This is perfectly simple - I paraphrased someone to get to the conclusion that moral realism declares that morality is truth-apt. You agree with that, so that should be that. You seem to want pick over an insignificance for what I can only gauge to be for the sake of being argumentative.
And you also staw man-ed my objection into being something about no one but experts being able to say anything. My concern was the way you presented the argument as getting atheist realism “out of the way” by reference to a random statement that is not representative of atheist realism.
Then if I'm to be convinced that morality is objective, then I require the objective facts behind the morality of our foundational values. Really, this has nothing to do with moral realism, only that moral realism would have to lead you to conclude that your foundational values have objective worth. I want to know why I should value human flourishing, not just understand that I do and take it as given as objective.
Actually from an Aristotelian perspective it is not required that you value human flourishing per se but simply your own, although an Aristotelian concept of flourishing is not the thin idea that you find utilised in some accounts. Nevertheless I digress, to respond to the above and also this:
"Committed to atheism"? No, I'm committed to explanation, as regardless of whether or not one could come up with a naturalistic explanation for objective morality, you can always plonk god on the end to explain how/why that naturalistic explanation exists.
You seem to be missing the point of the role of God in grounding moral truth. When realists point to the flourishing of moral beings as a moral fact they are claiming it as a basic moral truth, not derived from anything else. I may argue that gay marriage is right based on contingent truths which have importance that is derived from basic moral facts but the move from a basic moral fact like human flourishing to God is a different kind of explanation than a derivative. Realists, including many atheist realists don't think basic moral facts are derived from anything else -they are just true. Everyone including the most ardent reductionist-atheist-materialist believes there are things in the universe that are ‘just true’ in that they are not derived from anything else - the laws of quantum physics or basic particles for example. Moral realists of all stripes think that basic moral truths are part of the basic things of the universe that are just true - we don't try to deduce them from God by saying something like “its true because God said so"...its a claim that values are the sorts of thing that form part of the basic facts about the universe. God’s role in the explanation isn't that he is a final step in a line of derived facts, he isn't - the basic moral facts are the end of the line of derived facts - for theists God is rather the explanation for why values are the sort of things that form part of the basic facts of the universe.
The way we reason about morality isn't morality, though. You keep doing this. Perhaps this is a fundamental disagreement and why we're getting nowhere, because you see morality as how it's used and applied and I don't. We can apply objective standards to anything we apply values or rules to, but that doesn't make those values and rules objective.
If you mean morality as a social practice can be distorted in its assumptions from what is possibly true in relation to metaphysical claims, that's not impossible as I have said it’s a choice the anti-realist has to face up too...but if you mean morality isn't our moral practices and moral reasoning then that's not true, that's exactly what morality is - what else do you think it is beyond the way we reason and make decisions about right and wrong? That's the definition of morality! As for second bit, I have no idea what you mean - if a standard is objective it precludes the fact that it is arbitrarily applied by definition. If you think morality is something over and above the way we reason and make decisions about right and wrong then please tell…. Any account of morality that you can give which does not explain key features of morality like how we reason or our moral phenomenology is not a theory of morality (at least not a good one) it’s a theory of something else you are calling morality.
It's not a distortion, but an acknowledgement that their values are the only thing they can base moral judgements on. That there are objective ways to best achieve those values has no bearing whatsoever on the nature of morality if their foundation can only be taken back as far as something subjective. There's nothing inconsistent about that, nothing distorted, no illusion, not even for a moral realist, because the practice of morality isn't morality itself.
There is something distorted if moral values are subjective if by subjective you mean cognitive judgements that are subjectively true. Truth is not something that can be relativised in the same way motion can and still have a meaning. For example, if Dan says "eating meat is wrong" is subjectively true then this means that this sentence means exactly the same thing as "Dan thinks eating meat is wrong". But this second sentence is a purely descriptive sentence that anyone can agree with no matter what their views about eating meat - by relativising the notion of truth we rob it of any normative content at all....not a subjective version that is still morality - its bleached of any moral content.
If alternatively you are saying it is derived from a non-cognitive affective state then it absolutely is a distortion as a key element of our moral reasoning is that when we alter our moral opinions (including at times our core opinions) we do so because we think our old views were incorrect. If a moral theory can't account for such core elements of morality then that is exactly what it means to say it is distorted.
Realists aren’t claiming that it goes back to something subjective. We are claiming that it goes back to something that is objective which makes perfect sense of our moral reasoning and phenomenology.
And if you think I see a god as the only way in which moral objectivity is plausible, then you're under some serious misunderstanding.
You yourself have argued this against my weaker claim of god being the best explanation - its only because you are now misappropriating the term objective to derivatives from subjective opinions that you are now claiming this last point, but this is just semantic sleight-of-hand.
