Theism VS Atheism 1on1 Debate COMMENTS

[Reginus]

So.... what's the standard way to defeat the argument from morality?

That moral behaviour arises as a need to live and work as part of a cohesive group, for mutually beneficial gain. As working in a large group, especially for animals who by themselves are not particularly specialised (i.e. humans), is beneficial in terms of increased/more stable food supplies, a better chance of encountering a mate, safer from predators and more secure living areas. Murder, rape, theft, bribery, violence destroy the cohesion in groups, and therefore the members who practice them are ostracised, so they are kicked out or shunned, so an individual who practices these acts is less likely to breed. Therefore you have a build up of acceptable and 'moral' behaviour within a group to encourage that group to work together for mutually beneficial gain. These groups have grown and grown until becoming the society we live in today.

Religion is not required in explaining moral behaviour, and to claim such is making an argument from ignorance, as they must have gone out of their way to ignore the evidence that suggests that moral behaviour is derived by evolutionary means.

Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

[Arctonyx]

Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

No, it is not always beneficial, but there are no examples to my knowledge, of a behaviour being considered moral, that is detrimental to society. Much of what we consider moral behaviour could also be classified as selfish behaviour, as moral behaviour arose out of a selfish need for extra food/comfort and mates. Even though we don't know the source of every single moral behaviour, it is easy to disprove that religion or a God has anything to do it, in previous discussions cultures where rape is prevalent have been used to try and argue that morality cannot be derived from evolution or is 'innate'. But I would say this is a very compelling argument why moral behaviour cannot be derived from religious texts or deity's. Even in this discussion morality has been said to be objective, then why do cultures where rape is prevalent even exist? Secluded cultures, some of which are only now being discovered, have never been in contact with Christian writings, or a Christian God, yet they share what we would consider very moral behaviour. So they don't kill people within their group for the hell of it, or steal from people within their tribe, but other parts of their moral behaviour are very different, suggesting that morality isn't derived from an objective source. But that it is derived from the particular needs and situation of that particular group/pack/tribe.

There are rebuttals to do with extraneous moral behaviour (e.g. So why are we kind to people outside of our group?), saying that they cannot arise without a God. This is again false, because natural selection, selects for empathy. This may seem like a behaviour that would grant no survival benefits but it does, if you show kindness to another group during their time of need they may show you that same kindness in yours, leading to a greater chance of survival. Tribes that empathised with wolves, and fed them got the benefits of an early warning system when the wolves hung around for more food, eventually becoming the domesticated dogs many own today. All these behaviours at first, seem to contradict the self-protection 'all-for-me' instinct, but when you think about them in terms of a group, and the chances of survival for that group and mutual benefit. Many of the behaviours such as owning pets and giving to charity make sense. And it seems to be the norm that as we learn about something and can then explain it, it removes a need for a God in that situation, just take thunder as an example. It just seems that so many religious people are getting 'God is the source of morals' battered into their heads that they are never presented with the evidence for moral behaviour by evolution.

[McQ]

Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

What is your relationship to Brax?

 :pop:  

[Arctonyx]

After going over the debate again there seems to be no end of falsehoods.

“T” is for Testimony. This kind of commitment level developed because it was based on eye-witness testimony.

Brax seems to be going out of his way to ignore the evidence, the bible was written based on testimonies by those claiming to know Jesus (the Gospels themselves admit this), not eye witness testimony.

[Reginus]

No, it is not always beneficial, but there are no examples to my knowledge, of a behaviour being considered moral, that is detrimental to society.

There are several things I can think of right off the top of my head. For example, factory farming is almost unanomously considered to be unmoral, even though it is economicaly productive to society. Care for the elderly (I'm talking 90+), even though they are usualy not at all beneficial to society. You might argue that they have wisdom that they can pass on, but I cannot think of a single author or infulencial scientist over the age of 90. Tons and tons of money is spent on medication and surgery for these people, because it is consitered to be moraly responsible. Last but not least, we have animal rescue centers. I think these are definatly detrimental to society, as we are spending money (that could be used to feed the poor) to care for dogs and other animals, when we could just as easily euthanize them. Why do we do this? Again, because we consider it a moral responcibility to help animals. My argument is that even though morality and "what's benefitial to society" are often compatible, they are still two different things.

Much of what we consider moral behaviour could also be classified as selfish behaviour, as moral behaviour arose out of a selfish need for extra food/comfort and mates

I'm not sure that I understand this point. Could you perhaps give a few examples? It seems to me like quite often, morality conflicts with these needs.

