God is a Sound Moral Basis

Ave.Well, I think it's interesting that Christian apologists like Ravi Zacharias and William Lane Craig always point to atheistic philosophers who denied objective moral values. I've always wondered what they're trying to prove with such remarks. I wouldn't expect Pro to answer for Saint Augustine's view on torturing heretics. Atheism has no content, and atheists can think whatever they want about any topic, like morality. The only unifying idea is the lack of belief in the existence of god. I do not believe that I have to account for Nietzsche ideas on morality. It's a pointless observation.Michael Ruse used a term that I don't like. There is no such thing as an evolutionist. It's an outdated term that is now only used by Young Earth Creationist's and ID advocates. As to what he said, I think it's a case of confusing epistemology with ontology, as Pro might say. Perhaps humans have evolved a sense of morality from our need to survive and reproduce. That is an issue of how we came to know morality, or epistemology. That does not tell us anything about the actual foundation of moral values, or ontology. The same is more or less true for the Darwin quote.I think that the Richard Dawkins quote is interesting in this context. I'll quote from an article about Richard Dawkins.Richard Dawkins had openly stated that science has little to say directly about morality. He has since said, about science of morality as friend and colleague Harris presents it in The Moral Landscape, that it "changed all that for me". In an online interview, Dawkins reiterated that he believes that Harris makes relevant points, and that, once one defines the moral goal as maximizing the wellbeing of creatures, science has much to say about what is actually morally good.I can agree with portions of Richard Dawkins's quote. There is no design in the universe, and there is no objective purpose to life. Yet, the fact that we are machines for propagating DNA is not relevant to the existence of objective moral values. You can't quote Dawkins without any argumentation, and the problem with this is that Dawkins provides us no reason to think that objective moral values do not exist (bearing in mind that he changed his position after Dr. Harris's book was published).Pro argues that premise one is a tautology. I feel that this is irrelevant to whether or not premise one is actually true. Pro and I both know that tautological statements can be true. Consider the law of identity, which states that an object is the same as itself, or A=A. This is a complete and utter tautology. Yet, we know that this tautology is true. Would Pro deny that A=A because it's a tautology? Not at all. So why should premise one be denied if I grant Pro his tautology argument?Pro is also changing some terms around. He talks about corn, bacteria, and flies. Those three things are not conscious beings (perhaps the third is an issue of debate). He's just changed the terms around to something the science of morality does not use.Pro suggests that there is no singular definition of well-being, so therefore, the science of morality fails. I believe that this is a false suggestion. By analogy, consider food. There are many healthy foods that one can eat. On any day, you could eat brocolli, carrots, or celery, and they would all be healthy foods. However, there is a clear difference between healthy food and poison, and the fact that there are many healthy foods to eat does not tempt us to say that there is no poison. To put this analogy in real terms, we have many ways of pursuing well-being, but this does not mean there are not ways to harm well-being. It's not just my subjective opinion that setting your child on fire is bad for well-being.Caroll brings up the issue of zero-sum conflict. Perhaps zero-sum conflicts are completely unsolvable. However, we all know that most moral issues are not zero-sum. It's almost never the case where we have a moral issue that's either ' lose and you win, or I win ad you lose'. In fact, I would go far as to say that beyond thought experiment, there has never been an actual case of a truly zero-sum conflict. From that, it's pointless to find a way for the science of morality (or any moral system) to solve a zero-sum conflict.As for the is-ought gap, I will quote fellow DDO user Center for Rationality:What constitutes a good knife? One that cuts well obviously. What constitutes a bad knife? One that does not cut well. An agent that performs its function well or telos is a good agent. For example, In order for agent A to accomplish B, A must reasonably do C. The function of human agents as a whole is act rationally according to Aristotle. The function of the mind is to produce rational thoughts a mind that doesn't is considered a bad mind. Anything can be considered on basis of telos can find it"s good. What is right depends on the goal. But as Aristotle defined men, in order to be moral must act rationally. Morality is rationality. My opponent seems to think that because rationality is objective and non-changing in cannot be based on function. As Contradiction once said "Given a teleological account of human nature, there is no fact-value distinction, for value is built into fact from the very beginning. If the purpose of eyes is that they see, then it follows straightforwardly given their telos that eyes which see well are good eyes. Nature is not merely descriptive, but also prescriptive. "Ought" claims are not derived from "is" claims, but present to begin with".A deterministic universe is one where our thoughts and actions are decided by past events. If our actions are decided by past events, then I think we have a reasonable case for punishing people, or in other words, holding them to moral responsibility. If a person begins to associate a certain action with a negative response, then it will prevent them from performing that action again. In a deterministic universe, we would punish people in order to steer their future actions towards promoting well-being rather than harming it. That is the deterministic justification for moral responsibility.Finally, I make my way to the Mary hypothetical. We know that Bob is immoral because he is harming well-being. How can Bob harm the well-being of conscious creatures if he raped something that is not conscious? Simple. A society that allows an unconscious creature to get raped is not promoting well-being, as conscious creatures do not want to get raped when they are temporary unconscious. It refers more to the thoughts and desires of people (in this case, the desire is not to get raped when one is unconscious) rather than the actual act of rape.That concludes my argumentation for this round. If Pro is interested, he can post five questions. If he does so, I will post five questions. We should both answer these five questions in round five with no argumentation other than our answers. Of course, my request is not mandatory, it's simply a suggestion.I bid you all Vale.