Bushbasher
"the article is either using the existence of a common morality as evidence for a god, or it is arguing that morality only makes sense by the authority of a god. either way, it's arrogant and dumb, and self-parody."

Gotta disagree with you there big guy. Current secular ethics philosophers would too. For instance, Simon Blackburn, who has held an ethics professorship at both Cambridge and Oxford said
"Nature has no concern for good or bad, right or wrong"

So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts don't exist.

Even Richard Dawkins said in the God Delusion
"Not all absolutism is derived from religion. Nevertheless, it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones. The only competitor I can think of is patriotism, especially in times of war"

Will you now call their claims arrogant, dumb or a self parody?

grey, "nature" has no concern for good or bad, but conscious humans obviously do.

i have said many times that i don't understand consciousness. but i don't use my lack of understanding as an argument for god. that would be very silly. i doubt if the people you quote are doing that, but if so they are being silly.

Grey: "Gotta disagree with you there big guy. Current secular ethics philosophers would too."

I can't argue with that one way or the other, because I know nothing of what secular ethics philosophers said and would not know where to go looking for the relevant bits. A bit of background information would of been helpful.

Since I don't understand it, I'll put this up for discussion and hope you can illustrate your point with it. We can say that our current society is very good because of what it deliverers to us in food, shelter and so on. We can also say the if everyone stole our current society would not exist very long. Ergo stealing is bad.

To me "stealing is bad" sounds like a moral, or at least ethical statement. I imagine it is the sort of statement bushbasher is referring to when he says morals don't need a reference to, or depend on the blessing of, god. You say he is talking about what "Nature" thinks is good or bad - but I don't see that. You also say its absolutist. Is it?

Anyway, a bit more explanation would be helpful. Or perhaps you were referring to another post of bushbasher's that did refer to absolute statements.

rstuart, you say, “if everyone stole our current society would not exist very long. Ergo stealing is bad.”

You are saying here that stealing is not bad in itself but that it is bad only in that if everyone stole society would not exist very long. That is approaching the point the original article was making. You may have a preference that people not steal and you may prefer that society stay as it is, and others may have the same preferences, but why should anyone who disagrees with you care what your preferences are?

What do you say to the person who steals: “Don’t do that because I would prefer you didn’t and therefore I declare stealing to be ‘wrong’”?

The intelligent, rational atheistic thief would reply: “Well I have a preference to steal and so I declare there is nothing wrong with me stealing.”

Presumably you would in turn say: “But if everybody steals our current society will not exist very long so therefore I say you shouldn’t steal.”

The thief: “Why should I care about society staying like this? Other people can not steal if that is their preference, and I would encourage them not to steal as that makes life easier for me, but I am good at stealing and it has made me very wealthy and I will continue to steal so long as I can get away with it.”

What do you say to the thief now?

*What do you say to the thief now?*

You say to your thief exactly what we say to our thieves. We as
a society think its immoral to steal, those who don't accept our
morals are austracised from our community. He goes to jail.

Actually GP, I would say "Fair enough, how do you like your coffee Mr. Chairman?"

But seriously, Grey's paraphrased idea "So without something outside of nature, he is saying those concepts don't exist" is absurd.

Just because it's an abstract concept and doesn't exist in "nature" does not mean that something outside of nature has to be invented to explain it.

To illustrate with an example: money does not exist in nature, elephants do not know what money is, which probably explains why they work for peanuts.

But money exists. In fact most people would say that it's extremely important for a society/civilisation to have a concept of money. Societies that do not have a concept of money are not generally considered "advanced".

If you use Grey's logic, money must have been invented by God.

Abstract concepts like good/bad/evil/moral/immoral/amoral etc can just as easily be invented by used by humans in maintianing a society. Natural selection pretty much dictates that it must happen, because those societies without these concepts are unlikely to have made it this far for a very good reason.