Everyone here has missed the whole point of the moral argument. The moral argument does not state that atheists cannot be moral. The moral argument does not state that atheists cannot make moral judgments or act morally. It does not say that at all.
The moral argument simply states that we all hold that actions such as those of Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook School are really evil and morally reprehensible. All of us when we heard of the shooting of the little ones recoiled in horror and revulsion.
No one that I know of flippantly dismissed his actions as being the manifestations of his socio-biologically evolved genes. Not one atheist or naturalistic scientist dared to say that what he did was simply socially disadvantageous.
On these forums, many naturalists tend to divorce their views from reality. It is as if they live in a lofty Ivory Palace separated from the reality of human misery, and pain and simply dismiss moral intuition as nothing more than a series of chemical reactions in the brain fostered by evolution. But when massacres occur and evil that men are capable of rears its ugly head, the scientists and atheists are conspicuously silent.....
Why is that? Why are they not on television defending Adam Lanza? If Adama Lanza is simply dancing to his DNA as Dawkins would put it, and if nothing is really "good" or "bad", but only socially or culturally advantageous or disadvantageous to survival and reproduction, why can we not simply say that Adam Lanza was simply acting in accordance with what he thought was socially advantageous for him? What if Adam Lanza in his mind, was convinced that it was socially advantageous for his immediate family that he do what he did? In his mind he very well may have thought that to eliminate as many of the weak and defenseless in his immediate surroundings would be advantageouss to his clan, no different than the way many wild animals that unquestionably kill members of their species behave. Male lions sometimes slaughter all the cubs when they join a new pride; rival ant colonies of the same species fight bloody wars; chimpanzees have been shown to kill each other at similar per capita rates to humans.
Since on naturalism we are of no more intrinsic worth or value than an ant, and since sharks eat other sharks and since crows hesitate not to ravish a Robin's nest, and since great white males forcefully copulate with female sharks and since Lions kill Gazelles without flinching, why say that Adam Lanza's actions were really wrong and evil? On naturlism you cannot say that they were.
In order to stay true to one's atheistic naturalistic schema, one must confess that what Adam Lanza, or Adolph Hitler, or Jeffrey Dahmer, or any other repugnant character did in history, they did because they were acting in accordance with their predetermined genetic makeup fostered by the theoretical natural process of evolution by natrual selection. Since this genetic composition was predetermined, this prohibits any type of culpability for their actions and also prohibits any type of moral judgment being made against them. They were ultimately no different than the Some insects who eat their partner after mating, such as the Preying Mantis and the Black Widow Spider. No different than animals, such as lions, who have been known to kill offspring from the same species if it is not their own progeny. Or like the tiger shark who will eat its siblings before being born, and many monkeys, while the same species, will kill other monkeys from rival troupes.
In all of the above, we would not maintain that monkeys or lions or spiders had committed "murder", nor would we say they had committed an "atrocity" or a "moral evil". We do not hold criminal trials for sharks when they forcefully copulate with another shark, because we dont consider that to be "rape".
The whole moral argument boils down to this:
Naturalists and atheists cannot on one hand say that we are merely homosapian cousins of our primate relatives, and on the other, maintain that they have a naturalistic basis for making moral judgments. Nor can they say that we humans are simply more evolved than primates, for as Davian pointed out, the theory of evolution by natural selection makes no distinction of "more evolved", or "less evolved". Animals do not make moral judgments nor do we make moral judgments against them. In order for the naturalist to make moral judgmments, he must borrow from the theistic worldview which maintains that every person was created equal and that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness - The Declaration of Independence
So you see, whenever someone here like Skavau makes a moral judgment like, "God is contemptible", he is borrowing from the very theistic worldview he is trying to repudiate, and is found in a self-defeating position.
It is the low view of humanity fostered by the godless in societies who want us to believe we are nothing but elaborate star-dust particles organized by chance according to an unguided, blind naturalistic theoretical process which cultivates attitudes and ideas which manifest themselves in reprehensible acts that are becoming all too common place in our day and age.
The irony is that the naturalist sees himself as a champion of human liberty and self-fulfillment. This amounts to the blind leading the blind.....Will they not both fall into a ditch?
