Questions Answered- Jacob Abdo asks "Hasn't Evolution been proven wrong?"

This "Questions Asked" is in response to a Jacob Abdo from Twitter. During our short conversation he made several criticisms of evolution and science which were clearly borne from ignorance of the topic in question i.e.-





This is the first of his revealing messages. That he thinks that men came from monkeys.


We didn't

Ok, well MOST of us didn't....

But then again neither did Monkeys!  We both have a common ancestor.  Huge difference.

Here's another;

This is just nonsense and the kind of thing that drives me crazy. If you are going to criticize something, then PLEASE have the courtesy and intellectual honesty to read up on the topic instead of just trying to find arguments against it.  There is nothing wrong with trying to falsify something. That is the highest form of science. But to start with a proposition (that evolution is wrong on divine grounds) and then seek things to confirm it is intellectually dishonest because you are not seeking truth, you are merely bolstering your argument with no concern for reality. You simply can't debunk something that you don't understand.

In this tweet he is seen conflating evolution with abiogenesis. Evolution explains the diversity of life, not it's origins. Although abiogenesis has demonstrated that life from non-life is possible and has a number of different hypothesis on the topic, there is no single accepted one. Not that it matters, as all that you need to do is demonstrate that it is possible.

In any case, I digress.  I am just making my first point which I hope that he will take to heart. Do not criticize science that you don't understand.  You lack the foundational knowledge to do so, and only come off looking like you have an agenda ... which is true. His agenda is to keep faith in his god and deny all science that seems to disagree.

(A point on this is that science doesn't care about god. It makes no comment on it at all.)

These are the tweets of contention.

I will first say that no one worships Darwin (or if they do, they are ridiculous) and further no one says that everything he said was right.

There were definitely points upon which he was wrong. He had no idea how the traits were passed on to the offspring. It has only been in the modern era that we have discovered DNA and understood more fully the passage of the allele. No one disputes that. So to say that Darwin has been proven wrong is partially (although only in the detail not the idea) correct.

Evolution, however, is still unfalsified.

That is because it is correct. It is accepted universally by natural scientists all over the world and on the basis of mountains of evidence.

I said this to him and he responded with a link to his source of information.

I hate answering to whole pages of information as answers to questions, but this is a reasonably civil and polite person and just seems to be working on a wealth of misinformation on the topic.  So, just this once ... I will answer to the best of my ability.

I am not going to post the whole narrative of the page, but I will address some of the clear and willful misrepresentations of the science by the author of this page.

Before I begin, I hold no animosity towards Jacob.  The author of this page though is a disgusting representative of his religion and of science. I say this because as I read his article I see common arguments and unscientific propaganda.  These are easily researched falsehoods. He has made zero effort to ensure that what he is saying is true.

ZERO!

That is disgusting in a forum of supposed scientific conversation and such people deserve no respect. They are manipulating the informational authority that real scientists have in order to bolster support for his ideas.  They are using scientific terminology in order to garner respect and support from the scientifically illiterate.

Disgusting.

In any case ... on to the post.

I will address three main points:

First, that there is no fossil evidence to show slow and gradual change in species as they speciate;

Second, that the Cambrian Explosion is a major problem to the theory; and

Third, (and I can't believe that people still have to address this) irreducible complexity and Michael Behe.


Ok, here we go ...



 
"There is no fossil evidence to show gradual change in species to demonstrate speciation"


The first thing to understand here is that fossilization is an extremely rare event.  It is to be expected that we won't have a complete fossil record of every species at every stage of it's evolution from the beginning of time. That is an unreasonable thing to demand. What I am assuming is that this question is referring to  "transitional forms". The problem with looking for transitional forms is in definitions.

I call this the "Issue of ignorance" or the "Kirk Cameron Crocoduck Connundrum"

Very often what the under-educated (on the topic of evolution) are looking to see are animals that have half-formed parts.

Fish with legs, or birds with scales or things like our crocoduck friend here ...

I'm working on a powerful tail for swimming until next June, then WATCH OUT!

These amalgams of species simply don't exist, nor would we expect them to. In fact, if we ever discovered something like this, the theory of evolution would come into serious doubt.

Evolution happens in much much smaller stages, and the forms that scientists see as "transitional" are merely species in a time where we can most clearly see the step from one function to another. 
Put another way, a transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a life form that exhibits traits common to both the ancestral group and it's derived descendant group.

The page he linked quotes Darwin as a method of falsifying his own theory;

"The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed on the earth, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graded organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory."

