God is a Sound Moral Basis

Contentions1: Theism provides a more plausible and less arbitrary objective moral ontologyValue & Duty & Mary Scenario: Extended arguments2: Atheism provides a less plausible and more arbitrary objective moral ontologyCon inconsistently asserts both that we have no purpose on atheism and that we have moral truths, "the fact that we are machines for propagating DNA is not relevant to the existence of objective moral values." Camus has been rightly criticized for inconsistently holding to the absurdity of life and to ethics. As Dostoyevsky said, if God doesn't exist, then "All things are permitted." So if atheism is true and there's no purpose or afterlife, then all the evil acts of men go unpunished, the good unrewarded. Cardinal Newman once remarked that if he believed that all the evils and injustices of life throughout history weren't made right by God in the end, "Why I think I should go mad." Rightly so.The same applies to altruism and self-sacrifice, for on atheism the stupidest thing is to sacrifice your well-being for some stranger, but this is exactly what we consider good, and exactly what Christ has preached and has done! Recall that I asked why conscious creatures are somehow worthy of flourishing and that unconscious creatures are not, on atheism. This is blatant species-ism unless Con can justify why humans are definitive for flourishing, and not corn. What gives us our dignity on atheism? How does Con carry his BoP in solving the Value and Duty problems? Value Problem (Contra-P1)Con failed to show that this so-called “moral landscape”, which features the highs and lows of human flourishing is really a moral landscape at all. I agree that, all things being equal, flourishing of conscious creatures is good. The question is rather, if atheism were true, what would make the flourishing of conscious creatures objectively good? Conscious creatures might like to flourish, but there’s no reason on atheism to think that it would really be objectively good. I also agree that science can study subjective facts, but is the wrongness of an action a subjective fact? Hence the property of being good must be shown as identical with the property of creaturely flourishing. If it can’t, then Con’s view is logically incoherent since it violates the Law of Identity. Consider Craig's knock down argument, 1) If there exists some possible world where the continuum of well-being is not identical to the moral landscape, then there is no possible world in which the continuum of well-being is identical to the moral landscape ^Support: Law of Identity2) There exists some possible world where the peaks of well-being are occupied by evil psychopaths who take pleasure and flourish in harming others (Nazi torture camps too). ^Support: 3 million Americans are psychopathic [4]3) Therefore, the continuum of well-being is not identical to the moral landscapeSo since it’s possible that human well-being and moral goodness are not identical, it follows necessarily that human well-being and goodness are not the same. Con's argument therefore is logically impossible to be true. It can't be true. This is why I say that Con's redefinition of morals to well-being in light of what science can study, is a tautology. Of course science can study morals if it's redefined like that! .. But we're still left wondering if morals truly are identical to well-being. Which, as the knock-down argument shows above, they're not identical.Duty Problems (Contra-P2)Is-Ought: Con can’t provide a sound naturalistic account of moral obligation. First, natural science tells us only what is the case. It cannot tell us that we have a moral obligation to take actions which are conducive to human flourishing. As the philosopher Jerry Fodor has written, “Science is about facts, not norms; it might tell us how we are, but it wouldn’t tell us what is wrong with how we are.” [5] Duty has no basis on atheism, for human beings are just animals, and animals have no moral obligation to one another. When a lion kills a zebra, it kills the zebra, but it doesn’t murder the zebra. When a great white shark forcibly copulates with a female, it doesn’t actually rape her. There is no moral dimension to these actions. All Con has to say in answering this problem is to quote a DDO user regarding human function as a way to measure what's right and wrong. First, Con has just contradicted himself yet again, earlier he affirmed there is no purpose to life, now all of a sudden there is, which are we to believe on atheism? Notice he can't say humans have a self-derived purpose, for that would be subjective morals, and the only other alternative is a transcendent purpose bestowed on human rational, but that's affirming theism and its teleology- Con's moving from one story to another in order to sway his flopped case here. Second, Con's quote has yet to show how it's probable on atheism, that creatures would blindly evolve to correspond to abstract moral realms through their naturalistically geared rationality. It’s almost as though the moral realm knew we were coming. And since darwinism shows that since evolution is geared towards survival value and not truth value, then nature doesn't give a wit whether well-being is objectively right or not. So on atheism, we have a defeater for not only reliable cognitive faculties, but also then, a defeater for the belief that morals are in fact objective. Con has undercut his case here. Third, at best, the objectivity of morals gives us reason to think that if moral properties supervene on natural states, they do so necessarily. But then there’s no reason to think on atheism that there are any moral properties, or that they do supervene on natural states. For why on atheism would strange non-physical morals supervene on someone? Why do moral properties supervene on certain natural states? Why on atheism are such principles true? It's insufficient for Con to just say we apprehend objective moral values and duties, for this affirms what we've already agreed is true. Con must give a more plausible foundation that's also less arbitrary for moral truths. Ought-Can: In the absence of the ability to do otherwise, there is no moral responsibility. In the absence of freedom of the will, we are just puppets or electro-chemical machines. And puppets do not have moral responsibilities. Machines are not moral agents. But on Con’’s view, there is no freedom of the will- and therefore, there is no moral responsibility. So there isn’t even the possibility of moral duty on his view.Con simply says here that just because there's a causal chain of events, then therefore we can reasonably punish people for what they had no choice in doing. But how is this even remotely reasonable? Con's outlandish reply is so that we can "steer" such determined folks in a state of well-being. But this is another contradiction, for if a person can be steered by other determined people, then that implies that we can choose to go contrary to what's already determined. But that's not determinism! If a person is therefore fated to choose something contrary to well-being, then why think it's morally right to stop him if he had no other choice? Indeed this is the one area where Con's case emerges as almost as unsound as the value problem. *Mary Scenario: Con's answer is wholly inadequate. First, he equivocates again, desire with well-being this time. Second, he forgets that Bob's desire was more realized than was Mary's desire at the time of rape. Utopia worlds are nice, but Con's case has no practial basis towards one. ConclusionYour "choice" is either Con's logically incoherent & absurd foundation for moral truths, or a true choice of a sound theistic foundation for the morals we all hold dear. Afterall, Nietzsche was right when he complained, “They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality.”Citations4. Harris, Moral Landscape, p.125. Ibid, p.97