Atheism and Moral Values

[regular.joe]

I maintain that to if it is true that there is no God, then there cannot be free will. Therefore we cannot make up our own beliefs or come to our own conclusions in any kind of morality.

[ZenGum]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

I maintain that to if it is true that there is no God, then there cannot be free will. Therefore we cannot make up our own beliefs or come to our own conclusions in any kind of morality.

I admire the clarity of this post, but the first inference has me stumped.

...if ... there is no God, then there cannot be free will.

Why not?

There is an argument which says that if there is a God then there cannot be free will (since divine omniscience implies perfect foreknowledge which seems to entail determinism).
There are also arguments that if we don't have free will, then there is no God (since the blame for the existence of evil in the world can then be attributed to the free will of humans, rather than God).

What's your reasoning, Joe?

[Phage0070]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

I maintain that to if it is true that there is no God, then there cannot be free will. Therefore we cannot make up our own beliefs or come to our own conclusions in any kind of morality.

There are several interesting assumptions here. The idea is that if there is no supernatural force behind the universe then the universe must work purely through definite rules, meaning that everything that happens is simply a domino effect of the previous state of things. Supposedly this implies the lack of free will, but let me ask you this: How would your actions differ between such universes? Logically your actions would be exactly the same and the only difference would be the metaphysical "weight" behind them. This "weight" cannot be measured or known, so what difference does it make? In a free-will universe you make decisions because of who you are... and in a deterministic universe you make decisions because of who you are. It is the same thing!

The second assumption is that morality must somehow be supernatural in origin. Such a stance basically says "My belief system is the best, so if I am wrong then nobody can be right!" It is from this that you get the most dangerous element of religion; it isn't the certainty that you are correct in your thinking, but that other people must be incorrect because they disagree with you. This is poor logic in action.