Do Athiests have morals?

[1robin]

This just goes to show that, once again, you have no clue what that word means. The definition of substantiated is "provide evidence to support or prove the truth of." You cannot do that with the vast majority of things you think are true. The vast majority of things that go on inside your head, consciously and subconsciously, are not representative of objective reality. Keep in mind that by the definition of "substantiated", you would be required to provide evidence to support and/or prove the truth that they are, in fact, substantiated.

I really wish I could have a discussion with non-theists who would in general who do not eventually claim that the Christian is just too stupid to appreciate how brilliant they or their cohorts are. For some reason the word substantiated is the all consuming topic of discussion instead of the real issues. So lets look at what it means.

Substantiated: Provide evidence to support or prove the truth of.

So now you must show I cannot provide evidence to support vast majority of my claims before you can make the determination you have above. In fact your claims about my making unsubstantiated claims is so far unsubstantiated. So I await your demonstration that the majority of my claims have no evidence.

The fact of the matter is that you, like so many other theists around here, are playing word salad with the language. You're misusing terms like "substantiated", "faith", "evidence", "belief", all because you're trying to blur the line between rational positions and your irrational religious position. Now I don't know if this is intentional or not, but considering the number of times it's been pointed out around here and how the tactics never seem to change, I can't help thinking there's a tinge of dishonesty among many theist debaters, that or they are being willfully ignorant of the truth, which might be a bit more likely.

Crap, this is not even just a personal commentary but about some imaginary group to which you refer. Can we please stop with the condescension. It does nothing for your credibility or the debate.

The whole paragraph was one long negative color commentary on an entire faith. I am not responding to it. Let me give you a piece of advice. Arrogance is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in us by others.

 

[leibowde84]

I really wish I could have a discussion with non-theists who would in general who do not eventually claim that the Christian is just too stupid to appreciate how brilliant they or their cohorts are. For some reason the word substantiated is the all consuming topic of discussion instead of the real issues. So lets look at what it means.

Substantiated: Provide evidence to support or prove the truth of.

So now you must show I cannot provide evidence to support vast majority of my claims before you can make the determination you have above. In fact your claims about my making unsubstantiated claims is so far unsubstantiated. So I await your demonstration that the majority of my claims have no evidence.

Crap, this is not even just a personal commentary but about some imaginary group to which you refer. Can we please stop with the condescension. It does nothing for your credibility or the debate.

The whole paragraph was one long negative color commentary on an entire faith. I am not responding to it. Let me give you a piece of advice. Arrogance is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in us by others.

I think you are in desperate need of a course on logic. There is no way to prove a negative (logical impossibility), so asking anyone to provide evidence that your claims are wrong is an unfair/illogical request. We have backed up our claims with physical/evolutionary explanations. We are waiting on you to back up your claims with the same, which you have failed to do.

Most intelligent people know that there is no way to prove that God does not exist, so why would anyone even initiate that conversation. We are in a debate on theory, so both sides have the responsibility to show why their claims are more plausible than those of the other side.

Any reasonable person would agree that we have done so. You, on the other hand, refuse to substantiate any of your claims. Any seasoned debater would agree that it is your responsibility to provide your reasoning for your claims, which you have not done.

 

[1robin]

All social creatures have "morality" of some kind that they instinctively follow. Behavior patterns and the like are there in almost all social creatures and the more advanced the social life of these creatures there is a proportional advancement in complexity of their moral thinking.

All social creatures have a subjective moral preference unrelated to any actual objective moral truth. If you want to refer to that as morality that is fine with me, just do not refer to it as objective moral truth. It is no matter how you label it merely a preference or an opinion.

Ants or bees for example don't have social lives as they don't generally have ideas of self. Its not known that they actually have sentience for themselves on a measurable level or not but instead work as a system. They are a completely different function than the social lives of say wolves, chimpanzees and yes humans.

I am not sure you can refer to a community like a bee-hive which has strict behavioral codes and practices as no social. Regardless I am not sure what this was given to demonstrate. Did this over turn a point of mine? Which one?

All of our moral systems do in fact give an advantage to survival. Depending on where the scope of your tribe is it could easily be just you, your family, your extended family, village, country, race, political association, species or all animals or hell even all life.

So war is a net survival gain? What we do is weird. We select by arbitrary means that are usually either speciesm or some other form of self interest which groups survival is to come at the expense of all others. These rules are not designed to improve the survivability of sentient creatures in general but invents groups who's survival is for some unjustifiable reason more important that the rest. It is not what is generally thought of as benevolence.

Every single moral aspect we may have of ourselves can be explained by evolution and reason. If you have one that is not then I would like to hear it. Though perhaps I should also note that bigotry, hatred, racism ect are also byproducts of the same mechanism that creates our moral thinking. So people like Hitler had morality (possibly. At least he played on them for the NAZI party and the German people). But that doesn't mean that his morality is acceptable by all.

