I think the kind of people you were talking about in the OP are those who think there is an atheist morality. Usually of the law of the jungle type. Recognizing the reality of atheist moralities is a lot more nuanced than these people get.
Which is why I opened this thread.
I would say that certain things indicate good concience no matter what the “herd” customs are - and that fact alone makes me think there is, indeed, some sort of objective morality after all.
The basis of these things is some effort or form of the ethic of reciprocity - boiled down, the notion that others besides oneself have moral meaning.
At base, the slaveowners (to use your example) were picking and choosing elements of their own cultural beliefs that, in effect, supported their own self-interest - that is, were contrary to the notion that their slaves had moral meaning; in contrast, abolitionists picked up the elements of their culture that supported the ethic of reciprocity - that invested slaves as having moral meaning. As in, “am I not a man and a brother?”.
Conscience tends to guide the choice of what aspects of already-existing culture to emphasize - do others have moral meaning or are you just justifying self-interest without regard to others? That’s where the choice of conscience comes in.
I want to point you back to post 3 in the thread, in which a smart, thoughtful, and devilishly handsome poster already addressed this point. How do you respond to that bad boy’s post?
OK… but I get the sense that “good people” are inherently good. They just seem to have the inner constitution to want to do right, to want to think of others. Good people come from all kinds of backgrounds. Conversely, “bad people”, selfish people, abusive people, authoritarian people, they seem to just be that way as well. It is easy to think people who had bad circumstances can end up being bad people but people from good circumstances also wind up being bad. So… for lack of a better example, do you think part of morality is genetic?
I don’t see how Natural Law/the acknowledgment of a higher power changes this in any way.
I don’t think that people have typically a well thought of moral system. Most atheists IMO don’t refer to some philosophy of life, and most believers don’t pay close attention to the real moral teachings of their religion. Both derive their morals from what they have been taught, from society’s values, from their feelings of empathy, etc…and there’s no guarantee of consistency. People rely on their feelings more than on their intellect for deciding what’s acceptable and what isn’t.
I’m not sure what you mean by “faith based”, exactly. There’s no “faith” involved for an atheist, obviously, but even the most thought of moral system is going to be based on some pretty arbitrary “axioms”.
I think language is the problem here. The basic idea, seems to me, that we need something to unify us in accordance to that people have so many of their own goals and agendas that SOME type of unification is necessary and helpful.
If so, I still don’t see how a Creator helps. The same could be achieved with an atheist system.
Oh, yes, we are quite in agreement about that as well as, I think, the person up thread that put across this idea we are now discussing…
We know there are sociopaths who are born that way and don’t get standard morals, so there can also be goodiopaths. ™. Some moral principles had survival value long enough ago for us to have them as part of our genome.
LOL 
But I guess I am referring more to day to day interactions or to people in general. I think a lot of it is genetic. Sensitivity & Empathy are largely innate/genetic, are they not?
That that boy went too far into religion. I agree that if you go that far you have problems and will end up with competing Gods and competing sets of beliefs.
Ok, i admit I didn’t read the whole thread but a text search on animals didn’t show anything so here goes:
Animals clearly have “moral systems”. It varies wildly from species to species but the more social the animal the more it tends towards kindness to your herd mates. So unless you posit that Bonobos are religious, clearly a morality is a nonreligious aspect of creatures.
I’m not sure I follow you. The objection is not predicated on any particular religion; it really discusses nothing more than the idea of a higher power.
You said,
My point is that a “higher order” does nothing to tell us what’s right or what’s wrong. If you just equate “matches the higher order” with good, you’ve lost the relevant definition of “good,” replacing it with “natural” or “godly” or whatever your higher order is. If you suggest that the higher order is apparently good, we just push back the question: on what basis are you declaring that the higher order is good?
If we don’t have an objective morality without introducing a higher power/order, the introduction of one doesn’t help.
I think it’s very difficult to separate the moral sense, which seems built in to me, and ethics. In this thread, people talk about axioms which form the basis of our ethical systems. Those axioms may come from the moral sense.
I was struck by those thought experiments where people had to save or not save an out of control train. They were mostly OK with pushing a button that would make the train go on a different track where it would kill someone, but save everyone on the train, and mostly not OK with pushing someone onto the track to save everyone on the train. Where did that decision come from?
Rand had an intense dislike for any man with facial hair.
“Faith” is simply belief not based on reason. There’s nothing in atheism that rules out faith, only faith in a god.
Sophisticated ethical systems that do not depend on religious faith or deference to any authority have been around since long before Christianity. The earliest surviving worked-out systems are to be found in the works of Plato and Aristotle. Since that time, many other philosophers have developed ethical systems that are not based upon religion, and indeed, it has generally been recognized, even by philosophers who were themselves religious believers (such as, notably Immanuel Kant) that it is a serious moral and theological mistake to make one’s morality fundamentally dependent on one’s religion.
Unfortunately, however, the fundamentals of ethics are a conceptually difficult and complex matter. I do not think that there is any short answer to the OP’s question except to encourage the people in question to study, and perhaps take an introductory course in, moral philosophy. If they want to take their course from a Christian (or otherwise religious) teacher (which might help them with trust issues), that will not matter, because Christians with a grounding in moral philosophy are, in fact, usually quite well aware that morality does not, and should not (indeed, for religious reasons, amongst others, should not), depend on religious faith.
To the extent moral claims lack objective truth value and are resistant to empirical inquiry one could say all morality is faith based. That’s a wee bit flippant though.
I never understood why the existence of God would create objective morality. That would just make him another guy with an opinion. He has lots of strange views I don’t particularly care for. His monopoly on celestial violence may compel people to act as he wishes but that doesn’t inject truth value. You could give an objective description of how it works, like if you cheat on your wife you go to hell, but you could also do the same by looking at community standards and break down everyone’s moral views, or cite a law and say that the police will punish you for X and Y.
These two axioms are in direct conflict. Thus, antinatalism. Or, in your case, the maximum positive morality state is keeping a single person in stasis.
Der Trihs, and, I believe, others, noted that some of our (human) concept of “good” is instinctively based. But…it’s worth your pointing out again. Dogs most definitely know “right and wrong.” Most of the “social animals” have instinctive rules of ethical behavior.
(Respect the family. Share food when it’s short. Play-fight if you want, but don’t really fight within the family. Keep up your end of the chase; do your duty.)
Way over in the other direction, it’s important to remember that there have been religions that had moral codes that we would not hold in much regard today. Human sacrifice to Moloch or Kali is frowned on in our society.