Even though we don't know the source of every single moral behaviour, it is easy to disprove that religion or a God has anything to do it, in previous discussions cultures where rape is prevalent have been used to try and argue that morality cannot be derived from evolution or is 'innate'. But I would say this is a very compelling argument why moral behaviour cannot be derived from religious texts or deity's. Even in this discussion morality has been said to be objective, then why do cultures where rape is prevalent even exist?

First, I think the notion that if something was prevalent, it must have been moral, is untrue. Again, factory farms are where we get the majority of our meat, yet factory farming is unmoral. Thousands of scam artists scam people out of money for their own benefit every year. This is common, but clearly unmoral. Therefore, I think that it is certainly possible for rape to have been common in a civilization, even if everyone knew it was unmoral.

Secondly, these differences between societies also have something to do with what was common knowledge at the time. If we had thought of blacks as equal to whites durring the late 1700s and early 1800s, slavery would have disapeared far, far more quickly. I would be willing to bet big money that in the civilizations where rape was common, women were thought of as far "bellow" men. People have disagreed as to weither war is ever moraly "right", but they have almost all agreed that it would be wrong to simply kill random people.

Besides, have you ever heard of man double-crossing someone because he thought it was "the right thing to do," or someone torturing animals because he believed it to be "moraly responsable'? Of course not! Therefore, I think it can be said that morality is, in fact, very objective and suprisingly similar between cultures.

[Arctonyx]

There are several things I can think of right off the top of my head. For example, factory farming is almost unanomously considered to be unmoral, even though it is economicaly productive to society. Care for the elderly (I'm talking 90+), even though they are usualy not at all beneficial to society. You might argue that they have wisdom that they can pass on, but I cannot think of a single author or infulencial scientist over the age of 90. Tons and tons of money is spent on medication and surgery for these people, because it is consitered to be moraly responsible. Last but not least, we have animal rescue centers. I think these are definatly detrimental to society, as we are spending money (that could be used to feed the poor) to care for dogs and other animals, when we could just as easily euthanize them. Why do we do this? Again, because we consider it a moral responcibility to help animals. My argument is that even though morality and "what's benefitial to society" are often compatible, they are still two different things.

I asked for examples of moral behaviour that impacted badly on society. You've presented a slightly immoral situation that impacts favourably upon society in the short term, and moral behaviours that have little/no impact on society. Additionally you're describing current situations, none of these situations would have been relevant during the times when natural selection had a much greater effect on the human populace (as of now it is almost non-existent). Our ancestral groups did not have factory farming, and the life expectancies would be short enough so that they would have died before they were old enough to be of no use. What behaviour that would be relevant during the times when moral behaviour was evolving, that we would consider moral would damage group cohesion in ancestral groups? My including of the word society in the first question blurred its meaning, so I've been sure to include ancestral groups this time.

I'm not sure that I understand this point. Could you perhaps give a few examples? It seems to me like quite often, morality conflicts with these needs.

It's what drove animals into family groups, an animal didn't get born into a pack and stay there solely because of love (though some kind of kinship does play a part in many pack animal behaviour), they stay there because if they go out by themselves they are less likely to survive. It can be applied to many current situations, the reason many people stay in religious groups is for selfish reasons (because that group may ostracise you, again meaning you get less access to friends and potential mates), it's the same with society, you don't leave your home with no warning/explanation and try to start a new village because of selfish reasons. Because you're safe within the group, these aren't recognised as selfish behaviours of course, because the word selfish has so many negative connotations, but it's selfish ideas that drive animals into groups/society, and those same behaviours that make you stay there.

First, I think the notion that if something was prevalent, it must have been moral, is untrue. Again, factory farms are where we get the majority of our meat, yet factory farming is unmoral. Thousands of scam artists scam people out of money for their own benefit, every year. This is common, but clearly unmoral. Therefore, I think that it is certainly possible for rape to have been common in a civilization, even if everyone knew it was unmoral.

Factory farms played no role in prehistoric ancestral groups, the rise of moral behaviour is down to what was relevant to these ancestral groups. It is easy to explain why we find factory farming immoral (down to empathy), but it did not exist during times when moral behaviour was being formed. And the point was that these civilisations don't see rape as immoral, they see it as a part of society. Just like some would be disgusted that we eat cows and drink their milk, just because we see it as wrong doesn't mean every other society does. I'm not trying to justify rape (I would never do such a thing), but it's evidence that when an ancestral group develops, if rape occurs and causes no problems in the cohesion of that group, then why would any members of those group see any reason to ostracise the perpetrator? It's evidence that society can grow up around very different moral standards, that are not gleaned from an objective source.

