re: A fact worth remembering: Those who don't believe in God argue against absolutes

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These are both subjective statements. Yes, morality is an extension of what preferential behaviors we want in a given culture or society. Each society gets to decide what they are and hold its own members or others accountable if they want.

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If you have an objective standard to justify your condemnation of something as morally wrong, then the statement isn't subjective.

The objective morality that comes from God's perfect and holy character has a inherent goodness to it. Subjective morality that is but an extension of preferential behaviors has no inherent goodness or evil to it (if God's standard doesn't, in fact, exist) and therefore is nothing more than a "might makes right" view of it. What is right are those behaviors that are popular at that moment based on those with the power to have the say in a society and culture.

The problem here, as I've said multiple times so far, is that there is no objective basis to condemn another society for their own moral paradigm just because it conflicts with the preferences of those who wish to provide the condemnation. It's results in an incoherence as the people who have accepted their own society's or culture's moral standard as the moral standard that all people and groups should adhere to try to impose that view on others who have a contradictory view. There is simply no basis to condemn a society like China's, Nazi Germany's, or the most extreme Islamic country's in the Middle East. All you can logically do is say "I don't like that" and leave them alone.

Once you accept that morality is defined by culture, then you cannot rationally condemn a morality defined by a different culture just because you don't like it for your own.

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I don't look back historically and see Christianity faring any better at deterring the kind of human suffering occurring than some of its contemporaries. If it was our true objective moral compass Christian Nations should have been clearly superior to nations using different moral frameworks, not to say Christianity isn't superior to some.

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I see the opposite of what you've said. I've seen great advances in technology, medicine, law, etc. come from western societies that have adhered to a Christian worldview. No society is perfect because all societies are made of sinful individuals, yet the Christian worldview provides a rational basis for respecting the rights and value of people who are made in God's image.

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Subjectively, as a population. You could look at the Allies response to the Holocaust as exactly that. What Germany thought about the Jews was irrelevant to what the Allies thought, they invaded Germany and prosecuted those responsible under their own morality.

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What do you do when two populations have conflicting views of what is morally acceptable? You have war. But why? If we were consistent with our views of morality as subjective then we should be leaving others alone. If people are just more evolved animals, why should we care if a society across the world treats their people like the animals that they are? This is why such a view of morality is irrational: it makes morality an arbitrary distinction between behaviors that we like vs. don't like, yet individuals (and even societies) like and don't like different things. There is no "right" way in that worldview, so it boils down to who has the biggest stick to enforce their own subjective preferences.

What this doesn't say, though, is that rape and murder are objectively evil. It just says that those societies that don't tolerate such things will be looking for a bigger stick to beat up societies that do tolerate them if the outrage grows large enough. There is no objective basis for it. It's just preference.

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You are describing reality. Look at China. They are doing gross things to people over there, and Americans by and large find it immoral. Sometimes it will be within your power to influence better moral outcomes (Obv subjective ) and sometimes you can't.

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If people were consistent with this worldview, they would mind their own business and let others do what they want to do because there isn't an actual right or wrong, just personal preference. Just because I don't like something doesn't mean that something is immoral. People act because they don't like things and they want to stop the things they don't like. It doesn't make them right. If people realized that this worldview actually delegitimizes their own feelings of what they view is "bad" then they might give it a second thought. People feel strongly about morality yet such a worldview doesn't give them justification for their feelings or their actions.

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This is a false equivalence. We are obviously operating under different definitions of the word morality.
Morality is an extension of what preferential behaviors a society wants encouraged/discouraged. Cancer isn't a conscious entity whose behavior can be encouraged/discouraged. Those behaviors can be considered immoral in a given society if they are discouraged/punished. It is rational for example for a society to punish thieves if it values trade/economic prosperity.

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I didn't equate cancer to an immoral action. I equated feelings about cancer to feelings about an immoral action. The key point of continuity is our (emotional) preferences: not liking something that is happening to us. Whether that be due to the actions of other humans, to animal attacks, to viruses/pathogens, or to natural disasters like hurricanes, the outcome is the same. There are externalities that negatively impact our lives and we have no objective basis to condemn any of it as objectively immoral simply because we don't like what they do to us. A human behavior is just an animal taking some sort of action (from an evolutionary perspective). Why should we logically differentiate what one animal does vs. what another organism does for the sake of morality when morality in this paradigm is nothing more than personal preference?

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I am. Society is. Again they went and kicked Hitler's arse. You are only looking for a judge on high because that is your preconceived notion. I can make statistic based arguments of the efficacy of certain moral frameworks at best.

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Who are you to judge? What is society to judge? See, the point here is that there is no objective judge and there is no objective standard in this worldview. It's simply "might makes right".

