Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? God is the Best Explanation for Objective Moral Laws

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity:

Is God Real? God is the Best Explanation for Objective Moral Laws         

Posted: 20 Feb 2019 01:56 AM PST

We live in a world populated with self-evident, objective, transcendent moral laws.

 Thus indicating you aren't trying to convince atheists or skeptics, only bible-believing Christians.  Should you ever feel up to the challenge, grow a pair of balls and actually have a debate with an informed atheist the way Turek does.  Something tells me you are too afraid to do this.  Why threaten your fan base you've worked so hard to get?

“It’s never OK to torture babies for fun”

But the burden is on YOU to show that this is an objective moral.  You are assuming, without argument, that because most people agree this is morally wrong behavior, then presto, it must be objectively wrong. Not so.  You are assuming without proof that whatever morals are agreed to by "most people" are therefore representative of transcendent objective moral standards.  But it could just as easily be that most people think torturing babies for fun is wrong, for much the same reason that gorillas and other higher mammals don't go around torturing their own babies for fun.  It's mere natural instinct to survive.  The question of why we have that instinct goes beyond the moral question and gets into the muck of "intelligent design".

And regardless, your own bible shows God requiring his followers to torture kids (when the bible says you must hit your child with a "rod" its authors probably wouldn't think that leaving bruises and lacerations on the child's body was too much, see Pro. 20:30, and remember that many proverbs are strung together without concern for theme or context, so you cannot automatically assume v. 30 must be interpreted in a way harmonious with the "immediate context".

How torturous do you suppose it is for the child who watches as strangers over run their village killing everything in sight?  How long can a child fend off the man trying to murder it?  How much torture does that child endure in those horrific moments?  Where else could the Canaanites go after be chased out of the promised land, except to barren places already occupied by slave traders, where survival required criminal acts, or selling kids into slavery, or prostitution?

or (my new favorite from a blog reader) “It’s never OK to torture non-believers just because you don’t like them?” are two examples of such transcendent laws. How do we account for laws such as these?

 The better question would be to avoid begging the question of transcendence and ask instead "why do most people think it immoral to torture babies?" or "why has human history exhibited a pattern of disapproving of baby-torture?" 

Of course, I'd disagree that humans have agreed throughout history that baby torture is immoral.  That Israel found some babies expendable is clear (Numbers 31:17, 1st Sam. 15:2-3), and as already pointed out, if all Israel was doing was "dispossessing" the Canaanites, they were chasing them off the promised land and thus into dangerous barren territory where crime or worse would be the only way a family could stay alive.

We are mammals, and we instinctively avoid doing things that inhibit the survival of our young.  Furthermore, in our mammalian minds, any "benefits" we could get from torturing babies would be outweighed by the cost of inhibiting survival.  The fact is most mammals simply lack a desire to torture babies just like they lack a desire to torture forgotten invisible dust particles. What fool would pretend this cannot be accounted for except by positing space aliens controlling our minds with their beam-weapons?  How's that any different than your invisible god who can read minds?

Their existence points to a reasonable inference: the existence of a Transcendent Moral Law Giver.

Not if you define that TMLG as spaceless, timeless, immaterial, invisible, other-dimensional, and the other mantra that Turek repeats ad nauseum to his mostly Christian audiences.  That's nothing more than an incoherent definition which we are reasonable to dismiss.   The only theory you have, to justify such nonsense talk, (i.e., the big bang) is a theory that is manifestly not what the originally intended addressees of Genesis 1-2 would have thought when reading the creation account.   Try again.

But there are other alternatives typically offered by those who reject the existence of such a Being. Is God real? The insufficiency of the alternative explanations strengthens the argument for the existence of God:    

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Laws A Product of Genetic Evolution?

When you ask a loaded question like that, no.  If a moral was objective and transcendent, then no, mere genetic evolution would not create it.  Evolution cannot create something whose nature extends beyond the physical.

    As one friendly skeptic said recently, “We share 99.999% of our physical traits with our fellow humans . . . so why would our mental traits not be similarly shared?” Are moral truths simply part of our genetic coding?

 Yes, that's why newborn babies don't need to be taught to breastfeed.  Your theory that "god puts his laws into our hearts" is bullshit anyway, as testified to by billions of children, who obviously don't already have such morality, who only acquire it by learning from their mammalian caregivers.

There are good reasons to reject such an explanation. When someone claims self-evident moral truths are simply a matter of our genetic evolution, they are assuming the same evolutionary pathway for every people group. What are we to make of cultures that behave in a manner different than our own?

 It's called cultural conditioning.  We all seek after food, water, shelter and companionship, we just tend to go about it in different ways in different periods of history.

How can we justly adjudicate between the myriad of people groups, all of whom have their own genetic evolutionary pathway? This form of emboldened relativism is powerless to judge any form of behavior, good or bad.

 No, you are assuming that if all morals are relative, that we have no "right" to judge others.  That's total bullshit.  One "relative" moral instinct we have is to criticize others who do things differently than we do.  Our "right" comes from our innate desire to criticize outsiders.  Just like there is no "right" for one junkyard dog to bite another, nevertheless, they still do.  It's purely instinctive, as nuanced by a person's environmental conditioning.

There is no objective moral truth governing the carnivores chasing the herbivores on earth, but that hardly means we accuse them of being "inconsistent" for foisting their morals on each other.  It's just what creatures of instinct do when they have different ideas about survival, yet have to live together.

In fact, how can we judge any behavior if it is so connected to our genetic nature?

 The same way one junkyard dog decides to attack another junkyard dog.  If we feel uncomfortable with another person being in what we consider our personal space, we react.  We aren't reacting merely because we first figured out how to prove that our moral view was more "objective" than theirs, we simply "react".

We don’t blame people for being brunettes or having blue eyes; if our genes are the cause of our moral understanding, what right do we have to blame people when they simply express genetic moral wiring different from our own?

Because we all innately resist the attempts of others to harm the ability of ourselves and our favored groups from surviving and thriving.  Instinct. And since I deny freewill, yes, I think society is wrong to pretend that a criminal had a "choice" or ability to resist the temptation to do a crime.  Why some boys in a group shy away from stealing while the others go through with the plan, has to do with the boys having very different genetic predispositions and environmental conditioning.  $50 says in the group of 5 boys playing to steal from a store, the one who will actually not puss out, but go through with it, will be the kid whose genetics make him more aggressive, and/or the kid who is lacking any serious discipline at home.

Perhaps most importantly, even if my skeptical friend is right and commonly accepted moral truths are merely a product of our genetic encoding, we still must account for the source of this encoding. 

No, that gets into the question of intelligent design, which doesn't get you off the hook.  Your attept to prove that some morals can only be accounted for by a transcendent moral lawgiver, has failed.  You cannot correct that problem by simply insisting on intelligent design.  That's called moving the goal-posts.  The "moral argument" for God fails.  The "intelligent design" argument for God is another matter.

DNA is information rich. As Stephen C. Myers observes in Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, there isn’t a single example in the history of the universe in which information has come from anything other than an intelligent source. If our genetic code contains information about moral truth, we still must ask the foundational question, what intelligent source provided this code? All codes require encoders.

 Meyers is debunked here.

But I don't really care if a "god" exists, the NT provides evidence that makes it more likely Jesus stayed dead, so given that Christianity is a failure, whatever 'god' exists, is nothing to worry about. 

And it wouldn't matter if Jesus did rise from the dead, the idea that God will send to hell all those who fail to live up to whatever Christian light they had, is total bullshit and is denied by enough liberal Christian scholars  to justify the non-religious person in turning away from such an exercise in futility as "What does the New Testament teach?"  You people have been asking that for 2,000 years, you couldn't agree with each other in the lifetime of Jesus, the lifetime of Paul, by the second century many sects of Christianity were competing as "the" truth and calling each other "heretic", and the only thing Christianity did for the next 2,000 years was get more splintered and more complex.

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Truths a Matter of Cultural Agreement?

When you ask the question in loaded form like that, the answer is obviously "no".  Cultural Agreement cannot produce some invisible moral law that "transcends" humanity itself.

    If societies are the source of objective moral truths, what are we to do when two cultures disagree about these truths?

