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As the article points out, absent absolute moral truths is a world where there is nothing wrong with gratuitously torturing children - where rape, torture, and murder are not wrong or evil. But only a sociopath would believe there is ‘nothing’ that is wrong or evil. Even the materialist appeals to a moral standard and morality implies how a human “ought” to behave.

Are you an atheist / materialist? - or just looking for logical fallacies…

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I’m agnostic. Of the type that says “I don’t know”, not the type that says “it cannot be known”.

I don’t agree with the statement that in a world where there are no transcendant values, there is nothing wrong with gratuitously torturing children.

Accepting that it’s OK to gratuitously torturing children would completely shatter any social strucure in place, and early man figured out that the protections a social structure provides is more than enough incentive to curb those behaviors which destroy social structures. Thereby, the good (as it relates to the society) are those things that hold society together, and the wrong would be those things that tear society apart. To wit: murder, adultery, stealing, and bearing false witness against others.