How to Discuss Objective Morality with an Atheist

I guess one of the pet peeves of atheists, against people of religion is to is the people of religions assumption that atheists don't have any ethics. Right? Which is not true, right? Like, their whole thing is, their foundation of ethics is not rooted in a particular religion. But within the area of social structure and order, I guess my question to you is, how do you engage on a discussion of ethics and morality with somebody who is not based in any religion?

We start off by recognizing that, for example, what we teach in paradise and hellfire. Yeah, this is not for the atheist, because the foundation here is, as I already addressed is an array. So but we showed how very briefly in maybe 60 seconds or less, why we are intellectually justified in using this foundation for our beliefs. Right? Yeah, that's, that's a different discussion in terms of atheist atheist, and they are varying types. And there are so many types of atheists. And sometimes they don't even know that they're, what kind of atheist they are positive, negative, strong, weak. Is it fair to assume in relation to somebody who claims to be atheist that at least the way I see it

is most atheists are not really true atheists? They're more agnostic than they are atheists. A lot of atheists are actually agnostic. Yeah, yeah. Okay. And the reality is that, for many of them, they don't know where morality comes from. Right. So they may say, whatever, is predominant socially. But that's not objective, right? That's not a fact. That's relative. That's an opinion. Because if you took all of society and you said, is killing an innocent, innocent person,

objectively wrong, like immoral, they should say, yes. If they say, No, we have a problem. If they say yes, based on what, right objectivity, in terms of morality has to come from an objective source, social constructs are not objective. And in fact, that's very problematic for so many reasons, among some people in the past, used to agree on things today. I mean, that's the problem in politics, right? People will say that, that the culture changes, and the laws should be respective to the changes in culture, which like, No, right? Because, because that same person would be okay with segregation, for example, in the time in which it was a lot, because it was culturally

acceptable. But that same person is against segregation, because it's culturally unacceptable. So the question then is, how much does culture influence laws? Or should it be the other way around morality, your beliefs literally affect everything else? There. I do not believe that there is such thing in even in academia, generally speaking, aside from very few disciplines, when it comes to the humanities laws when it comes to history when it comes to morals, politics, everyone has some moral belief or bias or inclination, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. But there is no such thing as being amoral. Because you do have a stance on something or on. Even if you claim to be neutral, it's

like an agnostic thinking that, hey, I'm not a believer or a disbeliever. Well, no. Do you believe in God? Well, no, I'm not sure that then you are not a believer. They are considered disbelievers. For example, yeah, there is no neutrality when it comes. It's almost like in the area of journalism, right? You're the theory, you're supposed to be unbiased. But like the biases really come through based on their, I guess, political leanings and backgrounds across the board. And I think it's kind of like the same thing in this regard. Yeah, oftentimes, it leaks into whatever you're writing, reporting. Obviously, every type of journalism is different. If it's something minor, local

incident, they're just reporting the facts. That's one thing, right? But even then there are sometimes other issues that come up, but generally speaking, yeah, we would start with, like, I I take on maybe three to five cases of personal conversations with atheists, or ex Muslims, not necessarily atheist on a weekly basis. Yeah. And they're great conversations, I enjoy the one on one. So a lot of times they open up about what they feel is

a shortcoming in their approach. And I usually show them why the methodology is problematic the way that they're thinking and reaching conclusions. It's based on a wrong premise or the wrong start. Wrong Foundation. And amongst them is morality, it always leaves them speechless, because if you claim that there is objective morality, you can't do so without belief that it's coming from God. Everything else falls apart in philosophy. The same goes for other issues, not just a proving that there's objective morality, how do you live your life according to morality? If it's going to be general morality, like Don't lie, don't steal, don't cheat. Yeah, we can agree on a few things. But

let's get into some serious examples like alcohol intoxication, causing so much harm and evil in the world. Do you believe that to be evil? Do you believe it to be immoral? Or do you believe that it's morally permissible that it's ethical Right? And how do you know that if you make any claim here's here's another problem. Yeah, atheist cannot make money.

claims about God and religion without a foundation. And so what they previously used to justify leaving religion? Yeah. And now they have no no reference point, the I guess the strongest argument that atheists have, which is not really an argument, but it's more like, because this was like atheists will base I've seen this so many times in an academic setting where like two professors and they deliberately make like one professor like a, like a hardcore God believing Christian and the other guy like a hardcore atheist, right. And his class was on it was on the neuroplasticity of the mind in relation to marketing and advertising, which was one of the classes that we took. And in the

end, I think it was a session and the professor, the atheist Professor goes to the Christian professor, you can't prove that God exists. And the Christian goes, and you can't prove that he doesn't exist. And it's like, yeah, hey, you're right. I can't do this. I can't prove that he doesn't exist. And I think the issue with but the moral objectivity, because one of the things that you find common within the space of at least in from my field background, is that, especially in the space of advertising, I guess, to lower to reduce the brunt of it. If some, for example, alcohol, they call it the marketing of vices.

