I am a theist. I've been living with the view that atheism ultimately leads to nihilism, since there is no objective standard for ethics. However I have heard of an atheist ethical system that is not arbitrary. A system that is actually sound. It goes as follows:
If there is an objective standard for morality, or if there is an objective meaning to life, then that meaning has a higher probability of being discovered in a more technologically advanced society. So we ought to strive for societal progress. If there is a meaning then it will be easier found if we live in an advanced society. And if there is no meaning then it doesn't matter that we wasted our time.
Also another part of this is that it's okay to guess that the basic ethical standards we have (wrong to kill, steal, torture etc.) are probably close to what a potentially objective ethical standard may be.
I don't know why more atheists aren't adopting this ethical system. Most atheists seem to insist on using ethical systems that are arbitrary and subjective (which leads to nihilism) when this clearly superior option exists.
Do you see flaws? What do you think of this? Is it sound?
Some examples of this system in practice:
>Should we genocide le undesirable groups?
No. States that do that are often unsuccsesful and not progressive.
>Should we murder?
No. Killing someone takes away their potential to benefit humanity.
>Should we do forced human experiments?
Yes if necessary and efficient.
>Should we torture?
No. Because that is probably wrong in a hypothetical objective morality.
Extremely dogshit thread, please never post again.
anon thats a cat
Your closing remarks highlight that you already have some sort of inkling of what might be immoral. If these things aren't arbitrary, then I don't see why you would generalize all extant atheist models of morality as arbitrary. For instance, I don't see why an atheist neokantian should abandon his position and decide to focus on speedrunning the tech tree hoping that a better model of morality will present itself.
The moral inklings are arbitrary of course. But it's fine to guess, as long as it doesn't contradict objective morality (in this case progress). However the assertion that objective morality is easier discovered in a more technologically advanced and progressive society is not completely arbitrary.
Utilitarianists assert that they have figured out objective morality, namely utilitarianism. I agree that utilitarianism leads to nihilism. However in this system objective morality has not been discovered yet. We just need to increase the chances of finding it.
>100% disagree
Why?
>As it does their potential to harm it.
Most people contribute more to humanity than harm it. If someone is a serious harm to humanity and progress then they should be killed.
>French movie
This is atheist morality we are talking about. The existence of souls hasn't been proven, so it's pretty stupid to conduct experiments based on it. Furthermore it is questionable whether the french womans methods are the most efficient. MAYBE if all scientific and empirical and philosophical methods are exhausted then it is permissible to conduct experiments like these.
USSR is not le progressive. They ban freedom of speech and suppress academia. In this model freedom of speech increases the chance of the objective moral system to be found. Also 5-year plans are not the most efficient way. It would have been better if they had been enlightened by capitalist liberalism (according to this model).
Morality is objective in a theistic framework because it is not just the preference of God. But rather that objective moral good and God are the same thing.
>>100% disagree
>Why?
Neither history nor anthropology suggests that technology gives such answers. The more technological we get, the less we are generally able to understand what is humanity and what is meaning in general. Meaning of human life? Forget it. A 300BC shepherd had a more human experience and more profound understanding of life than any average internet user today.
>Most people contribute more to humanity
Says who? Most people are tagging along whatever social inertia there happens to be.
>it's pretty stupid to conduct experiments based on [soul]
But permissible under OP ethics. Which is an obvious flaw, since the system should quite obviously not conclude that torturing someone to death is morally permissible.
It would be immoral to do these experiments since the soul doesn't exist. There is no scientific or philosophical proof for it. If it did exist then these kinds of experiments would be okay if they are necessary and efficient.
The current 'objective morality' is to increase the chance of finding true objective morality. If not torturing is actually immoral. Then yes we did make a mistake by not torturing everyone. But in the future when we would know what objective morality is we could act on it perfectly.
>claims credit for the creation of evil
Post verse
>Post verse
Isaiah 45:7
"I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things."
Many translations change 'evil' to 'calamity' or something along those lines, but the Hebrew word is רָ֑ע (rā‘) which gets translated as 'evil' or 'wickedness' in pretty much every other context, except the one where doing so would cast a bad light on YHWH's character.
https://biblehub.com/hebrew/ra_7451.htm
https://biblia.com/bible/esv/isaiah/45/7
>The current 'objective morality' is to increase the chance of finding true objective morality. If not torturing is actually immoral. Then yes we did make a mistake by not torturing everyone. But in the future when we would know what objective morality is we could act on it perfectly.