The issue with using this quote is that they have no follow up.  Darwin explains (as they say in the article) that this is due to the imperfect fossil record and the rareness of the fossilization event. What they FAIL to mention is that not only does the fossil record begin to fill the gaps as the science matures, but transitional forms ARE found. 

The discovery of Archeopteryx was of particular importance (found in 1861, just two years after the aforementioned quote) because it seemed to confirm his theory. Archaeopteryx is a classic transitional form between birds and dinosaurs. Since then MANY transitional forms have been discovered and any question about the evidence in reference to "transitional forms" is made either out of an ignorant view of what transitional forms are and how evolution manifests, or out of an intellectually dishonest attempt to garner support from the scientifically illiterate/gullible.

The thing to note about these transitional fossils is that they always appear in order of sequence in the fossil record. If one ever appeared out of sequence, then that would be a major blow to the discipline but they never do.  

Not once.

This is what we would expect to see if evolution manifested as scientists say it is. If it were not happening like this, gradual change from one species to another (speciation) then we would expect to find overlap. That never happens. 

Without going into too much depth here I am pretty sure that we can lay that criticism to bed. 

On to the next point ...





"The Cambrian Explosion is a problem for the Theory of Evolution"



It is a sad state when arguments such as this still exist.  The last argument was born from a simple and easy misunderstanding of the science. This one is borne from a willful neglect to study it.

Science is wrong if I don't hear it!

Punctuated Equilibrium has explained the existence of the Cambrian Explosion and it's place in the story of evolution for almost 40 years now.

Wait ... I am getting ahead of myself. First let's explain and define our terms.

The Cambrian Explosion is a time about 570 million years ago when the vast majority of modern animal phyla appeared. (Phyla are "forms" or "body plans".)  

There is a common criticism that the appearance of so many new Phyla (not just new species) during such a short period of time is contrary to what the theory of evolution would predict. The second part of that criticism is that there seems to be no evolutionary history for these new phyla. They even go so far as to quote Richard Dawkins;

"it is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history"-R Dawkins

"Please don't buy and read his book for context"    
 Signed-Creationists

 These claims are simply untrue. 

The most rudimentary research into the Cambrian Explosion reveals this so, once again, Mark Hartwig seems to be caught in what would appear to be a barefaced misrepresentation of the science.

So in reference to the point that there is no evolutionary history to these Cambrian fossils, this is partially true. There have been very few Pre-cambrian fossils but this is explained by two factors.

One:  Fossilization is, as we mentioned previously, a very rare event.

Two:  Pre-Cambrian species were invertebrates which would leave very little in the way of fossil record.

The mitigating truth here is that there are NO Pre-Cambrian transitional forms. There are a number of transitional forms found from the pre-Cambrian period and more are being discovered all the time.



Anomalocaris is one. It is the precursor to the arthropod family.

I don't think that there is any need to go further into something that has been known since the 1940's.

Time to catch up on your reading Mr. Hartwig.

Here is a link to a very short article on the Pre-Cambrian fossil record.



Now we get to the last, and most ridiculous of arguments ...





Irreducible Complexity

And gravity works with invisible strings tying everything down ...

This one is a problem of definitions and has been debunked time and time again. It is an argument that was first proposed by Micheal Behe, and was debunked about 3 minutes later.  It is actually a bit of a silly posit.

It is based on a false premise. Behe states that evolution is simply impossible because there are forms that could not have evolved because they are irreducibly complex. By which he means, the removal of any single part makes that form non-functional.

His basic misunderstanding of the science is explained here, but I will explain in shorter terms. \


Behe's posit is based on the false thinking that scientists claim evolution works by a gradual and step-wise addition of parts. It is culminated in the thought that any gradual evolutionary precursors to an irreducibly complex system would be non-functional.

There is one fatal flaw in his argument.

He thinks that evolution only works by adding "parts".  It can also work by subtracting or changing parts.

This completely debunks his claim that there are irreducibly complex forms.

Forms do NOT have to have the same function as they evolve and evolutionary precursors do not have to have common functions with current ones.

As organisms evolve, functions can change with the addition (or subtraction) of new parts. This changing function is where Behe falls flat. He feels that if the function wouldn't remain with the subtraction of a part, then the organism is irreducibly complex. (Not to mention that evolution manifests as small and gradual changes, and the addition of a whole part would be a large change. Invalidating his argument again.)

I'll give you an example of how evolution can work in ways that Behe would decree impossible (there are better examples in the link I provided, but I will use this one for simplicity).