You are assuming there is a higher moral law to answer that in an objective way, and there isn't.  When we find other cultures with morals opposed to ours, then whether we attack or leave them alone is largely conditioned on the current generation's genetic predispositions and their environmental conditioning. Once again, there's no higher moral "truth" to govern when two dogs choose to fight, so its pretty stupid to ask what moral law governs when you confront another person whose morals are opposite to our own.  But that fact that human history has exhibited a tendency to war or to just stay away from those of differing persuasion makes a good case that there really are no higher moral truths to it, and what we "should" do goes no deeper than what we feel like we should do at the moment.

How do we adjudicate between two competing views of a particular moral claim?

By using our relative morals. When we all gasp about the criminal who was caught torturing children, this shows nothing more than that a bunch of people have formed a city, state or nation and they all pretty much have the same moral disgust for hurting kids.  While we may often act like putting such people in jail aspires to some higher moral law, this is not true, such act only aspires to the moral law that a bunch of mammals agree on.

If objective moral truths are simply a matter of “shared morality”, the societal majority rules; “might makes right”.

 Which is precisely what we have in our democratic "Christian" nation.  You either obey the majority's morals, or they will send their strongest representatives after you to put you in jail even if you don't wanna go.

In a world like this, anyone (or any group) holding the minority position in a particular moral argument is, by definition, immoral.

Yes.   A minority of men in America approve of homosexuality and/or pedophilia. Not really strange that they are automatically accounted "immoral" by the majority.

In fact, Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson made this clear in his early career as a prosecutor at the Nuremburg trials following World War II. When the German soldiers who committed atrocities in the Jewish prison camps were brought to trial to face criminal charges, the issue of moral relativity was tested directly. The lawyers for the German officers argued that these men should not be judged for actions that were actually morally acceptable in the nation of Germany at the time of the war.

Those lawyers were just asking for consistency. 

They argued their supervisors and culture encouraged this behavior; in fact, to do otherwise would defy the culture and ideology in which they lived. In their moral environment, this behavior was part of the “shared morality”. Jackson argued against such a view of moral relativism and said, “There is a law above the law.”

 Jackson was wrong if he meant there was a moral law transcending humanity.  The fact is that before WW2, not everybody in the world agreed that they should go involve themselves in the affairs of other countries.   But then that's why they call it "war".  Us mammals tried but could not achieve peace, so we just fought it out.

    Are Objective, Transcendent Moral Truths a Consequence of “Human Flourishing”?

Not when you ask the question in that loaded way.  Once again, if the moral truth "transcends" humanity, than humanity's flourishing obviously did not create said law. 

    Sam Harris (author of The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values), argues we can establish the moral value of any particular action by simply evaluating its impact on human well-being (something Harris typically refers to as “human flourishing”).

 And Harris was wrong on the point, as are most moral objectivist atheists, since he fails to provide an objective definition of human well-being.  And indeed he cannot.

Harris likens the establishment of such truths to a game of chess. In any particular game, each player must decide how to move based on the resulting effect. If you are trying to win the game, some moves are “good” and some moves are “bad”; some will lead you to victory and some will lead you to defeat. “Good” and “bad” then, are evaluated based on whether or not they accomplish the goal of winning the game. Harris redefines “good” (in the context of human beings) as whatever supports or encourages the well-being of conscious creatures; if an action increases human well-being (human “flourishing”) it is “good”, if it decreases well-being, it is “bad”. What, however, do we mean when we talk about “flourishing”?

Good question, which is why I say atheist moral objectivists are just being silly.  If humanity is the highest form of life, then it us US, and nobody and nothing else, that decides whether a given act constitute moral goodness or moral badness. 

It’s one thing to evaluate a behavior in terms of its impact on survival, and if we are honest with one another, this is really what drives Natural Selection. But Harris recognizes survival, as a singular goal, can lead to all kinds of morally condemnable misbehavior.

 Condemnable only because of Harris's subjective and relative morals that he brings to the moral investigation table.  Harris might think the way the Nazis chose to 'survive' in WW2 is condemnable, but his basis for such criticism cannot be anything greater than his naturalistic relative morals.

Harris suggests the goal is something more; the goal is “flourishing”. Human flourishing comprises a particular quality of life; one in which we honor the rights of others and seek a certain kind of character in order to become a particular kind of human group that has maximized its potential.

That sounds nice, but doesn't solve the problem:  "Should" we allow the Taliban to "flourish"?  If not, then apparently "flourishing" is not a sufficient criteria for morality.

See the problem here? Harris has already imported moral values into his model, even as he seeks to explain where these values come from in the first place. One can hardly define the “maximization” of human wellbeing without asserting a number of moral values. What, beyond mere survival, achieves our “maximization” as humans?

Good question, I don't think Harris can answer it.  Dan Barker tried to answer it with "pain" by saying we naturally recoil from pain, which is true enough, but he draws back somewhat by acknowledging that some pain is required to achieve good, such as the doctor who sets the broken bone, or cutting off one's hand that is stuck between two huge rocks so that one can survive.

The minute we move from mere survival to a particular kind of “worthy” survival, we have to employ moral principles and ideas.

Correct.

Concepts of sacrifice, nobility and honor must be assumed foundationally, but these are not morally neutral notions. Human “flourishing” assumes a number of virtues and priorities (depending on who is defining it), and these values and characteristics precede the enterprise Harris seeks to describe. Harris cannot articulate the formation of moral truths without first assuming some of these truths to establish his definition of “flourishing”. He’s borrowing pre-existent, objective moral notions about worth, value and purpose, while holding a worldview that argues against any pre-existing moral notions.

Good for you.  You refuted Harris.  But you didn't refute me.  I've based humanity's morality in each human's mammalian instinct for individual and group survival, as flavored by genetic predispositions and environmental conditioning.  These naturalistic explanations account for all known moral issues.

    Try as we might, the alternative explanations for objective, transcendent moral truths are desperately insufficient.

Dream on.

    Try as we might, the alternative explanations for objective, transcendent moral truths are desperately insufficient. The moral law transcends all of us, regardless of location on the planet or time in history.

And there you go again, proving you aren't talking to skeptics but only to Christians just looking for anybody that can professionally articulate what they already believe.  Try having a live debate with an informed atheist, then take a poll of your fan base and see how many think you survived.

Or....continue running away from challenges and just tell yourself that periodically preaching to the choir must be something inspired by God because it happens to boost book sales.

Cold Case Christianity: Morals cannot be "objective"

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Is God Real?
Common, Objective Moral Standards Are an Evidence of God’s Existence

Posted: 01 Feb 2019 03:00 AM PST

The Axiological Argument for the existence of God relies on the existence of objective, transcendent moral truths (i.e. “It’s never morally permissible or virtuous to torture babies for fun”). But not everyone agrees these truths exist in the first place, even though they often seem self-evident.

One person thinks their opinion on how America should be run is "self-evident", but such confidence is not a reliable criteria of truth.  Many men think the goodness of dying for one's country is self-evident, but others maintain that their personal commitment to family outweighs any obligation they have to die for other people.

Many who do accept the existence of transcendent moral truths still deny a transcendent moral truth Giver.

Some atheists think that way, and I say they are inconsistent.  If atheism is true, then no moral would have a basis any deeper than genetic predisposition flavored with environmental conditioning.  I am, of course, discounting the bare possibility that earth and humans were created by advanced space aliens.  Dan Barker often talks about objective morals with his "we recoil from pain" speech, but alas, since we also recoil from the pain at a doctor's office where the pain is part of what's necessary to heal, not even our recoiling from pain implies the existence of some objective moral standard.

Some skeptics believe these moral truths come from our evolutionary development as a species, are embedded in our DNA, or are simply a matter of social convention. If this is the case, moral truth is relative to the individual making the claim. Moral relativism is, however, difficult to actualize consistently. Those who argue against the existence of transcendent, objective moral values, typically advocate for such values when push comes to shove (especially when they’ve been victimized).

Yes, many atheists do, and I say they are inconsistent.  When I say my neighbor shouldn't slash my tires, I recognize that I can only appeal to his own morality and the threat of legal action to persuade him to comply.  But the truth is that if he doesn't share at least some of my general moral beliefs, then I will be deprived of any way to convince him to see things my way.  Indeed, you cannot do much with a person who does not respect the law, doesn't respect normative social conventions, and doesn't really care if they get put in jail.  For such people, ordering them even in the name of god to stop committing some act will prove futile.

