And? The point is that you really cannot derive "objective" morality from any worldview. Some claim otherwise, but those claims never seem to stand up to serious scrutiny.
If the random collection of atoms called Dawkins says that religious instruction is child abuse and some other random collection of atoms called Diamond says it is not, so what?
It matters because we have to live with the consequences either way, obviously. I'm sure that if it turned out that morality wasn't handed to us by some external third party, some might waste away from despair, but I suspect that most might turn out to be a bit hardier.
My initial response to the assertion that "objective" morality cannot be derived from any worldview is, how do you know that for certain? Have you looked everywhere? How can a finite human being possibly have enough knowledge to assert with any certainty a universal negative?
Before you answer that, my second response is, if morality is not objective it is subjective. I have merely been pointing out the impossibility of the atheist alternative to give an account for any morality at all worthy of the name. r9etb said it very well:
If we accept this as true, and if we deny the existence of any supernatural or irrational basis for moral principles, it follows either that there is no such thing as morality, or that morality must have a scientific basis.Your reply to the logical implications was instructive to me in that while denying the logical implication, you tacitly acknowledge the existence of the objective rules:
No, it really doesn't follow at all. If morality isn't handed to us on a silver platter, all that really follows is that we're responsible for rolling our own.Responsibility denotes some sort of moral obligation or incumbency, but this is what I mean when I say that atheism cannot give a coherent account of morality; you cannot account for the existence of morality simply by positing a prior moral rule because to do so is to simply assume the very thing in question.
r9etb is also correct to point out that if you deny the existence of objective morality then then you have no legitimate complaints about anything at all, which is a very difficult philosophy to actually put into practice, as Dawkins so incoherently demonstrates. Whenever there is an objection to something, there is an assumption of some standard that the thing violates. So when some non-Christian like Dawkins objects to the Christian faith he assumes some standard that Christianity violates. In order to do so, though, since he cannot justify the standard from an atheistic worldview, and (I would argue) since he actually lives in God's world, and is made in God's image, he cannot help but use unacknowledged Christian presuppositions such as the existence of objective morality in his attacks on Christianity. Anytime Dawkins or anyone else makes a moral judgment they are tacitly assuming the existence of objective standards and thereby of God's existence as the authoritative source of those standards.
What those standards are, how they are known and what difficulties arise therefrom are related, important and vexing questions, but I think the fact that this unacknowledged presupposition has been pervasive throughout this discussion is the evidence, or the proof, if you will, that is already evident to you.
Cordially,