Actually that is not true. Billions believe that to love God is the greatest possible good and to do his will our all consuming duty. That I snot grounded in natural selection or any genetic mutation. That being said I think many of our behavioral systems can be theoretically explained by evolution as well as by faith in the divine but that is a black eye on using evolution for morality. If all our behavior is a reflection of evolution then rape, murder, war, slavery, oppression, hate, vengeance, substance abuse, etc..... as you say is the result of evolution and therefore evolution is a horrific pattern for behavior. BTW the closest any society ever got to patterning it's self systematically on nature was Hitler's Germany. Remember I said the closest not a perfect mirror of it. Beyond that I have never heard of a society that based it's laws on nature alone. And for good reasons like those I gave. Any society that truly used nature as it's behavioral authority would contains as much injustice as justice.

The competing foundations for moral authority are God and nature. I think God holds every single advantage in every category. An example is this. Nature can only tell us what is not what should be. If nature is the pattern then it's evils and good things would have to be allowed because no higher standard exists to tell us which ones should be obeyed and which should not. With God he explains other evil and good but can also tell which actions are good and should be obeyed and which are evil and should be avoided. If you make those distinctions about evolution your not actually using it as a pattern for behavior. Your violating what is said to be the basis for morality and your doing so by opinion of preference which cannot be validated on any objectively true foundation.

Thanks for being civil and not sarcastic. Since it was realized I am not convinced by weak counter claims of non-theists most have turned to negative personal commentary alone.

 

[leibowde84]

I really wish I could have a discussion with non-theists who would in general who do not eventually claim that the Christian is just too stupid to appreciate how brilliant they or their cohorts are. For some reason the word substantiated is the all consuming topic of discussion instead of the real issues. So lets look at what it means.

Substantiated: Provide evidence to support or prove the truth of.

So now you must show I cannot provide evidence to support vast majority of my claims before you can make the determination you have above. In fact your claims about my making unsubstantiated claims is so far unsubstantiated. So I await your demonstration that the majority of my claims have no evidence.

Crap, this is not even just a personal commentary but about some imaginary group to which you refer. Can we please stop with the condescension. It does nothing for your credibility or the debate.

The whole paragraph was one long negative color commentary on an entire faith. I am not responding to it. Let me give you a piece of advice. Arrogance is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in us by others.

Our responsibility is not to prove your claims false, but, instead, is to provide explanations for our claims that are more substantial or reasonable/reasoned than the explanations for your claims that you have failed to provide. Anything more than this would be an impossibility.

 

[leibowde84]

All social creatures have a subjective moral preference unrelated to any actual objective moral truth. If you want to refer to that as morality that is fine with me, just do not refer to it as objective moral truth. It is no matter how you label it merely a preference or an opinion.

I am not sure you can refer to a community like a bee-hive which has strict behavioral codes and practices as no social. Regardless I am not sure what this was given to demonstrate. Did this over turn a point of mine? Which one?

So war is a net survival gain? What we do is weird. We select by arbitrary means that are usually either speciesm or some other form of self interest which groups survival is to come at the expense of all others. These rules are not designed to improve the survivability of sentient creatures in general but invents groups who's survival is for some unjustifiable reason more important that the rest. It is not what is generally thought of as benevolence.

Actually that is not true. Billions believe that to love God is the greatest possible good and to do his will our all consuming duty. That I snot grounded in natural selection or any genetic mutation. That being said I think many of our behavioral systems can be theoretically explained by evolution as well as by faith in the divine but that is a black eye on using evolution for morality. If all our behavior is a reflection of evolution then rape, murder, war, slavery, oppression, hate, vengeance, substance abuse, etc..... as you say is the result of evolution and therefore evolution is a horrific pattern for behavior. BTW the closest any society ever got to patterning it's self systematically on nature was Hitler's Germany. Remember I said the closest not a perfect mirror of it. Beyond that I have never heard of a society that based it's laws on nature alone. And for good reasons like those I gave. Any society that truly used nature as it's behavioral authority would contains as much injustice as justice.

The competing foundations for moral authority are God and nature. I think God holds every single advantage in every category. An example is this. Nature can only tell us what is not what should be. If nature is the pattern then it's evils and good things would have to be allowed because no higher standard exists to tell us which ones should be obeyed and which should not. With God he explains other evil and good but can also tell which actions are good and should be obeyed and which are evil and should be avoided. If you make those distinctions about evolution your not actually using it as a pattern for behavior. Your violating what is said to be the basis for morality and your doing so by opinion of preference which cannot be validated on any objectively true foundation.

Thanks for being civil and not sarcastic. Since it was realized I am not convinced by weak counter claims of non-theists most have turned to negative personal commentary alone.

Our only claim is that an explanation for morality based on societal evolution and the need for order and non-violence as human beings is much stronger than one based on God. That is, unless you have convincing evidence that outweighs our explanations.