We accept many values and mores as if they were transcendently true, even as we might deny the existence of such overarching truths.

Yes, we do often live as if our relative morals were absolute, and yes this is an inconsistency.  But the mistake of some atheists of living as if their personal moral outlooks are absolute transcendent truths, does not open the door to the possibility that such morality is indeed objective.

Is God real?

Only if you allow for the reality of objects whose description is incoherent.  God's non-physical nature is one problem, as you cannot even show that any "non-physical" thing even exists.  And apologists are mostly to blame for toying with words and pretending that "physical" is something that can have an opposite.

Our common acceptance of an objective moral standard is yet another evidence of God’s existence.

 Since you are preaching to the choir, I don't mind saying "Amen".  When you come up with anything that even remotely threatens something atheists believe, let me know.

If there are no objective, transcendent moral truths, we lose the ability to make many significant decisions and judgments.

No, you are assuming moral relativity saps importance from everything we might say or do.  Not true.  Going to the store to get something to eat would still maintain its inherent significance, relative to your own life, even if all morality was relative.  As mammals, I'm sure Christian mothers would likely continue caring for their children even if such moms became convinced there was no objective morality.   Indeed, purpose in life is quite "relative" anyway.  You don't need to believe that God gives a fuck about how many cookies you eat before dinner, in order to experience a sense of fulfillment of purpose in eating them or resisting the temptation.  But if you are a Christian, I can understand how you think moving around in the world without linking everything back to God's sovereign purpose implies nothing but utter chaos.  But it doesn't.  I don't put gas in my car because I think there's some higher intelligence who wills it.  Most Christians probably also lack this view when fueling up at the service station.  So you are wrong, significant and sufficient sense of fulfillment of purpose in life can easily be achieved without pretending that god exists or that morals are objective. Only those who are already Christians, cannot bear to think about living life in complete disregard for 'god'.  If you stopped praying at meals, you might overcome some of your brainwashing.  And if you wish to continue praying before meals, then just remember that because you think God is infinitely wonderful, no length of prayer would be too long.  Classical theist Christians cannot meaningfully object to the person at the dinner table who takes 5 hours to say grace.  Isn't god worth that much?

Without the existence of such truths, nothing can be considered objectively virtuous, vile, or benign.

 I don't see the problem.  There is no moral that is objectively virtuous, vile or benign.  The closest you can get is that it is no coincidence that we mammals just happen to agree with each other, for the most part, that conduct which threatens our ability to survive and thrive, should not be tolerated.

Greg Koukl, my ministry partner at Stand to Reason, has written an excellent book on this topic: Relativism; Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air. Greg makes several key observations, some of which are summarized here:

All True Praise Requires An Objective Moral Standard

Most of us recognize the importance of praise, particularly when someone has performed nobly or has behaved sacrificially to improve the world in some way. But it’s impossible to truly praise anyone for such behavior without the existence of a transcendent, objective moral standard. Our accolades for those who have acted sacrificially for the good of others are meant to be more than subjective compliments. When we praise someone, we are praising them for something we believe was objectively virtuous, and would be considered so by everyone and anyone, regardless of personal opinion.

 False. When we praise our military members, we are not claiming their defense of this corrupt nation, called America, was in conformity to objective moral values, we are only expressing gratitude toward them that they played a significant part in helping America remain free of military threats.  After all, many Christians believe God disapproves of America for the most part.  So then if we are praising those who defend this corrupt nation, we stand a very good chance of praising in total absence of any underlying objective moral truth.

When we praise a child for getting good grades, we are not presuming that conformity to modern social convention like public schooling is based on some objective moral standard, we are only praising them from within the relative standard of our society and century.

We seldom say, “We praise you for doing something we happen to value in this culture; something we personally think is good, even if it may not be good to anyone else.”

Yes, most people offering praise aren't that specific about its realities, but that is the more honest way to praise regardless. You are a fool if you think you can argue from the socially acceptable mistaken inaccurate way that people say things, over to objective moral truth.

True praise assumes an overarching standard of goodness transcending all of us as humans.

 No. Praising a toddler when she manifests an act of kindness, like sharing a toy or food, only signifies that the praisers think she conformed to modern social convention, nothing more.  They can be Christians and add "Jesus wants us to be kind to each other" to the mix, but that hardly transforms the relativity into objectivity.  Whether a toddler "should" be kind to another toddler is ultimately relative to the situation and the expectations of the parents, caregivers and society.  You lose.

Do you remember growing up as a teenager and hearing your mom tell you that you were handsome or pretty? We accept such compliments with a degree of hesitancy, don’t we? Was her statement true, or simply her biased, subjective opinion? We are left wondering if we are truly handsome or truly pretty. True praise requires an objective standard related to what is good or bad; ugly or beautiful.

No, there is no objective standard for teen beauty or handsomeness.  So if anybody remarks that you are pretty or ugly, it isn't like they can show your looks fail to match up to some objective standard.  Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

And once again, yes, we often talk as if we are invoking objective standards, but that is mere convention, our doing this doesn't mean such objective standards actually exist.  If my grandpa curses at the ACLU because they fight so hard for gay-rights, he might be implying he relies on an objective standard, and maybe he wants the hearers to believe such standard is real, but in the final analysis, that standard is not objective. 

All True Condemnation Requires An Objective Moral Standard

In a similar way, it is also impossible to truly condemn anyone unless there is a transcendent, objective moral standard.

 So when we condemn a child for unwillingness to share a toy, we are necessarily proving there's an objective morality, somewhere out there, that says "all children must share their toys in this circumstance".  Wrong.

We often condemn those we think embody evil in our world (Hitler is a good example). When we say we believe someone (or something) is evil, we think we are expressing more than our personal opinion.

Correct, that is what we "think".   But it is also inaccurate.  Lots of people are belligerently dogmatic in their attempts to call somebody evil, stupid or criminal.  But in the final analysis, their invoking objective standards doesn't mean those standards exist, or are objective, anymore than the Mormon invoking the historical accuracy of the Book of Mormon implies that book is historically accurate.

We think this person (or thing) is truly evil and worthy of everyone’s condemnation.

Because our genetics and environmental conditioning were very different from Hitler's.  Had we been born in Germany 1915, we would be just as likely to join the Nazis as today's high school boy is likely to join the US Army.   Nothing is more popular than a citizen thinking his country's specific ways are the "right" way.

But such transcendent condemnation requires an objective, transcendent moral standard defining both good and evil.

Correct.  But needing one to exist in order to justify reliance upon the standard, doesn't mean such standard exists.  It could just as easily be that the person is mistaking their dogmatic but relative opinion for objective moral truth.

If we reject such a standard, we must accept what one person might see as evil, another might see as good.

No, you are now telling us what morality "should" prevail if in fact none of it is "objective".  But if no morality is objective, then you are deprived of any objective basis to morally condemn anything...like bigots who condemn the moral acts of others.  If all morality is relative, then there is no objective moral basis for declaring  "you should allow the other person to do what they want".  No.  There are no objective morals, so there can be no objective moral criteria to decide what level of intolerance is "wrong".  In such a world, if two people meet and have exactly opposing moral intentions, often there is no way to resolve it except physical violence (fighting, or getting arrested for harassment, etc).

In a world like this, statements of condemnation are meaningless. They are nothing more than mere opinion,

Now you are just repeating Frank Turek's fallacy of immediately equating opinion with uselessness.  That is a factual falsehood.  I have an opinion that tomorrow I should work on my legal case instead of studying the bible.  That opinion is not meaningless.  A father has an opinion that the kids need to go to bed on school nights at 10 p.m.  That is not meaningless, useless or equal to the opinion that says just let the kids stay up 24 hours per day and constantly imbibe pepsi and pizza.  Some opinions are clearly more likely to result in achieving normative American societal goals, than others.   For that reason, not all opinions are equal.

and, in the end, they presume the condemner has some right to judge others who simply hold a differing opinion.

No, in a morally relative world, we do not condemn out of any sense of "right" to do so, we condemn because hatred of certain conduct is hard-wired into our mammalian brains.  We have become sophisticated enough to create a democracy whereby we seek to justify our personal morality by appeal to law and the Constitution which just happen to reflect our personal morality, but those sources are still equally as morally subjective as any moral opinion is.  Appeal to an external source of moral authority hardly implies that any such source is going to be "objective".

