Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

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I don't deny it but that's because I'm not dependent on evolution for an understanding of what a human being is.

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Neither are any of us. The most important things are what we observe about humans. Why do you find no value in anything you see in humans, so that you are dependant on dubious stories instead of observation ?

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As usual, such a simple point so strangely misunderstood and unnecessarily complicated.

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That is your problem. You will note that the first demotion is one I explicitly referred to earlier. And, as I said, you see no reason to promote geocentrism to restore human pride.Blows to human pride do not remove all value from the human species or from human individuals. If blows to your pride cause you to deny any worth to humanity then it only indicates that you have a psychological problem.

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Human culture is the result of human brain activity. If human brains are the result of evolution, then so is human culture.

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Evolution is certainly relevant to human culture, providing both the capabilities needed for it to exist, and influencing human psychology. But that is hardly the who,e story. The idea that culture is dictated - or even largely dictated by the course of human evolution is obviously wrong.

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How do you know that all human behaviour is not instinct?

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How do you "know" that it is ? You are the one making the claim. Are we to believe that your posts are just produced by unthinking instinct ? That there is no thought behind them at all ?

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William Provine believed that evolution means human beings have no free will.

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I suspect he refers to libertarian free will, and in that case I believe that he is wrong. Libertarian free will is a logical impossibility and therefore evolution is irrelevant to the question of whether humans (or anything else) could have it.

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Such a simple idea so miserably twisted.

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And indeed you are miserably twisting it.There is no reason to expect the theory of evolution to give any objective grounds to prefer a human to a bug. Nor does the fact that it does not give us any reason to think that humans are not more valuable than bugs.It's not hard to see that it is irrelevant to the question.

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Nobody "expects" it to give such a standard.

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It seems that you do,

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And again, you can put humans above bugs, but it can only be a subjective valuation since evolution gives you no grounds for it.

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This makes no sense unless you assume that the theory of evolution is the only possible source of value (outside of supernaturalist beliefs, I suppose). But why should anyone believe that ?

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I shouldn't kill because it might land me in jail ... I used to drive taxis at night in a large city and at times I really did feel like killing some people.

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In other worlds your morality is centred purely on avoiding punishment.How does the theory of evolution make any difference to that ? It isn't exactly likely to stop the cops from arresting you.

So we see from your posts that you see avoiding punishment as a valid basis for what you call "morality" and pretty much nothing else. Is there a point ? Or are you just arguing for nihilism ?

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No, God ordained punishment for the guilty

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I'm pretty sure that all the actually guilty Amalekites would have been long dead by the time of Saul.

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I've never considered avoiding punishment as a basis of morality. The basis of my morality is the morality of the Catholic Church.

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And yet your reason for not murdering is that you might get put in jail Message 680

And so far you haven't made a serious point.I mean you say you accept things that God is supposed to have done as moral because you assume that God doesn't do evil. But can you persuade anyone else of that unless they already buy into your belief system or a close cousin ? And if you can't then you're in the same boat as everyone else.

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I agree. If my God doesn't exist, then I'm talking complete nonsense and my God's morality (and thus, mine) is as meaningless as anyone else's.

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Even if your God (your idea of the Christian God) does exist you can't prove that your morality is correct, any more than anyone else can.So, asking for proof is beside the point. Your beliefs don't help you there.