Right. And they're like, We love our vices.

Right? And so now, in a way, when you say something's advice, yeah, you know, it's bad. But it's not the it's not nearly as something that says thinking as haram.

Right? So the question then is,

does objective morality in the vernacular that's used, ie vices and virtues?

Is there a relationship? And or do you discuss that at all or No, subhanAllah one of the ways in which a pawn works, obviously, through human beings and through 1000s of years of efforts in ways we can't really imagine, is through language, yeah, how we label certain things and feel about certain things. So when cultural norms change, morality changes with those cultural norms. When you label something as adult entertainment, rather than

a number of problems, like I don't even know where to begin with the 20 different issues that arise when we talk about pornography, or prostitution, or sex trafficking or under agent, like, there's just so many different things, and the destruction of marriages and the brain and the addictions. So the labels that people use are very interesting. And it's interesting to see some of the overlap between like morality, cultural norms, the psychology of marketing, you know, how things are marketed. And obviously, to each society, they see things differently. There were Christians before that actually, do not believe that it is permissible to consume alcohol beyond just for ritual

purposes. Okay. And actually, in fact, many, many Christian months in the early 1900s, were the proponents of the prohibition in the US, right, which is very interesting, because they saw that some of the damaging effects of that, but Anyways, long story short, in terms of talking to an atheist, we would have to find some common ground to begin with something. And usually, before delving into a secondary issue, like morality, because morality is all secondary. You have to start off with methodology. How do you know what you know? How do you know like, was this Tamala G or someone that is demonic? Yeah. I hate that word. Yeah, it's a it's a fancy sounding word, all very

fancy sounding word. And you have to spend 20 minutes explaining to the person what that means. How do you know what you know? Yeah.

Okay. And I just want to correct one other thing, though, that example that was given of the atheist professor and the Christian professor, saying, You can't prove he exists. And then he said, Well, you can't prove he doesn't exist. The Christian professors true science cannot prove disprove God, right. Otherwise, it's not science. It's a science class. Yeah. Besides can't disprove god, this is true. This is why atheism has many issues. That's just one. But

I don't know if that was his immediate response. But I would have disagreed with the atheist professor when he said, You can't prove that God exists. I would have asked What do you mean by proof on what terms are using the word proof? Because if somebody claims you can't prove to me, for example, that there's a son, right? And you ask, how do you want me to prove it to you? And they say, Well, you have to do so at nighttime or whatever, whatever they say, Well, you might say, well, that's not the right approach to proving things. Your entire premise of proof is wrong. Right. So they're saying about the existence of the sun? Can you prove it at night? Sure, you can take a

rocket up at nighttime and say, Hey, there's a sun ship. So what does that mean? That means there's something in mind for that person, a tool, a methodology to prove things right, right. But in terms of religion, and science, and God were many most atheist inclined to is empiricism and science as the tool to prove or disprove the general was one of two things

Right, what you said is empiricism. Can you observe it? Right? That's one and the other in some form, right? And the other factor has to do with, is there something that you could do maybe not be able to observe it in some form, but can you reduce the doubt in relation to it? Right? You know, the famous Carl Sagan, quote about sciences objective is simply to reduce doubt, in a particular area, you're not going to know anything, but at least you'll be less doubtful about a certain matter. And that's the thing though, there are many atheists who, who became believers in God, they left atheism after sometimes after decades, these were philosophers of science and scientists,

because of science, like they Their argument was like Anthony flu science spotlights different areas that prove the existence of God. And so for them, it is clearly working for others it is not working. That means we have to ask what's wrong with the methodology or why is it really reaching different conclusions? Why are we not finding the same conclusion? There are other potential factors like how we're reasoning reason is another one like rationalism and also the internal state like what's your starting foundation in terms of what's called a priori knowledge, your belief that there's necessary foundational knowledge