(July 10, 2014 at 10:01 am)SteveII Wrote: Some of you were right to criticize my formation of the moral argument. If should have been formed like this:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
1) Why? Please demonstrate this premise to be true. You haven't demonstrated that one necessarily follows from the other.
If hobbit serial killers do not exist, objective moral values do not exist
Objective moral values do exist
Therefore hobbit serial killers exist
2) As Esquilax keeps pointing out, you haven't demonstrated this to be the case either.
3) For your argument to hold, your premises have to be demonstrably true. Yours are not.
Quote:1. If naturalism is true and God does not exist, then our morals are a product of evolution. Evolution cannot provide for us a set of values that are true for all times. With naturalism, at some point in the past, basic survival would be at odds with many of our morals today (killing, harming others, personal freedoms, equality, taking care of the elderly, etc.). So, naturalism gives us relative values.
Why assume we have a set of values that are true at all times when all evidence points to the contrary? You only have to look to nature to see how animals flourish in groups, with or without a concept of morality.
Quote:2. Most of us believe that objective values do exist. It is right/good to take care of one's parents into their old age and realize even 100,000 years ago it would still have been the right thing to do and 100,000 years in the future, it will still be the right thing to do. Killing young children has been and will forever be morally wrong. We all intrinsically know when something is just plain wrong--even if a million people are doing it.
Most people believed the sun went round the earth; that's not an argument for the truth of a claim. 5,000 years ago slavery was not seen as immoral; today it is. I could construct a situation whereby, in 5,000 years time the survival of mankind depended on slavery. Would engaging on slavery then be a moral action?
Quote:3. Since naturalism cannot provide for objective moral values, some other source must exist. God is the most plausible source.
Ignoring that you haven't demonstrated that objective moral values exist, how do you arrive at "God is the most plausible source." There is no evidence that God exists.