Are Humans Born Good?

Evangelicalhumanist said:

So, you are saying that good or evil has absolutely nothing to do with any of the participants – neither the perpetrator nor the victim. For you, a thing is either good or evil based on only the nature of the thing itself, and not in what results. At least, that seems to be what you are saying.

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Not exactly. If actual moral values and duties exist they must first exist external to us. If you claim moral duties on exist within people then no one has the slightest obligation to obey them, it would also make Hitler and Stalin actually good. I thank God that you, I, and every human on Earth acts as if morality is objective. With God moral values and duties are rooted in God's eternal nature and all men and women do is either act in accordance with that objective truth or against it. The decision is ours, the values and duties are God's.

I will make it even easier. Prove that (if I had the button to a million nuclear war heads buried around the planet) I have any duty to not push the button. Or even easier, prove that Stalin did anything actually wrong.

Regardless I do not see what your arguing against. There are few arguments as untouchable as the moral argument. Let's go back to my two main contentions.

1. If the Christian God exists then objective moral values and duties exist.
2. If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.

The only open question is if God exists or not but that is not what we are discussing. Which one of those two unassailable arguments are you denying.

Let me show you that your own camp (non-theists) know that without God no objective morality can possibly exist. I am quoting no a philosopher, not a scientist, he is THE philosopher of science. He is a Darwinian atheistic bulldog with great credentials.

Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement, 1991.

"The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called 'ethical principles'. The question is not whether biology- specifically, our evolution-is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no justification of the traditional kind is possible. Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God's will ...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

Or how about Dawkins, as bad of a philosopher as he is he still knows that without God no actual morality can possibly exist.

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
― Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life

Atheism does for morality what it does for almost everything. It strips concepts and terms of everything that makes them meaningful, also if followed to it's natural conclusion will produce self contradictions, every single time.

Ok, I will have to be brief from here on out.

I was referring to the collection of complex, contradictory thoughts from both of us, that were beginning to lose any coherence in terms of argument.

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What I have stated has been non contradictory for thousands of years.

I presume you know that these "definitions" are human constructs – and legal ones. They are not part of any philosophy or theology of which I am aware, and I there are many legal theorists who argue strongly that they are arbitrary and not-too-useless notions.

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All definitions are human constructs. In fact everything you have said has been a human construct. I will throw out my definitions if you throw out everything you ever have or ever will say or type.

And I'll make it simpler for you – the "morality that exists in human mind" is the only one to which you have access, unless you make the claim you have access to God's mind. And, as we can see through all of human history, this turns out to be quite true. Oh, sure, we have our scriptures (you, your Christian ones, Muslims their Qur'an and Hadith, Sikhs the Guru Granth Sahib, and so on), but as it turns out, these are not apparently a clear explication of what "God thinks." And how do I know this? Because it has proved impossible to get agreement – not only universal agreement, but even agreement among various religions, resulting in literally thousands of sects, with thousands of definitions.

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Why are you denying things you do not even know about.

1. If my God exist I can have every reason to suggest I can know the thoughts of God he wishes to grant me access to and the obvious one would be his moral commands.
2. Even if I could not know God's thoughts straight out of his mind he could still communicate through my God given conscience.
3. Even if neither one of those are true he could and has communicated all I need to know in the Bible.
4. I do not even care if I knew a single moral aspect of God's nature, what I said about the nature of morality is absolutely correct. For you to be right every person who believes objective moral values and duties exist (virtually all of us) would all have to be wrong in every single instance.
5. Your in a vanishingly small group that claims objective moral values do not exist (even though you act as if they do continuously), I am in a vastly larger group that believes they do exist. The odds are overwhelmingly in my favor.

In that sense, I contend that "with God morality has become a hopeless disaster," and it would not take much digging to find hundreds upon hundreds of examples of the use of "evil as defined by God" resulting in a lot of evil committed by humans in the name of this "God ordained morality."

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Your wrong, but even if you think God's morality is a disaster it would still be objective. That necessarily means you would be wrong.

Let's try an example. It is claimed (in Malum in se) that things like murder, robbery and so on are objective moral evils. So let's start with robbery. Now, it does seem to me that without some subjective individuals (the robber and the robbed), such an evil could not exist at all. That already begins to make it subjective. But let's ignore that for the moment, and posit that "robbery is always and without exception a moral evil."

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Incorrect, murder and unjustified theft would be wrong even if no one at all existed to commit either.

Now, consider the fellow in a disaster area, let's say New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Now, there's a fellow in a flooded area of downtown, with his daughter who is a very brittle diabetic. They desperately need insulin, but the druggist (he had money) had locked up his store and got out. So in his desperation, the man breaks into the store, takes only enough insulin to satisfy the present need, and leaves. Well, if you are saying that the existence of God makes that – irrespective of any of the characters I've described -- and objective moral evil, I confess I have a different opinion. To say so implies that the morally correct action for this man to take is to let his daughter die – that this is, in this current and dire situation, what God would actually want.

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You are going to open a can of worms if you bring the bible into this. First you must have a very good understanding of the bible for us to have a meaningful discussion of the bible. But if you had a sufficient understanding of the bible you would already know that what it says accounts for what you described. If you understand the different covenants, the application of each covenant, and the purpose and function of the law, the differences between the levitical law, the laws written on our hearts by God, and the deca-law can we even begin to discuss this. Do you?

