Conscience and the Moral Argument as Evidence for the Goodness of God.

[Anomalocaris]

There is no reason whysoever evolution should make us peaceful per se,    because we clearly find ourselves in many situations where use of violence can improve the survival and reproductive prospects.    This is made more true for homo sapiens than might be for the likes of bonobos because our cognitive powers gave us the ability to adapt ourself and our social structures to the demands of a much wider range of environments, niches and modes of social organization.   These in turn allow many more opportunities for situations to arise that can be profitably dealt with by violence ccur.

What evolution would tend to do is to calibrate our innate impulse to violence so as to allow our capacity for calculation to keep the urge to violence in check in those situation where reflexive violence would be self defeating.

So, evolution has not made us less violent,    It has  made us more inclined to use experience, learning, and broad cognition power to more optimally calibrate the use of violence to increase the chance that it’s use would be profitable rather than self-defeating.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

OP wants to buy his way into Heaven with conversions? Too bad he doesn't have the tools.

[The Grand Nudger]

There is little evidence that it's a natural trait if it were natural why do militaries need to train men not just how to kill but make them want to kill someone they have never met and who has done them no harm? If rape were natural why do humans seem to have such a strong negative reaction to it? this can't merely be cultural indoctrination as even in cultures where there were few written rules in rape there seemed to be a disgust for the act.

That we use rape as a weapon suggests that we innately understand the offense of the act even if a cynical view would suggest that the raping warband doesn't see a problem with it.  Rape the warbands daughters then ask them what they think about that.  As for training people to kill, modern armies have learned that the best way to get people to reliably kill, is not to train them to kill, but to disconnect the lethal act from "killing" first semantically and then cognitively.

Depending on a persons metaethical view, I can see why morality can be thought of as an evolved trait, but I don't think that's the case.  The traits we use to apprehend moral properties are evolved, and evolved for other purposes entirely, but not moral properties themselves.  Those were there to be apprehended before we possessed those traits - we simply weren't moral creatures at the time.  Nothing about rape or killing has changed from before that moment..after that moment, or since.

[Astreja]

OP wants to buy his way into Heaven with conversions? Too bad he doesn't have the tools.

Does his Holiness Account™ get debited for inspiring people to commit unforgivable blasphemies?  Asking for a friend.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

OP wants to buy his way into Heaven with conversions? Too bad he doesn't have the tools.

Does his Holiness Account™ get debited for inspiring people to commit unforgivable blasphemies?  Asking for a friend.

"There's the Devil to pay!"

[Nishant Xavier]

"...the quote circulating on social media has been taken out of context from a letter in which she was describing a perception she wanted to avoid."

LOL. Is that the best leftist "fact-checkers" can do? Yes, she was "describing a perception she wanted to avoid", the perception that she was a Racist Eugenicist. Her support for both racism and eugenics is well documented and well known, as that very article you cited notes. Read it in context and it's just the same: she does not want word to go out that she wants to exterminate the N/Black Population and she wants leftist/liberal "ministers" of hers to "straighten them out" if "ever that idea" occurs "to the more rebellious members" of Black People. So much for her enlightened, non-racist views. In blunt language, she wanted to (1) exterminate the Black population (2) didn't want word to go out that she did ("describing a perception she wanted to avoid") (3) wanted (false) "ministers" of hers to spread these fake/evil/sinful/immoral racial and eugenic theories, and (4) "straighten out" all those who might oppose her, whom she deemed (5) more rebellious members of Black People?

Heard of the saying, 'Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?' (who watches the watchmen). In our day, it would be who fact-checks the "fact-checkers". 

President Lincoln, who emancipated the slaves, instead said this: "We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the Gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of Redeeming and Preserving Grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!

It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness."

Some 76 years before Sanger, without a doubt he was a million times more enlightened than Sanger. It hurts Atheists to admit this, but it is true.

Grand Nudger: "That we use rape as a weapon suggests that we innately understand the offense of the act even if a cynical view would suggest that the raping warband doesn't see a problem with it."

Only if one views Skepticism about Atheism as "cynicism". Yes, on the naturalistic perspective, raping warbands and many other raping soldiers, terrorists, criminals etc see no problem with rape. So, if morality is subjective, who is to say ours is right and theirs is wrong. In fact, because morality is objective, we can say that they are wrong. But if it was subjective, we could not, any more than you could dictate your subjective preference of tea over coffee to them.

(Obviously, Christians and Atheists agree Rape is wrong, as we do on many other things in fact; only on things like Abortion being wrong, we'd disagree).

And, if it is granted that morality is objective, Theism logically follows. The reason is because, nothing in blind, unguided Nature can tell you how you "ought" to behave, by very definition of being unguided. That's the "is-ought" problem I briefly made reference to earlier. Therefore, granted that we all objectively *ought* to behave in certain ways, and *ought* not to do other things, even if it is in our great self-advantage to do so (as it may be in the self-advantage of a murderer to kill, a rapist to rape, and a thief to steal; or of a bad doctor to commit infanticide etc), it follows logically that there is an objective moral Law that binds all of us, which in turn could only have originated from a Supremely Good Law-Giver.

