Why is deduction based on experimental knowledge impossible without a God?

You have never told anyone why this is not possible.

My answer for Stalin is nine posts up - you missed it.

Fuck Jesus - his innovations are that you don't need to take personal responsibility for this life, this life is a transient thing to suffer through, and there is hell is a consequence. It's all pathetic fearmongering.

"You know they are wrong because you have a God given conscience which tells you that they are. Therefore, you are living like a theist but denying it with your atheism."

Wrong, I know that things are wrong because humans and cultures have a long history of interacting with reality, and certain strategies have been more successful than others. You haven't spent one iota of your time discrediting this notion, whereas I have given you plenty of examples crediting mine and discrediting yours.

For the millionth time, I have no hopes of convincing you of anything - you'll defend your stance against literally any proof. But you seem to come here on the sift with the intent of demonstrating to others that there is some logical basis for your beliefs.

Well you're failing miserably, mainly because you are only capable of restating the following sentence as if it is an agreed upon truth:

Not only is the entire concept logically contradictory, but it doesn't match our experience, which is that some things are absolutely wrong.

I don't expect you to have any good support for that, but the audience out there just waiting to be convinced, they will need at least something.

@shinyblurry - And here's another interesting brain tickler. If everything god commands is right, and god has a track record of testing his faithful with their willingness to commit infanticide, how can you say that this lady isn't moral?

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2001-08-17/news/0108170166_1_baby-s-death-baby-s-father-documents

"... If people rob and cheat you, you don't say that they are just executing their particular survival strategy, you say that those things are wrong. You know they are wrong because you have a God given conscience which tells you that they are. "

Actually, that's exactly what I say, and average modern human morality is considerably superior to the filth that the biblical God advocates.

I am only saying that they are wrong by todays generally agreed upon moral standards. Some of these moral standards are extremely effective and have been around since very early human communities, so they only have the illusion of being absolute due to high adherence rate.

Murder, theft, oppression and incest are three fairly obvious examples. The evolutionarily advantageous trait of society building tends to list it's effectiveness when such things are widespread. But we have a very long human tradition of sanctioning and celebrating murder and theft as long as it occurs well outside our cohort. Killing other tribes is celebrated in the bible, as is stealing their possessions. Ethically justified slavery took another 4000 years to mostly get rid of, and hell, it was common practice to fuck your fifteen year old cousin all the way up to about the late 1800s here in the good old US of A as long as it was under the marital auspices of the church, of course.

Yep, but thank God that his just definition of morality - if we didn't have god's guidance through scripture, we'd probably do crazy shit!

Do you see that these are absolute statements? On what grounds do you say there is no absolute morality? Saying there are no rules is a rule; this statement contradicts itself

Using the word 'absolute' is a concession to brevity, but nice try - seriously dude, this is laughable and it wouldn't even stand up in Jr. High debate - absolutes do exist, they just need to be well justified, and yes if you want to be nitpicky about it there is an ever so remote chance that 1+1 is not equal to two in some distant corner of the universe. But as humans with an admittedly limited scope of understanding, we have to accept that level of certainty. If you want to relegate your theory to claiming its space somewhere in the possibility that we might be wrong about the whole 2+2=4 thing, go right on ahead.

There, that's what I meant by absolute. happy?

When God issued the command to wipe out Canaan, it would have been immoral for the Israelites to disobey Him.

Well then thanks for the offer, but I think I'll pass in the whole god based morality thing. I prefer to have a really good reason to never slaughter innocent kids. But thanks for finally answering my question: there has been a good reason to butcher a toddler after all! Praise The Lord, for he is good!

Just saw your post on my account from a few days ago...

I agree with you wholeheartedly but I can only hope you chillax a bit, if only for your own good. Religion in one form or another is here to stay, and all you can really do is take solace in the fact that there is a statistical probability that your niece and nefew will start thinking for themselves at some time around their second year of University.

*beg

*beg

That's cute. Maybe I'm not being direct enough.

There is no absolute morality. It is an illusion created by people who can't wrap their minds around the certainty of life. Each generation comes up with their best idea of what morality is, and there are literally no rules on what we can and cant try.

However some will be more successful than others.

This is reality, and just because reality is messier than the simplifying idiocy of "god did it, and I'm not allowed to ask questions" doesn't invalidate it in any way.

Why?

Because it is reality.

