RE: Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.
June 16, 2023 at 5:52 pm
(June 15, 2023 at 6:44 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:(June 15, 2023 at 2:12 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: There are plenty of refutations of the moral argument. If you choose not to avail yourself of them, that’s your own lookout.
Boru
Sorry for the lack of clarity. My reply was directed at the assertion by @Angrboda that nothing about atheism precludes objective morality. Technically, that is true in only of very trivial definition of atheism...the lack of belief one that I consider entirely disingenuoius. Be that as it may, Freidrich Nietzsche and Fyodor Dostoevsky pretty much nailed it IMHO. If God is dead, everything is permissable.
Well, at least you are in famous company with your incorrectness.
Humans are social animals, that evolved in small groups of 50-150 members. Things like: cooperation, empathy, reciprocity, etc were necessary for survival.
If individuals of those groups behaved like Nietzsche or Dostoevsky claimed they would (without the belief in gods), they would be ejected from the group, to almost certain death.
Those 100's of thousand of years of evolved traits, are still with us.
Just exactly which god do Bonobo chimps believe in, that causes them to: protect weaker members of their group even if it puts their own lives at stake, share food with other group members even when food is short supply, adopt orphans of dead group members, punish violent members of their group?
Do you really believe that if you stopped believing in a god, you'd instantly become a thieving, murdering, raping maniac?
I actually rape and murder exactly as much as I want to. Which is zero.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.