Besides, have you ever heard of man double-crossing someone because he thought it was "the right thing to do," or someone torturing animals because he believed it to be "moraly responsable'? Of course not! Therefore, I think it can be said that morality is, in fact, very objective.

Many evil acts have been perpetrated because someone thought 'it was the right thing to do'. We only see it as evil from our subjective world view, I would be willing to go out on a limb and say that you thought the consumption of dogs was wrong? At least it is the majority view held in western civilisation, but there are many countries where Dogs are eaten as standard affair. Morality is not objective, it appears to be simply because certain moral behaviours are so widespread. But how far do you think a group would have got if they thought it was fine to kill anyone in that group if they looked at you funny? They would have died out rather quickly, moral behaviour has been sculpted over thousands of years, and certain morals are so prevalent because they were the best solutions. In evolution, certain solutions arise several times, independent of each other. Does this mean that there is some intelligent designer? No, it means that, that solution is good at getting the job done. Just like: don't murder each other, don't steal from each other, don't rape each other are usually good morals in preventing the breakdown of group cohesion, just because they're good doesn't mean it is always the case though.

Morals are objective in the same way that natural selection 'designs' nature. They may look that way at first glance, but delve deeper and you find the reasons why they almost look sculpted. It's the same reason we see pictures in clouds.

[Recusant]

I sort of wonder why Will has so far let braxhunt get away with asserting that Stephen Hawking's writing presents evidence for a theistic world-view, and that Hawking himself is a theist.  My guess is that he's trying to avoid being impolite.  To go into this would entail an inference that either
A) braxhunt is basing this assertion on a drastic misreading of Hawking's writing, or
B) even worse, getting it from some Christian propagandist who is deliberately misrepresenting what Hawking has written.
  It's fairly common to come across this in Christian writing.  It's a snare and a delusion. The only way to present Hawking as a theist is to quote-mine his work; chopping off a portion of what he has said to give the impression that he's arguing for the existence of a creator.  In reality, it's pretty clear that Hawking does not consider a creator in any way necessary to explain the existence of the universe, and those who assert that he does are either mistaken or mendacious.

  If anyone cares to read up further on this, there are lots of resources on the web.  One that I found interesting, if a bit hard to follow in places, was Why Steven Hawking's Cosmology Precludes a Creator, by Quentin Smith.  Smith has written more that one piece on the issue of Hawking's supposed theism.  A succinct statement by him on the subject from another article:

 

Stephen Hawking has recently argued that there is 'no place for a creator', that God does not exist. In his quantum cosmology

"there would be no singularities at which the laws of science broke down and no edge of space-time at which one would have to appeal to God or some new law to set the boundary conditions for space-time . . . The universe would be completely self-contained and not affected by anything outside itself. It would neither be created nor destroyed. It would just BE . . . What place, then, for a creator?"  
 S. W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time pp. 136, 141 (New York: Bantam, ©1988).

Full text here.

That said, I for one am actually enjoying this debate, which has maintained a consistently high level of dialog with none of the snarling and snapping often seen when subjects like this are on the table.  I appreciate the readiness of both the affirmative and negative sides to keep it civil.

[braxhunt]

I never said Hawking was a theist. Please read my posts carefully before attempting to discredit me.

[Recusant]

I never said Hawking was a theist. Please read my posts carefully before attempting to discredit me.

Point taken.  I should have said that it seemed you were implying that Hawking was a theist, by only quoting a statement by him which seemed to present a theist view, rather than making it clear that he does not hold such a view by the very simple means of including a more complete picture of his statements on the subject.  I guess you actually just did that in the interest of brevity.

 

Stephen Hawking said in his book A Brief History of Time, “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in just this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us.”

It seems I misunderstood your intention, because to me this quote made it sound like Hawking is a theist.  In the interest of being diplomatic, I suppose I should apologize for this misunderstanding.

[LoneMateria]

I've finished reading all the posts so far in here (when i'm done i'm going to read whats has been added to the debate).  First I got to point out a few things.

Looks to me like Brax is using the best arguments but if you don't like em cause they're old Will is using the same old atheist stuff especially epicurius ---hundreds of years old. you seem to think just cause you heard someone give an answer on dawkins' website that means it's a done deal. No, you still have to defeat the arguments.

