Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

As far as I can understand it, he(?) thinks he can do it by knowing stuff instinctively, thinking hard about it and telling us about something important in a book that god wrote for him.

Yes. And yours too I assume. You'll find those views common amongst people born and raised in the same cultures at the same time. But the fact that they are seen differently by other cultures at other times tells you that morals are not absolute doesn't it?

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I think we are actually getting closer and closer to showing you how the term subjective is meaningless and worthless. But I'll await your answer.

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You've had my answer several times. Your normal response is to declare victory whilst leaving everyone baffled by your answers.

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Why do you think I sidestepped your answer.

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Because you can't answer it? Just a thought.

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Without even ME trying you just told me in your statement about socities, that there is actually nothing wrong with Fred's behavior with or without a tumor.

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Here's a little job for you, go back and find where I say that there's nothing wrong with Fred's behaviour. If you prefer, I can save you time by saying that there is everything wrong with it.

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But I'll wait for your specific answer as to why the societies child sex and Fred's tendencies are moral or immoral. Give us an answer why you think thier behavior is moral or immoral. Is your indirect implication that sex with children is actually morally ok, because you nearly defended thier right to have that right

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Well here we go again. Fred's behaviour is not moral. FMG is not moral. Child sex is not moral. According to me and the society I live in. But in other societies some of those practices are considered moral.

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You see Tangle I did answer your question.

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As you didn't even touch on answering my question, I'll ask it again. Here you go THAT is what you have to explain. Try to stick to answering that single point. How can morality be absolute if it changes?

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You just didn't like the answer, because you are not sure whether Fred's behavior is wrong in the first place.

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Let me help you with that - Fred's behaviour is out and out wrong. Got it?

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you see tangle, morality has to be from a source outside human perspective to actually be morality,

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I guess we got lucky, not only have we actually got this thing called morality - we all here pretty much agree that murder is wrong for example - but we can do it without a fictional god.

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But now notice, looking strictly at your and the others doctrine here, that being that morality is subjective, there is in reality, no way to define any of the examples you gave as right, wrong, correct incorrect, moral or immoral.

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Yes there is we do it all the time, every day, several times a day.

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Even you in your description are bouncing back and forth, flip flopping around. Now you may call this subjective, but remember you defined Hitler's actions as Wrong. Not slightly wrong, maybe wrong or possibly wrong, but Wrong. So how could he be ACTUALLY wrong. Of course given your position he's neither or any of these things.

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Nope he's still wrong. Yep, just checked again and genocide is still definately wrong.

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Relative subjective morality can't even exist muchless be explained

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Hmmmm. The difficulty with that is that it does exist and can be shown to exist so we're in a bit of a bind here.

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It's relative, easy, no pun intended, to show you the absolute,truth about the edict, thou shalt not kill. If I had made that decree, it would be meaningless. If an infinte God made that decree, then he knows absolutely my intentions when I take a life. The obligation is on God, not me to define whether I murdered or killed in self defense. So, if I'm showing you simply by my standards what moral or immoral are, it would be meaningless.

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Well jolly good for you. I agree that we shouldn't kill but I don't need a work of fiction to know that. Also people who believe in different works of fiction think that we shouldn't kill either. How does that work?

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We dont have to be all knowing ourselves to determine glaring distinctions, in moral concepts. But even if we don't get all the specifics right, it doesn't mean there's no standard. Obviously there is

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Of course there is, we set the standard.

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So Hitler was objectively wrong and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely Moral, ie Romans 13

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Now that is the biggest non sequitur I've seen for a while. Why was Hitler objectively wrong and Hiroshima and Nagasaki were absolutely right? Please explain.

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Of course part of it is due to the fall and depravity of man's nature. The whole of creation was corrupted. So to answer your question that's not how it was originally created. But to be honest, I dont know all the reasons.

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Yeh, tricky for religion to explain isn't it? Easy for evolution though.

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On the other hand I don't know why the same God would tell me to love my enemies or let Satan put Job through what he went through, or why he would sacrifice his own son.

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It's easy, it's just fiction. You can do that when stuff is just made up.

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This is why, even if subjective morality were actually a real thing in reality, would not work. If you pay close attention to your answer, you will see that you described nothing more than imaginations and perceptions, that really make no sense and have no meaning. Given your description, any thinking person can easily see that morality cannot and does not actually exist in a purely Naturalistic society

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Oh I agree absolute morality does not exist in our society. That's sort of what we're all saying. It's a mash-up.

This entire rambling mess boils down to us saying that morality is a name we give to a category of behaviour that we feel is 'good' - that benefits the human race generally. (And the converse, that immoral behaviour is bad for us generally.)It is indeed a human invention, what's regarded as good, moral, beneficial and what's bad, harmful, detrimental has changed over time and is different between cultures. At an individual level it varies based on personality, illness, drugs, upbringing, religious belief and age. It is therefore anything but absolute and unchanging..We can evidence all this with history, anthropology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology and behavioural psychology. You yourself know all this to be true.As far as I understand your position, it's that all of that is made up stuff by people and that morality is god given and absolute.Well to make a start on that you'd have to demonstrate the existence of this god - which you can't. Or demonstrate the existence of an absolute morality, which you can't. Of the two, I suggest the latter was the easier of two impossible tasks, why not have a crack at it?But just to be clear, quoting chunks of fantasy novels isn't going to be accepted as evidence.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I and many others here have demonstrated what morality is. So far you have not. Why don't you tell us instead of all this waffle? The concept of good and bad behaviour is a human one. (Although several social species have devised 'rules' for living together.) Humans did indeed invent the term to describe positive and negative behaviours. In doing so they demonstrate that the terms 'morality' or 'good' do in fact refer to something real in the 'naturalistic universe'. Had it not existed we wouldn't have created a term for it. Are you saying that you can't tell us what morality is without quoting from your man-made fantasy novel?Well I can. It seems that atheists can explain morality but fundamentalist god botherers can't.

