We should take the Moral Highground

[DeistPaladin]

By the way, I notice you completely ignored and dodged all my points. Does this mean you concede?

You have no foundation on which to build a high moral ground. Your argument is is not logically sound, because you are saying that evolutionary based empathy is a valid basis for morality. Consider the following:

1) Evolution is an amoral process.
2) Empathy is a by-product of evolution.
Thus:
3) Empathy is amoral.

To avoid conclusion 3, either premise 1 or 2 must be false. If premise 1 is false, then evolutionary results are moral, i.e. 'might makes right.' If premise 2 is false, then empathy comes from outside natural selection. If it exists at all, morality exists despite evolution, not because of it. To secure the 'high moral ground' you cannot appeal to some vague "moral sense" that itself has no inherently moral basis.

The transition from 2 to 3 is highly spurious. How exactly does being a by-product of an amoral process make the produced thing necessarily amoral? It seems to me you've made an invalid assumption.

Additionally, how empathy came to be is a red herring to our discussion. I've specifically said in previous posts that you are free to believe God gave us our conscience if you wish. Doing so does nothing to validate your idea that religious morality is superior.

The crux of my argument is that religious "morality" has an inherent conflict of interest (promoting itself and its own memes) where secular morality zeroes in on the the heart of the matter, that morality is a function of how we treat our fellow sentient beings. Can you successfully attack this argument?