By the way, I am a Roman Catholic and very much a "theist."

 

[leibowde84]

All social creatures have a subjective moral preference unrelated to any actual objective moral truth. If you want to refer to that as morality that is fine with me, just do not refer to it as objective moral truth. It is no matter how you label it merely a preference or an opinion.

I am not sure you can refer to a community like a bee-hive which has strict behavioral codes and practices as no social. Regardless I am not sure what this was given to demonstrate. Did this over turn a point of mine? Which one?

So war is a net survival gain? What we do is weird. We select by arbitrary means that are usually either speciesm or some other form of self interest which groups survival is to come at the expense of all others. These rules are not designed to improve the survivability of sentient creatures in general but invents groups who's survival is for some unjustifiable reason more important that the rest. It is not what is generally thought of as benevolence.

Actually that is not true. Billions believe that to love God is the greatest possible good and to do his will our all consuming duty. That I snot grounded in natural selection or any genetic mutation. That being said I think many of our behavioral systems can be theoretically explained by evolution as well as by faith in the divine but that is a black eye on using evolution for morality. If all our behavior is a reflection of evolution then rape, murder, war, slavery, oppression, hate, vengeance, substance abuse, etc..... as you say is the result of evolution and therefore evolution is a horrific pattern for behavior. BTW the closest any society ever got to patterning it's self systematically on nature was Hitler's Germany. Remember I said the closest not a perfect mirror of it. Beyond that I have never heard of a society that based it's laws on nature alone. And for good reasons like those I gave. Any society that truly used nature as it's behavioral authority would contains as much injustice as justice.

The competing foundations for moral authority are God and nature. I think God holds every single advantage in every category. An example is this. Nature can only tell us what is not what should be. If nature is the pattern then it's evils and good things would have to be allowed because no higher standard exists to tell us which ones should be obeyed and which should not. With God he explains other evil and good but can also tell which actions are good and should be obeyed and which are evil and should be avoided. If you make those distinctions about evolution your not actually using it as a pattern for behavior. Your violating what is said to be the basis for morality and your doing so by opinion of preference which cannot be validated on any objectively true foundation.

Thanks for being civil and not sarcastic. Since it was realized I am not convinced by weak counter claims of non-theists most have turned to negative personal commentary alone.

Have you even provided evidence to support the idea that objective morality even exists?

 

[McBell]

So now you must show I cannot provide evidence to support vast majority of my claims before you can make the determination you have above. In fact your claims about my making unsubstantiated claims is so far unsubstantiated. So I await your demonstration that the majority of my claims have no evidence.

So Mr Hovind, how long you gonna wait before you fly home claiming victory?

 

[1robin]

Evolution and natural selection wired our brains to believe in the supernatural because it gave a survival advantage. In some people as they grow up this belief is replaced by belief in logic, reason and common sense and evidence and the scientific method, but in others the belief in the supernatural just stays on. The jump you are talking about is actually from the supernatural.
Is the Human Brain Wired to Believe in Supernatural?
Is the brain hardwired for religion? - HowStuffWorks

This is merely a theory and one I believe is absurd. Even if evolution explained why we would invent a God that loves us and hates our enemies it does not explain why Hebrews would invent a God that condemned them, invent a Hell that they potentially would wind up in, invent a new testament in large measure which condemned themselves, or why Christians would invent a Christ that condemned them unless they accepted him and admitted they were morally corrupt, or end time scenarios as damaging to themselves as others. I have read and listened to these ridiculous theories for years so I do not need to look at those links specifically, though you did well to supply them, Let me give you one of the most famous rebuttals from one of (if not the) greatest expert in testimony and evidence in human history. It was not written specifically to rebut the claims you made but does so in spades anyway.

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law in the same university, upon Story's death in 1846. H. W. H Knott says of this great authority in jurisprudence: "To the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States."

Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence which "is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure."

In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ.

The following are this brilliant jurist's critical observations:
The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be represented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling's, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

"Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication."

Let me also add to this that there is so much evidence that even the supernatural claims made by the bible's authors did in fact actually occur and are still occurring that to suggest millions have made them all up and brilliant scholars in evolution, genetics, history, and every other relevant field have believed they in fact have and do occur that suggesting that they are merely untrue by-products of evolution is an idea so inherently pathetic as to provide proof to what many scholars have said. We are in the modern era educating ourselves into imbecility. BTW if you want scholarly claims as to the actual historical evidence for the bible's supernatural claims then just ask.

 

[leibowde84]

This is merely a theory and one I believe is absurd. Even if evolution explained why we would invent a God that loves us and hates our enemies it does not explain why Hebrews would invent a God that condemned them, invent a Hell that they potentially would wind up in, invent a new testament in large measure which condemned themselves, or why Christians would invent a Christ that condemned them unless they accepted him and admitted they were morally corrupt, or end time scenarios as damaging to themselves as others. I have read and listened to these ridiculous theories for years so I do not need to look at those links specifically, though you did well to supply them, Let me give you one of the most famous rebuttals from one of (if not the) greatest expert in testimony and evidence in human history. It was not written specifically to rebut the claims you made but does so in spades anyway.