In this kind of world, firm condemnation is arrogant and self-righteous.

So?  You don't have an objective moral that says "thou shalt not be arrogant or self-righteous".

All Moral Activism Requires An Objective Moral Standard

We recognize the virtue of moral reformers like Martin Luther King Jr.

No, you are just blindly assuming that because he was successful in creating something America now views as normative and good, therefore, he must have been doing something that was an objective moral good.  Nope.  What he did was good for America, in my opinion, but the goodness of what he did does not reside in any "transcendent" moral truth.

There are times when an activist sees the need for improvement within a society and feels compelled to propose reform.

And he or she can attempt such reform for no other reason than that they get a personal thrill out of trying to convince others to forge society in their own personal view.  Nothing objective here. And once again, the reformer's invoking god or inherent human dignity or some such qualifier doesn't automatically require that objective morality exists.  Terrorists invoke their god Allah in the name of their brand of social change which we call "terrorism".  Are you convinced therefore that god's name is Allah?  Hardly.  Any fool can invoke non-existent authority.  It is better to skip their invocation and go directly to the alleged proofs that this authority exists or is objective.

But if moral truths are formed by cultural consensus, moral reform is illogical (and, indeed, immoral).

No, there is nothing illogical about a small group of people taking their subjective moral point of view and convincing others in the culture that adopting said view would constitute a change in conformity to the nation's higher goals.  Such naturalistic explanation is sufficient and therefore leaves no room to pretend that this state of affairs is best accounted for by a higher intelligent being who has objective morals..

When a society decides something is morally virtuous (and the vast majority of its members agree on this), on what basis can a lone reformer, disagreeing with the cultural consensus, make a call for change?

His own personal moral opinion, whereby he says the status quo needs to be changed.

To what standard is this moral reformer appealing?

His own, and if he campaigns, he will likely argue that the change he seeks is also in furtherance of the general goals his hearers likely have.  Nothing morally absolute here.

If moral truths come from the society, whatever the society believes is, by definition, morally right.

 But not in an absolute sense.  Therefore the subjectivity of the majority moral viewpoint is also subject to change.  And the world of humanity has done little more in 100,000 years, than continually change their views about the worth of human beings and what goals nations should pursue.

If the majority rules, this group is the source of moral truth.

The source of relative moral truth, yes, if you are going to use a watered-down version of "truth".

In a world like this, the minority position is immoral by definition.

But only subjectively so.

Moral reformers cannot argue for a moral truth unless they are agreeing with the society.

Indeed, the only way to be successful at moral reform is to convince the hold-outs that their voting in favor of the change will be an act furthering their own more general goals.  The fact that you convince somebody to join the Moral Majority doesn't imply the existence of a god, anymore than an atheist convincing his girlfriend to snort coke implies the existence of an invisible space alien who wants people to do drugs.

In short, anyone who advocates reform in this kind of world is morally mistaken.

Not in an absolute or objective sense.  There is no objective morality.  The moral majority might rule and have final say on moral matters in our society, but that doesn't make their views absolute or objective in the sense of implying that their standards are grounded in something "transcendent".

A moral reformer like a Martin Luther King Jr. simply could not exist (as a person holding a minority position) and argue for a transcendent moral truth, unless of course, such truth comes from something (or someone) other than the culture.

So the only way Muslim terrorists can argue for their "transcendent moral truth" that Americans deserve to be massacred, is if such "truth" comes from something (or someone) other than the culture.

Sorry, that's just stupid.  Those terrorists do what they do, often successfully, despite your own belief that their version of moral reform is contrary to the real objective moral truth.  Therefore terrorists who engage in moral reform are a proof that seeking more reform does not imply the existence of a transcendent moral truth.  They are just ruthless bigots who have lots of power.

All Tolerance Requires An Objective Moral Standard

Finally, let’s take a look at the much loved attribute of tolerance.

Then count me out.  I'm not one of those wishy-washy card-carrying ACLU radicals or newagers who think tolerance is always good.

Without an objective, transcendent moral standard, true tolerance is impossible.

So if a friend comes to your house which smells like "dog", but politely tolerates the revolting smell for the duration of their visit, this is supposed to imply the existence of an objective transcendent moral standard?  Sorry, try again.

When two people disagree, tolerance is the behavior employed to coexist in spite of their disagreement. When we agree with each other, there is nothing to tolerate. Tolerance is reserved for those with whom we disagree. But if we are living in a society in which all diversity is to be embraced with equal status and value (as equally true), there is nothing with which we can disagree. And without disagreement, there is no need for tolerance.

 That's a good rebuttal to the stupid liberals who embrace absolute tolerance.  You say nothing to refute my own views.

While some may continue to deny the existence of transcendent, objective moral truths, our common acceptance of such truths reveals a contradiction.

Not at all, our common acceptance of such truths would first imply we had either similar genetic predispositions, or similar environmental conditioning, or both.  Our both being "mammals" is also why we'd agree on some moral duty.  Unfortunately for you, these naturalistic explanations are reasonable and not sufficiently stupid or unlikely so as to make any room for you to pretend that any morals "necessitate" god's existence.

We typically accept the foundation of objective moral standards as we praise, condemn, reform and tolerate the behavior of others.

No,  we typically tell ourselves that we stand upon objective morals when we praise, condemn, reform or tolerate.  But we aren't really standing on any such thing, we simply have a nasty persistent habit of mistaking our personal views for objective moral truth.

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? Evidence for God from Objective Moral Truth

This is my reply to an article by J. Warner Wallace entitled

Cold Case Christianity: Is God Real? 

Evidence for God from Objective Moral Truth

Posted: 30 Jan 2019 01:56 AM PST

There are several compelling arguments for the existence of God, and many of them are rooted in science (i.e. thee Cosmological Argument) or philosophy (i.e. the Transcendental Argument). Sometimes these disciplines are foreign to our everyday experience, however, and not many of us are prepared to debate (or even describe) scientific details or esoteric philosophical concepts, especially as they might be related to God’s existence.

  Should we blame that on the Holy Spirit, who apparently wants to be known as your teacher?  Sure is funny that we have no problems blaming the teacher if the kids remain uneducated, but when it comes to "god", then suddenly, any and all imperfections seen in "his" work can never never never be blamed on him.  Feel free to take comfort in your insanely inerrant security blanket, but don't expect the atheist's goosebumps to rise up from their skin as high as your goosebumps do.

Another set of evidences may be far easier to assess and communicate. Is God real?

 You'd serve the cause of truth more efficiently if you narrowed the debate proposition, so you can focus your attention more to less issues  Don't ask whether God exists.  Ask whether Kalam's first premise is fatally ambiguous.  Don't ask whether Jesus rose from the dead.  Ask whether a non-Christian can be reasonable to find apostolic authorship of Matthew's gospel too obscure and problematic to be granted.  See how that works?

The presence of objective moral truth validates the existence of God and this evidence may be much easier to communicate to others.

 So since burning teen girl prostitutes to death was commanded by God (Leviticus 21:9), you are forced to view that form of justice as objective morality.  You can assert that not everything God commanded through Moses was morally objective, but you'll find yourself in theological gridlock in no time.  The end of the Mosaic theocracy appears to have less to do with God's will and more to do with naturalistic historical circumstance.  If killing all the gays was good for the Mosaic society, how could it possibly be bad for any other society?  Would it be true that in every such execution, the people were "putting away the evil from among them"?

We live in a world filled with moral truths and most of us, whether we are aware of it or not, believe these truths are more than a matter of personal opinion, evolutionary development or social convention. “Torturing babies for fun” is (and has been) morally repugnant regardless of the time in history, place on the planet, or identity of any particular people group.

 But there is a perfectly good naturalistic explanation for the common human aversion to torturing babies.  The natural mammalian desire to protect the young.  Furthermore, there is the fact is that torturing babies doesn't appear to serve any mammalian purpose, and contradicts mammalian genetics.  If the whole purpose of life is to procreate, then obviously the parents are going to view anything that inhibits the life of the newborns, as something to be shunned.