A parting shot. God accounts for circumstances. For example many lay people think the bible said "Thou shall not kill". The original Hebrew does not say that. It says thou shall not murder. Murder is unjustified killing, God has allowed for circumstances. I would love to debate biblical morality, but we would have to only debate that because it will take me a long time to bring you up to speed concerning the thing you deny.

In fact, when it comes to it, I cannot think of a single moral evil that does not involve at minimum two sentient beings. A tsunami that kills thousands is a disaster, but it's a natural one. To make it "evil" you require some being to have caused the tsunami – perhaps you'd like to consider God for this role?

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You must also have researched moral theory before you throw natural evil and intentional evil into the same pot.

How about the Inquisition, which sought to stamp out “heresy” (or “wrong belief” which presumes that you are in possession of the “right belief” without possibility of error), by the burning to death of thousands of human beings for the presumed “evil” of what they believed?

I know where we differ, by the way – you cannot see the world as I see it, as being one of sentient beings created by nature and needing to co-exist. You see it as ordered by God – although I say to you that you would be very hard-pressed to tell us, in a definitive and unassailable way, a single “Objective Moral Evil.” That is, an evil that would still be evil even if there were no subjective players.

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It appeared that the second half of your post will require our switching gears.

1. You have not and will never show that Objective moral values and duties exist without God. If God does not exist that means that everyone's moral opinion is no better and no worse than any others. If you do not have a fact to refer to then no one opinions are true.

2. You cannot nor will you ever be able to show that if my God exists that objective moral values and duties do not exist. By the way you also need to understand the difference between an absolute and an objective moral value or duty.

I think you realize you cannot refute either of those two arguments, because you switched gears entirely to whether I can know God's moral requirements (by reason and by revelation I actually can). Then you switched gears again to attacking the objective moral values and duties we have before God you claim I couldn't know but apparently you think you can. To attack a moral command in the bible is to assume there is an objective moral principle that he has violated (yet that is what you deny even exists). So you have emphatically proven what I said by acting as if objective moral values exist at the same time you deny them. That is exactly what I meant by atheism if left alone contradicts its self and implodes.

So I can defend any one claim I made or any one concept you wish to discuss but since I will have to bring you up to speed before any debate is even possible it will have to be only one issue we discuss. You may pick your own poison.

Evangelicalhumanist said:

Absolutely amazing! You posted all of that -- in response to someone who asked you to provide JUST ONE example of an objective moral evil -- and that's the only thing you did not do!

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1. First things first, the etiquette of professional debate requires that the person who makes a claim to knowledge first, has the first obligation to provide the evidence which proves their claim is true. That has not been done so I will wait until it is before I provide my required own duty.
2. Since the person asked me many question I could not respond to them all. You ignored 95% of the questions I was asked and simply cherry picked one. You falsely claimed that I was required to be the first to provide what my claims required.
3. Since nothing further can be resolved until a person first understand that nature of morality and the arguments concerning it, so that is what I provided an exhaustive response to first. If you do not know how to add I can't debate a triple integral with you.

Please concentrate on the mistakes in your own arguments before you falsely accuse me of anything in a discussion with another person. Doing so will take all the time you can muster.

1robin said:

Regardless I do not see what your arguing against. There are few arguments as untouchable as the moral argument. Let's go back to my two main contentions.

1. If the Christian God exists then objective moral values and duties exist.
2. If God does not exist then objective moral values do not exist.

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And for me, nothing could be easier. I do not accept the existence of the Christian God, for reasons that I have explained at great length elsewhere. I also do not accept the idea of objective moral values. Therefore, my thought is 100% consistent.

1robin said:

Not exactly. If actual moral values and duties exist they must first exist external to us. If you claim moral duties on exist within people then no one has the slightest obligation to obey them, it would also make Hitler and Stalin actually good. I thank God that you, I, and every human on Earth acts as if morality is objective. With God moral values and duties are rooted in God's eternal nature and all men and women do is either act in accordance with that objective truth or against it. The decision is ours, the values and duties are God's.

I will make it even easier. Prove that (if I had the button to a million nuclear war heads buried around the planet) I have any duty to not push the button. Or even easier, prove that Stalin did anything actually wrong.

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Unfortunately, you make what I think is a completely unwarranted leap. The absence of "objective moral values" doesn't make anybody "good." This is a complete unjustified dichotomy.

We are human beings, on a planet populated with millions of other species, and billions of our own kind, all of which have evolved to be what they are at this present time. That is the only context in which moral values exist.

We are a social species (as are many others), but our evolution has included an immense amount of flexibility that does not exist in other social species. A worker bee could no more "decide to take a nap and let the other bees gather nectar" than it could develop the internal combustion engine. But even though I evolved to be a social animal, and to respond to the social cues around me, I can do otherwise. Sometimes, that is merely egregious, sometimes it is wise (as when I don't fall into "mob hysteria" which we're all capable of), and it can sometimes be distinctly evil (a la Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin).

Sunstone said:

Have you avoided addressing my points because you failed to understand them? Do you need them explained further?