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law in the same university, upon Story's death in 1846. H. W. H Knott says of this great authority in jurisprudence: "To the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States."

Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence which "is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure."

In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ.

The following are this brilliant jurist's critical observations:
The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be represented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling's, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

"Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication."

Let me also add to this that there is so much evidence that even the supernatural claims made by the bible's authors did in fact actually occur and are still occurring that to suggest millions have made them all up and brilliant scholars in evolution, genetics, history, and every other relevant field have believed they in fact have and do occur that suggesting that they are merely untrue by-products of evolution is an idea so inherently pathetic as to provide proof to what many scholars have said. We are in the modern era educating ourselves into imbecility. BTW if you want scholarly claims as to the actual historical evidence for the bible's supernatural claims then just ask.

Did you post this on the wrong thread? You provided an argument for why you think it unreasonable to claim that we invented God or that supernatural events can be suppported with reasonable claims (ideas that you merrely borrowed from those that you quoted). Our argument is whether a supernatural necessity explanation for morality specifically is more or less reasonable than one that depends on societal evolution and development. Can you address the question at hand? Again, I do believe in God.

 

[Monk Of Reason]

All social creatures have a subjective moral preference unrelated to any actual objective moral truth. If you want to refer to that as morality that is fine with me, just do not refer to it as objective moral truth. It is no matter how you label it merely a preference or an opinion.

I would say that it is not an objective moral truth. So there I agree with you. However lets not degrade it to simple opinion. The instincts that we are endowed with as well as our own reason allow us to come to moral conclusions based on information that is still a subjective moral conclusion but it is hardly "just an opinion".

I am not sure you can refer to a community like a bee-hive which has strict behavioral codes and practices as no social. Regardless I am not sure what this was given to demonstrate. Did this over turn a point of mine? Which one?

You mentioned something about a queen bee killing another queen bee or something. I don't recall. But I can and do say that the interactions between bees are fundamentally different than the complex social interactions of mammals. For example ants are eusocial. It isn't the same as personal behavior as they don't have identifiable personal behavior. Eusociality - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So war is a net survival gain? What we do is weird. We select by arbitrary means that are usually either speciesm or some other form of self interest which groups survival is to come at the expense of all others. These rules are not designed to improve the survivability of sentient creatures in general but invents groups who's survival is for some unjustifiable reason more important that the rest. It is not what is generally thought of as benevolence.

I don't recall saying anything about benevolence. But you bring up another good point. There is a balance to be had in evolution of morality in social creature. Working together is fundamentally important and if we have a society where everyone did as they were supposed to then we could possibly have a utopia of perfection. But we are imperfect creatures. We don't always follow what is moral and often cannot even fully agree with what is moral. And as I have stated earlier what is considered your " tribe' varies for each individual and in each circumstance.

War and the like are actually side mechanisms. War is only possible because there are individuals who are willing to put their lives down on the line for other people they consider to be part of the same group. This can change. For example I may an argument with an individual over the Colt's game. We would not be on the same side in that argumetn or hell even a fight. But if we were to work together for example on a political issue that may be different. I may fight alongside someone who is my 'neighbor" in a war against another tribe but fight them if they transgress against my immediate family.

So there are layers upon layers of individuals usually trying to do right by who they seem to want to protect and often make mistakes along those lines. We also are socailly advanced enough to be able to identify and analyze the behavior of other people. This leads us into consequences and laws as we have generally agreed upon oughts and ought nots within societies. So from there that is another factor in the incredibly complex mechanism that is the evolution of morality in our modern society.

Actually that is not true. Billions believe that to love God is the greatest possible good and to do his will our all consuming duty. That I snot grounded in natural selection or any genetic mutation. That being said I think many of our behavioral systems can be theoretically explained by evolution as well as by faith in the divine but that is a black eye on using evolution for morality. If all our behavior is a reflection of evolution then rape, murder, war, slavery, oppression, hate, vengeance, substance abuse, etc..... as you say is the result of evolution and therefore evolution is a horrific pattern for behavior. BTW the closest any society ever got to patterning it's self systematically on nature was Hitler's Germany. Remember I said the closest not a perfect mirror of it. Beyond that I have never heard of a society that based it's laws on nature alone. And for good reasons like those I gave. Any society that truly used nature as it's behavioral authority would contains as much injustice as justice.

The competing foundations for moral authority are God and nature. I think God holds every single advantage in every category. An example is this. Nature can only tell us what is not what should be. If nature is the pattern then it's evils and good things would have to be allowed because no higher standard exists to tell us which ones should be obeyed and which should not. With God he explains other evil and good but can also tell which actions are good and should be obeyed and which are evil and should be avoided. If you make those distinctions about evolution your not actually using it as a pattern for behavior. Your violating what is said to be the basis for morality and your doing so by opinion of preference which cannot be validated on any objectively true foundation.

