—There is another thread here in Great Debates in which atheists are being asked “What is the meaning and purpose of life?” Almost unanimously, the atheist response seems to be “there isn’t any”.—
It is pretty misleading to present this information here without actually noting what they do say. Just because people don’t think that there exsits something that has a purpose FOR them, does NOT imply that THEY have no purposes, or don’t find meaning. Indeed, this was the distinction I explained in there, and you simply cannot speak about this subject, or derive any conclusions about morals from it, unless you confront it directly.
As well, your argument that morality relies upon god will remain entirely baseless until you can explain YOUR claimed account of morality. You cannot fairly compare non-theist accounts of morality against a completely unexplained alternative, just because that alternative uses the word “god” somewhere in there.
If you believe that the existence or non-existence of god can have relevance to morality, you need to explain more thouroughly how in the same way that the (supposedly failed) non-theistic accounts do. As far as I can tell rom reading your posts, you do not do this: perhaps you have realized that explication exposes it to exactly the same sorts of criticisms. But just saying that god is above the universe does precisely squat for explicating how a potential god’s opinion or will can make any difference to what is or is not wrong.
—If you make an “act of faith”, you are not an atheist.—
You seem to misinformed as to what an atheist is. Perhaps you could start there. There is nothing about making an unfounded assumption that is relevant to the distinction between atheists and theists. Nor are all moral first principles “acts of faith” in any meaningful sense. In fact, I would wager that most aren’t, because they are usually principles of value, not fact.
—It seems to me that all morality has to be based on a first principle.—
I would include instead: value. For instance, if one does not value the aleviation of the suffering of others, then I would say that one cannot in any real sense have moral sensations about suffering itself being right or wrong.
Which is fine for the occasional psychotic, but most people DO have such values, and so can very meaningfully speak of a common moral obligation arising from it.
Finally: can you refute Plato’s Euryp. arguement (never seen it done, but I’d love to)? If “good” is simply whatever god’s will is, doesn’t that vacate the term “good” of any specific meaning? Doesn’t it also prevent god from ever being meaningfully described as “good?”