God Is Unnecessary As A Basis For Morality And Justice

I thank Con for the penetrative critique. However, I think con had misunderstood my points therefore I'll first clarify and defend my previous points and then respond to con's arguments.Clarification and Defending my own arguments.I. Con argued by presenting alternate logical possibilities that I overlooked in my first premise. I will attempt to defend by showing the logical route I presented is the most valid.1. “A society accustomed to theft would take appropriate countermeasures to theft and eventually make theft the path of most action” This supports my point. Given any two societies where one favors theft and the other does not, the one favors theft will evolve into one that does not. The point is that a theft-favoring society is just as impossible as a squared circle.2. “It could even generate a society better suited to taking advantage of societies around them with the know how to prevent foreigners from stealing from them” Then let them continue to dominate the world until they have no other countries to steal from but themselves, then my argument still holds. 3. “Or you could argue that if theft were not morally wrong that particular society would simply have no concept of personal property as the people were free to take as they needed. What you could end up with is a society that works toward the betterment of the whole society through over abundance for the whole in order to eliminate all want or need” What you just described is communism which has been shown to fail and the evidence is that there are way more capitalist countries than communist countries. The reason why the society you describe doesn’t work is because history has shown that it is impossible to make people work for stuff that is not theirs.4. “My point is that a society of theft would not view theft as we do, those who live in a society where the concept of theft exists and is wrong.” It doesn’t matter what that society views theft as, such society just cannot exist and persist through time.5. “Also the progressive tax is direct proof that the majority of of people not part of the elite top in terms of strength and intelligence DO allow for theft to constitute a society. Ask any Republican and they will tell you that the progressive tax is theft.” This is mere word play. In my argument, people who are NOT in the elite class condemn theft because it takes property away from them. In your example, such people tolerate theft for it adds to their quality of life, not taking it away. My “theft”: take away from the poor. Your “theft”: take away from the rich. 2 different things.6. “Self interest leads to a society that allowed for the systematic imprisonment and extermination of Jews and others during world war” and ”A process that also saw the theft of all their possessions. The US saw the same thing happen to the native American population” You misinterpreted my point because when I mention self-interest, I did NOT say that only a certain group is entitled to act according to their self-interest but rather each rational individual in a society exerts their self-interest. The Native American did exerts their self-interest against this in the “American Indian Movement”. I wonder what you think about the Bible justifying discrimination against homosexuals? Two opposing groups in a society exert their self-interest on one another till they reach an agreeable equilibrium. In this view, morality is something that emerge over time as individuals interact with self-interest in mind. Self-interest does not instantly creates morality but rather eventually.7. “There is no natural selection taking place in our decisions to rape, murder, minimize groups of people, and then turn around with some process of rationalization to morally justify the reasons we did it. But it happens daily and for all these reasons both of your premises are highly flawed if not completely false.” I think you misinterpreted what I meant again. When I mention the natural selection of societies, my ideas was that : a. Morality is something that is agreed among the majority of the members belong to a society. b. If it is agreed among the members of a society then it is subjective to that society and therefore there can be different societies with different laws that its people agree upon. c. Not all societal laws are the same. Some laws allow a society to flourish through time and some do not. That is why the societies that survive till today all hold some traits in common such as the prohibition of murder. Just like the animals that survive and observed today are capable of reproduction.8. “We continue to have this trial and error approach to justice and morality and while we try to figure it out and how to implementthe execution of laws to uphold those ever changing concepts people are suffering and dying. This is what we have chosen when we decided to figure it out on our own independent from God.” I would have prefer for con to restrict his use of the Bible since I do not assume the Bible to be the source of truth that we agreed on. What con seems to argue here is way weaker than the claim of this debate. The assumption that it would be better for us to have obey God in the garden does not say anything about god’s necessity for morality. 9. “The Principles of morality as set by God are unchanging. They provide a consistent standard that does not bend to the whims of whimsical mankind. We don't have to toil away trying to figure out what is right and wrong. The more we keep trying to change and adjust what is right and wrong to suit our misguided desires the more people will suffer.” I think such statements are impractical. Even if such objective morality set by God is unchanging, it is inaccessible because we are constantly adjusting morality so that opposing groups can exert the same amount of self-interest. ARGUMENTS:1. There are moral laws that prove morality is a constantly evolving human construct. Take for example playing music too loud in a library. We know this to be morally wrong (because if it were a right thing to do then we perhaps we shouldn’t be so annoyed at the act of righteousness) but what does the bible have to say about this, or even more general, what does other religions have to say about this. NOTHING. This is because the bible or other religious texts reflect the morality at the time and at the time the concept of music player and library as we know it seems nonexistent. Our list of moral acts nowadays is much more extensive due to the simple fact that morality evolves.2. Con seems to have agreed with me that morality does evolve over time through trial-and-error and shifted the argument away from its central, original topic. Remember that the central of this debate is whether god is necessary as a basis for morality and justice. One can just simply take the morality obtained through the expensive process of trial-and-error and say that these moral truths were already there before you found it and attribute those moral truths to God, but this would at best settle god as an alternate and artificial foundation for morality rather than a necessary one because morality evolves on its own independent of whether god is in the picture or not.