With Atheism, All is Permissible?
“Why is an Atheist appealing to Morality when all is permissible?” - Bowrudder, YouTube Video(1)
Since for the Atheist, morality is a human concept from human beings (not from a God or gods), the real question for us is (and has always been historically): What do humans consider permissible?
Observing the world, the assumption that humans, religious or otherwise, are inclined to permit everything is simply false and demonstrably so.
Moreover, for atheists who are also secular humanists, seeking to balance what we permit - and do not permit - to maximize human well-being and flourishing is the primary goal of things like morality and the law.
Given the context of our worldview, how would permitting things like murder and theft in society broadly serve that goal? It would achieve the opposite. Unsurprisingly, most people do not support permitting these and similar anti-social behaviors. And many secular reasons for not permitting them are easy to find - including simply the type of world we individually want to live in (e.g. Enlightened Self-Interest) and want those we care about to live in (empathy), if not for everyone's sake.
As the original video commentators suggested, this question is simply not well founded. Just because your theistic foundation for morality is absent (i.e. belief in a God) does not mean another rational for morality is not present within the other party's worldview (e.g. human self-interest, reason and empathy).
Taking a step back, this appears to be another example of a Theist projecting a broken or gutted version of their own worldview (everything built around God + Atheism:NO God at the center of it all = yikes!) onto to those who do not share their theistic worldview. The more informative approach is to understand how the other’s worldview may be built differently - even in a holistically secular way - from the ground up - rather than presuming to fill in the blanks around a single part of their worldviews (atheism) with what’s in one’s own worldview currently. To be fair, this is easier said than done - as we humans are often like fish in water who don't know they're wet or what wetness even means in the first place - for a lack of contrasting experience.
For many Atheists, like myself, that holistically secular worldview is Secular Humanism. It speaks to our values in a way that our atheism does not address and is incapable of informing someone else about. No amount of combining our atheism - which is merely what we think about one narrow question (do you believe in a God?) - with the theist's broader worldview (as above) will help them understand what life really looks like through our eyes.
References
- “Is Apostate Prophet better off as a Christian?” w/ Secular Rarity (YouTube Video)