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Author Topic:   Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.
Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 49 of 1006 (798573)
02-03-2017 2:22 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by Dawn Bertot
02-02-2017 3:56 PM


Has anybody mentioned the well known very vociferous atheist from some years ago, I can't think of his name, who became a theist (not a Christian) because he realized evolution could not account for morality and human consciousness. It's really indisputable but evolutionists have to maintain their theory, and it's not hard because there's no way to prove any of it. All they have to do is invent a vaguely plausible pathway through the species and voila! Imagination becomes fact, which is THE actual method of evolution. Word magic
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 52 of 1006 (798577)
02-03-2017 2:39 PM
Reply to: Message 51 by RAZD
02-03-2017 2:25 PM


Has anybody mentioned the well known very vociferous atheist from some years ago, I can't think of his name, who became a theist ...
Or ALL the people that became atheists because they found fundamentalism was a lie.
That's apples and oranges, RAZD. The decision of the atheist who became a theist had to be based on some pretty complicated analysis of possibilities in the natural world, not like determining that a theological statement is true or false.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 81 of 1006 (798663)
02-04-2017 12:18 PM
Reply to: Message 79 by Dr Adequate
02-04-2017 11:23 AM


Re: Religion Cannot Rationally Explain Morals
That's not the Moral Law. The Moral Law is based on the Ten Commandments, it's about lying and murdering and adultery and coveting and stealing, and of course you disobey those too because we all do, but you aren't asked to obey the specific laws God gave to Israel, the food laws, the fabric law, the Sabbath observance laws. And of course you know that Christ fulfilled them all so you're just being an obfuscator as usual anyway.
The Law written on the human heart isn't a perfect reflection of the written Law in the Old testament, because we're fallen and get our own ideas mixed up with God's, but I'm sure even you would acknowledge that you have a moral code of your own, and that reflects your having the image of God in you (much as I might want to dispute that at times).
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 158 of 1006 (799179)
02-07-2017 9:15 PM
Reply to: Message 157 by Riggamortis
02-07-2017 9:02 PM


Re: enlightened self-interest -- three laws unanswered
Slavery is definitely wrong and the Bible does not "condone" it. If you are trying to reform people you don't give them the hardest tasks to perform at the beginning, that will only make them resist; you have to lead them with wisdom and prudence until they are ready to recognize a moral evil. Jesus taught that Moses tolerated divorce because of the hardness of the people's hearts. Moses gave laws to make life easier for the women divorced (they had no right to divorce a husband) but that's as far as it went until Jesus was able to make people see that divorce is a great evil. (And now that moral truth is lost again anyway). Similarly the Mosaic Law gave laws to make life easier for the slaves.
Slavery was WORLDWIDE until Christianity started pushing it back, bit by bit. Paul advises a slaveowner to release his slave, so that directive had an effect bit by bit. And it was Christians who finally ended it, because the Bible IS clear that it is an injustice. Wilberforce in England fought the slave trade for most of his career in Parliament before he had any effect. John Newton who wrote "Amazing Grace" condemned the slave trade he had been involved in before he became a Christian. Abolitionists also worked for a long time in the US before slavery was finally ended. We're stubborn fallen people. The Moral Law operates inexorably to judge and condemn us for our disobedience, but we often don't notice.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 161 of 1006 (799186)
02-07-2017 10:08 PM
Reply to: Message 160 by Riggamortis
02-07-2017 10:02 PM


Re: enlightened self-interest -- three laws unanswered
Well, since you are inclined to find fault with anything, what's the point of trying to explain. But of course I must. Marrying the rapist is better than being ostracized by the community and never being able to find a husband isn't it? We're talking about a primitive Middle Eastern culture. Single women were badly mistreated, as they still are in the Middle East. Being raped is a symptom of that. But once she's raped she's "spoiled goods" and her life is pretty much over. Requiring the rapist to marry her and take care of her spares her that fate. Don't impose your modern culturebound opinions on such an ancient and different time and place.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 163 of 1006 (799190)
02-07-2017 10:41 PM
Reply to: Message 162 by Riggamortis
02-07-2017 10:21 PM


