How do you rationalize moral realism in a world without God...

How do you rationalize moral realism in a world without God? Is morality not dependent on arbitrary systems of axioms and goals?

you can't

Possible routes I can think of would be,

1) Human Nature arguments
2) Utilitarianism
3) Pragmatism (usefulness is truthfulness)
4) Human Freedom
5) Natural Law/Order (as consistent with the Nature of reality, and not a Godhead)

Not endorsing or denying the virtues of the stances, just putting some out there.

First post best post, without God morality is just a personal preference

You can't rationalize moral realism even with God.

Quasi-realism.

Atheist here. You really can't. It just becomes personal preference at that point and it becomes what you make of it. I believe morality is subjective and what is considered moral behavior generally arises from environmental factors, biological factors, and just people being people.

That being said I do feel that certain moral values are almost objectively better than others. But maybe that's just because I come from a culture that places value and emphasis in individual self determinism. I don't know senpai, but I prefer western values over everything else. They do just seem better considering the civilizations they've created.

only good post itt

the circlejerk needs to chill

It can be argued that it is human nature to believe in god.

Explain.

Religious morality is also based on arbitrary systems.

Of course. But why wouldn't you follow God if you had proof of his existence?

Because we don't.

To be honest, I'm not sure how. It takes a place in my whole philosophical system.
Here's a try, though:
It's that not only do I not see how a "real morality" could be known by humans, but that I can't see how anyone who talks about it is referring to anything at all. Something either is or isn't the case. I genunely don't understand how saying something objectively (that is, not according to a certain (imperfect?) will) SHOULD be the case is a meaningful statement at all. That, of course, is required for God's will (brushing over the many problems I have with the idea of "God" as defined in Scholasticism) to be any more binding than mine.
(The same goes for saying that something objectively (that is, not in reference to a certain imperfect knowledge) COULD be the case, by the way.)

(meant to reply to there, sorry)

Morality isn't any less intrinsic to human nature than feeling pain is.
It's something that humans have evolved to have due to our intrinsically social nature. If humans never evolved to have a built-in system of morals then we would have never been able to coagulate into groups, tribes, villages, towns, cities, empires, etc.

What is the Euthyphron Dilemma?

>Is morality not dependent on arbitrary systems of axioms and goals?

It is, yes. However, that doesn't mean that they're disconnected from reality. There are still objectively right answers within the context of such systems - for instance, if my goal is to promote health and prevent suffering, it is wrong to make people drink bleach.

We also don't have proof of his non existence.

The likelihood that the christian scriptures reflect the real truth of the universe seems pretty infinitesimally low

JFC read some meta-ethics you retards

fpbp
subjective morality

This guy gave it a shot. He was the first well known philosopher to outright say morality is defined by man, not God. He also created two principles we all live by today:

"Ought implies can," a fancy way of saying if you should do something morally, you first must be able to do, and if you can't do anything morally right in a situation, then it's not your fault. This is probably the only philosophical principle philosophers agree on.

Categorical Imperitave, another fancy term Kant made that's basically the golden rule but turned into a principle of morality. If you're going to do something, ate you prepared to:
a.) Do it again in the same situation, and
b.) Have someone else do it to you,
If the answer to any of those two is no then you shouldn't do it.

The reason why many people haven't heard of Kant or his principles is that they're not easily translateble to society like religous morality or other ethical principles like Utilitarianism. Also, his work is controversial because it forces people to be moral without using religion as their reason to be moral.

Literally the first atheist that I have ever seen to be honest and forthright about this issue, Thanks user.

Actually the reason why Kant as well as Locke and the Categorical Imperative arent well recognized is because there are several logical loopholes that exist within the philosophy.

One simple example would be Lieing - now lieing is wrong in most cases but what if you are lieing to protect a friend or family member. in this example lets imagine there is someone who wants to harm or maybe even kill someone and asks where they were - Kant would argue that you have to tell them where said victim was, because you can never justify "the ends justify the means"

Another issue is that he ignores emotions or intentions behind actions - there for Giving freely to the poor could easily be equated to having taxes taken from you to feed the poor because the result or action is the same regardless of the fact that one is a cold moral action with no emotion behind it and the other is done out of love, compassion and empathy.

Multi approach utilitarianism

An easy way to fix these problems is throwing Aristotle's Virtue Ethics into the mix.

In every situation, rationally calculate all factors at play, then make your decision as the mean of two extremes, and be comfertable with this action as a maxim in this specific situation.

In addition, every morally good action at its most basic level is someone acting to the best of their abilities (thus combinig Ought Implies Can and Virtue being a mean) at the time, because as Kant states, every has the tendency to and tends to be good.

The reason why Kant didn't want emotion to be a reason for good is that, as many philosophers agree, emotion is irrational. Kant just never had a good explanation as to how every good action could morally explained.

This may sound like something different than Kantianism, but its simply a revison, much like how John Stuart Mill revised Utilitarianism from a pure hedonistic ethics to the "Greatest Happiness Principle," and how that was later revised to Rule Utilitarianism.