So claims a man who is favorably referenced on this site...

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53872 ... qus_thread

What an idiot.
"Science," he said, "is the atheist’s weapon."
Science is the atheist's god.

I disagree with Myers on the point from which Mike took the title of his post. The last two paragraphs say:



Accept for evolution, the issues he mentioned include moral and value judgments that take more than science to make. I do agree with him that it is wrong to think that somehow moral and value judgments based on religious belief have any special value.

Given your premises, Jack, no moral or value judgments have any special value.

We all are responsible for our morals and other values. Claiming that you believe a God exists that validates your morals doesn't in fact give you any special or different access to the source of moral judgments - you can believe that such a God exists that somehow establishes the correct moral judgments, but believing that does not make it so. The theist and the atheist have exactly the same claim to the validity of their morals.

In your opinion, of course.

Of course. Do you have anything other than an opinion?

Anything? Of course.

Please explain. What statement can you offer about this topic - the nature of moral judgment - that is something more than an opinion? And why is your statement more than an opinion and mine just an opinion?

FYI: for the record - what I wrote was. What do you think that is different from this? And, and asked above, how is what you think something other than - more than - an opinion?

I wrote, "We all are responsible for our morals and other values. Claiming that you believe a God exists that validates your morals doesn't in fact give you any special or different access to the source of moral judgments - you can believe that such a God exists that somehow establishes the correct moral judgments, but believing that does not make it so. The theist and the atheist have exactly the same claim to the validity of their morals."

Jack, you asked if I had ANYTHING other than an opionion.

And of course I do.

For example, the Holocaust was Objectively Immoral...and by that I mean that even if under some circumstances (such as the Germans winning World War Two and thus through control of the educational system, the Historians, all the techniques of Propaganda, etc. convincing the world that it was Right) the world decided that it WAS moral, it would still have been wrong. (And, after all, Moral Relativists tell us that we make our own morals and get this from surrounding society.)

Or do you argue that declaring the Holocaust Immoral is a Subjective Position?

There was/is near universal agreement that the Holocaust was grossly immoral, but that doesn't mean it was "Objectively" immoral in the sense you mean it, as being somehow immoral in reference to some standards that exist independently from human beings. Your belief in the existence of such "Objective" morals, as well as your belief in some absolute source of those morals, is a subjective opinion on your part.

Just to be clear, I already understand that there is near universal agreement that the Holocaust was grossly immoral.

But since you say that that doesn't mean it was OBJECTIVELY immoral in the sense of being somehow immoral in reference to an independent standard, then if somehow the consensus was different (as per the example I gave about the Germans winning World War Two) it would be Moral according to your argument.

And that is the thinking that led to the disaster in the first place.

And if you can argue that the Holocaust was only SUBJECTIVELY immoral, then if that represents an implication of atheism your world view is Bankrupt; and if the atheist world view prevails, ANYTHING GOES; it that sense it is self refuting because it contains the basis for its own destruction.

Mike writes, "And if you can argue that the Holocaust was only SUBJECTIVELY immoral, then if that represents an implication of atheism your world view is Bankrupt; and if the atheist world view prevails, ANYTHING GOES."

This is where you are wrong. There is no "objective true" morality. It doesn't make any difference that you believe there is a God who supplies some "objective" standard, that is just a subjective opinion that you use to bolster your subjective opinion of what is moral. Being an atheist doesn't imply that anything goes: what it means is that one looks elsewhere for the source of one's moral positions: to our biological and social natures, to reason, to the combined wisdom of centuries if people living in societies.

Also, a great deal of what we consider moral does change. Take a a different example: in our culture some people consider it immoral to breast feed in public, and some don't. In much of pre-western Africa, this would absolutely not be the case: women didn't wear shirts and breast fed whenever necessary. However, 200 years ago in England it was considered immoral for a women to show her bare ankles, and breastfeeding in public would have been out of the question. There is no absolute moral standard here. (If you think there is, what is it?)

My world view isn't bankrupt: I care deeply about the well-being of people, and about the importance of doing what is right. I consult both inner and outer sources in order to reach my moral judgments. There are some things I believe that the vast majority of people in the world would agree with me about, some that people in my culture would agree and others not so much, and some that there is strong disagreement within my culture. There is no outside absolute arbiter - all we can do as people is stand for our positions and try to strike a balance between trying to influence others to see things our way and finding ways to let others live with other standards - and deciding which things fall in the first category and which in the second.

This is all equally true of you, Mike. Just because you believe in an "objective" source of morality doesn't make it so - that's just your subjective opinion.

Jack, you keep asserting that there is no "Objective Morality", as if your opinion makes it so.

You say that being an atheist has nothing to do with it, that it just means that we have to look "elsewhere"...sure. Lenin looked elsewhere, Stalin looked elsewhere, Sartre looked elsewhere, Sanger looked elsewhere and so forth, and you are left with no basis to say they were wrong.

You say you care deeply about the well being of people, but you have no basis for that, nor even for saying what that well being might be. That is Bankrupty; you can not even argue that the Holocaust was Objectively wrong. Does that cause you to think for a moment that there is some inherent flaw in your approach? Take another example; you don't know when a fetus becomes a human being, but that does not stop you from having an opinion on the subject, even though you signature line says you would rather LIVE with uncertainty. Well, if you are uncertain about it, you are again in no position to critique the Pro Life position.

But your opinion is Self Refuting...it does not even leave you an Objective basis to criticize my postion. And that is why our positions are not equivalent.

You don't get it, but I'll quit repeating myself.