Thanks for being civil and not sarcastic. Since it was realized I am not convinced by weak counter claims of non-theists most have turned to negative personal commentary alone.

I have to disagree with you at the actual substance of your argument.

Firstly there is understanding about the evolution of religion and its place in our society. It isn't all together separate from morality but it is not the root of it by far. I could get into the evolution of religion in our society and how it is based off of false perceptions of a mis-identified causal entity and attempting to find patterns where they are not there, we even have the development of social order and structure. As many moral arguments are subjective and they are especially subjective to who is within the group you have clashing of opinions. It is a chaotic system if there is nothing to help order it when you get to societies that are larger than family or multi-family dynamics. Religion which is already based upon the aforementioned evolved perceptions, was likely transformed into a functional usage of moral dictation within groups.

For this to continue to be so people would have to believe that "god" or "gods" were totally moral or at the very least morally superior. This is very likely looking at the nature of evolution and our track down it.

So what we find as patterns of acceptable morality can now be defined in systems of pre-government known as religion.

Now onto the Hitler regime. I have already told you that his morality was based upon bigotry which can be a side product of the same mechanisms. But it is in no way the perfect society to represent the morality presented by evolution. In fact it is far from it. It is based off of ignorance of the system as well as bigotry, hatred and propaganda.

The "true" society that would be based off of morality that was derived from evolution (as in what we have been ingrained with not the laws of evolution themselves) would be secular humanism. There has not been a secular humanistic society yet made. Though America for example could be somewhat called a secular humanistic state. Well at least almost. There is far to much religiosity within its laws currently to be called so and I would hesitate to ever call it "humanistic" given its track record.

But in conclusion, Hitler was not a secular humanist.

 

[leibowde84]

This is merely a theory and one I believe is absurd. Even if evolution explained why we would invent a God that loves us and hates our enemies it does not explain why Hebrews would invent a God that condemned them, invent a Hell that they potentially would wind up in, invent a new testament in large measure which condemned themselves, or why Christians would invent a Christ that condemned them unless they accepted him and admitted they were morally corrupt, or end time scenarios as damaging to themselves as others. I have read and listened to these ridiculous theories for years so I do not need to look at those links specifically, though you did well to supply them, Let me give you one of the most famous rebuttals from one of (if not the) greatest expert in testimony and evidence in human history. It was not written specifically to rebut the claims you made but does so in spades anyway.

Simon Greenleaf (1783-1853) was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University, and succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law in the same university, upon Story's death in 1846. H. W. H Knott says of this great authority in jurisprudence: "To the efforts of Story and Greenleaf is to be ascribed the rise of the Harvard Law School to its eminent position among the legal schools of the United States."

Greenleaf produced a famous work entitled A Treatise on the Law of Evidence which "is still considered the greatest single authority on evidence in the entire literature of legal procedure."

In 1846, while still Professor of Law at Harvard, Greenleaf wrote a volume entitled An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In his classic work the author examines the value of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection of Christ.

The following are this brilliant jurist's critical observations:
The great truths which the apostles declared, were, that Christ had risen from the dead, and that only through repentance from sin, and faith in Him, could men hope for salvation. This doctrine they asserted with one voice, everywhere, not only under the greatest discouragements, but in the face of the most appalling errors that can be represented to the mind of man. Their master had recently perished as a malefactor, by the sentence of a public tribunal. His religion sought to overthrow the religions of the whole world. The laws of every country were against the teachings of His disciples. The interests and passions of all the rulers and great men in the world were against them. The fashion of the world was against them. Propagating this new faith, even in the most inoffensive and peaceful manner, they could expect nothing but contempt, opposition, reviling's, bitter persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, torments, and cruel deaths. Yet this faith they zealously did propagate; and all these miseries they endured undismayed, nay, rejoicing. As one after another was put to a miserable death, the survivors only prosecuted their work with increased vigor and resolution. The annals of military warfare afford scarcely an example of the like heroic constancy, patience, and unflinching courage. They had every possible motive to review carefully the grounds of their faith, and the evidences of the great facts and truths which they asserted; and these motives were pressed upon their attention with the most melancholy and terrific frequency. It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they have narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. If it were morally possible for them to have been deceived in this matter, every human motive operated to lead them to discover and avow their error. To have persisted in so gross a falsehood, after it was known to them, was not only to encounter, for life, all the evils which man could inflict, from without, but to endure also the pangs of inward and conscious guilt; with no hope of future peace, no testimony of a good conscience, no expectation of honor or esteem among men, no hope of happiness in this life, or in the world to come.