@shinyblurry

I know that an opnipotent God can be as capricious and vile as he wants to be, but I'm asking about his function as a source of morality. In the case of the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah and so on, God was the one doing the killing. And that's fine, because again, he's allowed to kill people whenever he wants to. I'll give you that.

I'm confused as to how God can be a good source of morality when he COMMANDS his human subjects to do immoral deeds like slaughtering toddlers.

You haven two options. Either god an command you to do an immoral deed, or that deed is no longer immoral if God commands you to do it.

Take your choice.

@shinyblurry

I'm not claiming any moral high ground here. I'm just asking you to convince me that YOUR claim that the god of the Old Testament is a solid foundation for morality is correct.

So convince me.

How is Jehovah's inability to take a consistent stance on whether or not it is ok to butcher toddlers consistent with YOUR claim that God is a solid foundation for morality?

Now stop being a coward and give it your best shot.

@shinyblurry - avoiding the question won't make it go away. I've answered all of yours and there seems to be an interesting reluctance on your part to answer any of mine...

I would argue that one of the most powerful evolutionary advantages we have as a human species is human potential. By human potential, I mean traits like creativity, motivation, artistic talent, critical thinking, communicative ability, etc. It is a weird and nebulous thing, but we do know that it is not unique to any particular group of humans. It is not unique to men, nor is it unique to aryans, and it is not even unique to particular families.

I think that a decent argument can be made that creating a hospitable and reasonably equitable environment for all of these groups will maximize the percentage of humans who excel at these useful traits, creating a better world for everyone to live in.

So if your system oppresses any significant segment of the population, then there is a good chance that you will be less successful. I think that the Jewish brain drain from Nazi Germany is actually a very good example of this principle in action.

I should note that this is an evolutionary principle that is well established within certain groups. It is a massive evolutionary advantage to look out for people within your own group (tribe), which incidentally is why we have a long history of it being totally ok to kill other people's toddlers but not your own (see the Old Testament for examples). I think that now in these modern times we are realizing the benefits of extending that same principle of tribalism equity to the whole human community.

But yea, it's ultimately just a survival strategy. I have never claimed that my view of human morality has any absolute standard or guarantee of success. I can only be thankful that the society I live in has won out over the other ones.

Mind you, I still think it needs improvement - and leaving my little stamp on it is going to be a hell of a journey by the time it's over.

So why did God seem to think it was OK to murder toddlers and enslave people under certain circumstances? I thought that his absolute gold standard of morality was the only thing that was keeping us from devolving into such chaos.

@shinyblurry - I'm still curious as to how you'll answer this:

"Do you believe that there has ever been a case where slavery has been justified, and do you believe that there has ever been a good reason for anyone to butcher a toddler with a sword?"

Wrong, my question is in no way off topic and implying otherwise may be easier for you, but it won't do much to convince anyone. We are discussing the incoherence of atheism relative to the superior coherence of Christianity as it pertains to systems of morality. Therefore any question regarding the efficacy of a Judeo-Christian theistic moral compass is entirely relevant.

So my question remains, but I'll answer yours because it too is relevant:

I wouldn't say anything, I don't think that it would be particularly effective. We all have our own idea of what morality is, and Stalin's is a very complex result of innumerable factors like upbringing, disposition and circumstance, and it would be a bit self important of me to think that I could argue that out of him. He lived, acted, died and left his mark on history. The paremeters set forth by the physical world and the collective actions of everyone else who has lived either as a contemporary or since has judged which of those actions have value and will live on. It's a messy process, certainly, but it's just how things work.

Thankfully, we seem to be heading in a direction that diverges considerably from that Stalin would espouse. I think that a certain evolutionary tendency towards beneficial collectivism is responsible for that.

Mind you that I'm not arguing for a one world government here, but rather I think that a sense of connection and personal responsibility for the wellbeing of everything else on this planet, ecosystem and all, will bode well for how I and my descendants experience this thing we call life.

It's only one of many competing survival strategies, and nothing more.

I'm still waiting for you to answer my question

So what of it @shinyblurry? What does god's perfect, unchanging, gold standard of a moral law have to say about slaughtering toddlers?

Is it written on our hearts that it always is a bad thing, or are there certain allowances made for when those evil little tykes become some sort of threat to God's sovereignty over a patch of Mediterranean coastal real estate?