Re: enlightened self-interest -- three laws unanswered
There is no undermining of the objective moral law though, when you determine the best most just solution in a complex situation. The objective Moral Law itself remains intact.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 515 of 1006 (804712)
04-12-2017 3:50 PM
Reply to: Message 514 by ringo
04-12-2017 3:33 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
But the point, of course, is that you have no objective or reliable basis for your valuation of human life or whatever you value. We may feel humanity is important, but the ToE is a strong influence we all encounter that says we aren't important at all.
It's presented as scientific truth, after all, and there's no avoiding the implication that if we're just a product of mindless chemicals that accidentally managed to create us, no matter how special we seem to ourselves we have to accept that it's an illusion because we're just a bunch of dispensable chemicals. You can subjectively value whatever you like, you haven't a leg to stand on outside of your own feelings, and your feelings are nothing but a byproduct of the accidental arrangement of atoms. No better than a bug.
Your soul rebels at such an idea? Certainly your children are immensely important? How do you hold onto such an idea when you know the "truth?"
The God of the Bible thinks you're important. But you have to know He's real, otherwise He's just another illusion and there is nothing at all to save you from utter objective meaninglessness.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 522 of 1006 (804725)
04-12-2017 5:13 PM
Reply to: Message 521 by Dr Adequate
04-12-2017 4:47 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
Denial is so easy. When I believed in evolution I hated the implication that we weren't worth anything, and people SAY that, how can you deny it? People liked to point out how human value was demoted by Darwin and Freud and somebody else, I forget who -- Einstein? Such blows to our inflated ego, they reveled in it. I haven't heard that one in years but the basic idea hasn't gone away. Even without believing in God I did think we were important in the teeth of evolutionistic ego-shrinking and perhaps most of us do, but it's utterly irrational when human reality is defined by being an animal made out of blind chemicals.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 567 of 1006 (804886)
04-13-2017 9:21 PM
Reply to: Message 559 by Dredge
04-13-2017 8:09 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
Amazing, isn't it, how they can deny the obvious? You've stated it quite well, however. Weird how you can be said to be making up what is not only obvious but has been said in other ways by people who believe in evolution. (Besides, how can one "make up" what is in fact an inference or a conclusion from facts?).

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 569 of 1006 (804891)
04-13-2017 11:07 PM
Reply to: Message 568 by Dr Adequate
04-13-2017 10:52 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
"Science says" is just a way of saying it is clearly inferable from (evolutionary) science that... I know that's what it means, why don't you?
We've both argued it. It is inferred from the fact that we are considered to be merely animals evolved from earlier animals, an accident of the blind arrangement of chemicals. Bugs are too, worms are too, wildebeests are too. That is a fact, right? So what's your problem?. There's nothing in the ToE to make us any more important than any of them.
I've mentioned the idea that Darwin, Freud and either Marx or Einstein, deflated the human ego with their theories; this used to be mentioned in lots of stuff I used to read. Darwin demoted us to animals, Freud took away our superior understanding of reality and turned us into unconsciously-driven ignoramuses or something like that and I forget about the other one. I don't know how old you are but perhaps enough younger than I am not to have encountered this common understanding.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 573 of 1006 (804899)
04-13-2017 11:56 PM
Reply to: Message 572 by herebedragons
04-13-2017 11:34 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
Oh cut out the semantic hooha. "Science says" means what I said it means, it's certainly how Dredge meant it.
Being created from dust isn't the salient point in the Bible, we know that human beings were created "in the image of God" and given responsibility over the entire Creation. Not just a bunch of mindless chemicals blindly thrown up from a cosmic burp as it were, obviously having NO intrinsic value over anything else brought about in the same way.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 576 of 1006 (804902)
04-14-2017 12:07 AM
Reply to: Message 574 by herebedragons
04-14-2017 12:01 AM


Re: Good post Dredge
Oh cut out the semantic hooha.
It's not semantics. Science doesn't make those kinds of judgement calls. It doesn't ascribe value.
Golly gosh, ya don't say? Imagine that. Aren't semantic distinctions clever? Evolutionism is built out of definitional cobwebs like that though, so what else is new? Surely a scientist or two now and then noticed that his science has the effect of demoting humanity from earlier assessments of our worth, particularly Biblical. Have to be brain-dead not to have noticed that.
Not just a bunch of mindless chemicals blindly thrown up from a cosmic burp as it were, obviously having NO intrinsic value over anything else brought about in the same way.
That is YOUR judgement, not science's.
As I very clearly and carefully pointed out, it is INFERRED from (evolutionary) science and it is, your definitional pedantry notwithstanding.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 578 of 1006 (804904)
04-14-2017 12:20 AM
Reply to: Message 577 by Dr Adequate
04-14-2017 12:11 AM


