Based on what evidence? There is no study substantiating the idea that you can equally compare different types of happiness objectively and that it is biologically impossible to obtain more one way than another. All your descriptions of how biology and evolution "work" are speculation.
They're chemical deficiencies - gaining one chemical doesn't "make up" for the lack of another. Just like having plenty of food won't stop you from dying from dehydration.
There is no "risk factor" in this context--you say they're both philosophical dead-ends.
There is risk if it involves personal investment or choices with verifiable, real world harm - such as participating in Jihad - or donating one's entire life savings to a charismatic cult leader who claims to be Jesus incarnate
This is gibberish. It's "cost/benefit is a verifiable principle" all over again, in terms of terminological confusion. Something can not "exist as cause and effects." It can exist as a law, and that law can be demonstrated through cause and effect.
Bad behavior leads to harmful effects, which is why it's "bad" to begin with.
The logic is pretty simple: we know morality isn't an objective force because people can choose to disobey it.
The cause and effect are objectively verifiable.
If it's not a force then it must either be a description or a will. If it's a description it has no compulsory power--it's simply saying "if you do this, you get this," but that doesn't make doing things right or wrong.
The effects are what make the things right or wrong. It's a map, not a destination.
On the other hand, if it's a will, that implies sentience. And a Sentience that has a Will is God.
That wouldn't make it 'right' except from a "might makes right" perspective (ex. if Allah was real and declared killing infidels was 'right', then so be it) - so it would be subjective to the whim of some supernatural dictator, rather than objective - as are actual cause and effects.
It does if the thing you created is an entire standard/concept, and the "authority" is the authority to define it. What you're doing (and I used this analogy earlier) is akin to telling Alexander Graham Bell how his invention is nothing like a telephone, even though you only know what a telephone is because he invented it in the first place.
If he'd lived under a monarch who had forced him to design the phone under penalty of execution - then it wouldn't be "his", nor would he have any authority over what to do with it - he simply had the authority to design it.
Your own position undermines this argument, anyway: you argue that morality is moral simply because it provides benefits.
Simply? Again, as opposed to what - because someone who know one can prove exists supposedly "says so"?
You could just replace "God" with "Elvis" and one wouldn't be any more valid than the other, since they're simply based on blind faith.
Leaving aside the obvious problems with this (link to the last round of unanswered questions available on request), why wouldn't this grant God the same authority? After all, any being powerful and knowledgable enough to create us figures to know far more about what's good for us than we do.
Not necessarily so, and since there's no actual example in nature to compare this to - the Sci-Fi example of a human creating a robot or AI which became more intelligent than its creator comes to mind.
And they'd certainly be much better at tracing out the long-term implications of various standards. So what rationale could you have to declare yourself a better arbiter of those positive benefits than the Being that created you and them in the first place?
What rationale is there for a member of the bourgeoisie to criticize the actions of his President? Who is he to think he knows better than Barack Obama or George Bush? They're politicians with a lifetime of experience in the political arena
Except for the part where Kim Jong Il did not create the country or its people, or endow them with any notion of anything.
Then if Kim invented human cloning and was able to create humans in a lab from scratch, then starving them and sentencing them to torture and death and gulags would be A-OK - because apparently might makes right
Whether you agree or not, there's still no comparison. At worst, defining meaning and morality based on the Creator of the concepts is paradoxical. Saying there's meaning "just because," however, doesn't even rise to the level of paradox. It's just straight-up circular, and there's no reason to believe it over the far simpler explanation that meaning, in a secular worldview, does not exist.
I'd say of those two options however, the secular one would still be less pessimistic. As even "meaning doesn't exist" is still a better alternative than "'morality' is only defined by the whims of a sociopathic, genocidal tyrant".
That's not what I asked. I asked why you believe it. You have a reason for believing it, y es?
I'd say the intricacy of the world makes me believe it.
Oy, another round of Mutilate the English Language. "Supernatural" means outside or beyond the natural. A supernatural thing does not have to interfere with anything physical to be supernatural. A deistic God is still supernatural.
The God himself would be supernatural, since creation of matter, energy, etc is beyond the realm of our natural world.
However nothing which occurs within the context of the universe itself would be "supernatural". E.x. Lighting is caused by electric currents - not by Zeus throwing a temper tantrum.
A lot of time has been wasted based on these sloppy, idiosyncratic definitions. You say "morality" when you mainly mean "survival." You say "survival" when you really mean "survival plus two other things with three other exceptions." And now you say "supernatural" when you mean "a supernatural entity which directly intercedes into the physical world."
The differences are pretty well defined - someone believing that some intelligent being brought the universe into existence is well understood to be different from believing that natural phenomenon within the universe itself are "supernatural".
Please choose your words more carefully. It's your responsibility to make yourself clear and say what you mean, not mine to challenge it until you eventually reveal that you're using some made-up definition.
Er, no, lots of theists (the majority, I'm fairly certain) take the first view, as well. Islam is the only major religion I can think of that regards all physical workings as being explicitly enacted by God (hence the repeated use of the addendum In sa Allāh: "God willing").
Islam believes that Satan is real, that Jesus was a Prophet of god who ascended into heaven, etc. Fundamentalists in Islam also believe evolution is false and that the universe was created according to genesis - so no it's theistic indeed. None of those beliefs would be compatible with deism.