Naturalism provides a more plausible explanation for objective morality than God.

Naturalism and objective morality According to pros version of morality, objective morality is determined by what is overall beneficial to our fellow creatures. In other words, killing a human being would be wrong because societies net-gain is negative. However, if pro assumes this view he must also concede some facts. All actions that have an effect on the furthering of the human race would be judged either objectively moral or objectively immoral. Whatever action that positively effected the over all well-being of everyone, would be considered a morally good thing. Therefore, if murdering a human being resulted in the human race gaining a net-benefit, the action would be considered an objectively good one. Therefore, pounding your fists into the child’s face pro mentions, may be considered moral if the child is Adolf Hitler, for instance before he has grown up, and hitting the child in the face would some how prevent the sequence of events that lead to his rising of power. Or to a less extreme extent, killing a child would be considered moral if it stopped that child from growing up and killing two other human beings. Two kinds of good/bad. I'll refer back to this in my arguments, but I think it is necessary for us to differentiate between the two different kinds of good/bad. Pro sometimes writes in such a way in which he is arguing about the good and bad moral actions, as if it depends about bad/good in a superiority sense of the word. Such as when he says, “morality is that which governs what we consider to be good and bad actions, but good and bad for what or for whom?” Suppose I say "that was a bad movie."We can garner two different conclusions. 1 .Morally bad: He didn't like the explicit sexual content. 2. Content wise bad: The acting sucked, and the dialogue was poor. A movie can also be both morally bad but entertainment-wise good. Pro's missing premise: Despite pros logic based morality, there are still some questions naturalism cannot account for. Pro uses categorical imperatives, which he has yet to justify. For categorical imperatives necessarily imply an ought and if we ought to do something there must be some basis as to why we ought to do that. Therefore pro has yet to justify the assertion that we ought to do what is beneficial to others and beneficial to us. Naturalism assumed we would have no duty whatsoever to positively affect the well-being of others or of ourselves. I am afraid there is little to nothing supporting this assertion from the pro. Now even if you proved that it would be more logical for us to do so, that still doesn’t satisfy the question, because for one that’s just advice, and two, it has yet to be proven that we are objectively bound to do the most logical thing. In fact in many situations we choose the less logical path, and also do no not regret it. Stephen: Why is murder wrong? Roger: Because it negatively effects the well-being of everyone. S: Why should I care about the well-being of everyone else? R: Because you are part of society. S: But what if it doesn't negatively effect me? Only everyone else? R: You should make your fellow creatures better off. S: But you're just creating a categorical imperative which you can't justify. I shouldn't be bound to positively affecting other people. Why should I care about other peoples lives, or even the progression of the human race? I die and then I'm gone. If I want to steal why am I bound to going against my wishes? Should I not do what I want? If I want to harm myself why can I not do so? At best, pro's morality could be thought of as advice, and going back previously, saying something is good because it's beneficial, is entirely different to saying something is good because it is moral. To quote Jean Paul Sartre "Life has no meaning the moment you lose the illusion of being eternal. It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose."[1] Atheism assumed, the purpose of life is not to progress the human race. In fact, purpose is entirely subjective. I could be a hedonist, for example, and who is anyone to say that I ought not to be? Only a non-natural metaphysical basis could give us an objective purpose of existence and that of course completely contradicts pros case. I also have to ask the question why is well-being the most important factor of our lives? Why would happiness, for instance, not be more important? Suicide/causing harm to yourself I would think that naturalism assumed you could do whatever the hell you want with your body. It’s yours. It is your own possession, therefore you should have the right to harm it if you want, such as by eating unhealthy food, or cutting yourself. I am confused as to why suicide would NOT be a morally wrong thing to do. Pro alludes that these actions are done simply because of an imbalance of chemicals in the victim's brain, and thus we can ignore them. But really we can only question pros assertion in a number of ways. Firstly how do we determine the “chemical imbalance”, pro speaks of? What is a chemically balanced mind in a naturalistic world, when all we are is really just machines? I don’t think we could deductively conclude what a chemically balanced mind would be. Maybe it’s not an imbalance but just a different chemical balance. Then there’s the question of whether depression could exempt you from doing immoral things. I think that this is just an unsupported assertion from the pros part, for depression does not entail loss of logical intuition. We can still rationalize while being depressed very easily. The moral facts that we can deduce using pro's naturalistic moral code: Now, what makes pros morality fun is that we can logically deduce many moral facts. Pro even presents a simple formula to postulate these facts. Let's look at what moral facts pro's position would entail. Morally good things Murdering 1,000 people in order to save 1,001 Torturing terrorists Killing one person and eating him so that the other two would survive Any war that results in more benefit than loss Exterminating those who were un-beneficial to society Cheating small business’s so that large corporations would benefit Killing 1,000 people of low intrinsic value, in order to save 900 people of high intrinsic value Exterminating 100 retarded people in order too make room for those of higher value in an overpopulated world, because it would over-all be beneficial to the human race Morally bad things Eating skittles Cutting yourself Not living a healthy life Suicide Almost any abortion Drinking alcohol Too much sex Squishing spiders This is a frightful moral code. It takes practicality and logic to a huge extreme. Now if pro wishes to assert this code, that's all fine and dandy, but I would just like to make it clear to anyone that shares pros moral views what exactly they are advocating. I could easily predict pro accusing me of appeal to emotion, but like I said, I’m just pointing out the extremity of a logic based morality. If pro also wishes to contend that his morality does not entail these facts, that is also fine. But I think it's clear they do. God and objective morality Pro contends that the moral intuition that exists, would be more plausibly explained by evolution, due to the crudeness of it and the certain things our moral sense tell is are right/wrong. The crudeness contention can easily be refuted because of the fact that evolution and God are not mutually exclusive, as well as the fact that many or most religions teach the fall of man, and thus the moving away from perfection and partially losing our sense of morality. Pro also asserts that facts that our moral intuitions presents us, such as that abortion and euthanasia are wrong, correspond with logic based morality. However he completely ignores the entirely contrary facts our moral sense dictates such as that torturing people is wrong, even if it is much more the logical thing to do. I’ll respond to the rest in the next round. [1] http://www.takeonit.com...