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It appears that is exactly what you did in your response where you falsely accused me of what you actually did in this post. First, the initial claims you made to which I responded you made claims to knowledge. Being that you did this first you have the first burden to post the evidence that proves your claims to knowledge are true. Second your points require so much work to simply bring you up to speed so we can possibly have an actual debate down the road that I can only address 1 or 2 at a time. In addition to your not providing the burden your initial claims require you do not seem to understand that responding with baloney to arguments that have survived all scrutiny for thousands of years suggests you do not know enough about these issues to have a debate. So if I decide to carry on the discussion I must go back to kindergarten and explain the basics behind my statements. That is exactly what I did. I submitted an approximately 8000 thousand character post to which you simply ignored. I do not have the time to waste on this none sense. Last chance.

1. Either provide the burden of proof that your initial claims to knowledge require before asking me to do what you haven't.

Or
2. Read what I post in an attempt to get your self familiar with basic arithmetic so perhaps one day we can discuss partial differential equations. IOW learn the basics of moral ontology so we can perhaps one day get into advanced moral theory.

And
3. Do not respond to arguments that have weathered all scrutiny for millennia (and which you apparently know little about) with "baloney". Respond with rational arguments, not with color commentary, or give it up all together.

So first things first. PROVE your initial claim to knowledge is actually true. You said I can't possibly of a single objective moral value or duty. Stop making claims to knowledge, when you do not even hint at an attempt to show they are true. It is your burden, provide it.

BTW it is not true that "in epistemic terms, your point of view is subjective -- as is every other person's point of view." If my point of view is that I think there for I am - then my point of view corresponds to an objective fact and is by necessity not subjective. That is the reason I posted the basic moral arguments that have existed for thousands of years. It seems you do not understand the definitions of subjective or objective in this context. Trillions of points of view that humans hold correspond to objective fact.

I generally think of morality as being essentially our conceptualisations, but that they are expressions and reflections of deeper impulses which might be more fairly called objective (in a relative sense ).

arthra said:

Thanks for your reply Robin... The forum is quite open as you know... and I commend you to the care of the Almighty.

God's blessings,

- Art

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Ok, I will give you one and see what you want to do with it.

You said that religious teachings have all been lost over time, and Baha'i is a restoration of what was lost. My response is the following.

I will only cover 2 examples.

1. Islam's text has been preserved almost perfectly back to the time of Uthman. All you can do with Islam is claim that prior to Uthman no one has any idea if anything was lost or added. However since no one has the slightest idea if anything was lost or added to Islam's scriptures no one can recover what was lost or get rid of what was added.

2. Christianity is a whole other animal.
a. The NT's text is by far the best preserved text of any kind in ancient history. There is not even an actual second place.
b. Even secular biblical scholars admit the text is at least 95% preserved, and theologian scholars suggest it is 99.5% preserved.
c. Add to this that textual critics say the entire original text is preserved, it has merely been added to in a few places.
d. Not only that but if you added up all the things necessary to have virtual certainty as to the preservation of an ancient text the bible's every one of them.
e. So not only is the Bible at least 95% textually accurate but we can actually know where virtually all the errors lie. Look at any mainstream bible version and
you will see every possible error is footnoted with all the details we know about them.
f. So it simply cannot be the case that significant portions the original biblical text have been lost. In fact even Bart Ehrman (the most famous bible critic alive)
said that there are virtually no errors in core doctrine.

So if the Baha'i do what they are famous for by distorting and contorting everyone else's theological texts. In at least the bible's case we know they got it wrong. There are even thousands of years worth of investigation and methods that have been perfected in the bible's case by which we can be virtually certain that when the Baha'i turn it's literals into allegories and it's allegories into literals the Baha'i are the ones that are corrupting the original revelations. The bible is the most scrutinized text in human history, has come out unscathed by any of it, and is the by far most well preserved text of any kind in ancient history.

DavidMcCann said:

It's on my post: Pagan.

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Which one? Actually it does not matter, so I will just take your word for it. Since every Pagan God I have ever heard of is derivative then mainstream Pagan deities cannot be the foundation of objective morality.

That's exactly the point that I was objecting to. I don't see how there can be two meanings of a word that are totally unrelated. How then did the word "good" come to be applied to human actions?

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Ok, let me give the examples again.

If I say my car is good (especially if I say it is evil). I am not making a moral claim at all, because only free moral agents can be referred to in a moral context.
But,
If I said your committing that murder is wrong. Then whether I am right or wrong I am regardless making a moral judgment because you are a free moral agent.

No. The statement that "2 + 2 = 4" is surely the result of human thought, but it's not a matter of preference.

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Absolutely not. I have two math degrees but even a freshman philosophy student or science major knows that was incorrect. In fact most PhDs say that mathematics is one of the few fields of study that concerns things that probably exist even if no humans or even the universe exist. No one invested mathematics, we only discover mathematics. When Newton wrote his papers on gravity, he said it made him appreciate the mind of God even more. Mathematics in one the few thing philosophers refer to as properly basic or be the terms brute fact. Natural laws like 2 + 2 are not the result of human thought. If you research the modern abstract scientific revolution the reason it occurred exclusively in Christendom it because men of faith in a rational God believed he would have created a rational universe. Cosmology, physics, etc.... are the result of people seeking out to decode the rationality out of the universe and natural law.

I did not say that happiness is the goal: I'm not a hedonist. I said that flourishing is the goal: living the most appropriate life a human can live. That will not guarantee happiness. Sometimes we are faced with the choice between two evils and have to live with sorrow regardless of our choice.