"Such conduct in the apostles would moreover have been utterly irreconcilable with the fact that they possessed the ordinary constitution of our common nature. Yet their lives do show them to have been men like all others of our race; swayed by the same motives, animated by the same hopes, affected by the same joys, subdued by the same sorrows, agitated by the same fears, and subject to the same passions, temptations, and infirmities, as ourselves. And their writings show them to have been men of vigorous understandings. If then their testimony was not true, there was no possible motive for its fabrication."

Let me also add to this that there is so much evidence that even the supernatural claims made by the bible's authors did in fact actually occur and are still occurring that to suggest millions have made them all up and brilliant scholars in evolution, genetics, history, and every other relevant field have believed they in fact have and do occur that suggesting that they are merely untrue by-products of evolution is an idea so inherently pathetic as to provide proof to what many scholars have said. We are in the modern era educating ourselves into imbecility. BTW if you want scholarly claims as to the actual historical evidence for the bible's supernatural claims then just ask.

It is starting to seem like you have no supporting objective evidence beyond your belief that it makes sense to you. You need to show us why God is necessary for objective morality to exist or at least evdence that shows it exists in the first place.

 

[Cephus]

I really wish I could have a discussion with non-theists who would in general who do not eventually claim that the Christian is just too stupid to appreciate how brilliant they or their cohorts are. For some reason the word substantiated is the all consuming topic of discussion instead of the real issues. So lets look at what it means.

If you don't want to be considered stupid, you should stop posting so many stupid things. The fact is, there are problems with your ideas. There are lots of problems with your ideas. When these problems are pointed out, instead of re-evaluating your beliefs and making the appropriate corrections, you double down on the crazy.

Substantiated: Provide evidence to support or prove the truth of.

So now you must show I cannot provide evidence to support vast majority of my claims before you can make the determination you have above. In fact your claims about my making unsubstantiated claims is so far unsubstantiated. So I await your demonstration that the majority of my claims have no evidence.

You are the one claiming to have substantiated beliefs. I pointed out that you were wrong, according to the definition of the terminology you chose to use. Now, instead of acknowledging that you were wrong, that your beliefs are not, in fact, substantiated, you're squealing like a stuck pig.

Crap, this is not even just a personal commentary but about some imaginary group to which you refer. Can we please stop with the condescension. It does nothing for your credibility or the debate.

This isn't a debate, talking to you is like a massacre. It's not condescending to point out what is actually going on. You don't want to acknowledge the inherently dishonest nature of your tactics or methods. No apologist does. That doesn't stop them from being dishonest. You just don't want it to be pointed out.

The whole paragraph was one long negative color commentary on an entire faith. I am not responding to it. Let me give you a piece of advice. Arrogance is the hardest fault to see in ourselves and the easiest to see in us by others.

Then maybe you ought to stop acting poorly and people wouldn't have to point it out to you. And apparently you are responding to it because you keep hitting "POST REPLY".

 

[1robin]

Look, I am not saying that objective morality surely does not exist, despite its implausibility. Many things can possibly exist. Blue fairies and the flying spaghetti monster could exist. Jesus and objective morality could exist, as well.

I dot not care if you did. My primary claims were.

1. That objective morality can only exist if God does. I am not saying objective morality does exists though evidence suggests it does.
2. That without God the only possibility is subjective morality.

So to claim objective morality is to merely chose the second option. I have no problem with that. The problem is with anyone who claims objective morality does exists yet God does not. That is an absurdity.

Your "other things" unlike objective morality have no evidence to suggest they exist.

But you are doing an extraordinary claim that deserves extraordinary evidence. Especially if we link it to the existence of God/gods or the morality of skeptics. I just fail to see this extraordinary evidence. I don't even see sub-standard evidence.

What extraordinary claim is that? I made two simplistic conditional deductions that are only extraordinary in that they both are unavoidable.

Looking below I can see you have followed one misunderstanding of what I claim with a second one here. I am not primarily arguing objective morality does exist. I am merely saying under what conditions it can exist.

What I see is a confusing mix of some constituents:

1) People have a feeling of objective morality, therefore it is reasonable to believe that it exists. Unfortunately people, in general, have a feeling for many things: something beyond the natural world, fate, gods, a spiritual world, life after death, omeopathy and other weird things. That does not entail that it is reasonable to believe in the objectivity of all of them.

I will respond to these but I remind you I did not spend much time trying to demonstrate objective morality exists. I did not say feeling. I said either they experience an objective moral realm, or they perceive one. Can you prove moral perception is in any way less reliable than visual or auditory perception?

2) We all agree on some values, therefore objective morality exists. That does not follow, obviously, because we disagree on many other values, as we have seen.