This has been called the Mullerian Two Step and it goes like this:
1. Add a part
2. Make it necessary

First take a stone bridge. We'll call it the "Evolutionary Precursor Bridge";

Next, we'll add a stone and call it our "Transitional Bridge";

Then we'll take away the middle stone and call it the "Irreducibly Complex Bridge";

But is it really irreducibly complex?

Clearly not. The middle stone just became superfluous, so it was evolved out of the equation giving our bridge the appearance of irreducibly complexity.


So Jacob, there is your answer to the link of information that you sent.

If you actually read my article as you expected me to read yours (well, not REALLY yours as you didn't write it) then you will understand that your claims about evolution are false.

BUT don't be sad.  The truth of evolution has no bearing on your God or your religious belief. Evolution is an area of knowledge that makes no comment on God at all and has nothing to do with atheism.

So, Jacob, continue to believe if you want but try not to be ignorant of science in the process.

It only takes away from the validity of anything you say when you do and it makes you look like this guy

Peace!

P.S. Next time you tweet a response, please don't send links. Otherwise I will just start sending encyclopedias in response. Use your own 140 words please.

*thanks to Talkorigins.org for the example graphics.

UPDATE-
I got a response from Jacob this morning. It saddened me because it looked like he might actually interested in learning the science behind evolution. Sadly this is not true. While he promised to read it, and I felt that I had laid things out in terms that were easy to understand, this was his response.

Learning is hard!

This is sad.  I had actually taken the time to address the article he linked (and I really DO hate "link warriors") but I had hoped for more. His blog is all about technology so I guess that swayed me to think that he might be open to actual science.

OH! I can't forget to include this one.

It's just a theory, just like gravity, and umm, math...

"Only a Theory".... ugh....

If only he had sent THAT little willfully and nonsensically blind statement first, I might not have wasted my time...


peace.

Questions Asked- Jon Asks "What would morality look like without religion?"

What?  My gun helps me think...

A hypothetical question-"In a world where the existance of God was never even considered, would the non-thiest's have developed a moral code and what do you imagine it would look like? Again, hypothetically"

-Jon B.

This was a question posed to me by my oldest and dearest friend. 

A great question, although he still hasn't revealed the reason for asking it, and one that I will take pains to answer as honestly and as fully as possible.

In order to answer this question fully, I will need to do it in two parts.

Firstly I will need to answer about my thoughts on morality with no concept of a god (regardless of religion), and second I will need to answer as to my opinions on morality formed without the existence of the Christian God concept because that is the framework in which most people in our culture operate. (and Jon is a Christian, so it may speak more to his actual question)

In the interest of clarity it needs to be said that it can hardly be argued that morality is objective.  Morality by it's very nature MUST be subjective, or it ceases to be moral and exists solely as obedience.  In any master/slave relationship, it is not morality that is valued but obedience.  The slave has no ability to choose what to do, but must acquiesce only to the desires and values of the master. Morality doesn't work that way. Morality is considered, morality is judged, morality is an attempt to lessen the hard that we do to one another in order to live together in a society.  All societal animals have it on one level or another, and we are no different.

That being said, there are many things that are so important to our collective morality that they can SEEM objective. 

Murder

Rape

Theft

Lying

The list could grow to an impressive degree if given much thought, but then we could deconstruct this list by adding circumstance to them as well.  Is murder wrong when it is to purge a country from a despot?  Is theft wrong when it is to feed your family?  Is lying wrong when it is to save yourself or others from harm?

THIS is why morality is subjective, there are no rules for how to decide these questions.  We have to use our rationality, our humanity, our own values and our own experiences in order to find solutions.

And they may not always be solutions with which everyone agrees

ummmm, it's to feed my family?

I make this point because the concept of a god driven morality has ALWAYS been tempered by our subjective interpretation of it.  Even in very fundemental societies.  This is why there are disagreements on what is right and wrong.

Even god driven morality has changed over the centuries. 

Why?  Has the bible changed? 

No, it's message has stayed constant. 

LOVE ME!!!

It is only our interpretation of it that changes.  We change how we see biblical morality in order to suit the current societal climate.

Slavery was once ok, and supported by both the church and the Bible but then when the cultural climate changed to one that was more concerned with human rights,  the church was at the tip of the sword fighting for the very rights that they had explicitly denied people for centuries. 

Does this make sense? 

How about when we consider that we know the Bible was written by men?  Does that change the focus of the discussion?  Does that make religious texts merely a carrier for the morality of men at the time? 