Then the following:
we torture?
>No. Because that is probably wrong in a hypothetical objective morality.
is just bullshit.
yeah I guess the original explanation for the immorality of torture was shit. But you could argue that torture is an activity that decreases the chances of finding truth. It retards and traumatizes the victim and creates an unwholesome society.
>It would be immoral to do these experiments since the soul doesn't exist.
So I take it you're not OP, who clarified right away to be a theist.
Anyway, just like with men being women, where there is will, there is way. Any amount of research can be fabricated about the souls and if the culture wills it, replication crisis won't stop it.
If your ethics system is one study away from torturing an unlimited amount of people to death, it's a bad system.
I am actually OP. I am just saying the views of those who hold this position. Of course I believe a soul exists.
Males being females is biologically objectively empirically false. However the idea that you can change your gender is not necessarily. Gender according to leftists is not defined by sex. But rather culture, attitudes, hormones and maybe even body parts. All of which can be changed.
>Define "progress".
No
"progress".
>No
Yeah I didn't think you could define that. There goes your entire philosophy, since it all hinges on how you define "progress". Hint: Most normal people don't define progress as state mandated depopulation.
>The moral inklings are arbitrary of course. But it's fine to guess, as long as it doesn't contradict objective morality (in this case progress).
How do you know whether those things contradict objective morality or not? If the inklings are completely arbitrary, it might as well be true that it's objectively immoral not to torture.
>But rather that objective moral good and God are the same thing.
"X is good because god says so" and "X is good because god says so and god is goodness itself" are the exact same claim. You're merely shifting definitions by claiming "good = godly", which makes the whole thing meaningless. It's still a circular argument in the exact same way, with additional unfalsifiable supernatural claims thrown into the mix. You really ought to find better apologists than fucking Frank Turek, though admittedly they're all low hanging fruits.
Besides like I said, the god in the canon Abrahamic mythology is a hypocrite who constantly breaks its own rules, lies and deceives by its own admission or lies through proxy, and explicitly claims credit for the creation of evil (a point which gets downplayed in many theologically motivated translations). If going by the law of non-contradiction it means that god can not be "goodness itself". Overall that whole idea is a modern piss poor attempt at word games to escape a blatantly circular objective morality argument.
anon, that's just utilitarianism or pragmatism, just another step closer to nihilism.
> that meaning has a higher probability of being discovered in a more technologically advanced society
100% disagree.
we murder?
>No. Killing someone takes away their potential to benefit humanity.
As it does their potential to harm it. But your goalpost wasn't general benefit. Your goalpost was discovering the meaning of life. In a french movie I don't recall there is a woman that tortures people to death in hopes of capturing the precise moment when the soul is in between this world and the next. She manages and finds out the meaning of life, which is never revealed to the audience. Based on the axiom of "discovering meaning", this is permissible.
This is a solved problem and has been for millennia, but the problem is not that atheists don't like the premises or the argument, it's that they don't like the results (age of consent laws are still justified)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_law
>unsuccessful
The Soviets did intentional famines in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, then won WW2. All this in the midst of rapid industrialization, making Russia from a third-world country into a superpower.
Ever heard of the Morioris? No? Well, a Maori tribe killed them all and they(the Maoris, particularly the two tries that did it) seem to be doing fine.
Anyway I could go on, this really isn't a good argument as for why genocide isn't justifiable, and yet most atheists would agree with us that genocide isn't justifiable.
>I am a theist. I've been living with the view that atheism ultimately leads to nihilism, since there is no objective standard for ethics.
There is no objective standard for for ethics in theism either. What it ultimately boils down to is the subjective standards of a singular god whose morality can't be justified as "objective" in a non-circular fashion, who in case of Abrahamic faiths constantly breaks his own rules by killing boatloads of innocents, or commands / permits his followers to commit various atrocities (that'd even theists would nowadays consider heinous) on his behalf. Many theists nowadays of course defend that by claiming something along the lines of their god being a cultural relativist.
But all of that's a moot point anyways, since Abrahamic theists can't even prove their god event exists in the first place: what the basis of their morality boils down to is the subjective opinions of primitive israelites that wrote said holy texts, who I as an atheist don't consider the source of some type of objective morality. Furthermore, morality itself can not be defined as "objective" in any meaningful way, since the existence of morality and ethics is predicated on the existence of moral subjects who either like or dislike certain acts. When it comes to morality, people can only designate things as "objectively" right or wrong if they agree on a common goal such as human flourishing, however the goal itself is ultimately subjective no matter if it's proposed by a human or a hypothetical deity.
