Moral Argument for God

You seem to be saying that humans are justified in doing whatever we please to the world around us, good or ill, becuase it is "in our nature." That argument is flawed.The bacteria you mention were not evil for adding oxygen to the atmosphere. However, bacteria are unable to observe the consequences of their actions and alter their behaviour accordingly.The biosystem of Earth is not static, and change is both ever-present and beneficial. However, humans can observe the effects of our interference - pollution, extinctions, deforedstation, etc. We can see that these things will have a detrimental effect on future generations of humanity and the Earth's biosystem as a whole. Certainly, new species would arise that would have evolved to take advantage of whatever the future conditions may be. The fact that "life" would go on, if not in the same forms we see today, does not justify humanity wiping out itself and a large portion of the Earth's biodiversity when we know exactly what the causes are and how to change them.If a pack of hyenas were to hunt local prey to near extinction, they would not be evil. They cannot realize the consequences of their actions. They would, however, soon starve from lack of food.Similarly, humans are wiping out rainforests and are contributing (whether the contribution is significant or not is up for debate) to global warming, as well as hunting various species to near extinction. These actions are immoral because we are fully aware of the consequences and do them anyway. If we hunt elephants to extinction for their ivory (we have hopefully prevented this, buit the example still stands), there will be no more elephants. If we continue to eliminate the rainforests, the oxygen content of the world will be decreased, casueing worldwide ecological changes that we, too, will need to adapt to or die. If we continue to contribute to global warming and cannot find a way to slow or reverse the trend, ecosystems and climates worldwide will change, and again we will have to adapt or die with every other species. The fact that we know what we are doing and do it anyway is what makes the action wrong, whether it is in our nature to do so or not.Another example: It could be argued that to murder is in a serial killer's nature. That he is driven to murder by internal urges in no way justifies his actions, because he knows the consequences and still has a choice.

Wholly false. Note that atheists can fully define for themselves what good and evil are, and have fully functional and valid moral systems, without any belief in God.Whether I believe in God or not, I know that torturing and killing millions of people is evil. The fact that God would agree with me or even exists is irrelevant to that knowledge. Your description would only be valid if both Hitler and Mother Theresa were non-sentient machines. Comets are not sentient, or even alive. They have no awareness of the consequences of their actions. Human beings fully know that, if they shoot another person, that person will likely die. The knowledge of consequences is what makes us responsible for our actions, and responsibility for our actions is what allows for the concept of good and evil. The concept of God is extraneous to those simple facts. One can believe in Him, and be good, or not believe in Him, and still be a good person. It’s simply an application of Occam’s Razor* — morality and the concept of good and evil can be described in the simplest terms without a supreme being. This means that God, whether He exists or not, is irrelevant to discussions of morality.* - Please note that Occam’s Razor (the simplest explanation is typically the correct one) does NOT mean the explanation with the fewest words or even the explanation easiest to understand. It means the explanation without any extraneous terms. I’m sure many here know this, I’ve just seen too many examples of Occam’s Razor being misused.

You've got to be kidding me. Wow, apparently you aren't kidding. The rabbitt's don't HAVE a perspective. They aren't SENTIENT! They aren't able to grasp those concepts. Your argument is a false analogy.The fact that mass-murder may somehow help other species is irrelivant. Human beings have inalienable rights simply by the virtue of being self-aware. Violating those rights (ie, the wanton slaughter of millions) is evil, pure and simple. No belief in an all-powerful deity is necessary to inspire horror and revulsion at mass murder! Congratulations, you know an immoral person, who doesn't think very hard about the consequences of his actions. I do not cheat on my girlfriend or seduce married women because it is wrong, and hurts the other party involved (actually, cheating usually hurts everyone in the end). I don't need a deity to TELL me it's wrong - by using my rational human mind, I can comprehend the consequences of such actions, and choose to follow the path that causes no harm. The fact that you know an immoral idiot who rationalizes his immoral actions so that he can sleep at night in no way proves that God is necessary to define morality. Please leave your strawman arguments at the door. False. Many atheists have a pretty good grasp on the concept of good and evil. Many of them have a better grasp, in fact, than certain Christians. The concept is certainly not useless. Bull. Any ordinary human being can determine whether an act is right or wrong with just a little though and consideration as to the consequences of his actions. Adding your deity into the mix is a violation of Occam's Razor, since morality can be totally defined without His inclusion.I think you need to provide some evidence that, without God to tell people what is right and wrong, evil runs rampant and no distinction is made between good and evil acts.I can certainly provide evidence to the contrary. As I mentioned previously, atheists are not immoral monsters. They have reasoned out morality for themselves without God's intervention. I'm not saying that all atheists are moral people (that would be as stupid as saying that all Christians are moral people, and Hitler and various Popes disabuse that theory). I am saying that many atheists reason out their own moral code without any deity to do it for them.