Clearly

But I digress.

The question, irrespective of whether or not religious tomes were written by men, is how would society be different if not for the moral medium of religion.

My belief is that religion has held back morality more often than it promoted it.  Morality has grown with our (and every) culture and usually right there fighting against the flow of change is religion.

One current example of this is the concept of same sex marriage.  It has zero effect on the people who fight against it, and it is only done for the purpose of controlling societal norms and making them adhere to their religious norms with no concern for the people it affects.  If it has no effect on the religious, why do they care?

Because it goes against the rules outlayed in their book.

Mind you so does;

Jesus Tattoo Art (Leviticus 19:28);
Polyster Leisure suits (Leviticus 19:19);
Divorcing abusive spouses (Mark 10:8-9);
Fortune Cookies (Leviticus 19:31);
Football (Leviticus 11:8);
Bowl haircuts (Leviticus 19:27); and
Letting Lance Armstrong into your Church (Deuteronomy 23:1);
Wearing Expensive jewelery (Timothy 2:9);
Eating Yummy Shrimp (Leviticus 11:10);
Your wife defending you by punching your attacker in the junk (Deuteronomy 25:11-12); AND
Pulling out or even masturbating (Genesis 38:9-10).

You could have told me that before.....

Do we care about those particular moral guidelines any longer?  Obviously not.  Society outgrew them and the church in response merely stopped espousing them as religious laws.
The point is that morality changes, and the bible is not the driving force for that change.  Society is.
We leave behind the morals which we deem to be nonsense or no longer applicable according to our current experience and societal needs.  The church usually mirrors that change (after lagging behind for a while in many cases) in order to stay "in touch" and then often even goes so far as to present itself to be the champion of those moralities.

Slavery was a fantastic example of this. 

The bible itself is rife with rules for slavery, selling your children (mostly daughters) into slavery and rules governing their treatment, and even marrying your daughters off to their rapists (slavery in my mind).

Hmmm, I DO like rape, but people frown on that. Wait, I'll just BUY her.  GENIUS!

So after hundreds of years promoting the "right" of slavery, the church realized that value had outlived it's usefulness.

The evolution of morality.


Now.  I recognize that I still haven't answered the question.

How would morality have been developed without religion to guide it?

It would have developed organically, just like it does now.

But without having harmful mandated objective rules given by dogmatically accepted books stifling it.

In short, I think that the world would be far ahead of where it is today and likely with a bit fewer deaths involved.

Without religion would we care about same sex marriage as an issue to fight?
Would we have the stifling sexual guilt and slut shame that is so prevalent?
Would we have genital mutilation (both male and female)?
Would we have millions of people dying of AIDS because of misinformation about birth control?
Would we see obedience as a virtue and skepticism as a flaw?

There are many things that religion has done for us with morality, but everything that was good could have been (and was) achieved by non theist means and the rest has held us back.

So my two part answer is this;

Without ANY religion, morality would have evolved organically (just as it did in non-theistic societies all over the world)
and without the Christian religion trying to mold us into a version of the iron age sheep herders who wrote it, that evolution would have most certainly been at a very accelerated pace.

Are you SURE that I can't eat this?

Questions Asked- Chris Echols

This edition of "Questions Asked" was brought about by a conversation on my twitter account and a rare tweep who genuinely wants answers to some questions.  We come from opposite ends of the theism scale but this Tweep is genuinely looking for some perspective and some answers. 

I am going to do my best to give it to him.

WARNING- Opinions expressed here MAY kill previously held opinions

Bare with me as I detail his questions and knock them off one by one.

First he was trying to wrap his head around why I felt that the bible was not a reliable source of morality.

"@AtheistEvo let me start over. I really haven't been clear about what I do and do not believe first of all. Secondly, I'm still trying to figure out how you can infer that the bible as a whole may not be a good guide and there's a chance that it can't be reliable, but yet you count the OT law and your own interpretation of scripture as being completely reliable. I'm wondering whether or not you see that has being conflicting?"

As far as the bible not being a good moral guide as a whole, that is easy.  Do you think that you should murder sassy children?  Rape defeated women in times of war?  Force women to marry their rapists?  Kill the victims of rape? That slavery is ok?  Because the bible does.  There are many more examples of evils in the bible, but all you need is a few to see that you must use your own morality to discern what is good from what is bad.  If you have that moral code already, then what good is the bible, because you are already standing in judgment of it from before you ever read it.  It is NOT reliable because it has a VERY inconsistent view of morality. 