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Prove with appealing to God that flourishing is the goal of morality. Or prove that human flourishing is better than bovine flourishing. Unless you can human flourishing is merely speciesm which is worse than racism.

All meaningful action requires a goal that is inherently desirable. Any goal can be desirable for itself or for a further goal. Ultimately, every goal is part of, or leads to, a good and satisfying life.

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Nope, all meaningful action requires a goal that is objectively true and objectively good. You first must post what that goal is, prove that it is objectively good, prove that it is objectively true, and show how you know any of that. Good luck. I can show all of that if my God exist.

Firstly, there is consensus. People may differ on whether a particular killing constitutes murder, but every society has a concept of murder: wrongful homicide. It is also unnatural: one cannot have a society where people go around killing each other: it just wouldn't hold together.

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Any moral goals produced by human minds are both subjective and do not correspond to any actual moral value or duty. Your more of a humanist than a Pagan, and humanism lacks it's own justifications.

Evangelicalhumanist said:

And for me, nothing could be easier. I do not accept the existence of the Christian God, for reasons that I have explained at great length elsewhere. I also do not accept the idea of objective moral values. Therefore, my thought is 100% consistent.

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That is irrelevant. I did not claim nor argue that God exists. Do you understand what an "if" "then" argument is? I said if my God exists then objective morality can exist, and I said if he does not then morality is subjective (which is ethics or legality, not morality anyway). Both of those claims have been immune to thousands of years of scrutiny. I do not even get what problem you are having with admitting they are both conditionally true.

Your inconsistent because you said God's morality was unjust, wrong, evil, bad or something similar. This show you are no different from every other human. You believe objective morality exists and you live as if it does. Because only if an objective moral standards exist that are even more objective than God's own standard can you judge or condemn God. I also see you never investigated divine command, it would save a lot of time if you looked up just the basics concerning it.

Unfortunately, you make what I think is a completely unwarranted leap. The absence of "objective moral values" doesn't make anybody "good." This is a complete unjustified dichotomy.

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That is probably why I never stated that. In fact I said the exact opposite. I said that if moral values and duties exist they exist external to us. It is merely whether we abide by those objective moral truths or live in opposition to them that we are good or evil. I even said that without objective moral standards no one can be good and no one can be evil because there is no actual good or evil for anyone to be.

I keep asking this question and no one yet has even attempted a response and if you can't respond to it then your argument is doomed. Show that any conceivable action by any human at any time is actually morally good or evil without God. I literally can't think of anyway to make that task any easier.

We are human beings, on a planet populated with millions of other species, and billions of our own kind, all of which have evolved to be what they are at this present time. That is the only context in which moral values exist.

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You must be more careful with your claims to knowledge. When you state that you know something to a certainty then you must provide the proof. You must explain at the minimum how you can know that evolution is the only context that morality exists in. You have no idea how many debts you are incurring by making sweeping claims to things that even if they were true you would have no way what so ever of knowing them. Your being so careless with your claims that I am going to be far more demanding of you. If you do not either retract your claim to knowledge above or post the proof that it is true I am going to remind you of that failure in every post until you do so.

We are a social species (as are many others), but our evolution has included an immense amount of flexibility that does not exist in other social species. A worker bee could no more "decide to take a nap and let the other bees gather nectar" than it could develop the internal combustion engine. But even though I evolved to be a social animal, and to respond to the social cues around me, I can do otherwise. Sometimes, that is merely egregious, sometimes it is wise (as when I don't fall into "mob hysteria" which we're all capable of), and it can sometimes be distinctly evil (a la Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin).

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Good Lord your incurring more and more stuff you must provide by claiming such things as incautious as your being. Even if a bee could not decide what to do, you have no way what so ever to know that. So you must prove that your claim to knowledge concerning bees is true. Good luck. However I want for you to provide what you can't. So, for bees to lack the ability to chose then determinism must be true, which it isn't. However if it was true then it would mean that humans could not choose their own actions and therefor we are not free moral agents and everything concerning us would be amoral. As I have said several times, if you leave an atheist alone and let them keep making claims they will inevitably contradict either themselves, known reality, or both. Regardless your claims have incurred burden after burden you have not provided, and BTW you can never provide. So I require you to take back your un proven claims to fact or prove they are true.

BTW choice is a metaphysical concept, not a biological concept. Sorry evolution.

A couple of hours after I typed the above and went home I thought I would give you a choice I did not mention before. I usually do not debate at home, but a few quick statements.

You can choose from any of the following.

1. Disprove either one of my two "if" "then" arguments about the ontology of morality given or denying God's existence. It is virtually certain you will fail.

So....

2. You can provide the actual evidence which proves your two claims to knowledge above are true. I am certain that neither are true but even if the were you have no way to know it.

Both of those are too easy for me to refute and so they are boring. So I have a third choice.

3. Or we can assume that morality comes through evolution alone (even though it almost certainly doesn't, and despite that even if it was true no one could ever know it) and then I can show you what moral insanity that would actually result in. All three are silly but this one is more fun. However, it is your choice.

1robin said:

That is irrelevant. I did not claim nor argue that God exists. Do you understand what an "if" "then" argument is? I said if my God exists then objective morality can exist, and I said if he does not then morality is subjective (which is ethics or legality, not morality anyway). Both of those claims have been immune to thousands of years of scrutiny. I do not even get what problem you are having with admitting they are both conditionally true.

