I've had many discussions, to put it lightly, with religious people via the internet for a few years now. One of the biggest arguments I come across is the transcendental argument or TAG for short. What tag basically says is that there can be no morality, logic, etc. without a god. I've been accused of living a life with no meaning and living with subjective morals- which I find very funny.

Anyone paying attention to life has heard of the Greek philosophers Plato and Socrates before. In one of Plato's dialogs Socrates is at a courthouse talking to a man named Euthyphro who was going to testify against his own father for having a hand in the death of a servant. Euthyphro thought that testifying against his own father was a pious act, that even though it was his father on trial Euthyphro still had an obligation to testify against him.

Socrates and Euthyphro then started talking about why certain things were considered pious to the various gods; this lead to the famous "Euthyphro Dilemma". This dilemma is as follows: "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?". In other words is something innately pious and the gods recognize it to be so, or do the gods create what things are pious and what are not?


I believe we can switch the word pious with the word moral and we can easily see that the ones using the TAG argument are the ones with the subjective view of morality. Let's pretend for a moment there is no god of any sort and we know that for a fact. I say it is still objectively wrong to kill someone for no reason. Those with the TAG argument say since there is no god we have no objective morals. This is the exact opposite of objectivity. To have objective morals means something is true even if there is no one there to recognize it. We can all agree that what the Nazis did was objectively wrong. Even if they had won the war and brainwashed everyone into believing as they do, what they did  is STILL wrong.

Let's take the Euthyphro dilemma and switch the word pious with moral: "Is the moral loved by the gods because it is moral, or is it moral because it is loved by the gods?". What the TAG argument suggests is that things are moral because it is loved by  god(s). If you say objective morality only exists at the hands of a god it's not very objective, is it? In fact my opinion is that the Judeo-Christian religion is the one with subjective morality. In the old testament God commands Abraham to kill his some (you know, for shits and giggles). Abraham almost did it until he was stopped at the last second. If God let him go threw with it, it would have been ok because what God says is moral is moral