Comment: As an atheist, it is true that it wouldn't be reasonable to believe that there's such a thing as an absolute, universal morality. Society plays a large part in deciding what's right and wrong. Well, what's so bad about that? Society is made up of people, and I trust our collective opinions to advise me in ethics more than I trust a two-thousand-year-old book written by several different authors ... Plus, it's not like society has it so bad compared to God's opinion that we shouldn't use it. Society in general thinks that killing and slavery is wrong, and God supposedly thinks that murder isn't such a good thing (despite all the 'accounts' in the Bible in which he blatantly murders people), so I guess we're not so different after all.
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Response: Thanks for your comment ... So then according to your logic, it seems to me you would have to believe slavery wasn’t wrong until there was a consensus that it was wrong. In other words, slavery wasn’t wrong in the 1700s, because at that time the collective opinion declared that such things were acceptable? So in response to this if you were to tell me that slavery WAS still wrong in 1700s even though most people didn't feel that way, then I think you probably believe in moral absolutes. But if you tell me that it WASN'T wrong in the 1700s then it simply demonstrates the reality that slavery is not inconsistent with atheism.
Furthermore, morality has been very cyclical through human history and does not always progressively get better as time goes on. what if you saw the consensus about slavery eroding? On what basis, then, could you argue that the emerging new consensus is wrong, since, in your view, something is only wrong if there is a consensus that it is wrong?
I believe I could also demonstrate that currently there are plenty of cultures and places in the world that don’t agree with your ‘consensus.’ Would you argue, then, that the part of the world that believes in your idea of human rights is the enlightened, correct part? Does this mean they are the ones who are thinking "properly" and the others are not?