Secular basis for morality?

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The problem is that you think Religion has anything to do with this, but it doesn't, Religious people do bad things for the same reasons non Religious people do, it's that simple.

I don't think any philosophy based on simple premises will ever be able to apply universally. The golden rule covers a great deal but there’s always going to be certain exceptions and nuances that can’t really be explained as anything more than societal norms.

I don’t think rigid reliance on a single moral philosophy is ever a good thing. People always find ways to use logical sounding ideologies to support horrible things. No matter what there’s always going to be differences of opinion. I don’t think this is that big of an issue as people are willing to compromise in order to live in a society. Call me an anarchist, but I think a small amount of discord is healthier for society than universal conformity to any utopian ideology. Large groups of people who are certain that they have all the answers always end up being a threat rather than a solution.

I also don’t like Ayn Rand. She pretends that her stuff isn’t utopian, yet it is. She constantly uses narrow black and white thinking in her arguments. She may be articulate, but her ideas are rather shallow.

in a strict sense, morality without something like a deity (or a final cause, etcetera) indeed is a serious problem.

morality is not about what is useful (for e.g. living together without killing each other) - thats where utilitarianism falls short from the very beginning. it mixes up two different things by declaring actions as (morally) good that serve to improve overall happiness (or any other random goal). morality also isnt about what makes sense rationally.
morality in the strictest sense is only concerned with the quality of good and evil.

however, if you exclude any possible source that could radiate these qualities into life with authority (like any kind of final cause would, or god, or whatever like that), there are either rational reasonings left - which are always geared towards a cause and hence concerned with the quality of useful/not useful instead of good/evil - or subjective moral sense -which is concerned with the quality of good/evil, but can not easily be used for a universally "applied" ethical system (quotation marks to make clear im not talking about the field of applied ethics).
there are moral sense theories that ought to base intersubjective normation on subjective moral sense, but thats a highly problematic thing to do - as should be obvious to the likes of us firsthand.

to cut it short, i see possible normation levels like this:

- radiating from a god, a final cause etcetera; they permeat existence as a whole and are truly objective moral values; they also are about good and evil, therefore they are moral values. problem: the argumentational foundation of the whole god/final cause/etc thing.

- rational rules geared towards a specific goal; they can work on an intersubjective base which is not the same as objective values, but should be good enough to work with. they are not about good/evil but useful/useless and hence arent moral values. if you are asking for morality in a strict sense, these can not be relied upon for answers (see the downfall of every single rationalist ethic - kantian to utilitarism - for that simple cause, if not more). however, this is a useable system - called law. law just isnt ethics.

- subjective moral sense judgements; they can be guaranteed to work on a subjective level only, but are strictly moral values again. the problem is: this might not be the kind of morality you asked for, if you referred to normations beyond the individual.

so, my secular bottom line is:
you basically work with two sets of scales at the same time: rational rules (some institutionalized in the form of law, some without institutions but still things to keep in mind. politeness and this kind of thing that you do "because it pays off in the long run" for example) and moral rules - your own code of ethics. things that just dont seem right or seem to be completely unproblematic to you.

of course, these sets of scales can clash: it could be a perfectly good thing to you to kill the murderer of your child, but rationally, youll be puniched for it, no matter how right it feels. that the murderer is to be kept in prison with a set of fixed living standards may be the wrongest thing on earth to you, but rationally defendable.
on the other hand, it may be legal to hop to bed with a 16-year-old (depends on where you live), but it might or might not be a moral problem to you personally.

So, either we don't have morality because we don't have a concept of "good/evil", onlyuseful/not useful, or we have "morality", but our concept of good/evil is an analogy of useful/not useful. The problem with morality, if you base it upon good/evil, is that there is no definition of good/evil that we agree on--perhaps that's why objective morality does not exist.

angelus: well, morality is morality by the fact that its about good and evil. otherwise, it would be just some regulation for purpose xy. morality without good and evil is like... red and green without colors.

so yeah, epistemologically, we do have a problem asserting objective moral values (ever seen one? i didnt).
whether objective morality exists or not, i dont know... at least, it isnt experienceable.

I am a follower of Kant's categorical imperative. In moral delimmas, I ask what would happen if everyone in the world did a certain thing. Though philosophical ideas like this are not universally applicable, they are more reliable than the shifting sands of religion and political ideology.

I read Atlas Shrugged. I am indifferent to Rand as a philosopher, but she is so inept as a novelist that I have trouble taking anything she writes seriously . I know she was not writing in her native tongue, but she lacked the writing-in-the-second-language talent of a Nabokov. Note to future immigrants who want to set down a philosophy in English: For the love of all that is good and right, go through a translator!

I found Atlas Shrugged to be beautifully written with a wide vocabulary and a good cadence to it that set every scene perfectly. I don't see how you could call it inept. If you could provide passages of poor grammar or badly constructed sentences or paragraphs I'd be interested in seeing what you think is crap.

if i do something and someone is hurt because of it and i feel bad about it, then it's wrong and i will try not to do it in the future.

if i do something and other people become happier because of it, then it's a good thing and i will try to do it again.

that's my morality