You assume that there has to BE a reason. All that can be ascertained from evidence is that it DID happen. "Why" is not the job of science.Logical. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.The fact that it doesn't make sense to YOU doesn't make it illogical. It IS illogical to assume that God is necessary to define morality, because atheists demonstrate that humanity is perfectly capable of doing that for itself.

The definition I found was:

quote:

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one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything

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As in, if 1+1=2, and if 1+1+x=2 then x=0. The extraneous term, x, should not be added, because it has no bearing on the outcome.So, if morality can be defined in wholly human, logical and reasonable terms, then God is simply an exreaneous entity that should be left out of the discussion because His existance or lack thereof is irrelevant to the argument.The definition you pose would allow such explanations as "God did it," because it contains the fewest words and is the easiest to understand. This does not make it right - it's not even an explanattion. It's a sidestep. Jump in logic. You are assuming that God MUST exists for morality to exist at all, and then using the existance of morality to prove the existance of God. This is a circular argument based on a false assumption. For it to be valid, you must prove that God must exist in order for morality to exist. Since morality can be defined without bringing God into the discussion, it cannot prove his existance.Your personal beliefs are your own concern, and you are by all means entitled to them. But to claim in a debate that the existance of morality proves the existance of God requires evidence that morality would not exist if He did not exist. Yes, says the argument. A circular argument. "God makes morality, so morality proves God." "The egg becomes the chicken, so the chicken proves the egg." See the problem with your logic?In order to prove that God creates morality, you have to prove that God exists. To prove that God exists, you say that the existance of morality proves His existance.

Huh? Atheists, for whom there is no God, prove you wrong every day by being good, moral people. An atheist can wrte down rules of morality just as easily as a Christian - if the ten commandments and the bible are your only source of morality, then an atheist could provide morality just as "universal" by writing it down in a best-selling book. Morality is an abstract concept created in the human mind by empathizing with other people. Yes, it likely was brought about via natural selection, where moral societies remained while immoral anarchies tore themselves apart.What you are saying is that you don't WANT to believe that morality could be something so simple, you WANT to believe that morality is divinely created because it somehow makes you feel "special." This is a logical fallacy - you have created a hypothesis and are ignoring evidence to the contrary becasue you really LIKE the hypothesis. Why not? I rather enjoy being self-aware. Sentience makes me more significant than a bacterium, or a rat, etc. I can define morality for myself, and I take pride in taking a stand for those moral ideals. Yet again, you are choosing to believe otherwise because you don't LIKE the idea that humans have no grand purpose. You haven't proven that we HAVE one, you just don't like the alternative. This is fine for determining what you choose to believe in, but in a debate it just doesn't fly. It's not a logical argument.

Again, this is all based on your likes and dislikes, not logic. It's fine for determining your personal beliefs, but not for a debate. But we don't. Many people disagree with the Bible's morality (ie, freedom or religion, sodomy laws, etc.). Morality is certainly NOT inscribed on our DNA! Other religions have different moral codes, though most share a few common threads at their core. Psychopaths literally have no conscience or morality beyond fear of reprisals for breaking the law.Provide evidence to back your claims instead of wishy-washy "I like this better than the other becasue it makes me feel special" BS. If you can't provide evidence to back up your claims or refute the evidence of the rest of us, then conceed your point.

Lizard Breath, that was a very nice statement of faith. There were absoluterly no logical arguments, however. False. The fact that we have experiences in no way proves the existance of God. Purpose and order are human-defined concepts, and do not exist dominantly in nature. Nature, rather, is filled with random chaos. Observe the thermonuclear reactions of the Sun, the distribution of raindrops in a rainstorm, the chaotic swirl of gravity that forms galaxies. This universe is based on chaos. Humans attempt to impose order on chaos because it's easier to deal with. That's a nice strawman. No one is saying that a giant explosion caused morality. Human sentience DEFINES morality for itself, by rationally observing the consequences of actions.The Big Bang is not some chemical explosion that magically created life. The Big Bang is simply a description of the early universe - when time and space came into existance, space began to expand. It's not like some giant bomb went off! The name was given due to similarities with explosions that we are used to, but was not truly related to them in any way. Nobody is basing morality on an explosion. The origin of the universe is irrelevant to this topic! Right and wrong are wholly defined by human consciousness. Your "designer" is not required to describe those concepts, or humanity itself. Of course we do. We determine the courses of our own lives. We decide what to believe in, if anything. We decide whether to be moral people or not, and define that morality for ourselves. To say that "our design reflects that our creation was for a purpose" requires evidence. Prove that we were designed at all, and prove that we have a purpose beyond survival and whatever else we determine from our own minds. The bible is an old book. Not evidence. There's some good stuff in there, certainly, but a book cannot prove anythign by itself.I'd really like to see you actually refute someone's points, or provide evidence of your own. As it is, you're just spouting off religious rhetoric like a broken record. Repeating yourself does not strengthen an argument. Either provide evidence of your claims or conceed.