Re: Good post Dredge
God doesn't define us by what our physical bodies are made of, as evolution does. Evolution is materialism, has no way of recognizing the soul or spirit, and of course ridicules the very idea. "Invisible sky wizard" and all that, the soul can only be an invisible human invention on the same pattern. Just a delusion.
Any value attached to humans as evolved is our own invention, and what authority does that have given that we evolved the same as bugs did anyway? You could point out that bugs can't think and perhaps assign them a lesser value than human beings for that reason, but that's a subjective assessment of ours you see, which has no objective standing because we too evolved just as the bug did.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 586 of 1006 (804981)
04-14-2017 9:30 PM
Reply to: Message 579 by Dr Adequate
04-14-2017 12:26 AM


Re: Good post Dredge
God doesn't define us by what our physical bodies are made of, as evolution does.
And evolution doesn't say that everything made of atoms is identical in every respect.
Nor is that implied in anything I've said. The point is SO simple I know even you get it, you just don't want to admit it: being made of atoms in itself, and that being the sum total of us and every other living thing from which we supposedly evolved, by defining us as nothing but an accident of material physical arrangements denies us any intrinsic worth.
Any value attached to humans as evolved is our own invention, and what authority does that have given that we evolved the same as bugs did anyway? You could point out that bugs can't think and perhaps assign them a lesser value than human beings for that reason, but that's a subjective assessment of ours you see, which has no objective standing because we too evolved just as the bug did.
Do you deny, then, that humans have intrinsic value?
I don't deny it but that's because I'm not dependent on evolution for an understanding of what a human being is. The point here is that evolution deprives human beings of any special status in the scheme of things. We may think human beings are special, I always did despite believing in evolution, but I knew that if evolution was true I couldn't make any claim to objectivity for that view.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1444 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 590 of 1006 (804998)
04-14-2017 11:28 PM
Reply to: Message 587 by Dr Adequate
04-14-2017 10:42 PM


Re: Good post Dredge
I already answered this:
But that or some equally false proposition seems necessary to your argument. You need to get from "everything is made of atoms" to "everything is equally worthless". How do you propose to do so?
Being made of atoms is what makes us nothing special. As I said. Being merely physical, or merely animal, which makes soul or spirit at best epiphenomenal, at worst a human delusion, is what denies us specialness.
I get what your point is, I just haven't seen you make so much as a token effort to justify it. Why would the intrinsic worth of the same person, having the same qualities, differ according to what he's made of? So long as I am the same person with the same thoughts and feelings, how does it affect my worth whether I am made of flesh and blood, invisible soul-stuff, or a mixture of mustard, alpaca wool, and zinc?
YOu are talking about something other than I am talking about. I'm not talking about individual persons, nor about one person differing from another. I'm talking about humanity as a (God help us) "Species," which as defined by evolution is nothing but material or physical, which puts us in the same category as bugs and leaves us without any objective standard for superior qualities we might like to claim for the Species. If it's all a blind accident, where's the qualitative difference between us and bugs?
We all ascribe value to humanness, but the value we ascribe to humanness can't be explained by any physicality whatever. Since physicality is all we're allowed by evolution the value we ascribe to humanness is just subjective, a delusion, it has no objective grounding.
Hey, jar agreed way back there. He has the standard understanding that being animals deprives us of an objective standard of specialness, purpose, meaning. You've got lots of subjective valuations, what you don't have is any objective support for it.
I don't deny it but that's because I'm not dependent on evolution for an understanding of what a human being is.
Nor am I. I'm dependent on it for an understanding of how he came to be --- but what he is is completely unaffected by this question. I am exactly the same person whether the first humans evolved from australopithecines or were made by God out of dirt. Either way, Faith, I am who I am, I have the same thoughts and talents, the same hopes and dreams, the same height and shoe size. No discovery about my antecedents could possibly change who I am.
What you don't have is any objective standard for assessing your qualities since in essence you are nothing but a bunch of atoms and have no way of accounting for anything else about you. It's all epiphenomena or it's delusion since all you are is physical Stuff. And again I'm not talking about persons, comparing persons, etc., I'm talking about Humanity itself. For which I have the objective standard of God's creation and definition of us.
Focusing on what you consider to be your qualities says nothing about any inherent value of humanity as such. Would you care to try to determine an objective standard for determining that?
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

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