All objective morality has to appeal to some standard. And then the question of "Why is that the standard?" shows that it likewise is in some sense relative. You can answer that question with some reasons, like God having authority to decide what is moral in his creation, but it never disproves other standards of morality which are justified by other reasons, such as the atheist's "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral".

That's why such debates boil down to worldview comparison and transcendental argumentation - which worldview can justify the thing in question, in this case morality. The problem with the atheist position is that they can't justify their claims within their worldview. Why? Because atheists believe in a meaningless and purposeless deterministic universe of random chemical processes in constant flux. They can't give an account how the laws of logic, metaphysics, knowledge and ethics exist in such a universe. It's a self-refuting position. But even if we grant them the proposition "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral", they can't answer why it is the case and how they know that without being ad hoc or circular. Even if the proposition is true, it's not a justified belief but an axiomatic/self-evident one. But nothing can be self-evident and everything needs to be justified.

And if we trust our consciences (and we all do) we need an explanation for why they are trustworthy. The obvious explanation is that they were meant to guide us, being given to us by the creator(s). And then it only makes sense that the creator would have a similar sense of morality to our consciences, and being the source of our consciences is a more reliable measure of what is moral - for we know our consciences do not always agree. And knowing this creator also made other people's consciences, as well as the whole of nature, it follows that we can get closer to the creator's morality by studying the consciences of others and the things of nature, which appear to be made for our benefit, given how so many of them are good for our health in contrast to artificial things.

Those are a lot of assumptions. Maybe the creator is the evil demiurg of the Gnostics? Maybe we're supposed to rebell against the evil demiurg and transcend the limitations of the nature he created by using artifice and becoming transhumanists? Maybe the creator didn't make all people the same and maybe some people don't even have a soul and are vessels for evil spirits (shout out to Scientology)? The point is without God's explicit revelation we can't know any of this just by looking around.

This is not to say that outside of Christianity people can't be moral - they can and they have been historically obviously (which is in line with the Christian teaching of God's law being written on our heart). What they can't do is justify objective morality.

All objective morality has to appeal to some standard. And then the question of "Why is that the standard?" shows that it likewise is in some sense relative. You can answer that question with some reasons, like God having authority to decide what is moral in his creation, but it never disproves other standards of morality which are justified by other reasons, such as the atheist's "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral".

That's why such debates boil down to worldview comparison and transcendental argumentation - which worldview can justify the thing in question, in this case morality. The problem with the atheist position is that they can't justify their claims within their worldview. Why? Because atheists believe in a meaningless and purposeless deterministic universe of random chemical processes in constant flux. They can't give an account how the laws of logic, metaphysics, knowledge and ethics exist in such a universe. It's a self-refuting position. But even if we grant them the proposition "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral", they can't answer why it is the case and how they know that without being ad hoc or circular. Even if the proposition is true, it's not a justified belief but an axiomatic/self-evident one. But nothing can be self-evident and everything needs to be justified.

And if we trust our consciences (and we all do) we need an explanation for why they are trustworthy. The obvious explanation is that they were meant to guide us, being given to us by the creator(s). And then it only makes sense that the creator would have a similar sense of morality to our consciences, and being the source of our consciences is a more reliable measure of what is moral - for we know our consciences do not always agree. And knowing this creator also made other people's consciences, as well as the whole of nature, it follows that we can get closer to the creator's morality by studying the consciences of others and the things of nature, which appear to be made for our benefit, given how so many of them are good for our health in contrast to artificial things.

Those are a lot of assumptions. Maybe the creator is the evil demiurg of the Gnostics? Maybe we're supposed to rebell against the evil demiurg and transcend the limitations of the nature he created by using artifice and becoming transhumanists? Maybe the creator didn't make all people the same and maybe some people don't even have a soul and are vessels for evil spirits (shout out to Scientology)? The point is without God's explicit revelation we can't know any of this just by looking around.

This is not to say that outside of Christianity people can't be moral - they can and they have been historically obviously (which is in line with the Christian teaching of God's law being written on our heart). What they can't do is justify morality.

All objective morality has to appeal to some standard. And then the question of "Why is that the standard?" shows that it likewise is in some sense relative. You can answer that question with some reasons, like God having authority to decide what is moral in his creation, but it never disproves other standards of morality which are justified by other reasons, such as the atheist's "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral".

