(November 23, 2014 at 7:32 pm)Chad32 Wrote:(November 23, 2014 at 7:17 pm)ChadWooters Wrote: Gee wiz, if you'all want to argue with the metaphor with talk of gills and such then go right ahead. The point is that being good requires the capacity to do so, despite whether you recognize the source of that capacity or not. The virtuous atheist can behave as well as anyone else because all humans have a providential conscience. If people do not look to the Good itself to guide their choices then they look to themselves or others for guidance. That looking elsewhere tends to be self-serving even if it potentially aligns with what is actually good.
First you have to get around to proving that Yahweh is real, that he is good, and is the source of goodness in the world, before you can assert that trying to do good without god is like trying to breathe without lungs. It's quite leap of assumptions.
That is where it comes back to free will. The concept of free will that I learned as a young Baptist was that evil is in the world because of free will. Free will exists because god wants love. By that logical, every time an event is on the news that makes us cringe at its cruelty(like Isis beheading aid workers or drug cartels murdering innocent people or serial killers torturing someone to death) it is because the Christian god wants love. So, the Christian god is evil. Ted Bundy, Hitler, John Gacy exist because their god wants to be praised and told he is great.
