Abstract reasoning and God

First of all, thanks to pro very much for your honesty and integrity. It's always nice to debate a person who holds himself to a high standard, and this has been a very good debate regardless of the inexact resolution. Now, let's get down to business. My example for why an argument over morals is not ridiculous was imperfect. A better example would be a debate over whether homosexuality is or is not moral. It is not at all ridiculous to argue over this point as it has many far reaching implications. Another debate is whether killing and eating animals is moral. The most interesting of these debates is over the nature of morals. Does the morality of an act depend on the act itself or the consequences? To give an example, suppose you were the driver of an out of control trolley and you spot 5 workers on the main track and 1 on an alternate track. Let's also say that your brake is broken and you can either go straight and kill five or take the side track and kill one. Most of us would turn and kill only one, saving five lives. Now suppose you are a surgeon/doctor and there are 5 patients who need organ transplants immediately or they will surely die, but you have no organs to give them. Let's then say you have a napping patient in the lobby who just happens to be a perfect match for all five. Would you painlessly euthanize the one to save the five? While most of us are in sure agreement about the trolley problem, the surgeon problem is not so clear cut. These are the sorts of philosophical debates that are absolutely not ridiculous and need to occur for us to set societal standards and write fair laws, yet the participants in this debate may disagree about whether killing one to save five is morally permissible. Now, we will turn to infanticide. Everybody understands that a baby is a human being. However, in Chinese culture and indeed in the minds of some Western scholars it is permissible to murder children depending on their value to society. This is an enormous example of a difference in moral codes. To put the problem on even more solid ground, consider the practice of human sacrifice. The Aztecs strongly believed it was morally right to sacrifice innocents to the gods, just one example of how religion corrupts people. In the Mosuo culture, there is no concept of marriage as either monogamous or even as a commitment. [2] These are two examples in which two cultures' moral codes differ radically from our own. Now that we have been introduced by a brief example to the topic of sexual morality, let's explore this topic further. In different cultures, there are a variety of sexual standards, from the Mosuo tradition of "walking marriage" in which men and women engage in as many casual affairs as they like to traditional Mormon polygamy to marriage as a sacred bond between one man and one women. Whether or not homosexuality, premarital sex, polygamy, or any number of sexual/marital relationships are permissible is a moral disagreement between different societies with far reaching consequences. Essentially, different cultures do not agree on a very important aspect of morality, disproving the claim that all humans possess the same basic moral code. Next, we come to a topic that I have not yet brought up: psychopaths. These people often have no sense of remorse and lack a basic moral code. They simply do not have the same morals that everyone else does. Obviously, these people are not subject to the so-called "Law of Human Behaviour," and this law is therefore not a universal law as my opponent may wish to believe. Now, we shall return to an important topic: the origin of morality. My opponent's argument is based on the premise that a universal moral instinct, or at least a common moral instinct mostly shared by most people, proves the existence of God. However, there is a completely naturalistic explanation for this: evolution. My opponent has not answered the charge that evolution provides a satisfactory explanation for the origin of the moral instinct. While calling morality a strictly human convention may, as my opponent pointed out, be inexact as other species have exhibited the traits of a moral instinct, it is nevertheless a natural phenomenon, and there is no evidence to suggest that this instinct was created by anything other than natural processes. Science has done a marvelous job of explaining both natural and sociological phenomena, and in time may be able to answer nearly any question about any natural process, though I am not so optimistic to think that day will come in my lifetime. Finally, even if morality pointed us in the direction of the supernatural, there need not be a god. There is absolutely no reason to prefer one god to many gods, a deistic god, or an impersonal natural spirit. My opponent has not answered this point either. Thank you all for your time. Sources 1- http://www.slate.com... 2- http://www.mosuoproject.org...