F.ex. your suggestion:
>If there is an objective standard for morality, or if there is an objective meaning to life, then that meaning has a higher probability of being discovered in a more technologically advanced society.
is a subjective goal, though one that many people might agree with. However the fact that many people agree on something - in this case a thing that isn't an objective feature of reality - doesn't automatically make it objective.
There’s no objective source of morality. Humans have a generally pro-social instinct and emotions while some people lack that due to mental problems or conditions like autism.
Usually young men are the worst and most anti-social, with this website being known for mentally ill and anti-social young men.
It is zero surprise that morality is seen as an enigma and a difficult problem here. Your average good person knows next to nothing about moral philosophy and yet they do good things and refrain from bad because they are pushed that way by their functioning social emotions.
I disagree.
I don't think technological progress alone makes us better ethical agents.
For example, the idea of a cyberpunk society is more advanced than in our current society, but it does not breed more ethical people.
Rather, what should progress is politics.
By progressing down this path could we achieve a more idilic society which could technologically advance into a solar punk utopia.
Well, I mean cyberpunk doesn't exist, yet. But, notice how dystopian the setting is.
Now contrast that with solar punk. A beautiful world that's lush and vibrant
Seems like a dubious, unfalsifiable cope to assume that this hypothetical objective morality would correspond to our current one, the belief in such a discovery is tantamount to a religious belief, one could just as easily say that murder could be allowed by this future morality, people would just keep on saying that it will be discovered "some time in the future" and how would we even know when we did?...and wouldn't such an idea justify a society whose sole purpose would be to discover this morality, a technocratic, totalitarian, centrally planned, eugenic state that would put all resources towards this goal? Atheistic world morality is impossible
That's a textbook definition of Abrahamic theistic morality, though? Or at the very least they all apply to same way to both ideas.
>Seems like a dubious, unfalsifiable cope to assume that this hypothetical objective morality would correspond to our current one
Indeed, and theistic morality has changed over the ages both in the written canon and official church doctrine.
>the belief in such a discovery is tantamount to a religious belief,
Goes without saying.
>one could just as easily say that murder could be allowed by this future morality,
Sometimes explicitly commanded or permitted by the infallible leader (god), among other numerous atrocities.
>people would just keep on saying that it will be discovered "some time in the future" and how would we even know when we did?
Different denominations and individuals who all claim they have the correct interpretation, or the slightly more humble ones who claim god works in mysterious ways and his word is obtuse on purpose - we just have to learn the right interpretation. Without any falsification criteria.
>...and wouldn't such an idea justify a society whose sole purpose would be to discover this morality, a technocratic, totalitarian, centrally planned, eugenic state that would put all resources towards this goal?
Theocracies in a nutshell, aside from maybe technocrat since many theists tend to be quite divorced from objective reality.
What does Abrahamic morality have to do with it? I neither mentioned it or believe in it.
Didn't mean to insinuate that you did, I merely meant that as a response to
>Atheistic world morality is impossible
by pointing out that the exact same faults apply to both OP's suggestion and theistic morality (at least the most common variations), if not more so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem
Fallacy fallacy, plus you don't seem to even know what some of those word mean, considering you're trotting out ad hominem for some reason. And you can't actually respond to any of the shortcomings I mentioned that apply to both OP and general theistic worldviews.
>considering you're trotting out ad hominem for some reason
Tu quoque is a form of ad hominem. You would know that if you even glanced at the article.
>a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument
>The (fallacious) tu quoque argument follows the template (i.e. pattern):
>Person A claims that statement X is true.
>Person B asserts that A's actions or past claims are inconsistent with the truth of claim X.
>Therefore, X is false.
Am I free to presume you're having difficulties with reading comprehension?
Here you go, retard.
Yes? Read the whole article and examples, don't just quote mine the parts you like. How was anything in my post attacking the anon's personal behavior or actions as being inconsistent with his argument? As for general ad hominem definition, how was I attacking the character, motive, or some other attribute of the anon making the argument rather than attacking the substance of the argument itself? I even clarified my position by saying that the same issues he raised equally apply to both theistic and OP's proposed atheistic morality, rather than claiming his criticism of OP's propositions were false.
Learn how to read.