Torturing babies does not keep the food supply stable, it does not replenish needed water, it does not tell you which person would be good for the company, etc, etc. You also forget that many older siblings do indeed torture their younger brothers or sisters.  "Torture" doesn't have to be water-boarding or smashing knees with hammers, to be torture.  Your own bible consistently affirms the goodness of physically harming children with a "rod", and one could easily argue that this is a form of torture even if it doesn't last very long.  Torture doesn't require a minimum length of time.

You also forget that plenty of people throughout history have engaged in child torture via slavery, hard work, harsh discipline, or placing them out in open territory to let them die slowly.  You are not very scholarly if you just automatically exclude such adult opinions from your analysis.  One could also argue that if morals come from God, we probably wouldn't find anybody in history torturing babies or children.

Moral truths of this nature transcend and precede us.

 Sorry, but there you go again, preaching the choir, since you know perfectly well no atheist is going to agree that any truth we exhibit "transcends" us.

We don’t invent or construct them, we discover them.

 In the sense that we were raised by parents who imposed on us the morals they discovered from their own caretakers, yes.  In the sense of the moral truths existing outside of humanity?  No.  Go work in a daycare for a few days, them come back and tell me God put his laws into our hearts.  No, he only puts his laws into our hearts when our caretakers put their laws into our hearts.  I'd say the timing is suspicious.

Transcendent, objective moral truths such as these form the foundation of the Axiological Argument for the existence of God. “Axio” means the “study of values” and the Axiological Argument uses the existence of objective values or “mores” to prove the existence of God:

(1) There is an Objective (Transcendent) Moral Law

 No.  I already grilled Matthew Flannagan on this:  when he told me that we shouldn't torture babies to death solely for entertainment, I asked him what moral standard he was using to condemn the practice, and he skipped town.  The best he could do was to simplistically bleat that if any person needs to be told why such act is wrong, then they have something wrong with their brain.  That's nothing but an appeal to emotion.  Flannagan knows the basis for saying such act is wrong, but is rightfully fearful that if he admits what it is, he will infuse his argument with more subjectivity than he wants his viewers to think is necessary.  So he just skips town instead of honestly admitting that his argument for God from objective morality is fatally subjective.

(2) Every Law Has a Law Giver

Not when the law in question is merely the name we attach to patterns of thinking we observe in mammals.  There is a "law of gravity", but that's obviously something far different from "law says you can't drive over 55 mph."

(3) Therefore, There is an Objective (Transcendent) Law Giver

(4) The Objective (Transcendent) Law Giver is God

Dream on.

If objective, transcendent moral truths exist, an objective, transcendent moral truth giver is the most reasonable inference.

No, the concept of "god" as an immaterial intelligence is incoherent, so since naturalistic explanations are at least coherent, they will always be better than this appeal to 'god'.

Living in a world filled with moral choices, we often confuse description with prescription. It’s one thing to describe “what is”, but it’s another thing to prescribe “what ought to be”. Humans are good at the former, but have been historically uneven with the latter.

And Christians have always been divided on the latter, i.e., what ought to be.  Your trifles about how this doesn't get rid of god, really don't accomplish much.  If you people ARE that divided on morality, and have been for 20 centuries, the mere possibility this could still be consistent with God's existence does precisely nothing to enable the atheist to figure out which Christian morality is from god. If you couldn't attain like-mindedness on this for 20 centuries, its pretty reasonable to conclude you aren't going to be achieving that goal with an internet post.

Individuals and groups often allow their own selfish interests to color the way they evaluate moral truth.

Sort of like the greed involved in a land-grab conveniently has the grabbers suddenly discover that grabbing land is more holy than allowing its original occupants to live there.  Sure is funny that you think every group doing a land-grab in the ANE was immoral to do so...except of course, conveniently, the Hebrews.

When this happens, we sometimes come to very different conclusions about the “rightness” of our beliefs or actions. When we disagree about the moral value of a particular action, we usually try to convince the other side to accept our position. But why would this be necessary if all moral truths come from individuals or groups? If humans are the source of moral truth, why should we consider one group’s values to be any better than another?

 This usually takes place in the context of showing how your particular moral stance is more likely to achieve your opponent's goals, than his own moral stance.  That's why.  Last I checked, you don't require your little daughter to wear matching clothes to school because God hath decreed it so, yet her obedience to her parents is a "moral" issue.  If morality comes from God, then there you go:  God has an opinion about what clothes she should wear to school. Let me guess:  you've always asked God about this matter, amen?

Nope, you believe your sky-daddy only gives a fuck about the big issues, and doesn't really care what color your shoes are, despite the fact that the biblical teaching that Christ holds all things together would imply that God is ultimately responsible for how the neurons fire in your brain, in ways that often manifest as you choosing a certain color of shoe.  Your bullshit idea that God doesn't care about your personal details, is theological heresy.  God could no more be apathetic toward what you'll have for dinner tomorrow night, than he could just remove his presence from rocks.

When we argue for what “ought to be” we’re not simply asking someone to accept our subjective opinion; were asking them to see the “rightness” of the objective moral truth we happen to hold.

When a group of societies come together to discuss the moral value of a particular action (as is often the case at meetings of the United Nations), they are appealing to a standard transcending the group in an effort to convince any one member of the group.

No, one group is trying to show how their unique morality will more efficiently achieve the common goals of the united nations, than the morality of any other group.

When one nation asks another to conform to some form of moral behavior, it’s not saying, “Do it our way,” it’s saying, “Do the right thing.”

 Correct, the "right" thing being the subjective view held by the nation whose representative is doing the talking.  

Our appeal to a particular behavior isn’t based solely on our collective, subjective opinion; it’s based on an appeal to objective moral values transcending our opinion.

 I find that to be rather disingenuous given that even conservative Christians disagree on morality so much they will accuse each other of defying common sense.  Forgive me if I refuse to believe that one of them speaks from the Holy Spirit and the other doesn't.  Your God could fix this stupid bullshit by just waving his magic wand to get people to believe whatever he wants them to believe, as he allegedly did in Ezra 1:1.  You always blame the parents if they allow their stupid kids to starve themselves to death.  Do you call God a "father"?  

We can argue about the identity of these values, but we must accept the transcendent foundation of these moral truths if we ever hope to persuade others to embrace them. Nations may dislike one another and resist the subjective values held by other groups. That’s why we argue for the transcendent moral value of an action, rather than appealing to a subjective national opinion.

 I don't find a UN speaker's appeal to "divine rights" or similar to be any more compelling than a terrorist's speech that says Allah wills the massacre of thousands of Americans.   I'm sorry Wallace, but bellowing out moral commands in the name of Jesus does precisely nothing to "show" that they come from god.  Which you probably don't care about since you didn't intend to do apologetics here anyway, you are simply preaching the choir with all the smug blindness of a 1940's teacher in a Book of Mormon class.  In our little world, we can tell ourselves whatever we want and feel good about it the whole time, amen?

The evidence from the existence of objective moral truth points to God as the most reasonable explanation.

No, "god" is an incoherent concept, and if he is the most infinite thing in existence, as you classical theists are forced to allege, then Occam's Razor would slice away the god-hypothesis long before it would slice away any less complex explanatory theory.  What now?  Did you suddenly discover that Occam's Razor isn't quite as bright as most Christian apologists say it is?

Now you start in with the irrelevant questions that arose only because you formed an illegitimate theological foundation:

If transcendent moral truths exist, from where do they come? Is God real? The evidence from the existence of objective moral truth points to God as the most reasonable explanation.

Stealing from Sense: Why Frank Turek needs atheism to sell books

This is my reply to an article by Frank Turek entitled:

Sunday, February 15, 2015

Atheists Steal Rights From God

by Frank Turek|10451

Atheist Richard Dawkins has declared, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at the bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good. Nothing but blind pitiless indifference. . . . DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is, and we dance to its music.”

But Dawkins doesn’t act like he actually believes that. He recently affirmed a woman has the right to choose an abortion and asserted that it would be “immoral” to give birth to a baby with Down syndrome. According to Dawkins, the “right to choose” is a good thing and giving birth to Down syndrome children is a bad thing.

Well, which is it? Is there really good and evil, or are we just moist robots dancing to the music of our DNA?

