There’s a common refrain—sometimes smug, sometimes sincere—echoed in religious circles: “If you’re an atheist, you have nothing to say about morality.” Popular apologists like Frank Turek echo it; philosophers like William Lane Craig give it academic weight. The claim is simple: if you don’t believe in God, you can’t justify moral claims. But the simplicity of the claim masks a profound confusion—not just about atheism, but about morality itself.

Let’s untangle that confusion.

The Is-Ought Problem Doesn’t Go Away With God #

David Hume famously pointed out that you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.” Facts about the world do not, on their own, generate moral obligations. And this includes the fact that God exists—if he does. Saying “God exists” is an ontological statement. To get to morality, you still have to insert the premise: We ought to obey God.

But where does that “ought” come from?

This is the subtle sleight of hand: invoking God doesn’t solve the is-ought problem—it simply moves the goalpost. You still have to use your own reasoning, your own values, to justify why divine command carries moral weight. You have to endorse the premise: “God is good, and we should follow Him.” But who endorses that premise? You do. And that act of endorsement is a subjective act. You, the believer, are still exercising your personal moral judgment in order to surrender your moral judgment.

In other words: the ladder you’re climbing to reach “objective” morality is built out of subjective rungs.

Faith in Authority Is Still Subjective Judgment #

Imagine a spectrum of belief in moral authority:

  1. I use my own judgment to decide what is moral.
  2. I trust the judgment of a good friend.
  3. I follow the moral advice of an expert I find credible.
  4. I accept a moral code given by someone I believe everyone ought to find credible.
  5. I accept a moral code revealed by God.

At each step, you’re outsourcing your moral framework to a more distant authority. But the key thing is this: in every case, the initial trust is your own. You’re exercising your judgment to decide who or what to trust. You may call God the ultimate authority, but unless you’re obeying blindly and randomly (which would be neither rational nor moral), you’re making a judgment that this being is trustworthy, that this code deserves allegiance.

That judgment is yours. And it is subjective.

So, why should the fifth position suddenly be regarded as “objective morality” when all it does is add more metaphysical grandeur to the fourth?

What Moral Claims Actually Are #

Here’s the real heart of the issue: when a subjectivist or atheist makes a moral claim—say, “torturing children is wrong”—they are not pretending this is a law written into the structure of the universe. They are saying something else, something more human: Given our shared values—like empathy, suffering, flourishing—this action contradicts those values.

This kind of moral claim is not an attempt to report an objective cosmic fact; it's an invitation. A call to shared conscience. It's a statement about what we value, and a plea to honor that common ground. And this is not weak. This is the basis of law, democracy, and human rights. It is the foundation of every moral conversation that has ever changed the world.

Even believers rely on these shared values to defend their moral positions to those who don’t share their faith. They can’t just say, “Because God says so.” They have to appeal to your empathy, your reason, your experience of what it means to be human. In short, they appeal to you—the very subjectivity they claim to transcend.

But what if someone doesn’t share those values?

It’s a fair question—and a common objection. What if someone doesn’t care about empathy, fairness, or suffering? What if they reject the very foundations upon which these moral appeals rest?

The key insight is that this isn’t a special problem for atheists or moral subjectivists—it’s a general problem for everything. Sam Harris illustrates this beautifully with a pair of rhetorical questions:

“If someone doesn’t value evidence, what evidence can you provide that they should value it?” “If someone doesn’t value logical consistency, what logical argument could you offer to convince them of its importance?”

You can’t. The moment someone opts out of the game entirely—refusing the rules of evidence, logic, or empathy—there’s no magical lever to pull. But that’s not a flaw in secular morality. It’s just how human discourse works. Reason itself rests on shared commitments, and if those commitments break down entirely, communication becomes impossible.

And yet, in practice, we rarely find ourselves in such a philosophical vacuum. People do care about suffering. They do respond to fairness, reciprocity, dignity. These shared values may not be metaphysically absolute, but they are socially resilient. They form the backbone of everything from traffic laws to civil rights.

So while it’s true that shared values are the only ground we have to stand on, that doesn’t make them arbitrary or fragile. It makes them deeply human. And powerful enough to build a world.

So Do Atheists Have Nothing to Say About Morality? #

Not at all. In fact, no one has a privileged position when it comes to moral authority—not the theist, not the atheist, not the skeptic. The fundamental challenges of moral reasoning, such as the is–ought problem and the need to justify one’s normative premises, apply universally.

Whether you're arguing that we ought to obey God or that we ought to minimize suffering, you're still making a normative claim that cannot be derived from facts alone. You need to justify it—and that justification must appeal to values, intuitions, or principles that others are free to question.

In that sense, everyone is on equal footing. The playing field is level. No worldview comes prepackaged with an unassailable foundation for morality. What matters is not whether one believes in God, but whether one can offer a coherent, persuasive case for the values they hold.

That doesn’t render morality meaningless—it just means that moral discourse is a shared project. And no one is exempt from doing the work.