Religious books are the ONLY possible source of moral guidance

--------------- REBUTTAL 1 --------------- Humans do tend to have a sense of what's "right" and what's "wrong", and we can go as far as to say that without this sense of right and wrong we wouldn't have survived this long. If people didn't have morals, then it would have made it very tough to sustain large societies where people get along. Let's assume we accept that to be true, but the source of this morality is still undefined. Let's look back to the Ancient Greeks; the Greek philosophers recognized that morals exist for one reason or another and Democritus was one of the first philosophers to discuss morality. Even today, we consider the Ancient Greeks to be the fathers of Democracy. This is a great feat in the history of mankind, and one can hardly imagine it could have been achieved with a lack of moral guidance. Democritus himself lived between 460 BC and 370 BC, the Old Testement was written by the Jews and it existed during the time Democritus and other Greek philosophers lived. Interestingly enough we don't see any of their arguments about the origins of morality even mention a spiritual source, let alone God or the Bible (there is a good reason for that, I'll explain in a little bit). Greeks had moral values which allowed them to run a great civilization and contribute to the development of human culture in many ways, evidence of which can still be seen in today's politics, history, art, architecture, science, literature, all have their deep roots with the peoples that predate the Bible as we know it today. The Bible (as we know today) was written during the first half of the first century AD. Now one might say that Greeks were influenced by the Old Testement. The first problem with that is that there is no evidence to support that suggestion, and the second problem is that the Greeks were not even Christians at the time (the good reason I mentioned earlier). One might argue "Yes, but then why was a portion of the Bible written in Greek" and the answer is simple: "… there is a 500-year period when no writings were contributed to the Bible. This is the period between the testaments, when Alexander the Great conquered much of the world and when the Greek language was introduced to the Hebrews. Indeed, they began to use Greek so much that the Hebrew language was replaced by Greek and by another language, Aramaic, which was spoken all over that area of the world at that time." (http://www.ibs.org...) Interestingly enough we don't see any of their arguments about the origins of morality even mention a spiritual source, let alone God or the Bible. Greeks had moral values which allowed them to run a powerful civilizations and contribute to the development of human culture in many ways, evidence of which can still be seen in today's politics, history, art, architecture, science, literature, all have their deep roots with the peoples that predate the Bible as we know it today. The Bible, as we know today, was written during the first half of the first century AD. Now one might say that Greeks were influenced by the Old Testement, but the first problem with that is that there is no evidence to support that suggestion, and the second problem is that the Greeks were not even Christians at the time. One might argue "Yes, but then why was a portion of the Bible written in Greek" and the answer is simple: The Greek language was introduced to the Hebrews by Alexander the Great (during his conquest of "the world") and the began using it more frequently than Hebrew. (http://www.ibs.org...) My opponent stated the following: "The only legitimate basis for any moral system MUST be knowledge obtained from God Himself." I have shown evidence that we have observed people not only display, but also discuss high moral values without: A) Being influenced by the Bible. B) Having knowledge obtained from "God Himself". Greeks took a very naturalistic approach to morals, rather than a spiritual approach. --------------- REBUTTAL 2 --------------- My opponent stated the following: "The existence of morality, then, hinges on the existence of an ultimate truth, something that does not change. Unfortunately, atheism rejects this possibility. All that exists is the physical, temporal world. There is nothing inherent in matter and energy which can determine what is absolutely right and what is absolutely wrong." First and foremost, the Bible itself can never give us: A. "ultimate truth", because we can't prove that the Bible is God's own word (as a matter of fact it isn't, the Bible claims to be inspired by God not dictated by God, but even that is questionable). B. "something that does not change", again the Bible fails in that respect, we see that the Bible justifies murder in certain situations. The Bible also teaches that one "shall not kill" yet this rule changes depending on the consequences and/or the reasons for the action. As you said yourself, the Bible is not accepted by everybody, so there must be another way for people to act morally without either accepting the Bible or believing in God. If we are to TRULY have unchanging morals, we must apply reason and here is how it works (Kant): First we accept that we should not act by maxims that result in logical contradictions when we attempt to universalize them. The moral proposition A: "It is permissible to steal" would result in a contradiction in conceivability. The notion of stealing presupposes the existence of property, but were A universalized, then there could be no property, and so the proposition has logically annihilated itself. Each person forms a maxim for their life and tests it against a categorical imperative. I would say: "It's permissible to kill", but if everybody acts by that maxim it would result in my own death. I cannot live by that maxim, but it's not yet immoral to kill. I propose the opposite maxim: "It's NOT permissible to kill", and that one works out OK because I will live (so will everybody else), therefore it's immoral to kill. "A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them." (Leviticus 20:27) With respect to Christian morals, history has shown that people were burned as witches. God commands people to do the opposite things: "thou shall not kill" and as we saw in the previous quote, God also commands people to kill witches. --------------- Conclusion --------------- The Bible itself cannot tell us what is "absolutely right" and what is "absolutely wrong", because it offers a morals which are right in one case and wrong in another case. Bible morals are based on consequences, if a person does thins, then they will suffer that. It is not consequences of actions that make them right or wrong but the motives of the person who carries out the action. This is especially problematic for Christians, they would act morally not because that's good, but for personal gains (greed). The personal gain is the desire to be saved and go to heaven, so the ONLY reason Christians would do good things is not because the deed is good, but because it will get them to heaven. The Bible also teaches that even if a person does something immoral, it's OK as long as they repent and they never do it again! If we are TRULY to have unchanging morals, then we MUST use LOGIC! Logic would dictate that we live our lives by UNIVERSAL maxims which are tested against a Categorical Imperative, if our maxims fail logically, then they can't be morals. We must not act morally because of the consequences (right or wrong) of our actions, but because we're truly convinced that the action is right.