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My goodness, what a legalistic mind you have – and (at least so far as I can tell from what you’ve written) not the slightest interest in the real “subject” of this subjective discussion: humans.

Of course I understand what an “if” argument is. However, before I go to all the trouble of I acting on the conditional, I require some reason to suppose that the conditional is true. If Flubber exists, then I can use it to fly my car. I’ve not found any reason to suppose Flubber exists, so I pursue the matter no further.

So, you can say “if God exists” until hell freezes over, but if I don’t accept that, then I’m not going further. But let me point out something to you: even “if God exists” and therefore (as you claim), “objective morality can exist,” that still does not mean that objective morality DOES exist. Possibility of existence does not entail existence.

(This, by the way, was the point when I and others have asked you repeatedly to provide one actual “objective moral good or evil” that remains so in the absence of any subject at all. You have not done this, so far – not once.)

Your [sic] inconsistent because you said God's morality was unjust, wrong, evil, bad or something similar. This show you are no different from every other human. You believe objective morality exists and you live as if it does. Because only if an objective moral standards exist that are even more objective than God's own standard can you judge or condemn God. I also see you never investigated divine command, it would save a lot of time if you looked up just the basics concerning it.

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How wrong you’ve got it. I told you in my very own words that I do not believe objective morality exists – so why do you claim I do? Are you calling me a liar? You claim I “judge and condemn God,” and yet how is that possible if I do not even believe in the existence of God? What would my condemnation of Gulliver mean, since I know he’s fictional? Well, for Gulliver I would have to be saying something about the stance taken by his author (Swift), and similarly for God, all issues that you think I have with Him are really issues I have with what human beings on this site say about Him. This is not really hard to grasp.

Oh, and I have read on DCT – but so what? If I do not believe in the divine, what the heck do you think I would believe about what it “commands?”

That is probably why I never stated that. In fact I said the exact opposite. I said that if moral values and duties exist they exist external to us.

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And that is MOST PRECISELY what I deny: if you do not exist, I have no moral duty towards you, and can do nothing morally offensive to you. Period-end-of-story.

It is merely whether we abide by those objective moral truths or live in opposition to them that we are good or evil. I even said that without objective moral standards no one can be good and no one can be evil because there is no actual good or evil for anyone to be.

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And this is precisely where you get it so wrong, and why I made my claim at the beginning of this post – that you are legalistic but uninterested in the subject matter of your legalism: us! I can be good ONLY because I DO some good FOR someone. I can be evil ONLY if I DO evil TO someone. I cannot steal from or murder a non-existent entity. I cannot help a poor person who only exists in a story, like “The Little Match Girl.”

On the other hand, if there are real subjects to whom I can do good or ill (or refrain from doing good or ill), then what? Am I evil if I don’t give the Little Match Girl money, because I’m worried about feeding my children? Am I good if I give her money because my pockets have too much change in them anyway, and I’m worried about putting holes in them? Are you good because you refrained from killing somebody because you believe God will punish your for it? Are you good because you gave somebody money because you could afford it and thought God would reward you for it? (I would say, by the way, that there are some very good people in the world – people who give even when they can't afford it, and because they feel empathy for those they are helping, not for hope of some reward later.)

I keep asking this question and no one yet has even attempted a response and if you can't respond to it then your argument is doomed. Show that any conceivable action by any human at any time is actually morally good or evil without God. I literally can't think of anyway to make that task any easier.

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I can think of millions – and I just gave you four, above. Now your turn. Show any conceivable action by any human at any time that is actually morally good or evil without the existence of other humans.

And that is even easier than your question.

You must be more careful with your claims to knowledge. When you state that you know something to a certainty then you must provide the proof. You must explain at the minimum how you can know that evolution is the only context that morality exists in. You have no idea how many debts you are incurring by making sweeping claims to things that even if they were true you would have no way what so ever of knowing them. Your being so careless with your claims that I am going to be far more demanding of you. If you do not either retract your claim to knowledge above or post the proof that it is true I am going to remind you of that failure in every post until you do so.

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I am not going to do the evolution debate here, and if you are going to insist – well then, we’re done. In science – in the real world of real science, not the religious world of pious pseudo-science – evolution is established fact. I will continue to post with that in mind, and in light of what that science says.

Good Lord your incurring more and more stuff you must provide by claiming such things as incautious as your being. Even if a bee could not decide what to do, you have no way what so ever to know that. So you must prove that your claim to knowledge concerning bees is true. Good luck. However I want for you to provide what you can't. So, for bees to lack the ability to chose then determinism must be true, which it isn't. However if it was true then it would mean that humans could not choose their own actions and therefor we are not free moral agents and everything concerning us would be amoral. As I have said several times, if you leave an atheist alone and let them keep making claims they will inevitably contradict either themselves, known reality, or both. Regardless your claims have incurred burden after burden you have not provided, and BTW you can never provide. So I require you to take back your un proven claims to fact or prove they are true.

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And in the same vein, I am not going to try to teach you how instinct works, how neural networks (brains) are programmed and how flexibility in that programming leads to what we might call “more intelligent species.” Those are arguments for another place, and totally irrelevant to this discussion.

