Background context: In a post by Dave Pinn, as well as in this blog entry by Antipelagian, as well in a comment by "mds", it is apparent that these three people can't conceive of morality in the absence of gods. Which, if they're wrong about their beliefs, is pretty scary. End background.
I've often seen the phrase "I'll pray for you" used as a wonderfully compact shorthand for "I can see that you're in a really bad way. Bad enough that you can't see your way out of it. Bad enough you may not even be capable of realizing that it's not the only way you can be. I know that it's possible to be a better person, so I have hope for you where you don't even know there's hope to be had, and where you don't even realize hope should be had. I may not be wise enough to show you the way out of where you are, but I can hope that you'll see that there is a way, and somehow stumble along it, and perhaps by sharing these hopes with you your eyes will open just enough to accomplish that."
Technically, there are usually implications that the perhapses and the somehows will be arranged by one or more supernatural entities, but it really boils down to the stuff above.
In that spirit, Antipelagian, I'll pray for you and Kevin Underwood and Dave Pinn and mds like I prayed for Jeffrey Dahmer and like I pray for everyone like all five of you.
Anyone who after deep and honest and searching thought, firmly believes that without gods there can be no solid basis for moral judgement... that's someone who's in a very bad place indeed. That's someone who, for all that they may limp along by relying on instinctual reactions or following codified rules or acting out of fear of punishment, is fundamentally without morality.
I don't know where exactly to lay the blame for the situation you're in, and it may be different in each case. Sometimes it seems that people are there because that is where their chosen religious authorities say they should be. Sometimes it seems to be a case of someone being stupidly shortsighted or willfully ignorant. Sometimes people are just lazy. I don't know why you and Dahmer and Pinn and Underwood are the way you are, and I know it's a sufficiently bad place that you probably can't even realize how bad it is, but I'll pray for you.
I'd dearly love to give you some much needed hope, and help you realize that morality can rest on truth without being propped up by law or punishment or instinct. I'd love to play a part in helping you, or anyone else like you or Dahmer, get your feet on a moral foundation so solid you could change religions a thousand times and no pronouncements from any gods would shake you, because they would either be telling you to do what you already did, or they would be wrong.
Alas, I don't think I'm equipped to do that... not from where you are now... and the risk of leaving you without either a moral foundation or religiously derived moral crutches would be too great. You may think like Underwood and Dahmer, but at least for now you have reason not to act like them. Getting your thoughts out of their bad place requires would require abandoning your reasons as well, and while you wouldn't need those reasons if you had a solid moral foundation, leaving you without any reasons at all would be too great a risk.
So, much as I'd love to lay out how morality can exist without gods, please don't bother asking. I will, however, pray for you. That's all I can do.
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