I never claimed the fact I was a sceptic gives me more credibility than you, that's a straw man you're attacking. It does however make your assumption that I was never sceptical and purely looked for evidence that suited my feelings lack credibility.

What made you turn from faith if you don't mind me asking? Personal hurt from religious people? Hypocrisy? Lack of willingness to answer tough questions? These were the things which turned me off Christianity for a very long time.

I never claimed martyrdom proved something is true, you're attacking a straw man, neither do I claim to speak words directly from God. Martyrdom indicates sincerity of belief and needs to be assessed against the backdrop of other evidence using historical criteria of dissimilarity, embarassment, multiple attestation etc. I have looked at this regarding Jesus in several on my articles. The disciples believed what they died for. Why? What incentives did they have? What evidence is their to support what they thought? etc. etc.

You're attacking a complete straw man of my view of objective morals. If the universe comes from a mind (Eugene Wigner Nobel Prize phyisicist says consciousness is fundamental to matter not the other way around etc), then logic, morals, mathematics etc naturally stem from the nature of this mind. I am not talking about needing the Bible etc for objective morals to exist any more than you need a maths or logic textboook for mathematical or logical truths to hold.

Can you prove objective mathematical truths exist? You have to assume maths to begin with. How about logic? This is not a question of proof but probability of objective moral values.

Is it more probable morals are objective or not. Are you saying raping a kid is not objectively wrong? Why do we have a different view on rape to animals? Why focus on human flourishing when transhumans will be more advanced than humans anyway? Why even care about humans? Why isn't propagating as much human DNA as possible the end game rather than subjectively defined flourishing? Any benchmark you set is arbitrary, hence, no objective moral values under your view. If we evolved differently we could have different values, that's if we even managed to exist again.

Is there any circumstance you think raping a kid is permissible?

Not all religious people agree, so what? Lightman and Rosenberg are sceptics who have a different view of morality to you, does that mean it's automatically wrong to be a sceptic becuase not all sceptics agree? I would say saying anything goes is being a logically consistent atheist, there is no objective right or wrong. I am not saying atheists cannot do good things, far from it.

Thanks again for your time and sharing your thoughts.

There's some big questions and topics here and I know we are merely touching the surface of these issues.