If you did, I would address the evidence you provided. At the moment you've provided nothing whatsoever to support your claim, so it's worthless. As for it being worth your time and energy, that's up to you. If you're happy to make a claim that everyone ignores because you refuse to support it, that's up to you.
The claim I'm making isn't even controversial. Materialists scientists have no qualms about acknowledging the apparent design of the universe, and they see it as no threat to their theories, so when I made the claim I just didn't expect this kind of "Nuh-uh, says you," kind of response. There's no point in trying to debate with people who dispute that which isn't even in dispute.
There is an almost universal consensus among scientists that evolutionary theory, which includes mechanisms, is correct. There is consensus on the mechanisms, and it is a scientific consensus, not a philosophical one.
This blog post documents a little sample of what's going on in the evolutionary wars. Unfortunately, a number of the links are broken, but enough of them aren't to get the point. So much for a consensus. The only thing they agree on is that evolution must be true. This much is admitted by atheistic materialist Richard Lewontin who writes,
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
Note the phrase "counter-intuitive." Material explanations, he says, are counter-intuitive. What would be the intuitive explanation? Design. That's one example of an admission by a materialist atheist of
apparent design.
That is not at issue. What you have provided no support for are the claims that this conscience is "God-given" due to our being created "in the image of God".
Correct, this is the Christian claim--this is the explanation of conscience from my worldview. This isn't something that I can support from some kind of "neutral source." (Hint: there's no such thing as a neutral source or a neutral interpretation of evidence.) It's a basic first principle within my worldview. But the fact of the universal existence of conscience (which, I'm assuming, isn't in dispute between us)
is evidence for God. Granted, the materialist will interpret this evidence in some contrary manner, but it's evidence, nonetheless. One of the problems with you people is that you don't understand the nature of evidence and interpretation. You seem to presume that materialist interpretations are inherently neutral or unbiased and Christian interpretations are inherently biased. From there, you try not to even allow us to call observable reality "evidence" for our position at all. What a blatant example of poor reasoning.
The question is how is it problematic. You seem to think it is, yet you don't say or demonstrate how or in what way.
The point you responded to was an explanation of the problem (i.e., the internal contradiction) within your worldview. If man is not inherently bound by any particular moral principles, then moral outrage makes no sense. If justice, honesty, etc., are not transcendent principles, but rather, they're just mutually agreed upon social conveniences, then no one has any inherent obligation to abide by them. Sure, the majority can overrule the minority and remove the person from society if he doesn't abide, but this would just be a dispassionate act of convenience, not "justice," if morality isn't transcendent. And moral indignation would be a nonsensical response.
Let me phrase it another way that you might understand better. If moral relativism is true, and morals are just mutually agreed upon principles within societies, then there would be no basis by which to judge another society. Nazi fascism would be "right" for the Nazis, oppression of women would be "right" for societies under the Taliban, etc.
But if you dispute this, please don't come back with another "Says you" kind of response. Show
why it's wrong.
This has nothing to do with what was being addressed, which was your unsupported claims regarding the Enlightenment, modernism and post-modernism.
You'll have to learn to be more specific about what you dispute or there's nothing to respond to. This blanket accusation of "unsupported assertion" isn't working for me.
Yes, this is your claim for which - again - you have provided absolutely no support.
Good, because I don't take your word for it, and your claim that others have made the point 'very clear' is, yet again, completely unsupported by you.
In my opinion, Douglas Wilson has made the point about as clear, I think, as it can be made. He demonstrates how atheists can't even formulate arguments without borrowing assumptions from a Christian worldview--how their assumptions are inconsistent with the worldview they espouse.
Unfortunately, you'll have to buy his book "Letter from a Christian Citizen" for his response to Sam Harris's book. It was published in installments on his blog, originally, but now that it's published, apparently it isn't available there anymore.
His responses to Dawkins' and Hitchens' books are still available, though.
The Odd Delusion
"God is Not Great"
To read these chronologically, you need to start from the bottom up. The Hitchens one also includes links to his written debate with Hitchens. It's astounding (and frustrating) to see Hitchens repeatedly just ignoring the point over and over again in the debate either because he knows he can't respond to it or because he's really that philosophically dense.
