[Greg F]

I think the basis for morality is every person's feeling about how they individually should be treated. Everyone believes he or she ought to be treated well. Then rationally we know that no person is inherently more valuable than another, so by extent we should treat others as we would like to be treated. I do not want others to steal from me and I am no more special than any other human, so I should also not want others to be victims of theft. That is the rational basis.

Think it through in light of a person who would rather have what he can steal from you than subscribe to your notion of morality. You have no way to rationally persuade him he shouldn't . . . rational moral restraint without God is a gamble: it is probability of being caught * harshness of punishment if caught > benefit of committing the crime. Throw in your view of a sense of guilt being biologically determined and you get: probability of being caught * harshness of punishment if caught + discomfort of guilty feelings from committing the crime > benefit of committing the crime. It is not a rational basis for morality . . . it is a calculation of cost benefit with no moral component at all.

[ahayes]

You have no way to persuade someone who disagrees with you that he should not steal because God says it's bad. The same cost/benefit analysis applies to every person with every belief system.

My ability or inability to talk someone out of robbing me is irrelevant to whether my concept of morality is rational. A person who steals is making the baseless claim by his actions that he is inherently more valuable than others. If I present you with two E. coli, can you say which is better and more deserving of life? Which house mouse has more inherent value? In the same way, there is no rational basis for claiming one person is "better" than another--it's a meaningless claim. So the thief would be acting irrationally.