I guess I should stop giving you the benefit of the doubt and just assume you're actually retarded. I understand you're very angry right now because you feel like your dearly held worldviews are under attack, but I'd suggest to consider some personal soul searching for why you're responding with insults and trying to bring up fallacies that don't apply, rather than actually attempting to form a coherent argument against mine.
>I understand you're very angry right now because you feel like your dearly held worldviews are under attack, but I'd suggest to consider some personal soul searching for why you're responding with insults and trying to bring up fallacies that don't apply, rather than actually attempting to form a coherent argument against mine.
I didn't even read your post.
Yes, I can see that.
I would say that if there were a god, that is, if theism were true, then there would be an objective morality. That is not to say, however, that religions which have theism as a premise possess this objective morality. A religion that merely has the statement "A God exists" would not be a religion at all, most religions exist beyond this simple premise. It remains however that in a world with no god, morality is a fiction.
>and wouldn't such an idea justify a society whose sole purpose would be to discover this morality
Kinda. Maybe.
>totalitarian, centrally planned, eugenic state
Totalitarianism reduces the chances of finding the truth since it reduces free expression. Central planning doesn't work. Free market capitalism is clearly superior. Eugenics is problematic since we don't know what kind of humans are actually the most optimal. And also diversity (of human experience, opinion, and genes) increases the chances of discovering truth.
Also, this goal of discovering morality would simply become another issue for humans to squabble over. Instead of fighting over "what is moral?", they will fight over the question "what is the best way to discover morality?". Given that there isn't really any clear path to discovering this hypothetical morality, innumerable completing methods would appear, probably along existing national, political, religious, ideological lines. This all assumes, if course, the existence of morality and the possibility of its discovery. And if this assumption were untrue or flawed, the whole thing would be a massive, unending folly.
>progress
Define "progress".
Morality is disobedience to YHVH
>If there is an objective standard for morality, or if there is an objective meaning to life, then that meaning has a higher probability of being discovered in a more technologically advanced society
I don't understand what technological advancement has to do with ethics. Morality and religious ideas are about exploring the nature of sophisticated computations/minds, and their relation to ethical orders, and their relation to each other, and the visions that come from meditation. These have as much to do with technological advancement as interpretive dance does.
In any case, the idea is wrong because absolute ethics is produced by a process of approximation and construction, like naming higher ordinals. It's something that gets realized at a hypothetical point in the "far future", but it's not like you ever get to that point, you can only approach that point.
The christian conception of absolute morality works just fine, and atheists should get on board. The way it works is that when you act you should act as if there was an all-knowing entity who knows what everyone wants and knows everything about everything, and that this entity then tells you what to do. You can call this God or absolute ethics, it's the same abstract thing. Now because the only way to have any clue of what this entity wants is to painstakingly reconstruct what the best behavior is in collectives, you need to look at history, and experience, and you need to summarize this thinking in texts. The religious texts just do the best job they could do at the time, given the political constraints around them.
What happens then is over time you end up with a better and better local approximation on earth of the absolute ethics/God, and this is what christians call "the body of christ". Every human is also embued with a circuit in their brain that approximates this body-of-christ thing as best it can, and the circuit informs your conscience, and this dynamic is called "the holy spirit".
>The way it works is that when you act you should act as if there was an all-knowing entity who knows what everyone wants and knows everything about everything, and that this entity then tells you what to do.
First the whole concept is unfalsifiable, second the proposed god often endorses or permits various heinous acts according to official canon, making it a very poor arbiter of morality by any modern standard, mine and (hopefully) yours. Third, the only way we can "know" what a deity wants is through the claims of ancient theists, and the subjective interpretations of modern theists, rather than from the mouth of a god.
>You can call this God or absolute ethics, it's the same abstract thing
They're not. One is a willing agent - a supernatural genie, a subject that dislikes certain things - other is a concept. Trying to shift definitions is one of worst apologist tactics.
>Now because the only way to have any clue of what this entity wants is to painstakingly reconstruct what the best behavior is in collectives, you need to look at history, and experience, and you need to summarize this thinking in texts. The religious texts just do the best job they could do at the time, given the political constraints around them.
Which is why one should maybe use some of the things they did correctly as a reference (do not kill, do not steal etc.), while discarding all the arbitrary and harmful parts (picking up sticks on Sundays, slavery, rape is a property crime, little girls as war loot, executing children, absolving criminals if they say they're really really sorry, boiling a goat in its mother's milk, hating specific people groups over actions that don't affect you or the people around them in the slightest, thinking people ought to be tortured forever over thought crimes).
