I have already demonstrated the "equivocation" you committed in the first statement.
My intention in this post is to show the many inconsistencies of your responses which present numerous "logical fallacies", the committing of which causes one to fail in the debate because of irrational argumentation.
In your first entry you state:
While you admit that it is your "way of thinking" (opinion) in "our little corner of it here on Earth" ("our" in context is either the Christian or the Gnostic of which you are neither. You are an Atheist) "simply does not look as if either of those assumptions are true. The arguments that can be made by simply gathering evidence from everything we know says otherwise. So I suggest a compromise ( this is, of course, entirely changing the course of the debate committing the "compromise position fallacy") -- if, of course, we have to accept "creation" at all: maybe our universe was created by a totally evil being that was a dozen or so percentage points short of omnipotent, and thus not entirely effective. That would fit the "facts on the ground" better, in my opinion. (here you have committed the "hedging fallacy" - You are hedging if you refine your claim simply to avoid counterevidence and then act as if your revised claim is the same as the original.
Further on you state:
I grew up in the Judaeo-Christian world, and my understanding of God is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent (all knowing, all powerful, and all good). The world I can see with my own eyes was definitively not created by such an entity. (you are crediting yourself with absolute knowledge of creation out of your limited view of the world - "non-sequitur". This is "suppressing of the evidence", or the fallacy of "incomplete evidence" AKA the "cherry-picking fallacy")
Your reply to another:
"Please be sure that your apologetics address the wisdom and goodness of God while busily tormenting and killing people. I promise I'll read what you write." (This "confirmation bias" or "selective attention" fallacy is the tendency to look for evidence in favor of one's controversial hypothesis and not to look for disconfirming evidence, or to pay insufficient attention to it is implied by the use of your rhetoric.)
You state:
"But if you accept God's creative -- then you also accept that God created all the wonderful array of plants and beasts that can and frequently do kill us -- not by anybody's "free will," but just because God created it thus." (Again, this is "slanting" the argument by building a "strawman" and providing only "selective attention" to "suppressed evidence" totally ignoring the Biblical testimony regarding the curse pronounced on mankind and the effect of that fall upon creation because of the forewarned result of the breaking of God's one restriction in Eden. Your total avoidance of the history of the fall of man and the result and nature of the entrance of sin into the world exhibits your effort to misrepresent the other side. Especially so, considering that you boast that: "I have read more theodicies than you imagine".)
This Syllogism: "But if you accept God's creative -- then you also accept that God created all the wonderful array of plants and beasts that can and frequently do kill us". (Commits the fallacy of "False Analogy" as demonstrated above. When reasoning by analogy, the fallacy occurs when the analogy is irrelevant or very weak or when there is a more relevant disanalogy.)
This is a good one:
"Surely you cannot mean what you said -- only the Christian worldview can give an account of the laws of logic? Those laws were invented before there were Christians (perhaps you've heard of the Greeks? Look them up -- they're quite interesting.)" (My position is that very statement. God created man in His image, which included, in part, a "rational" mind which predates what the Greeks discovered by quite a while. Only the Christian worldview has the foundation which gives a logical explanation for the transcendent, universal, necessary, invariant and immaterial laws of mathematics, nature, physics, logic, morals e.t.c.. The Atheist cannot account for transcendent, universal, necessary, invariant and immaterial laws according to their worldview because evolution is their theory of the existence of life - the origin and progression of the species - with the result that man is obtained by natural, physical (material) means. Since they reject the "super"natural, transcendent, and immaterial (God, heaven, hell, angels, miracles, etc) they must, to be consistent, reject the transcendent, universal, necessary, invariant and immaterial laws of logic. They don't because they can't and therefore are inconsistent with their own thinking and living their life, making their arguments illogical and their worldview self-refuting. If you can account for the transcendent, universal, necessary, invariant and immaterial laws consistent with your worldview, please give a "coherent" explanation. Here's your chance.)
