Religious books are the ONLY possible source of moral guidance

"My opponent has stated that Greeks had religious beliefs, many philosophers believed in a higher power, and Socrates came to a conclusion that there is one God; therefore morals are based on religion." That is a completely false representation of what I said. It was not an argument that morals are based on religion. Rather, it was a rebuttal of your argument that the fact that the Greeks behaved morally and didn't have the Bible proves that morals can be derived from something other than religious faith. Their religion and their morality predate their philosophy. "rather the Ancient Greeks had formulated their own set of morals using other sources." And yet their system of morality predated their philosophy. How did they maintain a civilized society before the advent of philosophy? "The fact that philosophers in Ancient Greece acknowledged the existence of a higher power does not suggest that they believe that higher power is in fact a source for morals." Not that they obtained their moral code from that higher power, but that they recognized that morality cannot exist appart from a higher power. You will not find one materialist Greek philosopher. All of them, in one way or another, believed in some form of the metaphysical. This does not prove that morals must be derived from a religious text, but it refutes the idea that their morals were necessarily derived from reason. They believed in the existence of morals, and believed that reason could lead them to moral conclusions. That does not mean that reason is the source of morality. The quote you supplied has absolutely NOTHING to do with identifying the source of morality. Your statement that a monotheist is considered the father of modern moral philosophy does nothing to strengthen your case. "First, by DEFINITION morals are NOT divinely inspired (see the definition in Round 1)." I never said that morals not divinely inspired by definition. I said that morals by definition, REQUIRE the existence of absolute right and wrong, which REQUIRES the existence of a moral authority. It is not explicit, but implicit in the definition. If, as you say, morals are merely what we perceive to be right and wrong, then in REALITY there is no right and wrong. If that's what you're trying to argue, then this debate was never meant for you in the first place. If morals are purely a matter of perception, then all I would have to do to circumvent them would be to say that I perceive right and wrong differently. We couldn't possibly condemn anyone for doing something we "perceive" to be wrong, since they may simply have a different perception. Once again, morality MUST exist outside of ourselves or nowhere at all. "Second, if the Bible is NOT divinely inspired, then your argument fails. Using the Bible for your morals when you know that there is a possibility it's not divinely inspired leaves you with the problem that you might live your life with morals which are wrong." Once again, you're missing the whole point. Regardless of whether or not the Bible is divinely inspired, we KNOW that ethics derived from reason aren't divinely inspired. Therefore, there is a 100% chance that you will live your life according to a bogus moral code if you go by pure reasoning, and a 50% chance of living your life according to bogus morals if you live according to the Bible. Furthermore, if the Bible isn't divinely inspired, and there is no God, then there are no morals and it doesn't matter how you live your life in the first place. "I never suggested that the Bible has changed; I can even agree to some extent that it has not, but the interpretations of the bible have changed SIGNIFICANTLY. My point was that people reading the Bible can come to two completely opposite conclusions about a particular moral behavior, as shown in my Capital Punishment example." This does not change the fact that there is a CORRECT interpretation of the Bible. Furthermore, this is not a reflection of the unreliability of the Bible, it's a reflection of the unreliability of HUMAN REASONING to come to consistent conclusions! "You suggest that one can reason to kill me for one's own benefit, but based on Kant's methodology their reasoning will be wrong. They couldn't have possibly reasoned correctly to kill anybody." Let me give you a refresher since you have obviously forgotten what we were talking about. You said that the Bible cannot possibly be a moral authority since it presents different situations in which something is right in one case, and wrong in another. I gave you an example of a situation in which YOUR OWN logical moral system (which I noticed has changed several times in the course of this debate) justifies killing. Therefore, if the fact that something is considered wrong in one case and right in another totally invalidates a moral system, we both have a serious problem. "Moral Authority, in the sense of God or a spiritual being, is not required for the existence of morals. As I showed, and even my opponent agrees that Kant's argument is reasonable, and that morals can be derived." Without a moral authority, Kant's "morals" are simply societal expedients, things that we MUST do if civilized society is to exist. SOMETHING other than the physical world must exist in order for right and wrong to exist, because nowhere in the physical world is their any indication of what is absolutely right and absolutely wrong. If there is no moral authority, morals are merely a perception of the mind, as you said earlier, which means they aren't REAL. If they aren't real then they are imaginary. If they are imaginary then they are not binding, and therefore, they are not morals! "What I have demonstrated is that people can produce morals EVEN WITHOUT EVEN LOOKING at a sacred text, so the more logical conclusion is that the morals in a "sacred text" are derived from our own logic, rather than from a higher power and the "sacred text" actually corroborates the fact that we can use our own logic and reasoning to produce morals." Methinks you have far too much confidence in human reasoning. You have already said that human reasoning often leads people to completely different conclusions over the meaning of various scriptures. How can you possibly be certain that your method of reasoning is reliable to the extent that it will always lead you to the correct moral conclusion? Furthermore, if morals exist, then a moral authority (God) must exist, and as you have already said, if God exists then he would "just tell us." I maintain that he DID tell us, in the form of the Bible. Thus, the Bible can be reasonably assumed to be a moral authority. Even if you CAN rely on your own reasoning to produce correct morals in every situation, why re-invent the wheel? "Perhaps the Creator designed logic so we can reason our own morals… But this requires that you believe a Creator actually did something, of which you, nor I, have any proof. Again, the more logical thing to believe is that logic is a product of the evolutionary process." Once again you have managed to completely miss my point. If logic is the product of evolution, and evolution is random, how on earth can we rely on it for ANYTHING other than SURVIVAL? My point was that the only way we CAN rely on logic is to assume that it was DESIGNED by an omniscient being. I wasn't arguing over where our logic actually came from, but the implications of assuming evolution is responsible for logic. I don't know what you're getting at by assuming you know what motivates Christians. Besides, now you're telling me in the comment box that selfishness is the source of morality. You can't have it both ways. If morality is determined by motive then selfishness can't possibly be the motive force for morality. Read the comments, people. This guy can't even figure out what he himself believes.