Quote:But the enemy would also be discarding empathy, so reason would tell you that you would be justified in treating them the same.
Could you just accept for a moment there are some situations in which empathy is not the most important virtue? Real life is different from Oprah, you know? If you go to work, you work 60 hours a week to feed your family, what guides you most of the time? Is it empathy? Or are there many, many virtues that work together. There is no one that is more important than another. They are virtues.
It is the epitome of liberal sophistry to say that empathy is the only virtue necessary in life.
Quote:Naturally, I disagree. Justice, when morailty is severely breached, would often not be considered moral outside of the domain of justice, I should note.
I am not sure what this means. You still havn't grounded the authority of empathy in anything other than feelings.
Quote:Do you know what would happen to the world if human rights disappeared over night? They're pretty important...
I don't think I am getting through to you. I understand human rights are important, that is why I am making this argument: your belief system can't defend against them. Read this book if you want to learn more.
http://www.amazon.com/After-Virtue-Study...+macintyre
Quote:You will need to define "authority" then.
If someone says "You cannot murder", authority is what gives the statement weight that is greater than an opinion.
Quote:Okay, so how do you determine exactly how much authority they have?
By comparing their actions to a measure of Christian ethics. If their actions are good, they have authority. They also have authority just because they are in certain elected positions. But at a certain point, they lose that authority.
Quote:Evolution of morality
I'm not 100% positive, but this is your best bet at the moment. It should be noted that morality didn't evolve purely out of genetic change, but from societal constructs that would, you know, keep it from becoming a free for all where the greediest and most selfish prevailed.
How does this explain why people should accept their biological behavior. If naturalism is true, how does evolutionary traits that encode morality carry greater weight than evolutionary traits that encode appendix's or cancer? What is the standard that you use to separate them, and how could someone else not make another standard?
I would argue that biological evidence in favor of evolutionary processes that formed people to be moral people could be evidence of God's imparting people with a cognitive nature that could deal with moral problems. I am not sure about that.
Quote:Well, rather it protects the rights that are there. The constitution says the rights are self evident to begin with. Of course, if someone wants to act as if rights don't exist, then their own rights don't exist either, and they become extremely vulnerable.
Where do the rights come from? Did they exist before the constitution? Was there a time in which they didn't exist? Are the rights people opinions or do they refer to something else?
Quote:I don't worship the founding fathers just because I agree that human rights are good. The difference between us is that you think the founding fathers need to be like religious thinkers, whereas I don't think religion is necessary.
But you are elevating the opinions of the founding fathers to be above other human opinions. What makes them more authoritative? Why are the founding fathers more important than say, the leaders of France in the 14th century? What makes the founding fathers so special that they are able to define, absolutely, the nature of human rights?
Quote:There are a number of atheists here who were strongly theistic for decades, but never found god. I don't know how natural theology works, but I would imagine that science would say it is improbable that god exists. What has natural theology conrtibuted to the world? (honest question)
Why do we need religious thinkers anyway, if you can get all the answers direct from god himself?
Western civilization. Most of what you know. Most of science, indirectly. The university system. Democratic governments, to some degree. The salvation of millions of souls.
People get answers from God himself that comes through agreement with religious authorities. If God just put a voice in your head and said to do something crazy, that would be difficult to obey. God will speak to people and reveal the same things that God has revealed to others, to form a chain of the Holy Spirit revealing God's ways.
If you were God, wouldn't you reveal yourself in the open? Wouldn't you make it easy for people to follow you?
Quote:These will take a while to read, and even longer to respond to. Perhaps this particular part of the debate should go in another thread.
Sure, sounds good. I would be happy to debate any of the arguments with you, but I don't think this is really a good way to learn about them. You have to really give them a chance and see how they work together. I could post the cosmological argument here and have 15 people tell me that it doesn't prove anything. Well, whatever. Lots of people, upon serious study of the arguments for the existence of God, including world class philosophers and scientists have found them to be persuasive. Like any field of inquiry, it is different to learn about them on their own terms rather than debate them. I will debate any of the ones that you post, but I am not going to advance one particular argument for the existence of God because I think they require long, careful contemplation and detailed study and meditation and also prayer, not a debate. Like any academic subject. Some of them are very difficult.