BTW choice is a metaphysical concept, not a biological concept. Sorry evolution.

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And metaphysics is whatever the putative metaphysicist says it is – which means nada to me. Sorry, metaphysics.

1robin said:

You said that religious teachings have all been lost over time, and Baha'i is a restoration of what was lost.

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Unfortunately my dear Robin you didn't quote me... Here is what I wrote:

"We also acknowledge that the spiritual teachings that were the original impetus for the past dispensations can be lost over time or forgotten and that's one reason God sends additional Messengers to restore the spiritual teachings..."

I never wrote that "religious teachings have all been lost over time".

Do you accept that Jesus restored some of the spiritual truths that Moses brought?

Any way I have much to do and wish you well.. God bless you and your loved ones...

1robin said:

Which one? Actually it does not matter, so I will just take your word for it. Since every Pagan God I have ever heard of is derivative then mainstream Pagan deities cannot be the foundation of objective morality.

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It says "Hellenic Pagan". I can't put it clearer than that! But I don't claim that the gods are the origin of morality, so it doesn't matter.

Nope, all meaningful action requires a goal that is objectively true and objectively good. You first must post what that goal is, prove that it is objectively good, prove that it is objectively true, and show how you know any of that.

No. When I get the quiche out the refrigerator tonight, that action is meaningful. How could it be meaningless? And the goal is to heat it in the oven. And the goal of that is to make it more palatable to eat. And the goal of eating it is to keep alive and healthy. As I said, to live a good life. None of this requires that I prove the truth of anything, save perhaps that the quiche is nutritious.

You're more of a humanist than a Pagan

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No. I don't know of any Pagans who think that the distinction of good and bad is of divine origin. If that makes us "humanists" from a monotheist point of view, so be it.

I don't think that this discussion is going to be fruitful: there's too much difference between out basic world outlooks.

PS On the subject of mathematics, may I suggest you consider the views of George Lakoff or Stephen Kleene. On ethics, I recommend Rosalind Hursthouse.

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1robin said:

Which one? Actually it does not matter, so I will just take your word for it. Since every Pagan God I have ever heard of is derivative then mainstream Pagan deities cannot be the foundation of objective morality.

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It says "Hellenic Pagan". I can't put it clearer than that! But I don't claim that the gods are the origin of morality, so it doesn't matter.

Nope, all meaningful action requires a goal that is objectively true and objectively good. You first must post what that goal is, prove that it is objectively good, prove that it is objectively true, and show how you know any of that.

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No. When I get the quiche out the refrigerator tonight, that action is meaningful. How could it be meaningless? And the goal is to heat it in the oven. And the goal of that is to make it more palatable to eat. And the goal of eating it is to keep alive and healthy. As I said, to live a good life. None of this requires that I prove the truth of anything, save perhaps that the quiche is nutritious.

You're more of a humanist than a Pagan

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No. I don't know of any Pagans who think that the distinction of good and bad is of divine origin. If that makes us "humanists" from a monotheist point of view, so be it.

I don't think that this discussion is going to be fruitful: there's too much difference between out basic world outlooks.

PS On the subject of mathematics, may I suggest you consider the views of George Lakoff or Stephen Kleene. On ethics, I recommend Rosalind Hursthouse.

I think people are born on a spectrum and the point is to move up the spectrum to the best of your ability. I think the starting point is significantly less important than the effort one puts into moving.

Sunstone said:

What are humans at birth? Are humans naturally good? Naturally evil? Naturally, a mix of good and evil? Or, neither naturally good nor evil?

Note: I'm placing this thread in religious debates because, as I understand the terms, "good" and "evil" are religious concepts.

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On a planet of 7 billion the vast majority of people live peacefully with each other in a cooperative manner. While crime and violence are always shoved in the spotlight it does not appear to be the primary nature of humankind.

Evangelicalhumanist said:

My goodness, what a legalistic mind you have – and (at least so far as I can tell from what you’ve written) not the slightest interest in the real “subject” of this subjective discussion: humans.

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Actually I am known to be the opposite of what you claimed. However your side of the isle engages in what I call whack - a - mole - mole debating. If your unfamiliar with it they used to have a game called whack a mole. It was a flat table with a dozen holes in it. Plastic moles would put up from the holes and no matter how many times you whacked them with the hammer they would come back up again after a few minutes. Every time I smash one argument another pops up. So I have to be demanding and exacting to pin down each mole that pops up. Anyway, no thread stays strictly on topic and to stay on this ones topic requires you first must understand moral ontology and the moral arguments that have existed since the Greeks. It did not seem that you did so I had to back up and get us both on the same page. I am still trying to.

Of course I understand what an “if” argument is. However, before I go to all the trouble of I acting on the conditional, I require some reason to suppose that the conditional is true. If Flubber exists, then I can use it to fly my car. I’ve not found any reason to suppose Flubber exists, so I pursue the matter no further.

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Ok, lets go back to kindergarten because until you understand the basics we can go no further.

My two conditional arguments are.
1. If God exists (especially my God) then moral values and duties can be objective.
2. If God does not exist then no objective moral value or duty can possibly exist.

Which one do you deny and why?

So, you can say “if God exists” until hell freezes over, but if I don’t accept that, then I’m not going further. But let me point out something to you: even “if God exists” and therefore (as you claim), “objective morality can exist,” that still does not mean that objective morality DOES exist. Possibility of existence does not entail existence.

