Abstract reasoning and God

However, I would like to continue the debate for the sake of argument and further understanding. Your counterargument consists of claims that my argument contains non sequiturs and therefor is not logical. I will try to clear up these apparant non sequiturs. "You assume it is impossible to have an argument unless men agree on moral principles" this is misleading and missing half of the story. To start, I never said impossible, I said it would be ridiculous. A better word would be senseless, and that hold true. As to your example of libs cons is flawed because my argument describes it perfectly. These two people both agree that killing a child is wrong, they simply disagree on when the fetus is in fact a child. To illustrate my point, we no longer burn women accused of being witches, not because it is immoral to do so, but because we no longer believe in witches. And I'm sure most evryone agrees there are no witches. Knowledge is a great benefit to morality but it does not define morality. And, our actions don't describe our morals, for we all know that we can chose to ignore our morals at any time for any reason. So, as soon as we KNOW for a fact that life begins at conception or birth, the liberal and conservative will agree, because now they believe the same thing. Their morality never changed, only their understanding or perspective of the world. By true morality, I mean a standard of morality that all humans are subject to. And I provided an entire sub argument as evidence, such as the civilization one whose supposed non sequiturs I will now address. I struggle to understand how the fact that China condones infanticide somehow accurately describes the morality of Chinese people. China condones it because in their situation of extreme exponential overpopulation, it is practical. It doesn't mean that they think it is right. Laws are not always morally right but sometimes they are necessary for the prosperity or benefit of society. As to example of shellfish, abomination is not synonymous with morally incorrect so I don't fully understand your point. In addition to that, you must remember that what people believe and the morality they hold are different things. They both affect a persons actions but they are not one thing. My morals do not stem from my beliefs nor my beliefs from my morals. My beliefs stem from what I know or am told (like that witches aren't real). As to your claim that I have not defined what is or isn't moral: morals are like a tool, which I use to measure the morality of the choices (which I called instincts or impulses) a situation presents to me. The morally right choice in that situation is moral, and the morally wrong choice in that situation is immoral. That does not mean that the immoral choice is immoral in every situation. Nothing is always moral or always immoral. So I cannot define what is or isn't moral always. I did however say that in the situation of the man who needed help, the moral choice is to help him. As to your claim that to some people, its fine to have sex with as many people as they want. These are very much in their right to SAY that they believe this, but if one of these people is married they may still continue to sleep with whoever they want, yet I struggle to think of a realistic situation where he does not understand that it is morally wrong for him to do so. If one of these people is not married, then I'm sure they have even more sex, but I think the moral question is not how much sex you have but WHO you have sex with. A this man will know that is morally wrong to sleep with a married woman, even more if its the wife of a friend, even more if it were to be someone he is related to. As you can see, there are many cases where sex is morally ok, but also cases where no matter what a person says, a sexual action is morally wrong. Now to the interesting part, I concede that it does make sense that evolution has played a role in the preservation of "morality genes". And for all intents and purposes it is a good theory. Whether or not it contradicts me is different. First off, it is clear that this theory draws some evidence from the behavior of animals, which makes sense because we are animals too, however it would be foolish to say that if this theory is true, it is not painfully evident that our "moral genes" and therefor our morality is far more sophisticated and evolved than that of other animals. Second, morality cannot be a human convention by the grounds of this theory because humans had no part in the moral development of other species. Now we come to the most important part, it seems that based on this theory, morality is a natural convention, a product of evolution. Humans are also products if evolution, every living thing is. f I accept that this theory of evolved morality is true, I can say that a God or a dao or Brahman or x z y creative entity is responsible. I would of course have to back that up with various disputable arguments like first cause or the nature of nothing or the converse of the product of evil but I don't think my character count allows. My point is that the theory of evolved morality does not discredit my own argument, it simply forces me to use another argument for a creative entity to describe it. Notice that this theory is more speculation and logical followings as of today. This is generally unrelated to the debate but important nontheless. "There is no need to invoke God when science will do the trick". I think you'll find that no educated theist of any kind will do this. At the end of the day science is an observation of the universe. It cannot deal in things like abstracts and for that we have other tools. A lot of times, science does not do the trick. Science, in its complete form, will be a description of the universe as it is. Will it describe how it will end? How it began? Or will it state that (not necessarily how) it began, that it will end and everything in between? Will it finally be able to tell me what true success is? Well I cant say that anyone knows. I agree that to mindlessly plug in a God to things that seem unsolvable is ridiculous and unwarranted, but that is not at all what theist try to do, much less theologians or theistic philosophers. And even if that were the case (it isn't) that would only be half the story, the other half is on earth, and is about men, rather remarkable men, who convinced other men to follow them to this belief even if it meant being boiled alive (as St. John was). Of course, whether or not those men were crazy or liars or cheats is another debate altogether My last comment is to remind voters that I have conceded and that you should vote for my opponent because I did not comply with my own criteria.