It's not frustrating at all, it's rather interesting watching you tie yourself into knots arguing the absurd. It's reminds me of reading Alice in Wonderland.As it turns out morality is not something us atheists have to deal with. We, like everyone else on the planet barring psychopaths but including yourself, know that morality exists and how it works.But you have made the claim that we don't, and so far you haven't been able to show us why. No there isn't. That's our entire position. As you think there is you're going to have to prove it. Why should something written in a book 2,000 years ago by people we don't know and that contradicts itself all over the place, particularly over morality, have any baring on anything at all?In any case, you're talking about atheists, you know, those people that don't believe in your god? How do you expect to make a case using what they regard as a work of fiction? You fail before you start.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

Nope. We are all very happy with our understanding of morality. It's you that makes the claim that we can't be.So you need to tell us - without waffle about 'meat in motion' or reference to man-made works of fiction - what this absolute morality of yours is. So far you haven't got anywhere near a reasoned explanation.If this thing exists you'd be able to give us a real life example - why don't you?Of course, if you're just going to say 'it's God' (and the Christian god only) then there's really no further discussion necessary. It's a straight fail. Gibberish. It might help if you slow down.

So you're unable to give an example of an absolutely morality..... How then are we to conclude that it exist?

Because, my friend, so far you have failed to provide a single example of an absolute morality. Show me one, it should be simple enough. What's the problem?

I'd say that it was repetitive, error-ridden word play but let's put that aside.What I asked you for was an example of absolute morality. If the only example of absolute morality you can think of is your imagined God, I'm going to shrug and move on because he is, as I say, imaginary.Morality and moral behaviour is a real and measureable effect in our world so I'm asking you to produce the thing that you call absolute so that we can examine it. Surely you have an example?

Ah, that old phoney - conscience :-) The universal get out of jail card.The first time I tripped over the argument was with the Catholic position on birth control. The Vatican ruled it out. Flat wrong. An absolute. If the intention is to avoid having a baby, it's a sin. Intention = conscience = 'what's in your heart'.But they came up against the modern Western populous who basically told them to take a hike and totally ignored this 'mortal sin' that would condemn them to hell for all eternity. So the Catholic church faced with a total revolt rolled over decided that it's a matter of conscience and if people truly believed it was ok, then it was ok.Meawhile it was still a mortal sin for the poor bloody Africans and millions died and are dying from AIDS for lack of condom use.You see, what's in people's 'hearts' varies between people, education levels, cultures and times.Eating people is wrong, but only if you're not a cannibal. Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

I'm not missing the point of the thread which is about moral absolutes which it seems we agree on. So not agreeing on what constitutes sin is the entire point - if we all have differing 'hearts' on these issues, then morality is not absolute.Then it gets to be real fun. If the 'heart' of Jack the Ripper was true to itself, and believed that slicing and dicing prostitutes in the East End of London was the right thing to do, then your god has to accept that it's ok. I happens to agree with him - intent is was counts - but it's not ok is it? Certainly not in Dawn's world.

That's just meaningless preachy drivel. The thing is that neither you nor I could do, or would want to do, what Jack did. There's a reason for that - it's the way his brain is set-up. It's not a disease or illness it's a design flaw. His brain worked in different ways to ours - by definition.He can't be doing wrong in the terms of your god's definition because he didn't see it as wrong, pychopaths don't, they can't. They know that society thinks it's wrong but it's not wrong in their 'hearts'. (I hate that term, it's wet, whooly and entirely inaccurate.)Yet we can say it's absolutely wrong, diagreeing with your God.

Woah.....you believe that I have no morality? That I'm immoral?Is this just another one of your brainfarts or do you really mean it?

I think this is a bit confused, the concept of rape may not have existed - who knows - but the concept of harm will have certainly existed.Neanderthals were social creatures and will have developed norms of behaviour within their tribes. It may be that abduction and rape was ok between tribes but not within them. It may be that the dominant male had sole rights of reproduction. We don't know, but we can say with a strong degree of certainty that social rules would have been developed. Some of them are likely to be abhorrent to us, some recognisable today.Societies form their own rules that allow them to co-operate. 'Twas always thus.

Hohum. Here we go again. Did you imagine that if you repeated this claptrap often enough we'd suddenly agree with it?I, you and everyone else here 'imagines' that Jack's actions are wrong.Depending on whether you're a vegitarian or not, we'd also have no difficulty eating chicken.But nobody but a loon would equate the actions of Jack the Ripper with the actions of someone that enjoys a KFC. We are carnivores, carnivores eat meat. God made us that way according to you. (Strictly speaking we're omnivores but the point still stands.)So where do you think that gets you? The fact that our biology allows it and at most points in our development has required it. If I was a herbivore I wouldn't eat chicken.Now what's really interesting is that I can imagine a time in the future where killing and eating animals will be regarded as immoral. We will grow our protein in vitro. Our view of what's moral in our food will have changed. Demonstrably false.Now, I've asked you three times for an example of this absolute morality of yours. Where is it? Where is this moral that comes from a outside the human mind?