As for interpreting the bible, I am not.  It is very clear in the bible what they meant, and there is no interpreting required.

So no.  There is nothing conflicting in not accepting a book as a guyide for morality that condones such things.

"I'm by no means an Atheist or Agnostic, but at the same time I'm not a traditional Christian/Bible thumper who's dogmatic about really crazy beliefs, and this is why I like having civil intelligent conversations with people like yourself."

YAY me!  (My ego looks like a ladybug?  Go figure)

"1. Who says that you have to take an all or nothing literal approach to the bible? Who made that rule or what logic does that stem from? You ask why if we don't believe parts of it, why believe any of it? And I say why indeed? I've never said nor do I believe that you have to believe all of the bible. I don't see anywhere in there where Jesus requires that you believe the bible despite the inferences of my evangelical friends."

Jesus is actually VERY clear that you must believe the bible (clearly he didn't refer to it as the "bible" as it wasn't compiled as a book for hundreds of years after his "death")  as 100% dogmatic fact and that means the OT as well.  No personal interpretation is allowed, you have to believe it as it is written by the prophets.  Clearly when he makes this statement (or at least is reputed by the NT to have made that statement as there is no contemporary evidence for any of it) he is speaking about what was known as the Tanach (what we know as the OT.  As a side note, the Torah only really refers to the first 5 books of Moses in the OT and the entirety of the book is referred to by Jews as the Tanach).  So when you read of something awful in the OT, remember that Jesus himself (according to the NT) demands that you still observe these terrible tenets.

"2. You say that it's commonly known knowledge that there is no actual first hand or second hand accounts of what he said. While I agree from a 'textual criticism' point of view, I'm wondering do you have a source that you rely on for this information, over others? Just name one scholar that affirms this and we can look at the evidence and see exactly what is and what is NOT there. Personally, I've read a lot of Bart Ehrman's work, but I want to defer to a scholar in whom you trust more than others."

The NT was written anywhere from 60 to over a hundred years after the death of Jesus and only Peter claimed to have met Jesus, and even that was only in a dream.  As an interesting side note, the gospels are well known not to have been written by those for whom they are named. (here is a very interesting show to watch on this.  All sources in the video are religious scholarly sources)

"3. You ask that "if we have to 'interpret' it thin it isn't really a good guide is it"? I say that it all depends on what you're trying to do. We have 9 Supreme Court Justices that sit on the Supreme Court of the United States whose sole job it is to get a consensus by majority vote on how the Constitution of the United States should be 'interpreted'. Is the constitution a good guide? Well it depends on how you look at it. It's a guide, but if it didn't need interpretation, it wouldn't be a 'guide' it would be a 'dictate'. If you tell your child that they're on punishment and they are not to talk to any of their friends for a week, they can take that 'dictate' as a guide and say, well, he didn't say I couldn't communicate via text, he just said I couldn't 'talk' to the them. Define talk?"

Herein lies the problem, there are many very harmful things in the bible and those things will dictate how a person acts if he believes them. The bible is open to some VERY harmful "interpretations". I would prefer that a person think for himself instead of giving up his culpability for moral consequence by blindly following the bible.  IF it is not a blind obeisance, and you are "interpreting" and cherry picking the bible for the stuff that you happen to like, then you already have a moral code with which to do that which renders the bibles instructions as obsolete.  Use the moral code to interpret morality for yourself instead of allowing a book to do it for you.

"I think because we're humans with brains, we often find a way to make a dictate work out in our favor."

Exactly, so why do we need the book in the first place?  We are already doing things our own way regardless.

BINGO!  Wait, let me start again... BULLSEYE!

"4. You say if I don't believe the bible literally, then it has no value. A million meanings mean no meaning. Says who? Are we to apply this to everything in life, or just the bible?"

No, a million interpretations mean that the guide has no value.  Each person is deciding for themselves anyway, so why add the book to confuse things?  Here is the point.  If you are using your own moral guide to decide what is good and what isn't in a book, then that book really isn't your "guide" at all.  The moral compass inside you with which you adjudicated the book in question is, in fact, your real guide.

"Here's what I believe:"

I'll answer these one by one...

"My belief in Jesus and God has way more to do with my personal experiential relationship with the spiritual than with the text of our collection of 66 books."

Great, but what is "spiritual"?  How do you know that Jesus is the right extension of that spirituality?  How does one have a relationship with something that isn't real?  If something manifests, then it can be observed.  There is simply no obvservable evidence to support spirituality, nor any version of a god, let alone what version of god it is or what he likes or dislikes.  It is all speculation.

