Morality does not require the existence of a god

First of all, thank you Semper ad meliora for joining me in this debate. My first time, too! This is a subject that fascinates me and I appreciate very much the opportunity to test my ideas against an opponent. Secondly, thank you from the bottom of my heart for your service to our country. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for all of our servicemen. You have my full support, stay safe. ok, down to the debate: 1. Your expanded interpretation of the lion/lamb analogy seems to prove my point. Your lion "B" in your example would, indeed, think it bad to go hungry. This actually happens with some frequency in lion prides. But the lions going hungry accept this as a social norm. There is a hierarchy to lion prides and other animal social groups that they all buy into. This is instinctual. It has evolved to allow the strongest to thrive. It is not considered evil by anyone. A person would put different feelings on the situation due to our multi-layered and more highly evolved and intricate concepts of morality and social responsibilities. My point being that the morality that we posses today is the result of evolved instincts to which we add the layers of language, social and intellectual drives and all the cultural complexities that humans have. NOT an immutable law handed to us from a higher being of some sort. This is an explanation that is supported by observable facts. You state that "Morality is defined as "a code of conduct put forward by society". Whether or not that society is human matters not at all and would also differ from society to society. For example, the morality of a pack animal would differ greatly from the morality of a solitary one." That is the truth. That seems to support moral relativism. And rule out moral objectivity. This further supports my argument. There is some confusion on moral objectivity. Morals are not objective in the same sense of the laws of gravity or the speed of light. They do not exist outside of human perceptions. They ARE objective in the sense of the rules of baseball. As long as everyone involved understands and plays by those rules, everyone gets along well. The problems arise when interpretations of said rules differ. 2. Your example of the golden rule, I feel, also proves my point. If a god had handed the golden rule, alone, to mankind, it would be very difficult to dissuade people of its authenticity. It would feel RIGHT. It would work well. However, that is not what happened. The ten commandments were handed to mankind, allegedly, by god. These are outdated and confusing to modern man. The commandment to allow no graven images, or rest on a sabbath day, or have no other gods seem rather useless to a modern society and are largely ignored. There is no law against rape or abusing children. These weakness' seem to indicate a rather human origin. The fact that men CLAIMED that these rules came from god just seems to be par for the course for men attempting to persuade other men to follow the rules they made up. After all, literally every single civilization has these laws and claims about their own widely varying laws. Incidentally, as you mentioned, the code of Hammurabai predates the ten commandments by 500 years. The christian god seems to be guilty of plagiarism. The golden rule, by contrast came along much later. It was obviously hammered out by the wisdom of men AFTER thousands of years of conflict and upheaval between societies. It was the finest distillation of social morality yet advanced, and it was not advanced by GOD! It was put forth by a man who some CLAIM was god. All of this seems to indicate that our morality is an evolving thing that changes dramatically with our culture and circumstances, NOT an immutable, hard bedrock of a foundation handed to us by a god with the express purpose of solidifying our civilization. 3. This one was poorly worded by me, apologies. I do not believe that ALL laws have been left behind. My point is simply that the rules which seemed eternal to the ancient people who worshiped these gods, seems to be strangely antiquated by today's standards. This should not happen to an objective, defined morality bequeathed by a creator to his creations. Your acceptance of the fact that we are continuing to adjust our interpretation of these laws seems to add fuel to my fire. 4. Yes, precisely. These are instincts that guide the higher animal lifeforms that we can observe all around us, every day. The obvious extension of which, is that as soon as these animals achieve more complex language and societies, they will also develop laws and codes which will have to be defined and handed down to their offspring. Observe the already complicated social lives of elephants and dolphins, crows and wolves. What god or gods gave them this morality? A god of elephants? of crows? It seems rather obvious that we are witnessing the evolution of morality right before our eyes. Just as it happened to us hundreds of thousands of years ago. ...and to your last point, the fact that ancient men claimed that the rules they wanted their people to obey came from gods is pretty clearly a ploy that worked. STILL works. How many cult leaders, faith healers, charlatans and politicians have played on this weakness in the psyche of humanity? If Moses had said to the Israelites "hey guys, I have some really good ideas that we can apply to our lives to make a better society for everyone", he would have been shouted down and laughed at. (the existence of Moses and the actual story of the ten commandments are most likely complete fabrications, by the way). In short, the belief in morals being handed down by the gods HAS improved their acceptance by the common man. This does more to show the herd mentality of the human animal than to actually prove the existence of god. OR the existence of an objective code of morals given to us by a god.