Resolved: All but the nihilist shares an operative form of faith.

Con stated, "Over time, people have better understood the nature of mankind and tuned their religious institutions in accordance with the better understanding." Con thereby posits a progression of morality as our species better understands the nature of our species. Con continues, "Madison said that the Constitution was derived entirely from ‘natural law,' meaning observation of the nature of mankind." Con appears to assume that all of the founders were Deists not Theists; therefore, he feels free to skip past the phrase, "we hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men were endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. . . ." As I suspect Con knows, the founder's views were influenced by John Locke. "Thomas Jefferson was accused of copying the Declaration of Independence from Locke's Treatise of Government. Jefferson denied this, but he was undoubtedly familiar with Locke's treatise and the principles laid out there in, which were in common circulation at the time." J. Locke, The Second Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, Forward (Dover 2002). Locke's Second Treatise begins with the story of Adam, talks about Cain and Able and clearly uses Theology as his foundation for the idea of "The State of Nature:" "For men being all the workmanship of one omnipotent and infinitely wise Maker – all the servants of one sovereign Master, sent into the world by his order, and about his business – they are his property, whose workmanship they are, made to last during his not one another's pleasure. …." Con posits a preexisting "nature of mankind" which is driving a progressive society as mankind "better understands" its own nature. Apparently, this kernel of nature is embedded in us all, there for the understanding, and has been there since the first humans evolved. Con's citation of progress in the last 10% or 1% of mankind's existence does nothing to make his point. To support his point, he would require evidence from prehistory, i.e. the tens of thousands of years which precede his examples. The antiquity of humanity was unknown to Locke or America's founding fathers. I made clear in my argument that Con cannot provide any evidence from prehistory which would support Con's premise that progress results from a better understanding from some preexisting or innate nature of mankind. It was in this context, obviously, that I said Con had no evidence on point. Con states, "In his opening statement, Pro admitted that moral rules could be derived as self-evident." I certainly did not intend to argue self-evident truths can be derived. If they could be derived, they would not need to be self-evident. Given the label of this debate, it is obvious I argued that the self-evident truth we are discussing requires faith and, therefore, cannot be derived from logic. Con states he has now added the example of the founders deriving morality as self-evident. Whatever the founder's internal subjective thoughts (which no doubt were influenced by Locke without the benefit of any knowledge of prehistory), when it came to articulating the basis for liberty to the fledgling nation, they relied on the existence of a Creator. I am not saying the founders were correct. I am saying let's skip the middle man and simply recognize that we all have a faith of sorts which says, "we matter." We don't know why but something is transpiring on the third rock from the sun which merits continuation. Let's just have faith that this fact is true because this fact cannot be derived. It, therefore, must be declared as self-evident whether or not endowed by a Creator. Con declares a view which is not operative: I asked, "If we only matter to our own internal architecture, what is the loss if humanity winks out of existence? Our non-existence would not matter because we only matter to ourselves and we would no longer be here to care." Con admits, "the short answer is ‘Yes.'" I do not think this is the typical view of atheists. They may bandy it about in insular groups such as on Dawkin's board but which of them would argue this as a rational position in a public forum that is not anonymous. Any exception, again, proves the rule. A question Con never adequately answers, is why it would be wrong to override our own genetic hard coding. What was wrong with the Unabomber's conduct? Con poses a question which is difficult on the surface: "Pro should explain why, if everyone has faith in the ultimate value of human life, virtually everyone failed the test of the experiments. He claims that all but nihilists have faith, then cites as proof that almost no one has the faith he claims." This is the paradox. I personally cannot find faith in religion. Nor could I find faith in some Lockean notion of natural law, after it has been stripped of its religion. In light of Milgram, I cannot believe there is some hidden, slowly revealing pure core of "human nature" which will lead us to the Promised Land. Yet, I choose to believe humanity matters. I think most of us do even though it is illogical. If it were logical, I would not be operating by faith. Dr. Janna Levin, a physicist at Columbia University, writes on the subject of free will in her book How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space: "We're self-referential. Computers are not. So computers are neither sentient nor animate and have no free will. [Pulitzer prize winning author Dr. Douglas] Hofstadter believes that out of the tangled hierarch emerges a sense of will and, ultimately, human creativity. I'm not sure how to take this, but I'm happy with any ray of hope that I might find a notion of free will I could believe in without lying to myself. Despite the fear that it strikes in my heart, I still live my life with the persistent illusion of not only free will but also responsibility. I still hold myself accountable, and others. But I don't believe it intellectually. Nor do I not believe it. I'm agnostic on the issue of human will and freedom." Dr. Levin's angst over the free will issue is palpable but she seems to have made a conscious choice to put the issue behind her and act (assuming in circular fashion that she has the free will to "act" to do anything) as if she has free will. She wills herself to act as if she had free will and hold herself and others accountable. Despite the protestations of agnosticism on the question of free will, this is an excellent example of the operation of irreligious faith. The claim is internally illogical and works only on the level of faith. I argued, "If humanity does not matter to some higher power, for some higher principle or simply as a matter of faith, we could destroy humanity and no wrong would be done . . . We could destroy a subset of the population based on an arbitrary criteria and no wrong has been done." Con declares, "nonsense" because we are programmed to be both self-preserving and social. That we matter only to ourselves, Pro contends is enough. Note that Con provides no reasoned argument as to why mattering to ourselves bootstraps us into mattering at all. This is particularly odd because Con seemed to concede, earlier in his argument, that it would not matter if humanity winked entirely out of existence. If it would not matter at all if the whole is destroyed, why does it matter if a mere portion of the whole is destroyed? Illogical. Also, whether humanity proves ultimately to be self-preserving is very much in doubt in this coming century. Rather than trying to better understand our "human nature" which I view as brutal and reptilian, we desperately must find another path. Finally, Pro's first paragraph is inaccurate in many respects. I have shown how one of his examples takes my argument about prehistory out of context. It would not further this debate to analyze the remaining words in that paragraph.