So what determines morality? To what is a moral label applied? The result, or the act? The means, or the ends?
Morality is deeper than acts and results, or means and ends. Morality is what a man is in his heart, but at that level, it's not really referred to as "morality", more just "what a man is". And that's not just a Christian idea, I could cite ideas from Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Hinduism, etc. for that.
But what determines morality for you as an atheist? I suspect it would have to mean purely results, because what else could it mean? Imagine the scenario again: a man hears that there's a child trapped inside a nearby burning building. For some reason, he rushes toward the building to help the child. While doing so he trips and breaks his ankle, so he can't reach the child in time, and the child dies. The man acheived no results, so he couldn't have done a moral act.
The same scenario, and the man successfully saves the child. You have to say the man was merely obeying his evolutionarily conditioned impulse to preserve some of his species' genes. Nothing moral there.
In either case, for an atheist, there's no morality involved, as traditionally understood. That's why "atheist morality" is a contradiction in terms. "Atheist morality", correctly translated, would mean "obeying behavioral conditioning which cannot help but be obeyed". If biochemical laws dictate what I do, then what I do cannot be called "good"; there is no "good".
True, but the way in which he does it is so convoluted, and the offer is so indistinguishable, that he may as well not offer it at all. We come back to the eternal question: if Christianity is true, why is it no different from all the other religions? If God is willing to interfere as he did when Jesus was born, why not just click his fingers and say "Right, you're all saved. No one's going to Hell, because that place is just nasty"? I don't understand why belief in Jesus is so important. If nothing else, why not save the morally good, rather than just those who were lucky enough to be born into a Christian nation?
Being born into a Christian nation is a help, but is no guarantee of being Christian. Being born in Muslim nation is a hindrance, but is likewise no guarantee. Even if where one is born was completely determinative, God is still in charge of such things.
Being saved requires something on the part of a man. If a man is drowning, there are two things involved in his being saved: someone must extend a rope or a hand, or something to save him, but secondly, the drowning man must accept the rope or the hand which is extended to him. Being saved may involve swallowing some pride. Salvation is only potential salvation if it's unaccepted.
Well, thoughts about things can still be true or false. My thoughts about mathematics may ultimately arise from biochemical reactions in my brain, but that doesn't mean that when I think "1 + 1 = 2", the statement is void of a truth value. The origin of our thoughts doesn't determine whether their true or false; that's determined on our own merits.
It's like saying that Shakespeare wasn't an author because all he did was splash fat and oil onto tree pulp.
I disagree. That our brains are biochemical doesn't change the fact that they can perform science. There is an inherent uncertainty that we're just making it all up as we go along, but that epistemological detail is always there, even if our thoughts are somehow supernaturally 'real'.
I didn't say we couldn't perform science, I said we have no idea if science is true or means anything. You say there's an uncertainty, but I would say it stronger as Haldane did: that if your thinking is pure biochemistry, you have
no reason at all to suppose what you think you know is true. I'll grant that there's still an uncertainty even if our thoughts are supernaturally real, but the important point is that, being supernaturally real is the
only way our thinking can be true in the way we think and feel it is.
What it means to be human isn't a particularly special thing. What, really, is so good about us?
I didn't say there was anything so good about us, I just said I can't imagine what it's like to be anything else. Although I do say it's special to be human, for what it's worth. Birds are special in that they can fly, but we humans have our own unique traits, such as making art and science, among other things.
I suppose it doesn't actually matter what we believe about Dawkins' beliefs.
True, although I wish we could agree that they are beliefs, so that we don't mistakenly think of them as "findings" or "discoveries".
We can't derive the metaphysical from the physical. And I know you, like others, say you agree with that, and will say that science doesn't do that, but still, it creeps into these types of conversations, just as it forms the foundation of a book like
The God Delusion. You tell me you don't positively believe there's a God, or any supernature,
because there's no evidence for it. In saying that, you are linking scientific knowledge (or lack of it) to a claim which doesn't depend on scientific knowledge.
I was intentionally terse because I didn't know if you want to get political, but...I don't like the idea of the State having any but the most basic responsibility for children (their physical well-being). Parents love their children, the State does not love its citizens. Because of love, the goal of a parent will be to raise a good person, whereas the goal of the State will be to raise a good (useful) subject. The difference between a parent and a government is like the difference between a mother hen and a farmer: the mother hen would raise her chicks to be good chickens, the farmer would raise his chicks to be good meals.
Each to their own, I guess. I can't make myself believe something, if only because I don't want to. If I actively lie to myself, I'd be undermining the principles I base my life on, and I don't exactly want to do that

