Image from American religious philosopher Chad Meister’s 2010 article “Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality”, wherein he asserts that a pure science based atheistic morality will never, likely, be possible. [3]

“That branch of philosophy which, because it relates to manners, the Greeks usually term ethics [from: ήθος or ‘ethos’], the Latins have hitherto called the philosophy of manners. But it may be well for one who designs to enrich the Latin language, to call it moral science. And here we have to explain the nature and force of certain propositions which the Greeks term ‘axioms’. When these propositions relate to the future, and speak of possibilities and impossibilities, it is difficult to determine their precise force. Such propositions necessarily refer to the amount of possibility, and are only resolvable by logic, which I call the art of reasoning.”

“D’Holbach took Newton’s ideas about the universe operating as a clock or machine to the extreme, arguing that humans have no free will, and that forces and laws of nature governed the lives of humans, not humans themselves and certainly not god. He aggressively argued against the existence of god and even against the existence of human souls. After all, why would human machines have need for souls?”

A overview of the moral symbols, i.e. reactions diagrams (AB + C → BC + A), bonding crotchets ( ‘ { ’), affinity darts ( ‘ → ’), and characters (A, AB, etc.), etc., pioneered in the combined works of chemists Etienne Geoffroy (1718), William Cullen (1757), and Torbern Bergman (1775), used by German polymath Johann Goethe to formulate his 1799 theory of physical chemistry based morality quantified in terms of human chemical affinities (table), as explained in his 1809 novella Elective Affinities, wherein he outlined a unified approach to the explanation of chemical, physical, and social nature, on the premise that there is after all only one nature.

“The moral symbols in the natural sciences—for example that of the elective affinities invented and used by the great Bergman—are more intelligent and permit themselves to be connected better with poetry, even connected with society better than any others, which are, after all, even the mathematical ones, anthropomorphic. The thing is that the former (the chemicals) belong with the emotions, the latter (mathematics) belong with the understanding.”

“The universe, that is the all, is made neither of gods nor of men, but ever has been and ever will be an eternal living fire, kindling and extinguishing in destined measure.”

— Heraclitus (500BC), opening quote to Buchner’s 1884 Force and Matter: Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe, with a System of Morality Based Thereon

“Where there are three students of nature, there are two atheists.”

— Anon (c.1850), opening quote to Buchner’s 1884 Force and Matter: Principles of the Natural Order of the Universe, with a System of Morality Based Thereon

“Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water, that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would be possible.”

— Ludwig Buchner (c.1870), cited by Henry Finck (1887) as representative of “gross materialism”

“Potassium and phosphorous entertain such a violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn—i.e. unite themselves with the beloved object.”
— Ludwig Buchner (c.1870), cited by Henry Finck (1887) as representative of “gross materialism”

“To understand good (natural) and evil (unnatural), you first have to view all individual human movements as chemical reactions. Some reactions we call "good", such as love at first sight: Man + Woman → Man≡Woman. These are quantified by negative Gibbs free energy changes. Some reactions we call "bad", such as an unwanted arraigned marriage, or "evil", such as reproduction from farther-daughter incest: Father + Daughter → Baby. These are quantified by positive Gibbs free energy changes. Both reactions, good and evil, occur in society because of what's called thermodynamic coupling.

A simple example of what we might call an "evil" process or reaction would a hydrogen molecule H2 naturally or spontaneously splitting apart in the atmosphere to form two hydrogen atoms: H2 → H + H This reaction, which never occurs on its own, has a free energy change measure of +157 kilojoules per mol. This is called an unnatural reaction, from the earth-surface system point of view. This reaction can be made to occur, however, if it is coupled energetically to another stronger reacting system (such as a strong battery) or if the system is heated (such as the early universe is hypothesized to have been). In the case of thermodynamics coupling, we say that unnatural reactions can be made to go if they are coupled to natural reactions, as long as the later are more powerful than the former. Hence the motto: "good always triumphs over evil."

“A proof is given that good [natural] always triumphs [drives] over evil [unnatural] in the framework of thermodynamics, the science that governs the operation of the known universe.”

Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson giving his 2015 Vero Beach Prayer Breakfast "Atheist Family Rape Murder Scenario" speech, wherein he outlines his view on what he calls the "sin problem", i.e. how do you atheists explain right and wrong.

“The ‘sin problem’ is something you can’t solve. [Namely] This ‘conscience’ thing, we just dreamed it up. There’s no right, there’s no wrong, there’s no good, there’s no evil.

I’ll make a bet with you: Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him. And then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him. And then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now is it dude?’

Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, ‘Wouldn’t it be something if this [sic] was something wrong with this? But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.’ If it happened to them, they probably would say, ‘something about this just ain’t right.’”

A cartoon rendition of the so-called “killing spree paradox” (Ѻ), often put to atheists, by believers, who raise the question about the basis of atheistic morality.

“Hobbes attempted before Spinoza to construct a ‘geometry of morals’, Helvetius constructed a ‘physics of morals’, d’Holbach a ‘physiology of morals’; but, under these diverse names, Epicurean morality is, in short, never anything more than the quest of personal advantage: it rests upon the audacious confusion of actuality and duty.”

— John Masson (1909), Lucretius, Epicurean and Poet, Volume Two (pg. 163)

“Heaven help us if an atheistic morality, rooted in evolutionary theory or otherwise, should ever become the guiding moral force on a global scale.”

— Chad Meister (2010), “Atheists and the Quest for Objective Morality” [3]