God Is Necessary For Morality

I'm going to respond to my opponent in numerical form; addressing each of his attempts to debunk the selected statements from my argument. 1. My opponent said that (A) was irrelevant to the discussion. This is simply not true. (A) establishes that if God does exist it would be certain that objective morals exist due to His very nature. This has everything to do with the discussion. 2. My opponent has completely missed the meaning of (B). (B) was intended to show that in an atheistic universe objective morality could not exist. (B) shows that evolution can not explain the existence of objective morals, which is what my opponent supports as his resolution. In essence, con's argument was "herd morality" which I showed to be completely arbitrary. 3. Con hasn't really refuted (C) at all. He never refuted the main point of (C), which was that all our moral choices have no moral value or significance in an atheistic universe. 4. Again, my opponent has completely missed the point. (2) was intended to show that evolution is absolutely incapable of explaining objective morality. Nothing more. It is interesting when he says "our disagreement on the subject also proves that human morality is not objective morality" as if I hadn't defined this difference already. 5. My opponents response to (3), "Punishment is irrelevant to morality." This has got to be the most outrageous statement yet! As John Stuart Mill points out that moral wrongs are the kinds of things for which punishments seems justified [1]. Punishment is the one thing that separates moral obligation and obligation based upon reason. He then says, "Not having a reason to do a moral action does not make that action amoral, and not having a reason not to do an amoral action does not make it moral." This simply not what I'm arguing. I'm saying that if morality came about from evolution, then morality, as shown throughout my argument, would be subjective. Thus no one can be held accountable for what they have done. There would be no reason to do so anyways. 6. Con states, "this does not mean it is impossible, or that our not possessing an alternative proves your side, that is an argument from ignorance." Did I ever make the claim that since you can not disprove my argument therefore my argument is true? No. I'm saying in light of the evidence I gave above evolution can not supply objective morals. 7. Con answered my first question by saying "With or without a God, there will be an action, or series of actions, that will create the most good.That action, or series of actions, is the objectively moral one." 8. Con answered my second question by saying, "humans have a concept of suffering". Therefore, any moral crime that has an absence of suffering is permitted. This view entirely lacks any moral intention. Thus it shouldn't even be considered. 9. You said, "this means that objective morality exists regardless of whether or not we have a reason to behave accordingly." My question is intended to ask where we get our moral obligations from. If moral obligations are irrelevant to the argument, as you claim, then we aren't talking about objective morality are we? This "ought to do something" is the very phrase that defines all of ethics. I can not be irrelevant to the discussion. 10. You said, "again this is irrelevant for the existence of objective morality." It has everything to do with moral objectivity. In the absence of moral accountability there would be no "ought" and no convictions. Morality would be debased as subjective. 11. And finally, you said "Pro has offered no argument against my explanation of objective morality". My rebuttal of your explanation of morality is quite clear and throughout my argument. I'll give you a more clear and slightly different rebuttal by Greg Koukl: "So, in abbreviated form, the reasoning [of your argument] goes like this: I ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for me. So why ought I be unselfish? Because it is better for me. But looking at what is better for me, is selfishness. So all of this so-called description of where morality comes from, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly. Because we know that morality can't be reduced to selfishness. Why do we know that? Because our moral rules are against selfishness and for altruism. They are against selfishness and for the opposite. When you think about what it is that morality entails, you don't believe that morality is really about being selfish. Morality is about being unselfish, or at least it entails that. Which makes my point that this description, based on evolution, does not do the job. It doesn't explain what it is supposedly meant to explain. It doesn't explain morality. It is simply reduced to a promotion of selfishness which isn't morality at all. " If you somehow debunk this, the rest of my argument still stands. Morality is something altogether different. We may debate about all that moral views and understandings entail, but one thing we can all agree on, I think, is that when we are looking for a definition of morality, we know it isn't about selfishness. It is about not being selfish, just the opposite. That's why these explanations don't work. They either smuggle morality into the equation by describing the behavior that is meant to be explained by evolution so they depend upon morality to do the job, or else the descriptions and explanations end up being reduced to selfishness, which isn't what we're trying to explain. We're trying to explain why one ought not be selfish, not why one ought to be selfish." [2] Thanks for the debate. I hope I'll learn from some of the various mistakes I made in it. [1]: John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1957 [1861]), 61. [2]: Stand to Reason: Evolution Can't Explain Morality found on str.org