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What principles do you base your life on?
Besides, if we explained the inexplicable with some superstitious fluff, we'd have nothing left to explore. We'd have explained everything.
Science works by acknowledging the gaps. Bunging them up with fluff doesn't advance our knowledge.
You needn't come up with a lie to
explain anything, just to feel good. You could still go on exploring everything. If you're just going to exist on Earth for less than a century, you might as well
feel good, right? I mean, how can you argue against that - what are you, some kind of Puritan?
I disagree. The naturalist can quite easily say the garden is beautiful without saying that beauty actually exists. He can explain the garden's beauty, he can say why he considers it beautiful, but that doesn't change the fact that, to him, it is beautiful.
I think that's a contradiction. If I say "the ball is red", "red" must actually exist, or else I'm not really saying anything.
If the naturalist explains the garden's beauty in terms of biological evolution and the functioning of vision and neural pathways, he has in fact explained that there is no beauty. After that, saying "the garden is beautiful
to me" is the same as saying "I am deluded".
Which refers back to my immediately preceding point above: why don't naturalists make up lies to feel good? Well, in fact, that is what they do.

And again, I admire genuine, old school nihilists, who honestly deny all meaning, more than modern atheists who fabricate meaning, who want to have their cake and eat it too.
If we all have this little voice, why do we disagree on what is bad? Why is our concept of morality so very dependant on where we grew up?
Because, with some notable exceptions, exactly what is bad is not really as important as the fact that we all recognize some things are bad. I forget which, but one of the Lewis science fiction books has a character trying to define sin for a race of aliens who have never sinned. The closest he can come is the word "bent". If you think of sin as being bent out of the shape you're supposed to be, it doesn't really matter
how you're bent, only that you're bent.
Bare-breasted girls in public in Tahiti are not immoral. Bare-breasted girls in public in England or America would be immoral, because we have different standards of modesty, and it would offend those standards. Having different standards for subsets of morality, is not the same as having altogether different moralities.
The laws of mathematics are more general than that, to the point where quantum mechanics is logically valid. It is common sense, not mathematics, that says something can't be in two places at once. Mathematically, there's no reason why it couldn't be.
Then a God could be in three places at once. Or be three persons at once.
But they can be true or false. Our perception of reality is, at the end of the day, either true or false: either what I see really is what exists, or it isn't. Whether my perception is ultimately spiritual or biochemical doesn't change that fact.
Like what? Name an event or process which can be true or false. If you can't name one other than human thought itself, then on what grounds is the process of human thought so special that it can be what nothing else in reality can be?
Again, the logic of logic is self-evident (and tautologous).
Yep, or so it seems.
I disagree. While it's simply a matter of opinion what exactly is called 'moral' (the act or the intent or what have you), it's not necessarily the case where an attitude 'towards God' will tend towards life, health and happiness. There are a variety of studies that attempt to index happiness and prosperity, and they all tend to show that secularised nations of sceptical atheists

cool

are the happiest. I think Norway is the top of a lot of happiness tables.
That doesn't mean religious people are necessarily unhappy. But rather, religion doesn't really make someone that much happier.
The only studies I've ever heard of in that regard claimed to show the opposite, that religious people were happier. Be that as it may, I was speaking more of where we are headed eternally, because the
primary goal of morality is not temporal happiness, and indeed, doing the right thing is sometimes the most unpleasant thing. Christ said to follow him, we must take up our cross, which is a very unpleasant metaphor. He didn't say following him was all peaches and cream.