Secularism Does Not Imply Moral Subjectivism

We have here today a guest editorial by atheist John C. Wright, writing as I would have written years ago, back when I was blind not a theist, but without the sarcasm and snobbery endemic to the atheist cause, or less of it.
A reader writes:

I have read with interest your discussion of the inability of a secular worldview to underpin an objective view of morality. The discussion prompted me to ask you two questions.
1. I was wondering what arguments you used to advocate an objective view of morality when you were an atheist?
2. Did the argument that you now put forth, (i.e. That an objective morality requires God) play any role in your conversion?

Both excellent questions, and ones which I would be delighted to address, and if I have the power, to answer.
The second question is the easier one, and the answer is negative. The kind of argument that says the secular worldview is insufficient to underpin an objective morality would have had no effect whatever on my mind at the time; even if (as I doubt) I could have been convinced of the proposition, all that would have convinced me was that objective morality was as unobtainable as, say, object rules for aesthetics.
Even had it convinced me that a belief in God had some useful philosophical or political side effect, a philosopher does not judge beliefs by their utility but by their truth. It may be useful to tell the men at the battle that the relief column is on its way, that they might fight the harder, or to tell all the men of the city that they were born like autochthons from the soil, that they might learn an amity which is not naturally in them: but a philosopher disdains such noble lies, preferring to know the truth, and believing himself stern enough in character to fight or to learn despite any opposition of cowardice or selfishness in his own nature, which he, as a philosopher, must tame in any case.
Had it convinced me that the theist world view was more coherent than the secular, again, that would not have been persuasive to me, since I would have preferred to know the truth rather than a theory, no matter how elegant, premised on a falsehood. To me, it would have been the same as arguing that the Santa Clause theory explains objective morality better than the Grinch theory. Even were that so, it would not make Santa real.
The first question asks what I once advocated to say that objective atheist morality were possible.
Before beginning, I needs must make a narrow distinction between those moral imperatives which are uniquely Christian and those which are common to mankind.
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