Andy Doerksen (perhaps we should call him Andy Dorksen) wrote:Thanks for pushing me to be a hard, serious thinker, and not take my faith for granted. It's good for me to ponder *why* I believe what I believe and why it impacts how I live my life.
Unfortunately, you steadfastly refuse to be logical. You cannot disprove A by proving B, even if you are successful.
Evolution theory is a scientific theory. Scientific theories have nothing to do with morality. Their morality or lack thereof is immaterial. The science of medicine can be used to kill people through an astounding variety of ways. This is not moral. Does this mean that medicine is wrong?
Darth Wong wrote:No, you are not [forming an argument]. This is a red herring. It has nothing whatsoever to do with creationism.
It has everything to do with it. (a) Human experience with morality is considered by creationists evidence of God's existence, for only His existence could account for our instinctive awareness of objective morals - "objective" meaning that we are beholden to them no matter how we feel or what era or society we find ourselves in.
Wrong. There is no need to assume God just because all humans have certain instinctive tendencies, whether they pertain to morality or any other concept. All dogs instinctively lift their legs to pee. Is this proof of God
also? You are committing the "leap in logic" fallacy; you go from A to B without explaining the connecting logic. Why does a common human trait (social morality in this case, probably derived from the fact that we are inherently pack animals) imply the existence of God rather than common
evolutionary ancestry?
I am not arguing that an atheist is automatically immoral just because he rejects the existence of God. I am arguing that the *logical outcome* of atheism is that there is no objective morality, and thus if an atheist acts morally he is acting in a manner *inconsistent* with his worldview - whereas, if a Christian acts morally (and not all do!), he is merely *applying* his worldview.
You say that morality is "inconsistent" with atheism. That is a blanket, bigoted statement if I ever saw one. Explain why atheism is inconsistent with morality, particularly since it does not promote anything; it simply denies the existence of imaginary deities. Do you also think that disbelief in Santa Claus is inconsistent with morality?
Indeed, only atheists can possibly have a system of remotely objective morality, because only atheists will refuse to pollute their system of morality with subjective data such as religious beliefs and superstitions. Only atheists will correctly base their moral judgements solely on objective data, ie- actions which are observable and verifiable.
Atheism *cannot* tell me why one thing is "evil" and another thing is "good." Only a supra-human Law-giver can tell me that.
Wrong. Secular humanism can tell you why one thing is evil and another thing is good, because its goal is to promote human interests, and human interests are hardly satisfied by massacres. And unlike your "supra-human law-giver", secular humanism has never advocated genocide.
(b) Morality hinges on purpose, because only if we have a purpose for our lives can we know how we ought to live in order to fulfill that purpose.
By analogy, let's say you put sand in your car instead of oil. You'd ruin your engine, but why would that matter? It would only matter if the *purpose* of your car is to get you around instead of merely sitting in a junkyard. How you treat your car is dependent on your car's purpose.
If you human life ultimately was an accident of evolution, and has no ultimate purpose, then how we treat ourselves, how we treat each other - these things just do not matter. Stalin was an atheist, and lived from the standpoint that "might makes right." He assigned no value to human life, but assigned value to his own agenda. From an atheistic standpoint we could not objectively judge his agenda or his actions to be "evil."
Two points:
1) Atheism is a lack of belief. It does not promote any values. You cannot deny its validity for that reason. Mathematics does not promote any values either. Does that mean that mathematicians are all wrong, and that morality is inconsistent with their worldview?
2) The humanist's purpose in life is to work for the betterment of humans around him and humanity at large. The secular humanist can easily see what is wrong with Stalin, just as he can see what was wrong with Hitler (a Christian) and the Biblical God (a mass-murderer).
Darth Wong wrote:In the worldview of secular humanism, life is a human right, because human interests are most valued in humanism.
Who cares? If a Muslim terrorist shrugs and says, "I reject the values of your 'secular humanism,' " what objective, suprahuman standard judges that he is "wrong" in rejecting the values you ascribe to secular humanism? You simply *do not* have, Michael, an objective moral yardstick by which to measure the terrorist's own values or actions.
Yes I do. I have his actions, and I have the human instinct of a species evolved from pack animals, which is to recognize that we should help one another, not hurt one another. You, on ther other hand, base your judgement on laws laid down by prophets claiming to represent an invisible man in the sky. Purely subjective.
Darth Wong wrote:It is self-evident that the right to life is violated by murder.
You are mistaken. What is a "right"? In Greco-Roman times it was common to leave a deformed baby out in the elements to die; that baby's life wasn't valued. By why "ought" we to value a baby's life? Objective values *cannot* arise from a worldview that rejects an Objective Moral Arbiter.
In fact, ironically, even though Greco-Romans believed in a pantheon of gods - they held in common with *you* the central idea that there is *no supreme being* to which humans must bow. That belief on their part removed from them any moral commitment to the value of human life, including helpless infants, who should be the most protected among us.