>Every human is also embued with a circuit in their brain
This just originates from evolution. Humans are social creatures with empathy, thus they tend to like laws that promote it.
>First the whole concept is unfalsifiable
What is? It's a fucking abstract computer program, dude, the concept is every bit as falsifiable as the number pi.
>second the proposed god often endorses or permits various heinous acts according to official canon
No, the proposed God I outlined hasn't endorsed anything like that. Don't conflate what I'm referring to with any established monotheistic doctrine, I am not happy with the current models.
>They're not. One is a willing agent - a supernatural genie, a subject that dislikes certain things - other is a concept.
The number pi is a conceptual number, and it manifests in the real world from algorithm which computes its digits. Your mind is an enormous conceptual computer program which manifests itself through the collective activity of neurons in your brain. Are you not a willing agent? In the same way, Gods in real life are these conceptual programs things that manifest through collectives of people. They are these huge computational entities that exert themselves on the world via collective agency. They exist in plato's realm, the realm of all software, but so do you, but in the same way the collective activity of neurons gives you physical form, so too does the collective activity of humans give form to the gods.
>Trying to shift definitions is one of worst apologist tactics.
Plato identified the abstract realm of computational programs, but it took until the 20th century to come up with a framework to nail down what this realm was precisely. In the same way, some religious people identified some subtle property of collectives, and I'm using a modern framework to tell you precisely what they're talking about. That's all that's happening here.
>What is?
The all-knowing, all-powerful entity you proposed. It's an argument from consequences at best, ones that can not be demonstrated.
>No, the proposed God I outlined hasn't endorsed anything like that.
Then you admit you're falling into point number three: your subjective claims and feelings on the matter of what a deity wants, rather than the Bible or other holy texts and decrees from different denominations and religions. You can neither demonstrate that god nor its desires.
>In the same way, Gods in real life are these conceptual programs things that manifest through collectives of people. They are these huge computational entities that exert themselves on the world via collective agency. They exist in plato's realm, the realm of all software, but so do you, but in the same way the collective activity of neurons gives you physical form, so too does the collective activity of humans give form to the gods.
You're diluting the definition of god / deity to the point it becomes meaningless. Why even call what you're trying to demonstrate a "god", if not as an apologetic tactic to try rope an atheist into accepting the existence of social contracts and then conflating that concession with a belief in god?
Am I actually arguing with Jordan Peterson right now?
>The all-knowing, all-powerful entity you proposed.
You're just making shit up dude. I never said all powerful, I said "all knowing". It's all knowing the same way the Church-Klein ordinal is "all knowing".
>It's an argument from consequences at best, ones that can not be demonstrated.
It CAN be demonstrated, I defined it here:
The concept I gave is like any other abstract concept, such as the software on your brain. It is well-defined, it's as real as the number pi.
>Then you admit you're falling into point number three: your subjective claims and feelings on the matter of what a deity wants, rather than the Bible or other holy texts and decrees from different denominations and religions.
Huh? I told you I'm not using the bible or any established doctrine. I can't even make sense of what you said here.
>You can neither demonstrate that god nor its desires.
What do you mean--- in the same way an individual neuron in your brain cannot demonstrate that your mind exists, or its desires? The gods form from collectives of people, I have defined them precisely, do you seriously deny that these collective entities exist?
>You're diluting the definition of god / deity to the point it becomes meaningless.
Logical positivism is what defines meaningful statements. This conception is fine within logical positivism, since it makes testable predictions on collectives of people.
>Am I actually arguing with Jordan Peterson right now?
No. I hate that guy.
>I never said all powerful, I said "all knowing".
Sorry, I seem to have attached that part subconsciously because that's the exact argument Peterson makes, i.e. "atheists act / ought to act as if a god exists", before proceeding to dilute the concept of god so far it becomes nonsense and completely removed from its original meaning. While I agree with some of your points, I think defining things you're trying to say as "god" is silly, and comes with plenty of established cultural package that unnecessarily obscures rather than elucidates the point you're trying to get across.
Well, I would give it a new name: the transcendent superrational strategy generating consistent all-knowing algorithm for game-play, but the religious folks already call something nearly identical by the name "God", and it is stealing credit from them to deny that their conception, minus the supernatural bits (which they don't take too seriously anyway, at least not as adults), is nearly exactly the same, up to a choice of philosophical gauge. The equivalence is in the sense of logical positivism, and the conceptions are equivalent in the sense of logical positivism, so I can't say the religious folks are wrong, just that they are stating it in the most obtuse and scientifically unfriendly way one could do it.
>that's the exact argument Peterson makes, i.e. "atheists act / ought to act as if a god exists"
Well, knowing him he probably means something entirely different and stupid, but I don't really care. I'm not really saying pretend this thing exists, because the notion of exist I'm using here is the same as the answer to the question "does pi exist" or "does microsoft windows exist". But on the off chance that he is talking about a similar thing, please do not attribute or conflate the idea with him. He probably didn't come up with it and he probably doesn't understand it.
>Why even call what you're trying to demonstrate a "god", if not as an apologetic tactic to try rope an atheist into accepting the existence of social contracts and then conflating that concession with a belief in god?
The appropriate super-entity defined in this way is, excluding miracles, meddling, and universe-creation, identical in the logical positivistic sense to the God that religious people identify.
>Which is why one should maybe use some of the things they did correctly as a reference...
Yeah that's what I said.
>This just originates from evolution. Humans are social creatures with empathy, thus they tend to like laws that promote it.
We are not in disagreement here, idiot. Listen to what I'm saying. I'm literally referring to an evolutionary process of collective ethics, which are gradually approximating but never reaching an absolute ethics.
The basic premise is that all individual intelligence is tied together into large networks with greater intelligence, through shared literature and communications, making an internet of brains in the world. This internet has its own ideas, separate from those held by individuals but composed of these, the same way a brain is made up of neurons.
This allows you to identify gods as collective agents, and then the notion of an omniscient God is just a limiting conception, of the agents grouping together to make larger and larger agents and so on. This conception is fine within logical positivism, since it makes testable predictions on collectives of people. It is ultimately the same thing the monotheistic religions of old are talking about, but they didn't have the framework to understand it. Like I said with the plato example, it's analogous to him not knowing precisely what a computer is, but still identifying the realm of abstract computer programs we now call "plato's realm".
Objective morality only exists as a group biological evolution within peoples. Different peoples have WILDLY differing conceptions of morality, simply because their brains are literally wired differently. To assume an objective morality for all bipedal apes is both insane and extremely gullible. I can confidently say that there are better moral codes than others, but that is also from my subjective viewpoint of belonging to a group which placed a premium on honorable and moral behavior through history. Certain groups like Chinese have never had this selection pressure, and indeed had the exact opposite. To save a countryman in need makes you vulnerable so it is best to let him drown as you continue about your tasks unperturbed. To them, there is no problem with this. It is simply how they were bred for thousands of years.
To assume everyone is capable of agreeing - or even conceptualizing - your "objective morality" is exactly why there is so much disorder in the world today.
I don't consider myself atheist because it would depend on the definition of God, but:
For me the meaning of life is the pursuit of happiness without taking the happiness from others and helping others to have happiness. Happiness would be the basic biological, psychological, social etc needs.
Morality comes from this.
>For me the meaning of life is the pursuit of happiness without taking the happiness from others and helping others to have happiness. Happiness would be the basic biological, psychological, social etc needs. Morality comes from this.
This is what I generally think as an atheist. Human flourishing is a goal that theists and atheists alike can usually agree with, so I try to live my life promoting both my and others' well-being and personal freedoms, as long as they don't violate others. However, we don't live in an utopia, so concessions are a given, and how such as society could be realized in practice for all humanity is obviously out of my scope of knowledge. And the goal itself is of course, ultimately subjective.
However from my point of view, the exact same main issue of *subjectivity* applies to theists as well, albeit with numerous extra steps: theists have subjectively concluded that a god exists (from various different religions and denominations), subjectively interpret its wants, either through their own or other people's lens, and try to adhere to said god character's rules that are based on its subjective desires of how the world ought to work. Biggest issue I see with this as an atheist is that said interpretations tend to include various arbitrary or outright harmful rules and commands, which theists are still forced to adhere to because there's a hypothetical, unproven consequence if one doesn't. Assuming one agrees with the goal of human flourishing, why not just cut all the middlemen and actually try to think for oneself whether one's actions actually help promote it?
Religion is nihilistic to me I see little positivity in spending eternity lifting up some petty semite daimons balls.
All moral systems, including religious ones, are arbitrary. Hence why they change over time and are based on enforcement and cultural inculcation. Unless God is appearing to you every second of everyday and openly telling you what to do, and you DO that thing, then your moral system is arbitrary or at best, practical.