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I do not care if you agree that God exists or not. I do not care if you think objective morality does exist or not. It only matters that you understand what morality would be if God doesn't or if he does exist. See the two arguments above and tell me which one you reject and why. It does not matter whether you believe God exists at this point.

(This, by the way, was the point when I and others have asked you repeatedly to provide one actual “objective moral good or evil” that remains so in the absence of any subject at all. You have not done this, so far – not once.)

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I have said I would be happy to if all of those who asked me to would meet their earlier burdens that their earlier claims to knowledge require. They haven't so I haven't. As it seems I will grow old and die before those on your side provide what their earlier claims required. So I will go ahead and post me own response. I will however go no farther until you all meet your own burdens.

1. If God exist then murder is objectively wrong.
2. If God does not exist then all the murders ever committed or that ever will be are not objectively wrong. At best they were merely against subjective moral fashions and there for were not actually wrong.

I have made it as easy as possible by asking for anyone to prove that anyone's act, of any kind, at any time, or at any place was actually wrong. I have done this for over a decade. I only had a single person so far that even tried, but he utterly failed.

How wrong you’ve got it. I told you in my very own words that I do not believe objective morality exists – so why do you claim I do? Are you calling me a liar? You claim I “judge and condemn God,” and yet how is that possible if I do not even believe in the existence of God? What would my condemnation of Gulliver mean, since I know he’s fictional? Well, for Gulliver I would have to be saying something about the stance taken by his author (Swift), and similarly for God, all issues that you think I have with Him are really issues I have with what human beings on this site say about Him. This is not really hard to grasp.

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It does not matter. You could not possibly know God doesn't exist even if he doesn't. So you are can not know objective morality does not exist. You actually live as if it does as everyone does but that is irrelevant as well. You limit the nature of all reality based on the unimaginably miniscule of it you have access to. I will not allow you to assume reality is what you wish it was. I will not grant anything you say unless you can possibly know it is true or your argument for that which does not exist is better than my argument as to what does exist. I even gave you an opportunity for us to assume your right about what you can not possibly know, but you didn't choose to and so my offer is withdrawn.

I know very well your condemnation of God's moral commands is meaningless. The only question is why you made them anyway. To make them you absolutely must have an ever more objective moral standard than God himself. Yet that is what you deny even exist. Calling your own arguments meaningless is not a defense of anything.

Oh, and I have read on DCT – but so what? If I do not believe in the divine, what the heck do you think I would believe about what it “commands?”

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I do not care what you believe, I care about your showing that what you prefer is actually true. You haven't and you can't.

And that is MOST PRECISELY what I deny: if you do not exist, I have no moral duty towards you, and can do nothing morally offensive to you. Period-end-of-story.

And this is precisely where you get it so wrong, and why I made my claim at the beginning of this post – that you are legalistic but uninterested in the subject matter of your legalism: us! I can be good ONLY because I DO some good FOR someone. I can be evil ONLY if I DO evil TO someone. I cannot steal from or murder a non-existent entity. I cannot help a poor person who only exists in a story, like “The Little Match Girl.” On the other hand, if there are real subjects to whom I can do good or ill (or refrain from doing good or ill), then what? Am I evil if I don’t give the Little Match Girl money, because I’m worried about feeding my children? Am I good if I give her money because my pockets have too much change in them anyway, and I’m worried about putting holes in them? Are you good because you refrained from killing somebody because you believe God will punish your for it? Are you good because you gave somebody money because you could afford it and thought God would reward you for it? (I would say, by the way, that there are some very good people in the world – people who give even when they can't afford it, and because they feel empathy for those they are helping, not for hope of some reward later.)

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Your simply adding layer upon layer of mistakes to your original ones.

1. I am not legalistic. I have been emphatically claiming my foundations are objective. Legalism is about as subjective as it can get. Your claims are legalistic and therefor subjective. Actually they are merely your own preferences.
2. You must show how what you did was good.
3. Then you must show that doing good for another human is the objective good goal moral duties are supposed to aspire to.
4. All your doing is stating a subjective opinion to back up a subjective opinion. In fact without God every moral duty you add would add another level of subjective preference.

I do not know why your even trying to rescue your moral preference when almost all the atheist philosophers agree that a moral system without God is merely an illusion. Apparently you do not know what the scholars on your own side claim because I had to provide Dawkins and Ruse to familiarize you with the state of atheistic evolutionary ethical scholarship.

I can think of millions – and I just gave you four, above. Now your turn. Show any conceivable action by any human at any time that is actually morally good or evil without the existence of other humans.

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No, you haven't. Nothing in any post you have made has proven anything is actually wrong. The reason I ask that questions because no objective good or evil can exist without God, so you have no chance what so ever as your responses above prove. So, one more time prove that any act (you can even dream up a hypothetical act) is actually wrong without appealing to a transcendent source.

I am not going to do the evolution debate here, and if you are going to insist – well then, we’re done. In science – in the real world of real science, not the religious world of pious pseudo-science – evolution is established fact. I will continue to post with that in mind, and in light of what that science says.

