Uncommon Descent preaches about materialist morality

BarryA drops this idiot bomb on us:

Obviously, by definition, materialists cannot point to a transcendent moral code by which to measure moral progress. Indeed, it is difficult for them to account for moral progress at all because if materialism is correct, the “is” in a society defines the “ought.”

Gosh, given that the cdesign proponentsists are all about science they do spend a hell of a lot of time criticizing materialism. Until they get their god-o-meter up and running it seems as though that this is a fundamental conflict between their stated beliefs and practice. But that’s nothing new.

What I am curious about is whether or not materialists (code for atheists) can or cannot point to a transcendent moral code by which to measure human progress? And further, can the religious? I would argue the religious, if anything, are far more incapable of pointing to a transcendent moral code. After all you must ask, which religion, which book, which interpretation? Sure they can point to all sorts of crap, but they certainly can’t agree on the moral interpretation of their scripture. They change which parts of their code they listen to in any given century (we only really take 3 of the 10 commandments seriously for instance), how can they suggest they are in possession of a transcendent morality because of their religiosity?

Then see this whopper:

On what basis do you say that the recognition of the humanity of African-Americans is “progress” unless you have held up the previous nonrecognition and the present recognition to a code and deterermined the former was bad (i.e., did not meet the code) and the latter is good (i.e., does meet the code)? In other words, when you say we have “progressed” it is just another way of saying that the previous state of affairs was bad and the present state of affairs is good. But how can you know this unless there is a code that transcends time and place by which both states of affairs can be measured. Certainly to say that things were previously one way and now they are another is not the same as saying there has been progress. Change is not the same as progress.

Now, I don’t quite get what BarryA is talking about here. Is he saying ending slavery is not progress? Or is he saying that ending slavery can only be judged as a moral good if you are religious? Because, you know, none of those religious codes prohibit slavery buddy. If anything, they encourage it, and tell slaves to be obedient. So if you guys are in charge of the transcendent code, and it’s in one of your outdated books of silly metaphors, where are your slaves? Slavery was ended in this country when many people – including many religious people — decided we could transcend dogma that defended the practice.

Here’s a job for my commenters. Leave me your transcendent materialist moral code that you can use to measure human moral progress. Mine is something like, “Progress can be measured by increasing rationality, human happiness, and abandonment of the hateful dogmas that bind us to tribalism and bigotry.”