheist I want only OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE. As a human I want only OBJECTIVE HARD EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE.

I would guarantee you do not believe humans are animals. Primates. Specifically, Apes.

rmfr

@AJ777: If one action can be known to always be immoral such as torturing children for fun, then objective morality must exist. If objective morality exists, a moral law giver must exist.

A gorilla wouldn't torture its children. Nor would a chimpanzee, or a dog.

Do they also have a "moral law giver".

AJ777,
"If one action can be known to always be immoral such as torturing children for fun, then objective morality must exist. If objective morality exists, a moral law giver must exist."

Say what???

2 Maccabees 7:17 (CEB) = "Just wait and observe his great strength, when God will torture you and your children.”"

@AJ777

I will repeat my question, and please give a simple yes or no answer.

Can we both agree that torturing children for no reason is immoral?

And I will take the first step, torturing children for no reason is immoral. There' I took a stand. Now AJ777, are you capable of taking a stand on any position?

AJ777: "If you think torturing children for fun can be a moral act, and that corresponds with reality, then be a moral relativist."

Do you torture your children by forcing them to believe in the immoral monster in the Bible?

Me wife and I allowed our daughters to make their own decision on whether to believe in the Bible and Christianity for themselves. We allowed them to go to church. If they asked us why we did not believe, we told them the true truth. Our daughters, identical twins, spent about eight months going to church. Their final decision was religion was a pack of lies.

Our twin daughters were actually more intelligent than I am/was. They actually began reading at 2yr old. I did not until I was 3yr old. They came to conclusion that Christianity was a bunch of bullshit by the time they were 5yr old. I did not until I was 7yr old. And to top it it all off, our twin daughters were dyslexic, yet were intelligent enough to self-compensate for that dyslexia. I did not discover this fact until they were almost 9yr old. The school system had our daughters for three years and NEVER knew they were dyslexic.

That alone, on top of millions of other people, shows that the more intelligent a person is, the more likely they are going to see through the LIES of religion.

Religion is Humanity's worst enemy. And a very distant second is Humanity itself. Think Critically about it.

rmfr

@aj777
Do objective morals come from your god?

"My opinion is that torturing children for fun is not now and will never be a morally right action."

Good, now explain why you hold that opinion.

"One cannot hold this opinion and defend it without the existence of objective morality. "

You just did, you stated plainly it was your opinion, again you;re showing you don't understand what objective means.

Objective
adjective
1. (of a person or their judgement) not influenced by personal feelings or ****opinions in considering and representing facts.

AJ777 "My ***opinion is that torturing children for fun "

Can you really be this obtuse by accident?

"how can religion be a pack of lies if truth is relative? You can at best say you personally don’t like it. In order to call something false or a lie, truth must exist."

Is blue the best colour? Now some people will say yes and others won't, and they will both be saying the truth, and offering personal opinion that is relative. Boy oh boy you are woefully out of your depth here seriously.

No one is saying truth doesn't exit, just that absolute truth is epistemologically impossible. Those are two very different claims. The validity of any claim, idea or belief is proportional to the amount of objective evidence that can be demonstrated for it. Established or accepted scientific theories are the gold standard, and even these must remain tentative, as no human method for validating claims would be of any use if it could not admit of an error and be corrected. Like religions, where you have the risible situation of people in the 21st century clinging to bronze age myths like creationism over objective scientific facts like species evolution.

AJ777 "**My opinion**...One cannot hold this *opinion* ...without the existence of *objective* morality. "

Objective
adjective
1. (of a person or their judgement) **not influenced by**....***opinions*** in considering and representing facts.

It can't be both personal opinion and objective, they're mutually exclusive. You really do need to read a dictionary occasionally.

It's not torture. It's not brainwashing. It's objective morality in action.
BULLSHIT!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac