That doesn't mean it's immutable, only that reasonable, rational people can make determinations on these sorts of things.
2. Never claimed they were unchangeable.
What would really be helpful, is if you could explain how celestial fiat helps morality. What does it add?
That doesn't mean it's immutable, only that reasonable, rational people can make determinations on these sorts of things.
Please note that in my first response to you I noted that your belief in argumentation itself assumes, without justification, that there are prescriptive, abstract, universal, unchanging laws of logic and reason. I wasn't referring specifically to laws of morality, but those can certainly be included along with logic and reason as unjustified and unaccounted for in an atheistic worldview.
If I may parenthetically answer your assertions about morality, I have read all of your posts in this thread up to this point, and it seems that in #212 and #223 you offer as a justification or account of morality a utilitarian description of morality as a system for homo sapiens to live with each other, in which it is obligatory that people seek to minimize or eliminate pain and suffering as much as possible.
One criticism that could be leveled at this description of morality is that announcing a utilitarian standard of morality concerning the well being of sentient beings doesn't justify it. If simply announcing a standard justifies it then the Taliban can stipulate their own standards just as you have. Fair is fair. If you are free to stipulate your own moral standard then I am free to stipulate a different one. For example, I could include other mammals, which you exclude.
When you point out that societies based on rape, murder, torture, and slavery do not last and eventually fail, as do those who base their lives on such, the deeper problem is that evolutionary assessments of moral behavior are only descriptive of past conduct. If I ask, why should I not be selfish and you reply that when I am selfish I hurt society and I reply, why should I care about society and you point out that societies based on rape, murder, torture, and slavery do not last and eventually fail, I can ask, so what? Why should I care about societies failing? If you reply that I ought to care about societies failing then you are simply presuming some prior moral notion that I ought to care about societies failing, which is not to account for moral incumbency, but to assume the very thing in question.
The preceding is parenthetical. What I want to know is, how you can have ANY kind of abstract "laws" at all in an atheistic system, i.e., a naturalistic, materialistic, ever-changing and contingent universe governed by chance. When you say, "that doesn't mean it's (morality) immutable, only that reasonable, rational people can make determinations on these sorts of things" you are also assuming prescriptive laws of logic and rationality. So, my question is, do you mean that the "laws" of morality, as well as the "laws" of reason and rationality are subject to change? Are they universal or are they conventional?
Cordially,