An argument's validity has nothing to do with age.  His arguments, as I put it, are old and discredited they bring nothing new to the table no food for thought.  He is using arguments that are flawed and have been rejected by atheists (well at least me) because they fail the lemon test.  What makes you think I go to Dawkin's website for answers to apologetics?  Just because someone claims your bible is true and that there is a god doesn't mean there is a god or that your bible is true.  Do yourself a favor and think on your own don't let brax do it for you.  Its blatant that you are affiliated with brax and if the truth is on his side he doesn't need someone to step in on his behalf, hes a big boy and he came here looking to convert an atheist.  The arguments he has presented have all been defeated at length and a simple google search and can defeat them again. You see, he (and you) is assuming that we've never heard any of these arguments and we have (at least I have) and if they were convincing i'd no longer be an atheist.  

Interesting, so do you think that morality is perfect in that the moraly responsible choice is always beneficial to the tribe or society?

You would have to define perfect but in the way I think you mean it then morality is not perfect and individual choices are not always beneficial to the society.  However group morals are beneficial to our society otherwise we wouldn't be here.  There have been studies on morality in which a person is asked questions such as, "You see a train heading 60 miles an hour toward a wall, when it hits the wall everyone on the train will die, you have the option to divert the train but by doing so it will hit a man who just happens to be crossing the railroad tracks and it will kill him.  What do you do?"  Then it asks different variations of that question changing the man to children, to people working on the tracks, to many other things.  What they found is morality isn't cut and dry.  If you look at our society individuals who kill, rape, burn buildings, vandalize and so on are the minority of people in our society.  Our society has deemed it wrong to kill, rape, steal, etc..all.  If we all killed, stole, vandalized and so on it would compromise the structure of our society and severely reduce our survival rate as a species.

“S” is for Solution. The best solution to the question of what to do with these facts is surmise that Jesus really did die and rose again. As my friend Mike Licona says, “If a man claims to be God and rises from the dead we should believe him.

I am god, I rose from the dead now send me money!!!  If you or Mike don't send me money then you do not believe in the claims you make.

[iNow]

Perhaps it would be appropriate to split this thread... One for the morality discussion (which is interesting, but off topic) and another for the comments regarding the debate itself?  I'm not trying to back-seat moderate, I just see the two as very clearly unrelated to one another.  Cheers.   :offtopic:

[Will]

I sort of wonder why Will has so far let braxhunt get away with asserting that Stephen Hawking's writing presents evidence for a theistic world-view, and that Hawking himself is a theist.  My guess is that he's trying to avoid being impolite.

I don't see it as being an important point, really. Even if Professor Hawking were religious, which he's not as he's agnostic, that wouldn't be evidence for the existence of god. I don't want to let things get off topic.

[SSY]

Why has Reginus not replied to the question posed by Whitney? I wish I had admin powers.

Also, why does every christian assume because early Christians were willing to die for Jesus, Jesus must have been divine, there are so many holes. One, we don't know if they were willing to die or not, we just have stories, even if they were willing to die, they could still be mistaken, just as they would say modern suicide bombers are mistaken. Classic case of conclusion first, evidence second.

[Whitney]

Why has Reginus not replied to the question posed by Whitney? I wish I had admin powers.

I don't remember asking Reginus any questions.  The question towards Edge ended up being handled via pm and there are no issues.

[LoneMateria]

Also, why does every christian assume because early Christians were willing to die for Jesus, Jesus must have been divine, there are so many holes. One, we don't know if they were willing to die or not, we just have stories, even if they were willing to die, they could still be mistaken, just as they would say modern suicide bombers are mistaken. Classic case of conclusion first, evidence second.

Its a common logical fallacy that Christians employ.  My buddy made the best retort to that "proof of Jesus' divinity" he said, "Our troops went to Vietnam to protect our country from communism."  In 20 years we will probably be saying the same thing about Iraq except replace communism with terrorism.  

On the Christians defense (the only point that merits defense) we have records of Christians fighting with Pagans and Jews as well as battle orders ... well "divine" orders from the church sanctifying violent attacks against the "heathens".  However almost all of those came about after Christianity became a popular religion whenever (I think was) Constantine became a Christian around 300 C.E.  Before that we have records of Christians being persecuted by Pagans (mostly) and it was not total persecution it was just a local thing after all most Pagans saw Christianity as a cult before Constantine.  The only time there was violence was when something bad would happen and the pagans would say that their gods was mad because of the godless Christians and would go persecute them to appease the gods.  Yes I did say that Pagans saw Christians as godless.  The Jews were excluded from persecution because they had shown they had a god that they worshiped in their own way.  However it was known (and often criticized) that Christianity was a ... shoot off sect of Judaism but they did not follow Jewish law while claiming to worship the same god, pagans concluded that they worshiped no gods and because of that they were persecuted in desperate times. Like I said though the persecution was never done on larger then a local level.   Wow long tangent sorry about that.