Even though I spent a minute fraction of my time saying that belief that objective morality exists you do not seem to have understood it. I did not say we all agree that specific morals are objective. I said we are perceive that some of morality is grounded in facts we did not determine. Almost everyone believes something is actually wrong even if everyone else disagreed. It is a virtual universal perception. I believe even psychopaths share it in some form. That does not require we al agree which ones are true. Do you realize that for objective morality not to be true and therefor God not to exist every single moral that every single individual believes is objectively true and every single claim to a supernatural event must all be untrue? That is a burden I am glad I do not have to live with.

3) Objective morality exists because it emanates from God. This just delegates lack of evidence of objective morality to God, Who lacks evidence as well.

I did not say this either. What has happened to you. You use to at least understand what I was saying. You left for a week or so and now seem to misunderstand me in every instance. I never said that because it comes from God it exists. I said if it exists then it must come from God.

4) Yes, but God does exist. Because objective morality exists and it is defined by what God approves. Or other equally circular variants thereof.

I made no assumption he did in this discussion. I merely said what his existence would mean.

So, when all logical support evaporates, what is usually left is the real reason why people believe in objective morality: incredulity.

Do you mean when you misstate what I said was supported, suggest that I stated as fact what I actually stated as a proposition, or when you erode an argument I never used, then I have no point? Your last two posts seem to have no connection to what you responded to.

We believe in it, because the alternative is intolerable. Something in the line of: if objective morality does not exist, then all we believe is good and righteous has no absolute value whatsoever.

Now this at least is relevant to what I have said. The first sentence might be true in part. I do not allow that we have these perceptions because we need or want them, but I can allow that we may believe they represent the factual case because we need or want to, possibly. Now the last sentence is simply true if your premise is true except for the word "value", it should be "truth". They are not true but they could have some value.

Love, helping the poor, self sacrifice, comforting the sick are ultimately "just" biological imperatives triggered by some circuitry inside a low entropic lump of duplicating matter. And people, in general, are not comfortable with that, understandably.

If you do not believe this let me quote the philosopher of science Michael Ruse:

"In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding... Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place."
Michael Ruse

And, especially for spiritual minded people, having no absolute, universal and cosmic value, means having no value at all. So, what do they do? They arbitrarily extend our local values to the rest of the Universe or to metaphysics without the necessary logical or empirical warrant.

Ok where's the man behind the curtain. You have just stated a very logical deduction that I can agree with and support to a great extent. Why did you do that?

Which should lead to the logical conclusion that this is just yet another display of hubris or excessive anthropocentrism.

Ciao

- viole

Is this an attempt to suggest that evolution has forced us to invent God? I cannot fathom why you finished this post with rationality that justifies my claims, there must be some trick here. What is it?

 

[LuisDantas]

I have been researching evolution for over 15 years and all the various and contradictory moral theories it is guessed it justifies.

I'm a bit surprised that you make such a claim. There are those who claim that Evolution has moral impact, but AFAIK that is something of a fringe position. Evolution is actually pretty amoral.

Let me ask you something. In the opinion of a great many scholars Hitler was the closest and human society ever came to using evolution, natural selection, nature as a basis for morality.

Feh. You really should seek more qualified scholars than those. If they are scholars at all, that is.

 

[leibowde84]

I dot not care if you did. My primary claims were.

1. That objective morality can only exist if God does. I am not saying objective morality does exists though evidence suggests it does.
2. That without God the only possibility is subjective morality.

So to claim objective morality is to merely chose the second option. I have no problem with that. The problem is with anyone who claims objective morality does exists yet God does not. That is an absurdity.

Your "other things" unlike objective morality have no evidence to suggest they exist.

What extraordinary claim is that? I made two simplistic conditional deductions that are only extraordinary in that they both are unavoidable.

Looking below I can see you have followed one misunderstanding of what I claim with a second one here. I am not primarily arguing objective morality does exist. I am merely saying under what conditions it can exist.

I will respond to these but I remind you I did not spend much time trying to demonstrate objective morality exists. I did not say feeling. I said either they experience an objective moral realm, or they perceive one. Can you prove moral perception is in any way less reliable than visual or auditory perception?

Even though I spent a minute fraction of my time saying that belief that objective morality exists you do not seem to have understood it. I did not say we all agree that specific morals are objective. I said we are perceive that some of morality is grounded in facts we did not determine. Almost everyone believes something is actually wrong even if everyone else disagreed. It is a virtual universal perception. I believe even psychopaths share it in some form. That does not require we al agree which ones are true. Do you realize that for objective morality not to be true and therefor God not to exist every single moral that every single individual believes is objectively true and every single claim to a supernatural event must all be untrue? That is a burden I am glad I do not have to live with.

I did not say this either. What has happened to you. You use to at least understand what I was saying. You left for a week or so and now seem to misunderstand me in every instance. I never said that because it comes from God it exists. I said if it exists then it must come from God.

I made no assumption he did in this discussion. I merely said what his existence would mean.

Do you mean when you misstate what I said was supported, suggest that I stated as fact what I actually stated as a proposition, or when you erode an argument I never used, then I have no point? Your last two posts seem to have no connection to what you responded to.

