Is There an Ought or is there Not?

When discussing the matter of morality, religious people often like to cite Hume's is and ought distinction to show how the godless are incapable of deriving a moral system, what one ought to do, from the material world, what is, without first betraying their fundamental epistemological principles and making purely faith-based assumptions. This tactic reveals a glaring inconsistency in the promoter of a godless morality's argument by illustrating how he must posit a metaphysical truth without material evidence and, by doing so, contradict the same principle of scientific justification that prevented him from believing in God in the first place. The religious person introduces this distinction because he believes that he has avoided crossing it and that his successful evasion of the fallacy supports the coherence of his worldview while diminishing that of the godless. However, the religious person only seemingly avoids this distinction by way of clever philosophical misdirection: he posits the existence of a God created morality, a system of oughts, as something that is. 

If one, through faith, assumes the existence of a Morality Creating God, he simultaneously posits the existence of that God's created morality for, if a morality creating God exists, then it follows the morality that God creates must also exist. God's morality, a set of metaphysical truths concerning what one ought to do, becomes part of what is when assumed into existenceHowever, this strategy merely pushes the question one level deeper. Just because a set of metaphysical truths about what one ought to do exists, why ought one abide by it? Any answer to this question predicates on yet another assumption about what one ought to value based on what there is to value.

Since the religious person does not explicitly posit morality by itself and instead smuggles it in with his posit of a Morality Creating God, his assumption of the existence of morality is far less visible than that of the godless person. The godless person's system of moral oughts does not have the opportunity to be packaged up in another posit. He is forced to openly posit his moral system and perform the is/ought fallacy in a spotlight which detracts from the perceived justifiably of his argument, consequently boosting the perceived credibility of the religious person's claims.

Of course, the degree to which one successfully cloaks his assumptions has no bearing on the truth value of his claims. Anyone forwarding any system of morality must posit something, they must assume the existence of an ought from what is through faith. The godless person posits the existence of his moral system and the religious person posits his version of a morality creating God. They both only posit once, but the God posit is significantly larger in that it entails an entire worldview with a specific God, morality, explanation for the beginning of the universe, etc. rather than a standalone moral system.