The Most Reliable Basis For Determining Morality Is Via Secular Means

I should perhaps add a further clarification for the sake of this debate, as I may perhaps have been guilty of being too vague with the term "Reliable" -namely that in relation to a moral philosophy and with morality amounting to being applied ethics, that the "reliability" of this method of determining morality means that it adheres to being provably correct and accurate in terms of how it determines morality, and that it provides a great construct for how we judge benefit and harm in actions and how we act from then onwards. And that in the absence of any evidence for God, it acts as proof that we should rely on "realist naturalist" thinking models. My Opponent's Argument Intriguingly, Con's position is not of religious morality being superior to secular morality, but that the two are no more reliable than each other, and that one can just make a random decision on the matter and it will apparently be more reliable than using either of those methods. I will not lie here: Con has set quite a momentously difficult task for himself. Essentially, the only thing I need do in this debate in order to counter Con is to show that, actually, secular morality does in fact show a considerably better level of results than religious morality or any other kind of decision like the method Con promotes. Because of this, it actually shortens what I would need to write in order to prove my case. So I believe it best to open by dropping a bomb. The Health Of Societies In Secular And Religious Nations Right at the get go we see that particularly more "religious" nations perform considerably poorer than nations who are more "secular" in nature (1). Just look at some of these particularly damning quotes: "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion in the prosperous democracies. " "The study concluded that the US was the world's only prosperous democracy where murder rates were still high, and that the least devout nations were the least dysfunctional. " "The study shows that England, despite the social ills it has, is actually performing a good deal better than the USA in most indicators, even though it is now a much less religious nation than America. " "The non-religious, pro-evolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. " And on and on and on. Similarly, we see something similar with regards to a compilation of studies taken by Phil Zuckerman (2). Lower murder rates not only in more secular nations but also in the more secular states of the United States. Likewise on violent crime. Less divorce rates and domestic violence rates among those of a secular persuasion. Secular people are less likely to engage in unprotected sex. And speaking of sex, when it comes to the religiously inspired abstinence only education against the secular minded comprehensive sex education, there's only one winner, and it's pretty easy to guess which one was well thought out and which one. .. well. .. wasn't (3). I believe Con would have a very difficult job of attempting to explain how a coin flip on those kinds of issues would even remotely be the most practical kind of action. Especially on sex, I mean, surely between keeping people ignorant or actually educating people about what sex entails so that we end up seeing less people chastised by Jeremy Kyle/Jerry Springer/Any other talk show or news outlets for being morons and not knowing how to use protection, this kind of thing should be obvious and really not necessitate any kind of "I can't decide so I'll just make a decision at random" situation. Going back to the Zuckerman study (2), we keep seeing even more stuff that demonstrates the superiority of societies where secular based reasoning has influenced the moralities of those residing there: Greater happiness, a higher percentage of populations donating money and time to poorer nations, a greater willingness to help the oppressed as seen in an excellent example of how the considerably more secularly-minded were more likely to provide aid to the Jews during the holocaust, considerably less support for the "negative" worldviews (nationalism, racism, anti-Semitism, dogmatism, ethnocentrism, and authoritarianism) as well as being considerably LESS likely to support government use of torture. I think Con would agree with me that these are all incredibly admirable positions, or at least Con would perhaps agree with me on most of the positions. Religious Actions That Fall Apart Under Secular Scrutiny I believe Con would also agree with me that religion (in the form of evidence-free supernatural belief systems) contributes to a lot of the real problems we have in the world today. In addition to what I've already mentioned, religion or religious beliefs is responsible for the following: -People refusing to take action on climate change (because their deity would never let that happen). (4) -The Israel/Palestine/rest-of-the-Arab-world mess, even though there are other issues in play too, this is the dominant factor. -The mobilisation of Osama bin Laden and the 9/11 hijackers. -Catholic officials believing that they were doing the world a favour by concealing paedophiles in order to protect the moral authority of their church. -Ugandan Christians and many Islamic nations imposing brutal death penalties on gay folks just for being gay. -The "witch child" persecutions in Africa. (5) -The abuses of Scientology. (6) -The horrific case that poor kid in the Dominican Republic to have her leukaemia treatment delayed until a court ruled that her life was more important than the clump of cells occupying her uterus, of which the delay may well have contributed to her death. (7) -The unbelievable hate campaigns against Jessica Ahlquist (8) and Damon Fowler (9). I'm pretty sure that Con would agree these are pretty disgusting things, and that anyone thinking rationally would consider these actions to be wrong. So Why Does This Harm Con's Argument? Throughout the course of this post we've explored aspects, among other things, like murder, rape, torture, mob justice, child abuse, and discrimination of people of different colours, genders, abilities, religions, and political opinions. Con wants to argue that a "coin toss" provides a more reliable basis for determining morality than what I am promoting, but what Con needs to realise is that those listed scenarios, these represent ten tosses of a coin, and I am pretty sure that both myself and Con don"t want to live in the actual real life societies that have quite clearly gotten one or more of the tosses wrong. Sources: ( 1 ) . http://www.qcc.cuny.edu... ( 2 ) . http://www.pitzer.edu... ( 3 ) . http://www.advocatesforyouth.org... ( 4 ) . http://www.pfaw.org... ( 5 ) . http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com... ( 6 ) . http://jezebel.com... ( 7 ) . http://www.cbsnews.com... ( 8 ) . http://freethoughtblogs.com... ( 9 ) . http://freethoughtblogs.com...