Let’s review what you need in your worldview in order to have a rationally grounded system of morality.
You need 5 things:
1) Objective moral values
There needs to be a way to distinguish what is good from what is bad. For example, the moral standard might specify that being kind to children is good, but torturing them for fun is bad. If the standard is purely subjective, then people could believe anything and each person would be justified in doing right in their own eyes. Even a “social contract” is just based on people’s opinions. So we need a standard that applies regardless of what people’s individual and collective opinions are.
2) Objective moral duties
Moral duties (moral obligations) refer to the actions that are obligatory based on the moral values defined in 1). Suppose we spot you 1) as an atheist. Why are you obligated to do the good thing, rather than the bad thing? To whom is this obligation owed? Why is rational for you to limit your actions based upon this obligation when it is against your self-interest? Why let other people’s expectations decide what is good for you, especially if you can avoid the consequences of their disapproval?
3) Moral accountability
Suppose we spot you 1) and 2) as an atheist. What difference does it make to you if you just go ahead and disregard your moral obligations to whomever? Is there any reward or punishment for your choice to do right or do wrong? What’s in it for you?
4) Free will
In order for agents to make free moral choices, they must be able to act or abstain from acting by exercising their free will. If there is no free will, then moral choices are impossible. If there are no moral choices, then no one can be held responsible for anything they do. If there is no moral responsibility, then there can be no praise and blame. But then it becomes impossible to praise any action as good or evil.
5) Ultimate significance
Finally, beyond the concept of reward and punishment in 3), we can also ask the question “what does it matter?”. Suppose you do live a good life and you get a reward: 1000 chocolate sundaes. And when you’ve finished eating them, you die for real and that’s the end. In other words, the reward is satisfying, but not really meaningful, ultimately. It’s hard to see how moral actions can be meaningful, ultimately, unless their consequences last on into the future.
Theism rationally grounds all 5 of these. Atheism cannot ground any of them.
Let’s take a look at #4: free will and see how atheism deals with that.
Atheism and free will?
Here’s prominent atheist Jerry Coyne’s editorial in USA Today to explain why atheists can’t ground free will.
Excerpt:
And that’s what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. Recent experiments involving brain scans show that when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. (These studies use crude imaging techniques based on blood flow, and I suspect that future understanding of the brain will allow us to predict many of our decisions far earlier than seven seconds in advance.) “Decisions” made like that aren’t conscious ones. And if our choices are unconscious, with some determined well before the moment we think we’ve made them, then we don’t have free will in any meaningful sense.
If you don’t have free will, then you can’t make moral choices, and you can’t be held morally responsible. No free will means no morality.
Here are some more atheists to explain how atheists view morality.
William Provine says atheists have no free will, no moral accountability and no moral significance:
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear — and these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.
Richard Dawkins says atheists have no objective moral standards:
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference… DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music. (Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1995))
When village atheists talk about how they can be moral without God, it’s important to ask them to justify the minimum requirements for rational morality. Atheists may act inconsistently with their worldview, believing in free will, expecting praise and blame for complying with the arbitrary standards of their peer group, etc. But there is nothing more to morality on atheism that imitating the herd – at least when the herd is around to watch them. And when the herd loses its Judeo-Christian foundation – watch out. That’s when the real atheism comes out – the atheism that we’ve seen before in countries that turned their backs on God, and the moral law. When God disappears from a society, anything is permissible.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
And yet they can’t go three sentences without making moral claims . . . almost as if Romans 1 is completely true and they’ve suppressed the truth in unrighteousness.
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“when a subject “decides” to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity at least seven seconds before the subject is consciously aware of having made it”
If anything this would prove we are somewhere else remote controlling these bodies. The brain receives the command to do the thing 7 seconds before the full processing od the instruction is complete, is what he’s describing. So the self is somewhere else sending this instruction. But the avatar is so immersive we don’t realize we are not the body…or at least atheists don’t because they’re stupid.
Has this theory not been around forever? The extra-deminsional soul of Eastern philosophy? That the soul does not literally transmigrate into a body but controls it from somewhere else, attaches to a body rather than enters it. Or perhaps it enters it but out of phase so it occupies the same space but in a different demension. That is all this experiment could prove. It could never prove that we don’t have free will; that’s just stupid.
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I do not understand your reason for believing that moral accountability is a necessary element of rationally grounded system of morality. I’ve attempted to ‘steelman’ your position and offer an argument on your behalf. Here is what I came up with.
(1) One of the purposes of morality is to motivate people to fairly balance their interests against the interests of others.
(2) If there are no rewards and punishments, then a person’s self-interested reasons will not necessarily align with their moral reasons.
(3) If a person’s self-interested reasons will not necessarily align with their moral reasons, then it is possible for their self-interested reasons to outweigh their moral reasons.
(4) If it is possible for their self-interested reasons to outweigh their moral reasons, then people will not necessarily be motivated to fairly balance their interests against the interests of others.
(5) Therefore, rewards and punishments are a necessary element of a moral system.
Is this a fair reconstruction (or reverse engineering, not sure?) of your thinking? If not, am I even in the ballpark?
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This is good. But in my case, I wouldn’t classify my accountability with God as concerned with rewards and punishments.
I would say that when faced with a moral decision, I will often reject the decision that is best for me, and choose what is best for Boss. But I wouldn’t think about rewards and punishment. I would think about want to grow the relationship with Boss, by respecting Boss in my decision making.
For example, imagine that I was a teenager and very poor and an orphan, and I was looking for a job. And I applied to every job, but got no interviews. But then Dwight D. Eisenhower called and offered me a job running 8th Air Force in the UK during World War 2. When I told him that I didn’t have any experience, he said “we’ll train you”. And then I got trained and won the air war against Germany in WW2. You might think that I would like Dwight Eisenhower, and would frequently quote his speeches and writings, and apply his character in my decisions. And that’s what I do with Boss as well. It was such a meaningful thing to be chosen by God and grown into something strong and capable over these many years, that now I reference Boss’s character, words and priorities in my own decision-making.
In Christianity, Christians do not do anything to another person that would get in the way of that person building up their relationship with God. So, if there is a conflict with a person, we don’t do what feels good (get mad, try to overrule them), we instead try to treat them in a way that respects Boss and promotes Boss. We want them to be curious about Boss, because forming and building up a relationship with Boss is in their best interest. And that’s a difference that you see between Christians and cancel culture leftists. The relationship with Boss makes threatening or coercing other people unthinkable to us. We have to stick with self-sacrificial love and persuasion using evidence, like Boss did. We don’t think of rewards or punishments, we think of imitating Boss, because we have an ongoing relationship with Boss, and we want to build it up and add to it.
I hope that helps.
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I understand your entire reply; it makes sense to me. At the same time, it seems to me that what you have written in your reply is an altogether different concept of “accountability” than what you described in the body of your blog post. Your blog post talked about rewards and punishments. I just wanted to make sure I was tracking that part of your thinking correctly.
I get what you say about growing closer in relationship to God, and helping others to do the same.
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Another thought. It seems to me that your point about “moral accountability” is linked to your point about “free will.” In your description of free will, you state that free will requires moral responsibility. I don’t have an opinion on that, so I’ll assume you’re correct. But then when I compare what I learn from the point about moral accountability to what I learn from your point about free will (=moral responsibility), it seems like your point about free will doesn’t really add that much. In fact, it seems like the relationship, at least on your view, goes like this: moral accountability requires moral responsibility requires free will. Thoughts?
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