The latter.  Being mammals, our DNA causes us to instinctively condemn any actions of the members that threaten the survival of the group or otherwise do more to hinder than help survival.   That is, in imperfect fashion, of course.

Atheists like Dawkins are often ardent supporters of rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, taxpayer-provided healthcare, welfare, contraceptives, and several other entitlements. But who says those are rights?

The will of the people after it has been enacted into law.  The "right" doesn't need to be grounded in any objective standard in order to function helpfully in society the way it does.   Curfews are not dictated by any god or natural law, but sometimes the arbitrary imposition of them keeps a damper on things that our authorities believe are counterproductive the survival of the group.

By what objective standard are abortion, same-sex marriage, same-sex adoption, taxpayer-provided healthcare, and the like, moral rights?

None, the standard is the subjective moral opinion that happens to be shared by enough people in the group to become law for the group.  Complaining that morality arises from subjective opinion is about as useful to the debate as complaining that freeways aren't made out of gold.

There isn’t such a standard in the materialistic universe of atheism. So atheists must steal the grounds for objective moral rights from God while arguing that God doesn’t exist.

If the atheist is one of those who believes in 'objective' morals, then, yes.

But for atheists who deny objective morality, then no, you are assuming atheism cannot provide a purely naturalistic explanation for the fact that human beings live in accord with their personal moral opinions.  You are wrong.  Every action that we call moral or immoral ultimate arises from one's personal preferences, which arise from a combination of genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.  That is a reasonable explanation even if it doesn't indicate that science has finally solved every mystery of the universe.

Now, I am not saying that you have to believe in God to be a good person or that atheists are immoral people.

Then you aren't being biblical. The bible makes atheists immoral by saying pleasing god is impossible unless you believe in him:

 6 And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him. (Heb. 11:6 NAU)

 If atheists cannot please god, then under Christian theology, they have no other category to be placed in except "displeasing to God", i.e., immoral.  Turek continues:

Some atheists live more moral lives than many Christians.

Then in light of Hebrews 11, supra, you are classifying as "moral", that conduct which the bible says is immoral.  Since nothing atheists do pleases God, it follows logically that everything they do is displeasing to god, and any human acts that are displeasing to god, Christians are required to define as "immoral".  I've heard plenty of conservative pastors preach that when the unbeliever feeds her children, this is displeasing to God, because the act wasn't done in faith, and under Romans 14:23, whatever is done without faith, is sin, hence, the unbeliever's feeding of her kids is sinful and thus displeasing to god.

That's the stupid shit mess you land in when you try to take biblical theology seriously.  Become a liberal, and these problems disappear like magic. 

I am also not saying that atheists don’t know morality. Everyone knows basic right and wrong whether they believe in God or not.

Because what we call basic right and wrong ends up being those actions that facilitate life, increase the odds of survival, or protect life from danger.  Murder, rape and stealing threaten the survival of the group, thus naturalistically explaining why mammals hate these things.  No transcendent moral law giver necessary.  You can say the atheist cannot explain the origin of life itself, but abiogenesis is a different topic.

Also, our knowing basic right and wrong is a problem for Christians.  God's morality in the bible goes beyond basic right and wrong.  God doesn't just forbid murder and rape.  He also requires rape victims to marry their attacker for life without possibility of divorce:

 28 "If a man finds a girl who is a virgin, who is not engaged, and seizes her and lies with her and they are discovered,
 29 then the man who lay with her shall give to the girl's father fifty shekels of silver, and she shall become his wife because he has violated her; he cannot divorce her all his days. (Deut. 22:28-29 NAU)

It doesn't matter if there are allowable exceptions to this, the moral of requiring the victim to marry her rapist is still there, and since it was given by God, it presents a problem for the apologist:  Did god put this law into our hearts too?  If not, how do you know?

What is the reason we cringe at the thought of forcing a victim to marry her rapist?  Is it because God put a law in our hearts that says "it is always wrong to force victims to marry their rapists" (thus God is contradicting the crap he said in the OT)?  Or because modern liberal culture has significantly eroded god's morality from our hearts (i.e., your god actually thinks forcing the victim to marry her attacker is morally good)?

By the way, our knowing basic moral right and wrong also means we also "know" that rape is immoral.  That creates a problem for Turek and his theory that basic right and wrong come from the bible god, because the bible god sometimes admits that He causes men to rape women:

 13 Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, And the earth will be shaken from its place At the fury of the LORD of hosts In the day of His burning anger.
 14 And it will be that like a hunted gazelle, Or like sheep with none to gather them, They will each turn to his own people, And each one flee to his own land.
 15 Anyone who is found will be thrust through, And anyone who is captured will fall by the sword.
 16 Their little ones also will be dashed to pieces Before their eyes; Their houses will be plundered And their wives ravished.
 17 Behold, I am going to stir up the Medes against them, Who will not value silver or take pleasure in gold.
 18 And their bows will mow down the young men, They will not even have compassion on the fruit of the womb, Nor will their eye pity children.
 (Isa. 13:13-18 NAU)

In the context, God is the speaker (i.e, speaking through Isaiah).  Unless Turek wishes to stupidly trifle that it was only Isaiah the human being who was threatening to "stir up" the Medes (which then means one biblical author wasn't inspired in what he wrote) then it is clear that the intent of the author was for the reader to conclude the threat is being spoken by God.  In that case, the phrase where god claims to "stir up" the Medes sit in an immediate context describing how the Medes will commit various but typical ANE wartime atrocities against the Babylonians, including rape.

If the immediate context had been "the Medes will give you gifts", Christians would have no trouble admitting what the passage plainly says: that God is the one who stirred up the Medes to give such gifts. But because the context describes rape and killing of children, then suddenly, Christians start hemming and hawing about whether "stir up" necessarily always means 'cause'. 


Turek continues:

In fact, that’s exactly what the Bible teaches (see Romans 2:14-15).

Occam's Razor forbids multiplying entities unnecessarily, which translates out into a general rule of thumb that says if the more simple explanation can also account for all the data, you should assume the more complex explanation is likely false unless and until it has been shown to be true.

I suspect most people don't appreciate that the explanation for morality that says "god put his laws into our hearts" is always going to be more complex than the "being alive necessarily implies we find morally good all actions that facilitate survival without hurting the group, and we find immoral all those actions that tend to decrease the group's ability to survive" explanation.  The more Christians credit the universe to god, the more infinitely complex the Creator must be, and for that reason the more that theory is sliced away by Occam's Razor...unless somebody can show that the god-explanation is actually true.

Occam's Razor, being a general rule of philosophical thumb, is not infallible, but it doesn't need to be, in order for it to be considered a reasonable guide for deciding which explanatory theories deserve priority at the time when the investigator lacks proof that one specific theory is actually true.  Occam's Razor performs the valuable function of giving us a reason to laugh off the "god did it" explanation and concentrate more on the naturalistic explanations.

What I am saying is that atheists can’t justify morality.

Hogwash.  There is no reason whatsoever to say a person's morality goes any deeper than their genetic predispositions and their environmental conditioning.   

Atheists routinely confuse knowing what’s right with justifying what’s right.They say it’s right to love. I agree, but why is it right to love.

Such atheists are confused, since sometimes to love another is to bring about circumstances that make life or survival more difficult, such as the faithful wife who loves her abusive husband and for that reason allows herself to be abused by him more often than she would if she hated him.

And don't forget that whether it is morally "right" to love, is completely subjective.  The most objectivity we have is to say that a mom must love her child to facilitate that child's healthy thriving, a goal all intelligent mammals naturally aspire to for those in their group. If the mother doesn't naturally love her child, there will be no convincing her by argument that she "should".  Her lack of love testifies that she is lacking the brain chemistry that gives rise to mammalian altruism.

Why are we obligated to do so? The issue isn’t how we know what’s Right, but why an authoritative standard of Rightness exists in the first place.

 That cannot be the issue unless you are just preaching the choir, as atheists, or at least myself, do not agree with you that any such authoritative standard exists.  By "authoritative" I am aware that you mean "objective", thus I disagree since no objective standard exists in the first place.

You may come to know about objective morality in many different ways: from parents, teachers, society, your conscience, etc.

