Convention, the social contract, can have a similar function as 'objective/intersubjective truth' within a particular group for the atheist... but nobody wants to hear about that.

As C. S. Lewis explained, the pagan gods weren't simply altogether false but are instead to be understood as distorted images of the real one. — BenMcLean

The Jews don't put much divine stock in Jesus; he wasn't the Messiah according to them. Christians call Him God. Muslims say He was another prophet, superseded by Muhammad, and that Christianity has been polluted.

This isn't about truth. It's about clinging to stories, and that's what most adherents do.

Shouldn’t the atheist answer be, they are thinking like a fantasy, fictional novel writer? They make up contexts, make up players in that context, make up actions, throw in biology and psychology to claim some semblance of “science” or actual knowledge, pretend rules and laws and human speech can direct physics and human choices (as if we are not mechanistic followers of biological necessity), and call this “morality” until the next time when all variables may be thrown back up in the air where they belong and never actually left.

To the atheist, like Nietzsche, isn’t having a morality itself maybe the only possible immoral act? Because it’s an utter lie? To the atheist, shouldn’t the one moral choice we make be the choice to resist all moral judgment, particularly of our own impulses and actions? I think so. That is coherent — Fire Ologist

Atheism is a spectrum of philosophical perspectives with a historical lineage in the modern West going back at least 400 years. These perspectives have nothing necessarily in common with each other beside the fact that they remove the name of theos. My particular version of atheism assumes the following:

1) What we call immorality are practices by others which we aren’t able to understand in terms that allow us to justify them according to our own values. As a result, we blame them for our own puzzlement.
2) Cultural history takes the form of a slow development of interpersonal understanding such that we progressively improve our ability to make sense of the motivations of others in ways that don’t require our condemning them, precisely because we see their limitations as having to do with social understanding rather than arbitrary malicious intent. Advances in the social sciences in tandem with philosophy and the arts contribute to this development.

The proof is in the pudding. Either our social bets pay off and our models of behavior are validated by the actions of others, or they are invalidated and we have to start over with a modified scheme. We all try our best to make sense of others without having to condemn them, but for most the task becomes too overwhelming and they find they have no choice but to fall back on something like god-given moral foundations (or the empirical version : socio and neuropathology).

Convention, the social contract, can have a similar function as 'objective/intersubjective truth' — ChatteringMonkey

I agree. That fits neatly under categories of criminal and civil law. And maybe that is all we can do in this world to get along, is invent and agree upon ever-changing laws. Maybe we need to stop fantasizing about religion and focus on fantasizing about the utopian state constitution.

I just don’t see any need to call any of that “morality”. People who don’t agree with the secular law regarding murder are not “evil” or “bad people”. They are just wrong, irrational, not intelligent, have no foresight, avoiding consequences, impractical. But calling a person who murders despite our agreed convention a “bad person” or “evil person”? That seems folly, psycho-babble, and an unnecessary distraction. Because some day, a particular murder may be able to be argued as right, rational, smart, forward looking, necessary….

Underneath this discussion is the role and ontological status of universals and the application of these ideal platonic form-like inventions to particular, physical acts in the world.

Morality, and using “good versus bad” judgments of whole people, based on individual choices and discreet acts — I don’t see why an atheist would bother. Other than for political manipulation, meaning, even though “evil people” may be a fantastical concept, it sure makes for successful politics today while there are still so many fairy tale believers. And the left does seem to put secular law in the same position as moral law, just so they can still use all the moral terminology like “anti-abortionists are evil oppressors, and oppression is always evil” or “Trump is the worst person ever”.

Everyone wants to preserve morality - some because they think there is objective right and wrong, others to beat up on their opponents in the minutia of debate. Maybe we should all focus our debates on whether there is any such thing as an objective measure that could subject us all to the same judgment of “what is good and what is not.”

We just have to keep biting the apple - can’t help ourselves. “If you don’t do X, then you are part of the problem.” (We don’t want to let go of our ability to say that do we? Without morality, how will we really be able to manipulate each other??)

Ultimately, to me, there is objective truth, and morality is about self-regulation. It’s not about judging the acts and hearts of others. There can be no morality court here. Only moral instruction that one can put into practice or not. Besides the objective component, morality also requires a purely subjective consent and will and knowing choice. This component is so subjective and tied to the “heart and soul” of a person, that I can not possibly judge anyone else but myself. So the public component, the objective component of morality, is a discussion of what is good, what the law means; but anyone who says “I know the moral law absolutely and can see you are evil and you are going to hell” and points at anyone but themselves, is acting like God, which they are not, so they are being immoral, and don’t understand where morality lives.

We should stick to secular, civil, criminal law discussions around here. After 2000 years of western philosophy, philosophers have proven they suck at moral instruction.

Schopenhauer explained secular morality.