God is a Sound Moral Basis

Correction, B is logically valid if we're discussing the falsehood of A because the implications of a supposed truth help determine it's falsehood. For instance, determinism implies fatalism; fatalism is false; therefore determinism is false. This is a valid argument. I'll therefore present implications for A to help solidify my case. *Mary Scenario: Mary willingly took a drug that made her black out unexpectedly at a party so her friends put her upstairs to sleep it off. Minutes later Bob, with a condom, sneaks into the room and rapes her while she's completely unaware. She was never harmed. Nobody knows of this except for Bob. Contentions1: Theism provides a more plausible and less arbitrary objective moral ontologyValue (Good / Evil)Theism views objective moral values as grounded in God, the greatest conceivable being and therefore the very standard of Good. For a being who is the paradigm of goodness is greater than one who merely exemplifies it. And unless we are nihilists, we must recognize some ultimate standard of value, and God seems to be the least arbitrary stopping point. Duty (Right / Wrong)Theism views objective moral duties as constituted by imperatives issued from a competent authority; God. For since objective moral prescriptions requires an objective moral prescriber, then it follows that God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commandments which constitute our moral obligations. God is therefore uniquely qualified to issue commands which reflect his good nature. Jesus summed all divine commands in the two commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind, and, second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On this foundation we can affirm a persons’ God-given dignity and duty to one another. For orienting the ‘self’ to God, the infinite source of all love, then we have an endless supply of love for God and others. What could be a more sound foundation if God exists?*Mary Scenario: Raping her would be wrong because of the God-given dignity she has as a human being, and also because Bob would be diminishing his dignity, regardless of the "well-being" he might momentarily enjoy.2: Atheism provides a less plausible and more arbitrary objective moral ontologyWhat bestows moral dignity and worth on humans apart from God? Human beings are simply evolved accidents doomed to a short life and long death. Why think conscious well-being is objectively good, anymore than less conscious beings? What grounds can we affirm the reality of morals? The great atheists Russell, Sartre and Nietzsche, have warned that with the death of God there are “altogether no moral truths.” Moral truths would not exist and so there would be no basis for affirming or denying true moral worth or obligation. But as the philosopher of science Michael Ruse reports,"The position of the modern evolutionist … is that humans have an awareness of morality … because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. …Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. … Nevertheless, … such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, … and any deeper meaning is illusory..” [1]A vastly different set of morals might well have evolved if evolutionary history were started over. Darwin wrote,“If … men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering.” [2]To think conscious human’s morality is true is to be guilty of species-ism. Dawkins says, “there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pointless indifference. . . . We are machines for propagating DNA. . . . It is every living object’s sole reason for being” [3]It will be interesting to see how Con does away with all the other problems concerning the failed moral system of utilitarianism since he defines maximizing well-being as "improving the well-being of the largest amount of conscious creatures." But the widely rejected aggregate hedonistic utilitarianism isn't even close to being the correct moral theory. For there is always critical point where the value of hedonistic properties is affected by a law of diminishing returns of well-being at the expense of others. Nietzsche even sneers, "well-being as you understand it - that is no goal, that seems to us an end, a state that soon makes man ridiculous and contemptible" (BGE:225). Value Problem (Contra-P1)Con must justify why, on atheism, moral values would objectively exist at all. But Con simply re-defines what he means by “good” in non-moral terms, as that which supports the well-being of conscious creatures. So to ask, “Why is maximizing creatures’ well-being good?” is the same as asking, “Why does maximizing creatures’ well-being maximize creatures’ well-being?” ... This is a tautology. So of course science can show us what contributes to human flourishing just as much as it can tell us about the flourishing of corn, bacteria or flies...this is hardly controversial. What Con must do is show that moral truths are the same as truths of well-being in every possible world. Duty Problem (Contra-P2)Moral obligations or prohibitions arise in response to imperatives from a competent authority. For example, if a policeman tells you to pull over, then because of his authority, who he is, you are legally obligated to pull over. But if some random stranger tells you to pull over, you’re not legally obligated to do so. Now, in the absence of God, what authority is there to issue moral commands or prohibitions? There is none on atheism, and therefore there are no moral imperatives for us to obey. In the absence of God there just isn’t any sort of moral obligation or prohibition that characterizes our lives. In particular, we’re not morally obligated to promote the flourishing of conscious creatures.Is-Ought: Sean Carroll, an outspoken atheist against Harris, affirms that science can only get you to what is the case, not what ought to be the case. First he says there's no single definition of well-being, nor is it self-evident that maximizing well-being, however defined, is the proper goal of morality, and finally he says there's no simple way to aggregate well-being over different individuals. He expands on these arguments,http://www.npr.org...I've already charged Con's argument as such, but it will be interesting to see how Con gets around the naturalistic fallacy, http://en.wikipedia.org...Ought-Can: The capacity to be responsible entails the ability to choose freely, “ought” implies “can.” But if there is no free will, then no one is morally responsible for anything! Con’s determinism spells the end of any hope or possibility of objective moral duties because on his worldview we have no control over what we do. *Mary Scenario: +1 for Bob's well-being ya'll! ConclusionWe saw that that on theism we have a more plausible and less arbitrary objective moral ontology; but on atheism, we have a less plausible and more arbitrary objective moral ontology.Citations1. Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-92. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd edition (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1909), p. 1003. http://physicshead.blogspot.com...