Don't be ridiculous; the Greco-Romans understood that murder was wrong. They certainly understood it better than the Crusaders.
Notice the word "should" in that last phrase. I can rightly use that word because "shoulds," or "oughts," or moral accountability, arises naturally from my worldview - but not from yours. You have no objective basis for pronouncing what anyone "ought" to do.
Nor do you. It is arguably a subjective belief that we should hew to our instincts and try to help one another rather than hurting one another, but compare that to YOUR worldview. You invent a man in the sky and then pretend
that all of your values come from him, rather than a bunch of dead people who wrote superstitious tripe 3000 years ago. How is that remotely "objective"? Do you even know what "objective" means?
Darth Wong wrote:Because their parents explain it to them. We have this thing called "civilization".
(a) Where did their parents get it? Where does the regress come to a halt?
(b) There have been previous civilizations that held to different values from yours. Muslim society today holds to different values from yours. Why are yours "right" and the values of other societies "wrong"? Your worldview simply cannot answer this question - yet you know instinctively in your heart that some things are definitely wrong and some things definitely right. That's your conscience, and it was put there by your Creator.
Civilizations are cumulative phenomena. There is no reason to ascribe to an imaginary deity that which can be easily explained through history. Over time, any civilization will eventually figure out what works and what doesn't.
But as the Bible says, "The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who _suppress the truth by their wickedness_, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities--his eternal power and divine nature--have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse." (Rom. 1:18-20)
Meaningless appeal to authority. The Bible is not evidence; it is hearsay and superstition.
Darth Wong wrote:People kill. This does not mean that they do not understand that killing is bad.
I agree that people's consciences inform them that it's wrong to kill, but it's possible for people to spoil their conscience by persistently opposing it; Rom. 1:21f speaks to this kind of scenario. Such societies ceased viewing their enemies, or the less fortunate among their own people, as having any value or purpose. Having begun viewing them as valueless and purposeless, it was a logical next step to decide they could kill them without remorse or repurcussions.
And YOU proudly view atheists as valueless and purposeless. Thanks for proving my point; your religious beliefs make it possible for you to rationalize hate.
(b) There is nothing in your worldview that can rightly dictate how they "ought" to have viewed those they discarded or killed. There's nothing in your worldview that can rightly proclaim that they "ought" to have followed their conscience.
I grow tired of your insistent lies. My worldview is secular humanism. Your claims of its lack of moral values are completely false. And atheism is not a "worldview"; it is simply the absence of a particular superstitious belief. Do you think it a "worldview" to disbelieve in Santa Claus?
Darth Wong wrote:Christians have killed more people than any other group in history; does this mean that they are incapable of understanding that killing is bad?
You are wrong. Modern atheists have killed more. But this not a competition of evil.
The death toll of Manifest Destiny, the Slave Trade, and the Nazis adds up to more than 100 million. It is a complete falsehood to say that modern atheists have killed more. And more to the point, atheism is not a "worldview" anyway, so to lump atheists into a group is akin to lumping people who observe mathematics into a group. Do you list all of the atrocities committed by people who recognize that 2+2=4 as an indictment against mathematics?
Secular humanists, on the other hand, have no major atrocities whatsoever on our record: a minor detail you glossed over.
(a) I agree with you that when Christians have committed atrocities, they really *are* atrocities. But only my worldview can judge them to be atrocities; your worldview has no objective basis for so judging them.
Yes it does; we are evolved from pack animals, and we instinctively recognize that we need to help one another, not hurt each other. You agree that we carry a certain "instinct" for morality, yes? You have said so earlier, even
if we both agree that it can be damaged or obscured through indoctrination, trauma, etc. So given that this "instinct" exists, you believe that it came from God, while I believe that it came from our evolutionary ancestry as pack animals. What's the difference? I do not need to appeal to the supernatural. Your system is subjective; mine is not. Secular humanism merely codifies it, and recognizes it as a purpose rather than a useless instinct.
(b) Not everyone who claims to be a Christian actually is. It's illegal to impersonate a police officer, but some still do it. Does that mean there's anything inherently wrong with the policing profession? No. Many have impersonated Christians, but that says nothing about the rightness or wrongness of Christianity itself. I urge you to look not at the failed lives of professing Christians - but at Jesus himself. Christians didn't invent Christianity; Jesus did. Look at the Inventor, at what his original intentions were, at how he himself lived out his own standards.
He was a racist, he supported slavery, he claimed that his enemies would suffer eternal torment, and he supported the Old Testament laws in which children should be killed for not obeying their parents. He even rebuked the Pharisees for not following that particular (insane) law. Hardly a model
citizen by today's standards.
Darth Wong wrote:So what? The Nazis were Christians, remember?
