Moral Argument for God

Agreed to some extent.If I understood my Aquinas properly, the existence of moral principles that are basic to human society, per se, can be demonstrated purely through the application of human reason.The existence of such principles, in and of themselves, is not sufficient evidence to conclude there is (or isn't) a God.WHY they exist in the first place, well, that's another matter.So the criticism often heard from fundamentalists that atheists/agnostics can't have, or subscribe to, moral principles, really is not a fair argument.The fact that "Do unto others" (the Golden Rule) has appeared in many human societies seems to be evidence for some universal moral principle that is discoverable by human reason. Universal in the sense of cross-cultural, at least. Universal in the sense of transcendent, well, that's another matter.However, I don't think the moral relativist argument that not all societies have the Golden Rule , therefore it is not a universal principle, is a very strong argument.This is like saying that Pythagoras discovered the mathematical theorem that bears his name, and we have evidence that Chinese and Persian mathematicians also discovered it independently, but not all societies discovered it, therefore is is not a valid mathematical theorem.That conclusion just doesn't follow.

What I am getting at is the non-discovery of the GR by a society cannot be a sound argument agains the GR being a valid moral principle. It may merely mean that the society has not developed to the point where this principle is known to be necessary.It would be necessary on your part to demonstrate the existence of non-GR societies of similar complexity to GR societies (that is, societies with complex state forms of government, relatively complex economies, at least Iron Age technology), function as well as GR societies.There have been , for example, Neolithic societies that discovered neither the GR or the Pythagorean theorem that managed to get by without either...for a time...but AFAIK most of these were assimilated (or worse) by GR societies.

I'm arguing that morals are empirically discoverable and therefore not mere abstractions. I'm not making a specifically theistic argument.An isolated group such as this would , I expect, empirically discover certain moral principles, perhaps in many instances "the hard way"...the process might take centuries.

I haven't proven that it is an absolute (as in being cross-culturally valid), I've presented evidence that it might be. Whether it's routinely violated or not is a separate issue from its intrinsic validity. Whic should work to your advantage in counterargument, a clear application of the GR But you do have a point. Perhaps there are additional rules like "Follow the GR unless circumstances prevent it". This is an argument that the GR is relativistic, as you've stated.

The tendency to follow such principles was selected for. You speak with the certitude of the non-scientist.Evolutionary psychology is an interesting discipline, but there are enough valid issues with its quantitative rigor, and underdeveloped demonstration of physical correlates to its hypotheses, that it is safer to regard its conclusions as tentative, at best.All that aside, your example does not vitiate the contention that what we label "moral" behavoir is at least partially empirically determined, and not completely relative.

Not especially. I asserted that moral principles are amenable to empirical investigation (which is a superset of scientific investigation in the sense a physical scientist would understand the term), but also that they are not completely relative. Not sure why we are arguing this point, sicne we both seem to agree to it. Yup. What quantitative metrics were used to measure "fairness" and "reciprocity" ? What is their basis ? What external evidence (e.g. from other studies ) is there that these metrics measure what they purport to measure (after all human IQ is still critiqued as a valid metric on this basis) ?Do the metrics work with other species? When don't they work,and why not ? Is there any possibility of unintentional bias on the part of the experimenters (e.g clever Hans effect ) ? Are there any physical correlates to the asserted observations of "fairness" or "reciprocity" (e.g molecular evidence, gene sequences) ?None of this says the studies are wrong, but if I was reviewing the
paper, I'd need good answers to these questions.