That doesn't make sense, as Turek does not believe "parents, teachers, society, your conscience" are a source of objective morality, since many parents raise their kids so they grow up to be criminals, teachers can corrupt youth by sexual molestation, society prioritizes ceaseless material gain and fame, and if you are a pedophile, then your conscience would be something Turek says doesn't help you recognize objective morality.

Also Turek always trades on the fact that his audience are largely born and raised in the USA and thus adopt the same basic moral code.  So his "conscience" argument seems to make sense.  But his blind appeal to conscience would do nothing if his audience were a bunch of remorseless gangsters or child molesters whose conscience tells them to just take whatever they want from whoever they want.  Turek and his typical audience will insist such social misfits don't count in the moral analysis, but it's not very objective to arbitrarily cast aside some of the evidence.  Yes, most of us think rape and stealing are wrong.  But not all of us.  The more objective procedure would be to factor in the moral view of sociopaths and others who act contrary to social norms.  For it could very well be that we'll find there's only a social norm to speak of solely because of historical circumstance, and that if conditions in history were different, the mass of humanity would continue as they did in the ancient past, and believe that as long as raiding the other clan down the street doesn't create too much of a risk to one's own clan, prepare for war.

And you can know it while denying God exists. But that’s like saying you can know what a book says while denying there’s an author. Of course you can do that, but there would be no book to know unless there was an author! In other words, atheists can know objective morality while denying God exists, but there would be no objective morality unless God exists.

You are just preaching the choir:  atheists obviously know that morality exists (because opinions obviously exist), but what exists is simply opinion, it is not objective, that is, there is no good evidence that our sense of morality comes from something transcending humanity itself.  We refrain from adultery because we personally don't wish to commit that act, and others commit adultery because they personally desire to do this.

If material nature is all that exists, which is what most atheist’s claim, then there is no such thing as an immaterial moral law. 

 Correct.

Therefore, atheists must smuggle a moral standard into their materialistic system to get it to work, whether it’s “human flourishing,” the Golden Rule, doing what’s “best” for the most, etc.

Correct, but I object to the emotive "smuggle" word:  we are not "smuggling" any moral standard into our system that atheism cannot account for.  Rather, we've shown, many times, that the basis for human morality does not go any deeper than genetic predisposition and environmental conditioning.

By the way, Turek, why do you so blindly assume that objective morality is reflected in what "most people" allow or forbid?  Why are you always premising the immorality of rape upon the fact that "most people" think it is immoral?

Is there a bible verse that says whatever the human moral consensus happens to be, is surely the will of God?

How difficult would it be for a smart bible critic like myself to argue, from the assumption that the bible is the word of God, that the criminals in the world are doing what god wants them to do?

Turek, do you ever tell your audiences about 5-Point Calvinism, namely, that version of Protestant orthodoxy that says God wants us to, and causes us to, sin exactly the way we do?  I'm guessing no.  If you brought up such a thing, your followers would probably be shocked to know that a system of theology that makes our sins morally good by crediting them to god, could actually be "biblical".

Such standards don’t exist in a materialistic universe where creatures just “dance” to the music of their DNA.

Correct.

Atheists are caught in a dilemma. If God doesn’t exist, then everything is a matter of human opinion and objective moral rights don’t exist, including all those that atheists support.

I'm not seeing the dilemma here:  characterizing human morality as mere opinion does nothing to handicap moral relativity.  Mere opinions can and do affect and manipulate the world around us no less than physical forces like fire and wind.

If you ask why one atheist being attacked would repel the other atheist attacking him, in an atheist world where everybody's opinion about life is of ultimately equal worth, the answer is that making efforts to stay alive logically already exist in the territory.  You can no more separate efforts to stay alive from a human being, than you can take away the oxygen from H20 and still have water.

Turek will blurt out "what gives you the right to defend yourself?"

Well, the same thing that gives the attacker the "right" to attack...my personal subjective desires.  If I honestly didn't care about my life, yes, I'd probably just stand there and let him kill me.

The "right" we have to defend our lives from attackers in an atheist universe, isn't really a "right" but more correctly an instinctive reaction. For example, even if the entire world agreed that some murderous serial child raper deserved the death penalty, as an organism his heart would continue to beat, and his kidneys and liver would continue ridding his body of poisons right up to the time that they seat him in the electric chair and flip the switch. The status of being alive logically presupposes desire on the living organism's part to continue staying alive.  No fool backs away from a knife attack solely because he thinks God has given him the right to defend himself, or because he thinks God has condemned deadly attacks on civilians; we react by pure instinct.  You will say "because god created us", but intelligent design and abiogenesis are different topics.

If God does exist, then objective moral rights exist.

The bible prevents that conclusion from following necessarily.  Isaiah 13:16-17, God causes men to rape women, in which case God is causing men to violate something Turek refers to as God's "nature".  Your problems are indeed real and imposing.


The consequence would be that the reason we all "know" that rape is wrong is because God has not caused us to rape anybody yet.

But those rights clearly don’t include cutting up babies in the womb, same-sex marriage, and their other invented absolutes contrary to every major religion and natural law.

Abortion is hardly a black and white issue.  No atheist would say it is morally good to cut a baby to death in the womb after 9 months, when birth is 5 minutes away.  The trouble with the abortion issue arises from our naturalistic tendency to more favor life forms that look like us. Nobody has a problem swatting flies, but we start having problems killing deer, we have more problems with killing kittens, and we have big problems with killing the darling three year old girl asleep in her princess-bed.   That's a good explanation why most people see less wrong in having an abortion one day after the egg is fertilized, and why they see more wrong in abortions done after 9 months of pregnancy.  We cannot really relate to that which is nothing more than an egg that was fertilized 5 seconds ago, but we obviously relate to the baby that is 5 minutes away from being born.

 We would never step on baby ducks, but we always step on spiders.  Life has proven that the advanced life forms care more about the life form the more it looks like themselves, and have less concern the less it looks like themselves.  Naturally then, abortion would be contentious, since it is not easy to say at what exact point during the pregnancy that the developing egg starts looking like us.

Now, an atheist might say, “In our country, we have a constitution that the majority approved. We have no need to appeal to God.” True, you don’t have to appeal to God to write laws, but you do have to appeal to God if you want to ground them in anything other than human opinion.

That falsely assumes that grounding morality in human opinion fails to account for the evidence.  It doesn't.  Once again, rapists rape because they personally wish to, and other men refrain from raping because they don't personally wish to rape.  It also seems clear that if we didn't have a justice system, humanity would evince its barbaric nature more clearly.  If people knew that they could gain from hurting others and never be held accountable, they god-damn sure would.  Most legal authorities recognize the value of jail, often fear of jail is the only reason a person will refrain from crime.   It's hard to envision because our society is modern, democratic and civilized, but you might be surprised at the dirty secrets and opinions a person will divulge in private conversation, opinions they'd never let the rest of the world know about.  I'd say amost of the men who decry pre-marital fornication, are lying about how they truly feel, because condemning that activity will make them sound more attractive to the civilized women they wish to be with.

Otherwise, your “rights” are mere preferences that can be voted out of existence at the ballot box or at the whim of an activist judge or dictator.

And I don't see why that is supposed to be some sort of flaw in the atheist view.  The founding of America is little more than a case of the preferences of people being voted in and out of existence or by decree of dictator/judge for 200 years.  So?

Turek will probably argue from subjective feelings again, and argue that if a dictator decided to take away all of your stuff, you'd feel "wronged", and therefore, this feeling of wrong arises from a standard of morality that transcends humanity.  But there is no reason to think such a conclusion need follow.  Some people also feel wronged when deprived of things that they never owned, such as when the neighbor, after 5 years, stops allowing you to borrow her car anytime you need it.  Does that feeling of being wronged come from god?

That’s why our Declaration of Independence grounds our rights in the Creator.

That's just a case of moral assertions being set forth in a founding document of America written by imperfect theists and deists.  It isn't like the document fell from heaven!

It recognizes the fact that even if someone changes the constitution you still have certain rights because they come from God, not man-made law.

Yeah, that document "recognizes" this, but so what?  Other documents "recognize" less human rights.  So what?

However, my point isn’t about how we should put objective God-given rights into human law. My point is, without God there are no objective human rights.

Correct.  The "right" of the American citizen to life is something that imperfect humans long ago thought to put into a document as part of their effort to become free of England.  So?