Not by Jesus' standards, no. And his standards are the only ones that matter. But even if some were, they were in such cases acting in a manner *inconsistent with* the worldview of Christianity, since Christianity would call them to live oppositely, to love rather than oppress. So a judgment on immoral Christians is not a judgment on Christianity.
It is if their behaviour is precedented and encouraged in the Bible, which it is.
Darth Wong wrote:Christians have a very long history of persecuting Jews.
I agree - but it's only the worldview of theism that can rightly judge persecution to be "wrong." Your worldview cannot.
Your repetitive use of this "your worldview" argument grows not only tiresome, but extremely irritating. My worldview is secular humanism. Its values allow me to judge this persecution. They are based on the recognition, produced by
our pack-animal instincts, that it's good to help each other. Your worldview is based on the subjective belief in a bunch of writings of dead prophets who claimed to represent an invisible man in the sky. If you are going to claim that someone's "worldview" lacks any basis of morality, you'd damned well better back that up instead of simply repeating it over and over.
Darth Wong wrote:A certain value system is "wrong" if it causes human suffering. If you do not recognize that human suffering is bad, then you have no concept of morality.
Human suffering is only "bad" if we value human life and care about those who suffer. But if there is no God, no Moral Arbiter to whom we are accountable, then I will simply ask the logical question: Why "ought" I to care about my fellow humans? If I want something, and if I'm in a position to be able to get what I want, even if that means oppressing or destroying others, why "ought" I to do anything different? Theism answers: Because God created those people to be equal to me and to have the same ultimate purpose as myself, and I am accountable to that God for how I treat my fellow humans.
In other words, you confess that you have no built-in moral compass whatsoever, and that your only moral principle is obedience to authority. What a good little fascist you are.
Atheism answers . . . ? It gives *no* answer. It *has* none.
Nor does mathematics. That doesn't mean it's wrong. Atheism does not claim to teach us ANYTHING; it only points out that your imaginary God does not exist. Secular humanism, on the other hand, is derived from the instinctive recognition that suffering is bad, among other things, and CAN be used as a
basis for morality. Small children become very uncomfortable when they hear a baby cry. Is this instinct? We both seem to think so. Do we need to appeal to the supernatural to explain where this instinct came from? You do, I don't.
It occurs to me to encourage to you ponder this question: How many people, though appearing moral on the surface, would commit immoral acts if they *knew* they could get away with it? (Or, ask *yourself* that question; I know I've often asked *myself* that question, and knew deep down that I was not as moral as I'd thought myself to be, to my shame.)
That is due to your religious indoctrination, which teaches you that morality is based entirely on obedience to authority and fear of punishment. You were never taught to consider the concept of morality on your own. This is why
Christians are so easily turned to evil.
I once read the results of a survey of college-aged males who were asked, "Would you rape a woman if you knew you could get away with it?" Well over 50% said Yes. And from an atheistic standpoint, on what basis could they be judged "wrong"? None at all. It would simply come down to whether or not they value and respect their fellow human beings, particularly women. There is no objective reason in atheism why they "ought" to, because if humanity is an evolutionary accident, well, accidents have no value, no purpose. They're just accidents.
You can replace "atheism" with "mathematics" in every one of your arguments in order to see how ridiculous it is. Do you deny that 2+2=4 because addition has no way of judging rape to be wrong?
I grow tired of your astounding penchant for repetition. If you answer this post in the same repetitive manner, I will only address this asinine argument ONCE, instead of humouring every single repetition of the same underlying
point. "Victory through exhaustion" is both unreasonable and dishonest as a debate tactic.
Societies create and enforce morality. Some people within those societies like to give the credit to their imaginary deities, even though advanced societies always do this regardless of whether they worship such deities. It is the
ultimate hubris to take credit away from entities which you know to exist, and grant it to an entity whose very existence is based entirely on your own personal subjective beliefs.
Consider this scenario, which happens everyday in many people's lives. A child overhears his mother tell her friend that he, the child, was an "accident." How does that make the child feel? Is it better for the child's mental health to know he was an "accident," or to know he was purposely sought after and brought into the world by his parents? Consider another scenario from family life: a child knocks over a vase and breaks it. Dad has to determine if the child did it purposely or by accident. If it was on purpose, Dad will punish the child or discipline him in some way; but if it was an accident, should Dad's response be the same? No, of course not, because if something is an accident, we view it differently than if it were on purpose. We assign moral meaning to something that is purposeful, but no moral meaning to something that is accidental.
So? How does this change the fact that you base your values on the laws laid down by some dead men claiming to represent a sky god, while I base my values on the betterment of humanity? I know humanity exists; you do not know that God exists. Your system of morality is based upon entities whose very EXISTENCE is subjective, yet you have the gall to refer to it as "objective!" Do you have any idea what objectivity is?