Also, who cares if you can make statistic-based arguments regarding efficacy of certain moral frameworks? Who said that efficacy (of utility?) determines the right way to judge a moral framework? It's an arbitrary standard because you can pick any methodology you want to determine what makes a good framework to you any anyone else can pick any other standard to determine what makes a good framework for them, and there would be no objective way to say which one is better. You seem to be approaching morality from a utilitarian perspective. Who said that utility is the "right" way to approach it?

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They are arbitrary in that one can hold any moral value, they are not arbitrary in that societies end up with certain moral values consistently for several reasons.

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If you believe that utility is the most desired outcome for people you will organize your moral values to align with that outcome. In that sense, the moral values aren't arbitrary as they are purposefully chosen to achieve a desired outcome. The arbitrary aspect comes from the notion that utility (or whatever the chosen end goal) is what is to be most desired.

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Believing in an invisible man who is so sadistic as to send people he “loves,” people who had no choice in their existence, to “hell” for not believing in said invisible man because he never makes his presence known, is a miserable existence.

Think Jigsaw from the Saw movies.

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God created us to worship Him. Since He's God, I think He's justified in that. It's not sadistic to create something for a purpose and then destroy it if it doesn't serve its purpose. This complaint of yours is common in people who don't understand the holiness of God or the sinfulness of man.

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Morality is based on human empathy

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It most certainly isn't.

Empathy doesn't account for everything we consider moral or immoral, nor does empathy even exist in some. Many people act rightly out of obligation sans empathy and act wrongly out of empathetic desires. Using empathy as your basis for morality is as bad as basing morality on social utility. Not only is an arbitrary standard and justification, you wouldn't want people to act consistently with it if it were true.

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Not some specific false deity

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I agree here. Objective morality is based in the only true God.

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An “objective” moral standard does not exist.

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Not in a godless universe, no.

The God of the Bible provides such a possibility and its certainty.

Everyone acts like morality is objective and would hate a world that acted consistently with the belief that it wasn't objective. The biblical worldview provides a justification for the reality people believe exists yet deny with their lips.

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Can someone not have a rational subjective basis for not wanting to be killed, raped, or stolen from?

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sure, but that's not any sort of moral truth. it's just relativist preference, one that can't really be substantiated.

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I can judge them on my SUBJECTIVE BASIS, which is likely shared/enforced by my community at large

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ok but why should anyone listen to you? there is no reason. and if there is no reason, then there is no point to you having that opinion/preference. also, you have no basis to defend yourself against said hitlers.

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Our moral beliefs are not arbitrary and not necessarily irrational

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they most certainly are if they aren't grounded in a transcendent moral anchor and this is EASILY demonstrated

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The concepts we assign to Gods plurally or the Christian God specifically are contradictory and nonsensical. Some are at best conceivable but if time has taught us anything it's that reality acts far differently than we conceive it to

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said no intelligent, clued up person ever.

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I provided examples where moral decision based on personal belief is superior to appealing to an authority

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no person is capable of doing such a thing. it's nonsense

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there are objective realities that determine why it is morally wrong for someone to kill and steal property that has evolved overtime through the progression of societies

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demonstrably false

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A society that allows unjustified murder and theft doesn't survive.

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"survival" of any such society is COMPLETELY irrelevant to the discussion at hand. absolutely tangential and obtuse. i'm willing to bet you can't explain why

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Did you not choose which religion and thus which set of morals to follow?

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the truth of morality has absolutely nothing to do with a popular vote. you are sorely mistaken on this topic. i'm not sure you're even capable of being rescued. you would have to divest yourself of basically everything you know on the topic

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the No True Scotsman fallacy

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first, foo's statement was correct. the basis for biblical morality has not changed one iota at any time. of course you will probably respond referring to the basis for ethics, not morality. second, the scotsman fallacy does not apply to this discussion. third, the scotsman fallacy is not always a fallacy. it can be used by lesser thinkers when they are unable to deal with a rebuttal. in this particular case, you seem to be in that category

and foo's point was a fortiori. it can be demonstrated that even the catholic conception of the basis for morality is the same as protestant, although they have an additional source for institutional religious heirarchy, which is not directly related to morality

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How do you know?

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how do you not know?

any person knows because it's truth, it's foundational. it's demonstrable, as is being shown itt by foo, et al

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morality is an extension of what preferential behaviors we want in a given culture or society

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totally false. that's ethics

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I don't look back historically and see Christianity faring any better at deterring the kind of human suffering occurring than some of its contemporaries

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this has nothing to do with the truth of or basis for morality. nothing whatsoever

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If it was our true objective moral compass Christian Nations should have been clearly superior to nations using different moral frameworks

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totally false. people being less than perfect has nothing to do with the basis for morality

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you can still have them without believing in God

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this is still false no matter how many times it gets repeated. apart from a moral law giver, no person has any right or authority to say a particular act/choice is moral or immoral. without god, everything is relative to the individual

it's a facile concept that has totally escaped people, probably because they have been miseducated on the subject.