No action can be truly selfless

Maya, Maya, Maya Must we go round and round. 1."You have assumed wrongly that all moral values must come from God, or a belief in God. I have meant plenty of atheists that not only possess moral values, but believe them to be objective values. 2.There are also several philosophers (Immanuel Kant is a good example) who devoted quite a bit of time to the discussion of the validity of their moral systems without bringing God into the picture." 1.You stating you've met plenty of atheists w/ objective moral values holds no weight in this argument because you can't prove it. 2.Actually Maya you're completely wrong in regards to Immanuel Kant. "In a famous pronouncement the German Philosopher Kant named the existence of the starry heavens and that of the the moral law within us as a powerful witness to the greatness of God."(The Question of God, Dr. Armand Nicholi) According to Kant, theoretical reason cannot answer questions such as "Does God exist?" or "What is the thing-in-itself like?" Practical reason, however, says, "All right, the moral law is the most important thing in the world, and life is meaningless without it. Now what is necessary if the moral law is to hold?" And here practical reason (rather than theoretical reason) must answer: "God and immortality are necessary. Hence, I must believe in God and immortality." These references to Kant completely cancel your statement "There are also several philosophers (Immanuel Kant is a good example) who devoted quite a bit of time to the discussion of the validity of their moral systems without bringing God into the picture." Maya said... 1."Again, you make a another faulty assumption: that all value must come from God. No supreme being is needed to create value for anything, living or otherwise. Value is there because conscious minds put it there. Also, an atheist must not necessarily believe that everything is pointless. As I stated, value can have other sources aside from God. If you ask a devout Buddhist, most of whom can be considered atheist, it is very unlikely that he or she will tell you that life is worthless or pointless." 1.I have given several arguments explaining why God is needed for an absolute moral value. You on the other hand just state "value is there bc the conscious mind creates it" Maya, you give absolutely no proof for this statement. Explain to me and the voters "how" and "why" the conscious mind puts value into a human being. You have not explained this and cannot explain this, so it is not a valid argument. On the other hand I have explained several times and will again that the only explanation for moral value is God. Here we go... What does it mean to say, for example, the moral value justice just exists? Maya says that the mind creates moral value. I understand what it means for a person to be just; but I draw a complete blank when it is said that, in the absence of any persons, Justice itself exists. Moral values seem to exist as properties of a persons, not as abstractions-or at any rate, I don't know what it is for a moral value to exist as an abstraction. Suppose the values like mercy, justice, love, forbearance and the like just exist. How does that result in any moral obligation for me? Why would I have a moral duty, say, to be merciful? Who or what lays such an obligation on me? As the ethicist Richard Taylor points out, "A duty is something that is owed..But something can be owed only to some person. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation"(Ethics,Faith,&Reason). God makes sense of moral obligation b/c His commands constitute for us moral duties. According to Taylor, w/out God we literally have no moral obligations; there is no right or wrong. The atheistic moral realist rightly finds this abhorrent, but as Taylor clearly sees, on an atheistic view there simply is no ground for duty, even if moral values somehow exist. 10 out of 10 people die. I believe atheists can't have a true meaning or purpose in their life because to fully live, one must resolve the problem of death. An example of this is Sigmund Freud became obsessed with death, he was extraordinarily fearful and superstitious about death. Freud dreamed about death continually and even closed his essay on war and death with the curious suggestion: "If you want to endure life, prepare yourself for death". Obviously Freud was never truly able to prepare himself for death and so he spent excessive energy obsessing over it and had little joy. For Freud, birthdays were not a time of joy and celebration, but of despair. "if I had known how little joy I would have on my 16th bday, my first would probably not have given me pleasure either. It would be in the best of times only a melancholic celebration" (The Question of God, Nicholi) Maya said "If you ask a devout Buddhist, most of whom can be considered atheist, it is very unlikely that he or she will tell you that life is worthless or pointless." Maya, I asked a Buddhist and this is his reply... http://cacrash.blogspot.com... Tuesday, May 27, 2008 The Meaning of Life - A Buddhist's Thoughts I think life is meaningless, not meaningless in the terms one usually thinks of it as, not that that it's not worth living, just that it has no meaning. I think it's meant to be crazy, chaotic, happy, sad, disastrous, hilarious, sour, sweet and just plain insanity. I think it's every one of those things and more but I don't think it has a meaning. I think everyone goes out of their way and spends their time looking for its meaning when there's none there to find, but I think that if everyone knew it all had no meaning everyone would just go crazy. Wow! Maya...ask and you will receive, straight from the Buddhists mouth, to the blog, to debate.org. Maya said "Your entire argument regarding Christian Hedonism only backs my point. They are seeking their own pleasure, period." Maya, Maya, Maya (I just like the way that sounds) Lastly the Christian Hedonism philosophy you obviously don't understand and I wasn't sure if you would b/c the title throws people, but if you study scripture you will realize that "God is most pleased in us, when we are most pleased in Him." This being the case it is ok to seek pleasure as a Christian b/c when we are earnestly seeking the ultimate true pleasure of God in Heaven and Jesus Christ it will bring God glory so we are actually not looking to fulfill ourselves first and foremost we are looking to glorify God and our pleasure of dong so Is just part of the process. See how Good God is. I hope people can understand this philosophy b/c it's easy to misinterpret, which is what Maya has unfortunately done. http://www.desiringgod.org... All of these points make my case and I have given extensive credible evidence and proof to back up my arguments where Maya has not given any credible evidence or proof for her thoughts or her arguments.