That's why such debates boil down to worldview comparison and transcendental argumentation - which worldview can justify the thing in question, in this case morality. The problem with the atheist position is that they can't justify their claims within their worldview. Why? Because atheists believe in a meaningless and purposeless deterministic universe of random chemical processes in constant flux. They can't give an account how the laws of logic, metaphysics, knowledge and ethics exist in such a universe. It's a self-refuting position. But even if we grant them the proposition "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral", they can't answer why it is the case and how they know that without being ad hoc or circular. Even if the proposition is true, it's not a justified belief but an axiomatic/self-evident one. But nothing can be self-evident and everything needs to be justified.

And if we trust our consciences (and we all do) we need an explanation for why they are trustworthy. The obvious explanation is that they were meant to guide us, being given to us by the creator(s). And then it only makes sense that the creator would have a similar sense of morality to our consciences, and being the source of our consciences is a more reliable measure of what is moral - for we know our consciences do not always agree. And knowing this creator also made other people's consciences, as well as the whole of nature, it follows that we can get closer to the creator's morality by studying the consciences of others and the things of nature, which appear to be made for our benefit, given how so many of them are good for our health in contrast to artificial things.

Those are a lot of assumptions. Maybe the creator is the evil demiurg of the Gnostics? Maybe we're supposed to rebell against the evil demiurg and transcend the limitations of the nature he created by using artifice and becoming transhumanists? Maybe the creator didn't make all people the same and maybe some people don't even have a soul and are vessels for evil spirits (shout out to Scientology)? The point is without God's explicit revelation we can't know any of this just by looking around.

All objective morality has to appeal to some standard. And then the question of "Why is that the standard?" shows that it likewise is in some sense relative. You can answer that question with some reasons, like God having authority to decide what is moral in his creation, but it never disproves other standards of morality which are justified by other reasons, such as the atheist's "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral".

That's why such debates boil down to worldview comparison and transcendental argumentation - which worldview can justify the thing in question, in this case morality. The problem with the atheist position is that they can't justify their claims within their worldview. Why? Because atheists believe in a meaningless and purposeless deterministic universe of random chemical processes in constant flux. They can't give an account how the laws of logic, metaphysics, knowledge and ethics exist in such a universe. It's a self-refuting position. But even if we grant them the proposition "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral", they can't answer why it is the case and how they know that without being ad hoc or circular. Even if the proposition is true, it's not a justified belief but an axiomatic/self-evident one. But nothing can be self-evident and everything needs to be justified.

And if we trust our consciences (and we all do) we need an explanation for why they are trustworthy. The obvious explanation is that they were meant to guide us, being given to us by the creator(s). And then it only makes sense that the creator would have a similar sense of morality to our consciences, and being the source of our consciences is a more reliable measure of what is moral - for we know our consciences do not always agree. And knowing this creator also made other people's consciences, as well as the whole of nature, it follows that we can get closer to the creator's morality by studying the consciences of others and the things of nature, which appear to be made for our benefit, given how so many of them are good for our health in contrast to artificial things.

Those are a lot of assumptions. Maybe the creator is the evil demiurg of the Gnostics? Maybe we're supposed to rebell against the evil demiurg and transcend the limitations of the nature he created by being transhumanists? Maybe the creator didn't make all people the same and maybe some people don't even have a soul and are vessels for evil spirits (shout out to Scientology)? The point is without God's explicit revelation we can't know any of this just by looking around.

All objective morality has to appeal to some standard. And then the question of "Why is that the standard?" shows that it likewise is in some sense relative. You can answer that question with some reasons, like God having authority to decide what is moral in his creation, but it never disproves other standards of morality which are justified by other reasons, such as the atheist's "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral".

That's why such debates boil down to worldview comparison and transcendental argumentation - which worldview can justify the thing in question, in this case morality. The problem with the atheist position is that they can't justify their claims within their worldview. Why? Because atheists believe in a meaningless and purposeless deterministic universe of random chemical processes in constant flux. They can't give an account how the laws of logic, metaphysics, knowledge and ethics exist in such a universe. It's a self-refuting position. But even if we grant them the proposition "Whatever leads to human flourishing is what is moral", they can't answer why it is the case and how they know that without being ad hoc or circular. Even if the proposition is true, it's not a justified belief but an axiomatic/self-evident one. But nothing can be self-evident and everything needs to be justified.