You challenge:
"Okay, here's a great challenge for you: tell me one, single "moral absolute that is governed by a moral law that is transcendent, universal, necessary, invariant and immaterial." Then we'll see if I could have gotten there without God."
The second table of the Ten Commandments regarding man's moral obligation to man states:
“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be prolonged in the land which the Lord your God gives you.
You shall not murder.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.
You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his male servant or his female servant or his ox or his donkey or anything that belongs to your neighbor.”
Summed up in "YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF." Matt.19:19. Or to go to the extent of self-sacrifice such as "Let no one seek his own good, but that of his neighbor." 1Cor.10:24
If, as an Atheist, man evolved through the process of the "survival of the fittest", because survival is the most vital issue, then explain how any moral laws would profit man's self-preservation. Please note just statements like "it's the right thing to do" or "it just is" or "it makes me happy" are not meaningful responses. Presenting your foundation, according to the tenets of your worldview, is.
You:
"What nonsense! I don't object to pain and suffering because I'm a rational atheist! I object to them because they hurt people! You may be so bound up in God-Grovelling that such a notion isn't important to you, but I wouldn't advise broadcasting that to the people around you. I don't personally think it's very edifying, and it certainly doesn't make you look good in my eyes. (I'm not addressing you as a "rational" Atheist. That's a "misrepresentation". I have consistently showed that your arguments are inconsistent with your worldview making them irrational. Resorting to pejorative, name-calling insults does not further civil dialogue nor substantiate one's position. It is the "ad hominem fallacy": when you make an irrelevant attack on the arguer and suggest that this attack undermines the argument itself.)
Words have meaning so when you state: "Yes, I'm familiar with the argument. What I find so fascinating about it is that it seems to state -- clearly and unequivocally, that if you did not have God, you would have zero way of knowing whether or not torturing babies for your own amusement is moral or not."
("it seems to state -- clearly and unequivocally" (a "False Equivalence" fallacy). You seem to hold two two opposing views that appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. It's possible or probable or it seems or in my opinion is definitely not "clearly and unequivocally".
Next: "So, as you can clearly see, I reject utterly your first premise, that "if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist." For me, the only thing required for a huge number of "objective moral values" is the object of those values alone -- as in my example above. Babies being the object, the moral value being the result. God not required. (Here you, again, deflect from the premises to present a new position by overtly committing the "Definist Fallacy". The Definist Fallacy occurs when someone unfairly defines a term so that a controversial position is made easier to defend. "Objective" moral values is defined as the state or quality of being true even outside of a subject's individual biases, interpretations, feelings, and imaginings. You change "objective" to "object" - "the object of those values alone", that is, a person, a subject. Another "red-herring".)
Finally: "And may I also point out (though I'm not going to list them) the number of things that various scriptures have claimed are morally imperative -- in the very name of God. Such as stoning girls for chastity failures, or killing innocent children just because you want their parent's territories. (Other than "Harlots" the only stoning that I'm familiar with was upon men, in Israel's economy. And "killing innocent children just because you want their parent's territories."? Ezekiel 18:20 "The person who sins will die The son will not bear the punishment for the father's iniquity, nor will the father bear the punishment for the son's iniquity; the righteousness of the righteous will be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked will be upon himself." I've never read where any "innocent" people were punished because they did nothing wrong. Matter of fact: Rom.3:10 - as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; 11 There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; 12 All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one...23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”. So I would need references to back-up your assertions instead of simple accusations and "Appeals to Emotion". Yeah, another fallacy.There is nothing wrong with using emotions when you argue, but it's a mistake to use emotions as the key premises or as tools to downplay relevant information.)
In essence your arguments posit one long list of rhetorical fallacies, or fallacies of argument, that don't allow for the open, two-way exchange of ideas upon which meaningful conversations depend. Instead, they distract the reader with various appeals instead of using sound reasoning.
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