As for why Christians Evangelize/Missionary Motivation, it's because we love God and our neighbor, and want Souls to be Saved and go to Heaven. Do we know what Heaven is? It's Eternal Happiness, of course. That's eternal as in like forever. If you saw someone in a burning building and labored to save them from the fire, do you do it because you love them or because you hate them. Self-evidently the former. Similarly, if someone wants you to have something like a Palace in Heaven ("In My Father's House are many mansions"), then, first, it's because God Himself loves you, and 2nd, because He commanded His disciples to love one another. So Christians who Evangelize/go on Missions have nothing to explain, as if they're acting inconsistent with their Faith. It's those Christians who profess to believe but don't Evangelize who either don't take their Faith seriously, or don't see that love of neighbor includes care for both their material good and also their spiritual good, i.e. their eternal happiness.

God Bless.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I don’t consider myself to be particularly cynical, but I’m always suspicious when a politician - any politician - waxes rhapsodic when using religion as the hook to tell me what I ought to do.

Boru

[Angrboda]

As for why Christians Evangelize/Missionary Motivation, it's because we love God and our neighbor, and want Souls to be Saved and go to Heaven. Do we know what Heaven is? It's Eternal Happiness, of course. That's eternal as in like forever. If you saw someone in a burning building and labored to save them from the fire, do you do it because you love them or because you hate them. Self-evidently the former. Similarly, if someone wants you to have something like a Palace in Heaven ("In My Father's House are many mansions"), then, first, it's because God Himself loves you, and 2nd, because He commanded His disciples to love one another. So Christians who Evangelize/go on Missions have nothing to explain, as if they're acting inconsistent with their Faith. It's those Christians who profess to believe but don't Evangelize who either don't take their Faith seriously, or don't see that love of neighbor includes care for both their material good and also their spiritual good, i.e. their eternal happiness.

Are you saying that you practice evangelism?

[brewer]

If christians (and expecially catholics) think rape is morally wrong then why did the religions try to hide the offenders (which they still do) and not bring them to account for their moral indescritions? 

And now NX has joined them,..... hmmm..........

Wait, wait, I got it........... objective morals are for everyone else. Nice!

PS: Did NX know that priests used to rape women and then would make these women and their offspring slaves?

[Nishant Xavier]

Just passing through for now. Will address more recent responses in a subsequent post. Since someone mentioned the Catholic Church and slavery, here are 2 Papal Bulls from like 5 Centuries ago on the subject. I'm not allowed to give links, but you can find them online. Quoting brief excerpts from both to make the point:

1. "Hence Christ, who is the Truth itself, that has never failed and can never fail, said to the preachers of the faith whom He chose for that office ‘Go ye and teach all nations.’ He said all, without exception, for all are capable of receiving the doctrines of the faith.

The enemy of the human race, who opposes all good deeds in order to bring men to destruction, beholding and envying this, invented a means never before heard of, by which he might hinder the preaching of God’s word of Salvation to the people: he inspired his satellites who, to please him, have not hesitated to publish abroad that the Indians of the West and the South, and other people of whom We have recent knowledge should be treated as dumb brutes created for our service, pretending that they are incapable of receiving the Catholic Faith.

We, who, though unworthy, exercise on earth the power of our Lord and seek with all our might to bring those sheep of His flock who are outside into the fold committed to our charge, consider, however, that the Indians are truly men and that they are not only capable of understanding the Catholic Faith but, according to our information, they desire exceedingly to receive it. Desiring to provide ample remedy for these evils, We define and declare by these Our letters, or by any translation thereof signed by any notary public and sealed with the seal of any ecclesiastical dignitary, to which the same credit shall be given as to the originals, that, notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect." (Sublimus Deus, 1537).

2. "Nevertheless, with the passage of time, it has happened that in some of the said islands, because of a lack of suitable governors and defenders to direct those who live there to a proper observance of the Faith in things spiritual and temporal, and to protect valiantly their property and goods, some Christians (we speak of this with sorrow), with fictitious reasoning and seizing and opportunity, have approached said islands by ship, and with armed forces taken captive and even carried off to lands overseas very many persons of both sexes, taking advantage of their simplicity ...

4. And no less do We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free, and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of money. If this is not done when the fifteen days have passed, they incur the sentence of excommunication by the act itself, from which they cannot be absolved, except at the point of death, even by the Holy See, or by any Spanish bishop, or by the aforementioned Ferdinand, unless they have first given freedom to these captive persons and restored their goods. We will that like sentence of excommunication be incurred by one and all who attempt to capture, sell, or subject to slavery, baptized residents of the Canary Islands, or those who are freely seeking Baptism, from which excommunication cannot be absolved except as was stated above." (Sicut Dudum, Pope Eugene IV, 1435 A.D.)

Certainly, as enlightened if not more than even Lincoln and Wilberforce, to say nothing of Sanger and Nietzche. And this was 5 centuries before them.

God Bless.