Now this at least is relevant to what I have said. The first sentence might be true in part. I do not allow that we have these perceptions because we need or want them, but I can allow that we may believe they represent the factual case because we need or want to, possibly. Now the last sentence is simply true if your premise is true except for the word "value", it should be "truth". They are not true but they could have some value.

If you do not believe this let me quote the philosopher of science Michael Ruse:

"In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding... Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place."
Michael Ruse

Ok where's the man behind the curtain. You have just stated a very logical deduction that I can agree with and support to a great extent. Why did you do that?

Is this an attempt to suggest that evolution has forced us to invent God? I cannot fathom why you finished this post with rationality that justifies my claims, there must be some trick here. What is it?

Anything supernatural, i.e. "God," is, by definition, extraordinary.

 

[1robin]

You claim that objective morality requires God. Robin claims that objective morality has developed through societal evolution and, as a result is subject to change through societal discoveries.

Both are plausible, but, objectively speaking, a supernatural explanation must be supported by objective reasoning to a greater degree.

Hello, Leibowde84. I think this is your first post to me and it was followed by 5 more in a row, Wow.

I was a little confused. I have made two primary points.

1. If God exists then objective morality exists.
2. If he does not then it does not.

Unlike what it seems as though you said I have not really stated which one of these two is true. Of course as a Christian I believe the first is true, but I allow that maybe I am wrong (despite meeting this God in question spiritually). If I am wrong then I grant that the second is true but is a horrific truth.

You added that the supernatural proposition requires objective reasoning. I am not sure what you mean by that but let my supply the reasoning that has survived scrutiny for thousand of years that is used for my first claim.

1. The concept of God in the Torah, the Christian bible, somewhat in the Quran, and even in philosophical definitions for a generic God include that he is timeless and eternal, holds the highest possible sovereignty over every thing that exists, is personal, his nature determines what moral facts and duties, has created us, and many other less relevant components.
2. From those divine attributes his being the source of any possible objective morality is a deductive inevitability. He is exactly what is needed for any ultimate source of objective moral truth.
3. So the only issue is does that God exist, what his existence would mean for the nature of morality is unquestionable.

 

[leibowde84]

I'm a bit surprised that you make such a claim. There are those who claim that Evolution has moral impact, but AFAIK that is something of a fringe position. Evolution is actually pretty amoral.




Feh. You really should seek more qualified scholars than those. If they are scholars at all, that is.

What convincing evidence do you have to support the contention that objective morality exists? Similarities between moral codes could always be explained with societal evolution.

 

[leibowde84]

Robin,

I'm not sure how anyone could argue against those claims becaause you aren't really claming anything. "If God exists, he would control morality."

I thought you were claiming that objective morality requires God. Are you no longer claiming this?

 

[1robin]

I think you are in desperate need of a course on logic. There is no way to prove a negative (logical impossibility), so asking anyone to provide evidence that your claims are wrong is an unfair/illogical request. We have backed up our claims with physical/evolutionary explanations. We are waiting on you to back up your claims with the same, which you have failed to do.

Oh brother, how did we get to the inevitable "your too ignorant to appreciate how brilliant the other guy is" response so quickly? That usually only comes once all the other guys arguments have failed. There most certainly are ways to prove a negative. I am at this moment not at your computer and can prove it by typing this. Only some negatives are incapable of being proven, usually ones that can occur anywhere or at anytime. Proving my deductions wrong is not to ask anyone to prove a negative as such. If it was then nothing of any kind could ever be proven wrong and that is just absurd.

I granted that it is possible that evolution is the best we can do without God. Actually that is not true. Evolution would still be a horrific foundation for morality. Assuming empathy is the foundation would be much better though imperfect as well. What claim is that I disagree with that was proven about evolution exactly?

What claim of mine do you need evidence for that was not given?

Most intelligent people know that there is no way to prove that God does not exist, so why would anyone even initiate that conversation. We are in a debate on theory, so both sides have the responsibility to show why their claims are more plausible than those of the other side.

For pity sake, another response that completely misunderstood what was being responded to. I did not try and demonstrate that God exists. Why do you think I have? I can go about doing so but I have not done in this discussion.

Any reasonable person would agree that we have done so. You, on the other hand, refuse to substantiate any of your claims. Any seasoned debater would agree that it is your responsibility to provide your reasoning for your claims, which you have not done.

Agree that you have done what? To what do you refer? Are you new to posting in a forum or this one specifically?

What claim is it you suggest I did not give the reasons for? My last response to you contained primarily that which you claim I have not done.

 

[viole]

Can you prove moral perception is in any way less reliable than visual or auditory perception?

Yes.

If we stand in front of a church, in Sweden, and a big explosion destroys it, then we will agree that that was very loud.

If we stand in front of the same church and we witness a gay marriage, we will presumably not agree that it is a good thing.

Ciao

- viole