If humanity as a whole is accidental, then humanity has no meaning and no objective morality.
Morality is based on goals: in the case of secular humanism, furthering the interests of mankind. Given those goals, secular morality restricts itself entirely to objective data, so it is far more objective than your religious morality, which is based on obedience to arbitrary edicts of imaginary deities which exist only in your mind, without any shred of objective evidence.
Darth Wong wrote:Wrong. Insulting someone by accusing him of having no morality is abusive.
I never accused you of having no morality. I said *your worldview* has no morality. Worldviews are not persons.
Ah, so if I say that your religion is evil, you won't take it personally. OK. Your religion is evil.
Sometimes people act in a manner consistent with their worldview, other times they don't. If you are a moral person - and kudos to you if you are - then it's only because you are not acting out the logical conclusion of your atheism. You are, instead, a practical theist. (Conversely, and unfortunately, many professing theists are practical atheists.)
You consider me a "theist" because I have a system of morality? How utterly ridiculous; please look up the definition of "theist" in the dictionary.
Hopefully you can perceive now how objective moral standards are in fact an argument for the existence of God.
No, they are an argument for secular morality. Only secular morality avoids polluting its moral judgements with any belief system other than that which is based upon the instinctive recognition that we are pack animals and we need to help each other out.
Darth Wong wrote:Atheism is not a belief, so it cannot naturally give rise to anything. Atheism is a LACK of belief.
That depends entirely on what Reality actually is. If there really is a God, then atheism is in fact the positive rejection of His existence and rule. It is a *belief* that God does not exist. Your statement, then, presupposes that God does not exist, which is the very question we're debating.
That is the most ridiculous argument I've ever heard. Replace God with "Santa Claus" in that argument to see how silly it is. While you're at it, look up the logical principle of parsimony. We presuppose that NOTHING exists unless there is some objective reason to believe it exists. Do you consider it a "belief system" to deny the existence of Santa Claus?
You deny the superiority of objective reality (ie- the observable universe) to your subjective belief (ie- your God), and then you go on to compound this ridiculous argument by claiming that the laws supposedly dictated by your imaginary God are actually "objective" despite having not a shred of objective evidence for his existence, never mind his wishes.
Darth Wong wrote:Secular humanism, on the other hand, does naturally give rise to a natural system of morality.
No, it doesn't. Again, I believe you're a moral person; I'm not arguing about you personally, or about any secular humanist on a personal level. I'm arguing about worldviews.
Explain WHY secular humanism cannot give rise to a system of morality, instead of simply saying "it does NOT!" fifty times in fifty ways.
Darth Wong wrote:What in your religion naturally gives rise to a natural system of morality, particularly when it advocates worship of an unrepentant genocidal mass-murderer and unabashed torturer of his enemies?
Those are reasonable questions which I am happy to answer. It's really a two-parter, so . . . (1) Theism posits a Creator who brought us into being for a *purpose*, a purpose which reflects His own nature and dictates how we "ought" to live. As the Westminster Confession puts it, "The purpose of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever."
If the purpose of Man were to help other people, that would be much more constructive than glorifying deities. That improved purpose would also have led to far less bloodshed throughout history.
(2) Although our morality "ought," by divine design, to reflect the character of God, that does not mean we are like God in every respect. A primary difference is that He is the Giver of life and we are merely the receptors. Another is that He is sovereign over all of us, whereas we are not sovereign over each other (from which error springs oppression, persecution, murder, rape, or any other form of wrongful treatment toward each other). As the Giver of life and as the One who is sovereign over the lives He has created, God has every right to *take* life. Because it belongs to Him. The second part of your question, then, presupposes that you are sovereign over your own life and that God has no right to rule it or take it. But if theism is true, your presupposition is false.
In other words, your belief system can be used to justify mass-murder and genocide. Precisely as I have been saying; by polluting your system of morality with subjective influences, you open up the possibility of great atrocities. Look at what you are doing! If you accept theism, then murder might be OK! What kind of "morality" is that?
As for the "torture of His enemies," can you be more specific? I'm not being facetious or difficult; I just want to be clear about what you have in mind when you use those words.
Hell. Lake of fire. The place where all of us unbelievers are supposed to be tortured for all eternity because we don't worship your "merciful" God.
SUMMARY
You made only two points in that entire volume of wasted space:
- "Objective morality requires an objective basis". You then used a leap in logic to conclude that this objective basis must be the interests of God.
- If evolution has no moral authority, then it is false.
The rebuttals are quite simple:
- There is no objective evidence for the existence of God, so God is subjective, not objective. The proper objective basis for morality is the interests of humanity iself, whose existence is quite clearly objective.
- 2) Evolution, like all scientific theories, need not carry moral authority in order to be correct. Gravity is no basis for morality either, but I don't see anyone denying the validity of gravity for that reason.
