1st post here at your interesting forums.
I came over looking for some practice in rhetoric, in particular the application of logic.
I'm obviously not debating David, but offering some further refutation of his logical reasoning .
Whilst David's deductive argument appears valid, I challenge the soundness of his premises. All of them.
Starting with "1. Every law has a Law-Giver". Without wanting to start a semantic argument, it is nonetheless fundamental to the entire debate, what is meant by the term "Law" and "Law-Giver".
If in this context 'Law' means legislated and/or enforced rules for the conduct of a society, then indeed I agree with Premise #1.
If however, David means observable consistent behaviours or results within a system (like the universe, or a planet) or society (group of animals or humans) then I'm afraid I'll need to know what he means by 'Law-Giver'.
If by 'Law-Giver' David means a person or personal God in reference to my second definition of 'Law', then I ask him to provide any empirical evidence to support his premise that a person or personal God is responsible for the 'laws' of gravity, relativity, natural selection or even the 'law' which explains how human life is created.
As David appears to have some philosophical vocabulary, he will hopefully understand what I mean when I say this premise appears to be a fallacy of equivocation.
Moving onto the even more flawed second premise. "There is a Moral Law". Leaving aside another definition argument, this one is a petitio principii (or begging the question) fallacy, no question.
The debate question was stated as "There ARE absolute moral laws......."
To simply use as a deductive premise in response "There is a moral law" is to make a totally unsound argument in logic.
No further argument against David's deductive logic argument is necessary.
However, (in a spirit of education I will continue), David's remaining posts were attempts to prove his premise #2 true entirely via his personal theological beliefs (e.g."we all have this prescription written on the fibre of our Being..."), thereby committing the fallacies of i) mind-projection (when one considers the way one sees the world as the way the world really is) and ii) moralism (inferring factual conclusions from purely evaluative premises in violation of fact-value distinction).
He also erroneously attributes observed behaviour and mental states in some societal groups to the entire human species (e.g. "even serial killers know that murder is wrong"), thereby committing the fallacy of composition (assuming that something true of the part is true of the whole). By the way, according to the latest scientific evidence, serial killers suffering Antisocial Personality Disorder do not know that murder is morally wrong.
Hope my contribution has been useful to something.
Cheers
Gladius