There is no right to abortion or same-sex marriage.

There are no objective rights, period, so any rights we can legitimately speak of, derive from sources no deeper than what people personally feel and what their leaders enact into law. 

Of course, without God there is no right to life or natural marriage either!

You are, again, preaching to the choir.  Without god there would be no 'objective' rights, but as I've already proven, rights being 'subjective' doesn't admit they are any less instrumental to getting things done.  

In other words, no matter what side of the political aisle you’re on — no matter how passionate you believe in certain causes or rights — without God they aren’t really rights at all.

Correction, they aren't objective rights.  You are blindly assuming that rights aren't rights if they have only a subjective basis. Not true.  This is just as fallacious as saying "you aren't really a man unless you have a car".  You are just arbitrarily narrowing down the list of things that deserve to be called "man", or "rights".  You can enjoy any 'right' that society's leaders say you have the right to exercise.  The fact that such rights arise from ultimately subjective opinion does not take away the level of significance and importance such rights play in the game of life.

You may as well say I don't have a subjective favorite color, because there is no ultimate standard by which a "favorite color" can be judged, except my own personal opinion.  That's foolish, that opinion still exists, and I'm not going to pay less attention to it, or ignore it more, merely because it is, in fact, subjective. 

Human rights amount to no more than your subjective preferences.

Correct.  So what? 

So atheists can believe in and fight for rights to abortion, same-sex marriage, and taxpayer-provided entitlements, but they can’t justify them as truly being rights.

Correction, they cannot justify them as objective rights.  You fallaciously assume that if the right is not "objective", then it doesn't exist.  That's stupid, "you have the right to remain silent" doesn't have an objective basis, it was simply invented and enacted through the 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona.  But it hardly follows that such subjective right to remain silent isn't "really" a "right". It certainly exists and dramatically impacts the life of the person being arrested, whether you wish to call it an objective right or an orange riddle.  Characterizing subjective rights as "mere opinion" does not stop them from continuing to impact lives as they have been before you were born.

So I don't see the point you have in constantly trivializing rights derived from ultimately subjective origins, as "mere opinion".  It's as if you can get rid of a truth by calling it names.

In fact, to be a consistent atheist — and this is going to sound outrageous, but it’s true — you can’t believe that anyone has ever actually changed the world for the better.

Correction, under atheism, we cannot say that anyone has ever actually changed the world for the objective better.

Objectively good political or moral reform is impossible if atheism is true.

Correct.  Whether raising taxes would be morally good or bad, goes no deeper than the subjective will of the majority.  Did you have a point?

Which means you have to believe that everything Wilberforce, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King did to abolish slavery and racism wasn’t really good; it was just different.

Agreed.  In fact I'd say any reform is ultimately bad because any change in society, short of something like losing half the population, necessarily and always increases its aggregate complexity, slowly but surely moving that society toward inevitable collapse. Moral reform and indeed any reform comes at a long term negative cost, even if it makes life more fun for a few decades.  And reforms usually involve changes in the law, and only a fool denies the reality of the "slippery slope" that materializes thereby.

It means you have to believe that rescuing Jews from the ovens was not objectively better than murdering them.

Correct, it was subjectively better.

It means you have to believe that gay marriage is no better than gay bashing.

Correct, though I could give reasons based on the natural world to show what normative mammalian behavior and human behavior is, and to therefore provide an empirical basis for condemning male homosexuality as a deviation that is counterproductive to our current society.

(Since we’re all just “dancing to our DNA,” the gay basher was just born with the anti-gay gene. You can’t blame him!)

Correction:  holding gay bashers accountable for conduct their genetics caused them to engage in, might not be consonant with science, but is clearly required if we are to have social order (i.e., it just might be that the type of social order we desire to have, it not consistent with scientific truths about human beings).  While the current justice system aspires to the freewill doctrine of criminal and civil accountability, that type of justice system would need to stay in place to prevent society from collapsing even if science conclusively proved that we don't have freewill.  We still lock up insane criminals even if the judicial system finds them "not guilty".
So while we cannot hold people accountable for what they couldn't avoid doing, we'd still have to impose on their freedom to keep order.  Also, motivating criminals to obey the law doesn't require that they have freewill. That's why we have jails.  Fear of jail achieves the social good of preventing the criminal from acting contrary to law, but we also recognize that the fact that the jail changed his behavior, doesn't mean he has freewill.  He is a human being intent on making himself comfortable in life, and so he will naturally obey the law if we put him in a context where he knows his life won't be comfortable should he disobey the law.  That's just a smart insect running away from disaster, that's not freewill.

It means you have to believe that loving people is no better than raping them.

Correction, loving people is not objectively better than raping them...because there are no objective morals that transcend humanity in the first place.  Our emotions tell us different, but read Jeremiah 17:9

You may be thinking, “That’s outrageous! Racism, murder, assault, and rape are objectively wrong, and people do have a right not to be harmed!” I agree. But that’s true only if God exists. In an atheistic universe there is nothing objectively wrong with anything at any time.

No objective moral wrong?  Correct. 

There are no limits. Anything goes.

Not true, there's more to being human than just "made in the image of god'.  We are also physical mammals who instinctively seek group approval, and thus naturally disagree with any behavior that threatens the group's survival.  Guess what?  Racism, murder, assault, and rape generally threaten human survival, while avoiding these activities generally promotes thriving.  The problem-area is how to know when that which facilitates thriving should be viewed as good or bad.  Is having 5 kids good because it makes you happy, or bad because it contributes to overpopulation?

Gee, Turek, why do you suppose bears feel offended when you try to steal their food?  Were bears made in the image of god?  If not, then apparently, one does not need to be made in the image of god, in order to have a basic sense of right and wrong. You will say god created them that way, but again, intelligent design and abiogenesis are different topics.

Which means to be a consistent atheist you have to believe in the outrageous.

It's only outrageous under the objectivist view.  Psychiatrists who regularly deal with those who continually rape and kill, find the behavior unacceptable, of course, but not 'outrageous', just like those who have seen plenty of footage of lions eating gazelles find it less outrageous than the small child who first sees it and cries.  Popular sentiment probably isn't a very wise criteria for deciding what is "outrageous".  You tend to emote about a thing less when you are constantly exposed to it.

If you are mad at me for these comments, then you agree with me in a very important sense. If you don’t like the behaviors and ideas I am advocating here, you are admitting that all behaviors and ideas are not equal — that some are closer to the real objective moral truth than others.

 Already refuted this - no, all behaviors are not equal, but that's because we are mammals with intelligence, and therefore automatically find that actions which threaten survival are to be abhorred more than actions that don't. 

But what is the source of that objective truth?

Objective moral truth constitutes an incoherent concept, as "truth" is what we usually say about conclusions that can be empirically verified apart from personal opinion, while morals are value-judgments arising from our personal subjective preferences.  The concept of "moral truth" is stupid.

Only a fool says "Is it correct to kiss after the 5th date?"
Only a fool says "should 2+2=4?"

It can’t be changeable, fallible human beings like you or me. It can only be God whose unchangeable nature is the ground of all moral value.

God does not have an unchangeable nature, he sometimes regrets his own decisions:

 6 The LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.
 7 The LORD said, "I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky; for I am sorry that I have made them."    (Gen. 6:6-7 NAU)

 Sorry, Turek, but you don't just say "anthropomorphism!" and pretend the debate is over.  You must justify your inteprretation from the immediate context.  That is, if you think the text is speaking non-literally, you must provide the grammatical and contextual reasons why.  Check out Boyd for a primer.

And since the immediate context of that statement is describing what most Christian scholars take to be real literal history, the assumption that v. 6-7 are talking literally about god, is consistent with the context. When concerns of inerrancy aren't present, the literal interpretation looks like the one the author intended.

Since bible inerancy is very controversial even among those who believe some form of it, I'm not doing anything unreasonable in refusing to make sure my interpretation of the passage harmonizes with the rest of the bible.

That’s why atheists are unwittingly stealing from God whenever they claim a right to anything.

Dream on.

But how do we know that’s the Christian God?  Doesn’t he do evil in the Old Testament?

Yes, unless you are willing to contradict everything you stand for and say that whether rape is objectively immoral depends on who is doing it and why (Isaiah 13:16-17).