The similarities are NOT universal, though prevalent.The explanation is that we are all rational human beings. Well, we are all capable of rational thought, anyway. A rational mind can examine the consequences of its actions and determine which actions resulted in beneficial or detrimental results, to the individual and society. Empathy can be used to explain the commonality of "do unto others." It's perfectly rational to understand that, if you don't like being punched in the face, your neighbor probably won't like it either, so you shouldn't do it.No deity necessary. Prove that it can't, becasue I think atheists do it all the time.

I think the point would be better made that the human brain is so needlessly and inefficiently organised that no intelligent designer would make it this way. The same can be said for our eyes (eagles eyes, for instance, are FAR superior - some parts of our eyes are actually backwards). How about vestigial organs in the human body? Why would they be included by an intelligent designer?If we were designed by an all-powerful deity, he wasn't a very bright one. It doesn't run on cause an effect. Mutations need no specific "cause," they simply happen durng the reproductive process. Its randomness allows traits to appear that are far too outlandish, inefficient, and complicated for an intelligent designer to ever even WANT to come up with.Ever heard an engineer refer to K.I.S.S.? It stands for "Keep It Simple, Stupid." The simpler, more efficient the design, the more reliably and better it will work.What you propose seems to say that God is so smart he looks dumb. That doesn't make sense.

I would think though that if hyper creativity would in fact exist and seeing where evolution is today, evidence of superior creations superceeding our own would be popping up at an interval that would be very apperant to anyone with life in them. Not just people like yourself who are well plugged in to that particular disipline./qsAppeal to Ignorance fallacy. Just becasue it hasn't been put directly in front of you, personally, doesn't mean it isn't so. It may "sound viable" to you, but you're still wrong. Autism is a difference in brain function, not the beginning of speciation. By your logic, people with all manner of differences could be the beginnings of a new species.

Your logic is mostly sound. There is no way to disprove the existance of a deity.However, the argument is cut apart by Occam's Razor (pardon the pun). Occam's Razor states that the simplest explanation is typically the correct one. Simple, in this instance, refers to the explanation with the fewest entities. If 2=2+x, then x=0 and should not be included. If (explanation of morality, or the universe, or whatever)=(same explanation)+(God), then God is not necessary to the explanation and is irrelevant to the discussion.Agaibn, we are not saying that God cannot exist. Only that morality is fully definable in human terms without the existance of a deity, and so the deity's existance or nonexistance is irrelevant. This is sound. No one can disprove God's existance. It is impossible to prove a negative, after all. But the nature of morality does not confirm His existance.

Thank you for allowing that an atheist would "most likely" disapprove of Hitler.To say that there would be no "logical basis" for that disapproval, however, is incorrect. It is logical to assume that every human being has the same basic rights, such as the right to life, and the right not to be tortured. It is fully logical to be appalled at violations of those universal human rights, purely on the basis that you wouldn't want it to happen to you and can empathize.

Your example assumes that human creativity determines the form of the bioweapons. This is incorrect. As crashfrog mentioned, humans artificially select more deadly strains. At no point does a human being say "well, if we put this protein here, and that one there." We don't make a set of blueprints or make a fabrication plant. We just accellerate the pathogen's evolution and select for more desirable traits.We breed dogs the same way. We breed the ones that have features we like. Nobody "designed" the German Shepherd - it's just the result of breeding for a few specific traits.

You can do the same thing with Christian teachings. Racial segregation, the Holocaust, the Crusades, the Inquisition, homophobia, televangelism ( ), and a hundred other crimes can be laid at the feet of those who did these things "in God's name."CS, there are immoral people in this world. Some of them are atheists, yeah. Some of them are Christians, too. But the fact that you can use "atheistic views" as a rationalization for immoral acts is irrelevant, since you can do the same with some "Christian views."Certainly Christians who are moral people would not agree with the Christians who committed the atrocities I mentioned. Atheists who are moral people would not agree with atheists who rationalize away immoral acts. Sure. But you can also show how selectively quoting from the Bible out of context can lead to the worst atrocities humanity has ever seen. Doesn't mean it's a fault of Christianity as a whole, just the individual immoral Christians who used their religious dogma to justify existing prejudices and solidify their own power.In any case, you are going on a tangent. I don't see how any of this shows how morality proves the existance of God. You've already admitted that morality can be described in the absence of a deity - Occam's Razor takes care of the rest.