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I am trying to find any relevant subject that you know enough about to post a challenging argument in. I am fast running out of possibilities. Your making a career of insinuating things you can't possibly know are true even if the were. I have two degrees in scientific fields from the same university Von Braun worked at, my father is a NASA engineer, my little brother won the national merit scholarship and graduated with a 3.95 in computer engineering in less than 3 years, one cousin has a PhD in engineering and another a masters, I work in a DOD weapons systems laboratory with a PhD, a guy with 2 masters, and 5 people with bachelors degrees in scientifically related fields. However I know way more about all the things that are relevant to this discussion than physics or mathematics, including the relevant evolutionary biology. Never mind, I am done. Enough is enough, I do not have the time to educate you to the point that you may eventually be able to make meaningful posts.

Societies are born good or neutral. Individuals are born evil.

arthra said:

Unfortunately my dear Robin you didn't quote me... Here is what I wrote:

"We also acknowledge that the spiritual teachings that were the original impetus for the past dispensations can be lost over time or forgotten and that's one reason God sends additional Messengers to restore the spiritual teachings..."

I never wrote that "religious teachings have all been lost over time".

Do you accept that Jesus restored some of the spiritual truths that Moses brought?

Any way I have much to do and wish you well.. God bless you and your loved ones...

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I do not see any meaningful difference between my paraphrasing and your clarification in this context. Even if I took your clarification strictly as you posted it my arguments (especially what I said about the textual integrity of the bible) would be as appropriate as I could hope to ever make. It seems you posted a distinction which makes no actual difference.

DavidMcCann said:

It says "Hellenic Pagan". I can't put it clearer than that! But I don't claim that the gods are the origin of morality, so it doesn't matter.

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The way you formatted your post will not allow me to quote it correctly. You probably did what I do sometimes by having an extra "quote" in there some where. I usually go back and straighten out other people's formatting but I couldn't in your case. I will answer the one statement I could quote from you but if you want me to address the rest can you please state your arguments again in a way where I can quote them?

Since you do not think morality originates with your Pagan Gods then what you have said contains 100% of the necessary details. So do you think that morality is objective, but comes from a non-divine source? If so what is that source? If not, do you then believe morality is subjective?

DavidMcCann said:

It says "Hellenic Pagan". I can't put it clearer than that! But I don't claim that the gods are the origin of morality, so it doesn't matter.

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It appears you corrected the formatting and posted your original post over again. So no need to go back and do anything to the original. I have already addressed the above in my previous post so I will skip to the statements below. BTW you do not have to post a correction in a new post. Just hit edit and you can change it without having to post it over again.

No. When I get the quiche out the refrigerator tonight, that action is meaningful. How could it be meaningless? And the goal is to heat it in the oven. And the goal of that is to make it more palatable to eat. And the goal of eating it is to keep alive and healthy. As I said, to live a good life. None of this requires that I prove the truth of anything, save perhaps that the quiche is nutritious.

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1. This debate is taking place in a moral context. So when I say your describing something that is meaningless that means that relative to morality what your claiming is irrelevant. Pointing out for example how fast a car is morally irrelevant because a car is an amoral object.
2. What you keep referring to is design optimization or functional adequacy, not moral good or evil.
3. You are completely jumping the gun. Since you have no source of objective morality then you need to show (but can't) that a human eating something is morally good. You must explain why any moral goal you mention is true. Only then can we move on the how that goal is achieved.
4. Just because you prefer something or believe something does not make it true. Explain why your living a good life is the objective goal of morality.
5. What you keep mentioning is either an amoral issue or you put forward that what you prefer is an actual moral goal. It isn't.

No. I don't know of any Pagans who think that the distinction of good and bad is of divine origin. If that makes us "humanists" from a monotheist point of view, so be it.

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Well, the reason I say this is that the core tenant of humanism is putting forward objective moral goals while denying their only possible source.

I don't think that this discussion is going to be fruitful: there's too much difference between out basic world outlooks.

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Your views lack any foundation for actual moral truths. That is the only thing I am trying to show. You lack any objective moral truths and there for the entire categories of moral good and moral evil do not exist. However non-theists want to have their cake and eat it to. They actually believe objective moral values exist and live that way. However they deny the only possible source of objective moral values and duties. Anyone doing so (and that includes you) are being inconsistent. Why has no society in the history of human kind actually used evolutionary morality as the basis for it's laws? The closest any society ever came to using social Darwinism to govern it's self was Hitler's Germany and possibly Stalin's communist atheistic utopia. That is not very good company. Anyway you can just accept the fact that only subjective morality exists if God does not, you can waste your time denying that fact that has survived all scrutiny thrown at it since the Greeks and Hebrews concluded that fact, we can both assume that subjective social Darwinism is true and I will show you how horrific that would be, or you can opt out all together. It's up to you.

PS On the subject of mathematics, may I suggest you consider the views of George Lakoff or Stephen Kleene. On ethics, I recommend Rosalind Hursthouse.

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I have two degrees in mathematics but I do not remember mathematics being mentioned in our posts. However no one needs to be all that experienced to know the moral claims I have made are true. All you have to do is read scholarship on moral theory or philosophy. So far I have said nothing that requires any in depth research, my claims have been just very basic stuff.

From what my religion (Deanism) teaches, we are all born naturally good. Naturally wanting to be kind and good etc etc. Deanism says that when Gld created us, She made our soul completely perfect and pure, but we have free will to act on good or act on bad.