If it's ok, I'm going to jump in on a couple points you made in your reply to Skavau.
TMr. Skavau, in light of the above statement, would you mind telling us what you believe objective morals find their basis in?
It's not up to him to determine where objective morals come from.... you made the argument that they come from God, so it's up to you to demonstrate your claim.
These are very good questions, if you hold to the theistic worldview. If you do not, then these questions would be irrelevant to you and therefore cannot be used as an argument against an entity which you categorically deny as existing.
It's not irrelevant by any means. If you can answer those questions and demonstrate your answers are correct... that would shift the worldview of any Atheist that reads it. If you can demonstrate that objective morality exists, and God has a hand in it.... then obviously God exists.
Answering this question is far from irrelevant... in fact it's a game changer in both science and philosophy. The proven existence of God could very well be the most important fact discovered in human history, if true.
For any argument to be sound, there are certain qualifications that it must meet. One of these qualifications is that the premises must be shown to be true. The premises have to have some degree of justification or warrant for us to accept them as corresponding to reality. But how much warrant? The premises surely dont need to be known to be true with certainty (we know almost nothing to be true with certainty!). Perhaps we should say that for an argument to be a good one the premises need to be probably true in light of the evidence. Another way of putting this is that a good argument is a sound argument in which the premises are more plausible in light of the evidence than their opposites. You should compare the premise and its negation and believe whichever one is more plausibly true in light of the evidence. A good argument will be a sound argument whose premises are more plausible than their negations. Now in order for you to show that premise one is simply "assumed" as you put it and is not plausible, the burden falls to you to provide evidence to the contrary and must be sufficient enough to warrant a relinquishing of said premise.
Yes and No.
I agree that many things we can't be 100% certain about, however for us to accept them as fact we must have overwhelming evidence in support of that idea.
The problem is, the premises on which you base your argument are not plausible, and in fact have no demonstrable evidence to back them at all. That therefore makes them very unlikely to be true.
The burden does not fall on us to provide evidence in contrary to your premise, when you have taken no steps to justify your own argument. If you put forward an argument with no evidence to back it, by definition is is simply an assumed assertion.
In the words of Christopher Hitchens... That can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.
And that's exactly what we're doing.
Theists argue objective morality proceeds from the nature of the creator, designer, architect, mind that is the cause of existence as we know it. Once again I shall reiterate, I am not arguing for the Judeo-Christian worldview at this point. I am arguing from the theisitc view, under which are many more specific beliefs.
And what is your justification for holding those beliefs?
As a theist, I would say both apply. As an atheist, your position does not allow for there to exist such an idea as right or wrong. But I will ask you this: is genocide wrong? It is a simple question.
This is simply incorrect... Atheists have as much of a sense of right and wrong as Theists do. We just don't attribute it to the same thing you do.
As for Genocide... Yes, I believe Genocide is wrong under all possible circumstances. And again, that's not because of a mystical universal law.
On that note, if morality is objective, and genocide therefore is universally immoral.... The Christian God is demonstrably immoral, as he directly orders multiple genocides in the bible.
Examples of this are: The extermination of the tribe of Benjamin, the conquest of Canaan, The Passover story (all firstborns in Egypt were slaughtered) and Noah's Flood... which if true is the worst genocide in human history by a landslide.
If genocide is objectively wrong, then your God is demonstrably the most immoral being in history.
If you come back with the "God's plan" argument, or that God works in mysterious ways.... then the genocides he committed were not wrong, and therefore can not be called objectively immoral.
It needs to be asked because it is fundamental to our discussion. I will show you why:
Lets say you are out in your neighborhood walking your dog, maybe a little dog like a puppy for instance. A young teenager comes up from behind you and hits you in the head with a baseball bat. He then takes your dog and runs away. As he runs off you can see enough of him to give a description to the police. Several days later, he is apprehended and eventually you go to his trial. After the prosecution makes its case which is airtight and solid, the judge pronounces his judgment. "Not guilty". Immediately you are indignant! Through the bandage which is wrapped around your head from the trauma sustained in the assault you yell: "But judge look what he did to me! Look! And I still don't have my dog!" The judge calmy replies: "That young man who you say assaulted you is my son and I simply don't believe he would do something like that. I know him too well. Case dismissed!"
What would your reaction to this be?
I'd say it was a biased judge who failed to look at the evidence. I'd be filing a complaint and appealing.... how is this really relevant though?
