Trolley Problem/Consistency in Ethics

[SteveII]

First, Eastern philosophies gave us the India caste system and totalitarian governments all over Asia right up until the 20th century. There is still significant human rights struggles in that part of the world as a result of millenniums of cultures that did not value any notion of "inalienable rights" just because you were a person. Plain and simple, these cultures, as a whole, did not believe humans have intrinsic value.

Second, you bring up "morality far out-dates Christianity". That is not my point at all. I discussing a narrow concept as it relates to human value and used a very specific word for a reason. Intrinsic. My position is that you cannot evolve or reason to intrinsic value. As I said above to Khem: ...tell me, at what exact point in evolutionary history did we move from the law of survival of the fittest to that of having intrinsic value that supersede the process that got us to that point and HOW exactly did that work? It sure seems that by definition, you cannot evolve intrinsic value.

Modern western natural human rights are directly linked to Christian thinking so much so that the Declaration of Independence says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

If you think that humans have evolved intrinsic value, that is an affirmative position and as such, if you wish to make the point, requires you to have logical reasons to believe so.

Thanks for the clarity.

Eastern philosophies and western philosophies were BOTH flawed in the past, I agree with the point you're making that western philosophies have a slightly more "moral" system in place in 2018 (subjective though).

But now that's a shift of the burden of proof. If you state god is the reason for western humans developing that way, if you make the assumption that intrinsic value cannot be obtained from evolution, it needs to be backed up. 

Immediately i can think of some things wrong with your theory though: why did humans "develop" this intrinsic value? Why not be created that way from the beginning? Wasn't america built on europeans looking for religious refuge? Where was the value for human life when america was "built"? Was it an empty land when the europeans got there? Anyway there just too much flaws in your theory to mention. But please no burden shifting.

There are two issues that I am talking about at the same time. 

1) A main difference between a Christian-based ethical system and an naturalistic one is that only the Christian system gives humans intrinsic value. I explained how Christianity does this (imago dei) and why a naturalism does not. If you disagree with this, then you are saying that there exists an argument that does give us some type of evolved intrinsic value and therefore have the burden of proof. 

2) I think it is clear that Christian thought has had a significant impact on the development of western ethics and I contend that our inclination that humans have intrinsic value is based on this impact and not reasoning from any atheistic worldview. I think the impact part of this idea is self evident. The second part can be countered with a reasoned argument to my 1).