Here is my answer to "the spiritual" relationship with God.

I believe that convictions about God may be arrived at through wise reasoning, but the individual becomes God-knowing only by faith, through personal experience. In much that pertains to life, probability must be reckoned with, but when contacting with cosmic reality, certainty may be experienced when such meanings and values are approached by living faith. The God-knowing soul dares to say, "I know," even when this knowledge of God is questioned by the unbeliever who denies such certitude because it is not wholly supported by intellectual logic. To every such doubter I can only reply, "How do you know that I do not know?"

First off faith is a very poor reason to believe.  Faith only means, "belief".  So you believe because you believe?  That is circular reasoning.  As far as the unbeliever, we see that there is no evidence, and saying that your reasons are outside the scope of our understanding then you are saying that you have the ability that you at first say we do not.  To know the unknowable.  For every other belief, you have evidence to support that belief.  Why not this one?  Personal experience can't give you insight into something that it denies me.  You are interpreting your personal experience to back up your belief.  That is called confirmation bias.  If you were born elsewhere this "experience" would have led you to believe in Allah.

In other places, "Shiva" or "Thor". 

MY personal experience leads me to follow Odin.  That and he'll kill me if I don't.

You have skipped a few steps in your logic.  FIrst you have to establish the existence of a divine artificer, THEN you have to try to determine his identity.  Not the other way around.

Either way, you have no evidence (and if you did, you would be the first), so I have to dismiss the idea.  That is the intellectually honest thing to do.  You are positing a claim for which you have no evidence.  That doesn't bring any cognitive dissonance to the fore?

I know it did for me.

"So while I don't take every single thing in the bible literally, I believe that it's useful, just like Grimms fairytales are also useful to teach morality to young kids."

HOW is it useful if you have to use previously garnered knowledge to decide what is good and bad in it?  That same knowledge could just be passed on without all the nonsense in the book.

"But if you can find it in your heart help a brotha out, email me at..."

No worries brotha!  I hope that this was what you were looking for.

Questions Asked- "Are Atheists the Arrogant Ones??"

Here is a question to all the Abrahamic religions today-


Just for a better concept of scale let me set the stage for it....

The universe is 14 billion years old.
There are 400 billion stars in this galaxy alone and over 100 billion other galaxies containing an equal amount.

That is a pretty big place!


How small are we?  How self important are the Abrahamic religions to think that we are the most important things in it?

How ridiculous is it for theists to continue to call we skeptics closed minded and arrogant for asking for evidence?


Well......


Only 22% is not covered by water on our planet and of that only  15% is actually habitable. So the entire universe is created for one species of creature among billions living on only 15% of one small planet in one small solar system in one small galaxy?   Egocentric?


You claim that all that time and all that space with all those hundreds of thousands of billions of stars was created for one mammalian species among millions on one small planet in one small solar system (just because you belong to that species) yet I'M the arrogant one for thinking the universe might be grander than that?


You claim to know the will and personality (let alone the name) of the being that created all that time and space yet I'M the arrogant one for asking for evidence?


You claim to be made in this perfect beings image yet I'M the arrogant one. You claim to be able to telepathically communicate with this being yet I'M the arrogant one for wondering?

You claim that you were born into the one religion or belief among millions of religions and that yours just happens to be the right one, and I'M the arrogant one?

You claim that the creator of the entire universe alters reality, controls minds, and pushes events to change merely because you think to yourself that it would be nice, and promise to love him (prayer) and I'M the arrogant one?  


While you are thinking about that....


Here is my last thought.


According to all the Abrahamic religions God created a universe of billions of billions of stars with many planets each, and that he is actually concerned about the sexual habits of one specific mammalian species on only 15% of one specific planet in one specific solar system in one specific galaxy and sometimes about the cloth (Hijab, yammukah, or headscarf) that they wear on their craniums? 


Really??

Pretty self important claims, yet I am the arrogant one?

I think that you might have some thinking to do.

Better get to it!

Objective Morality- Does it exist?

I hear this a lot in conversation with theists, "if you don't believe in god, then from where do you get your morality?" or "without god there can be no true and objective morality" or even "without god anything is permissable".

I am tired of hearing it, so lets talk about it.

What we are talking about here is an objective morality.  It really has very little to do with the existence of a god, and more to do with the nature of morality and the future of how we solve problems in a societal context.

If we say that there is an objective morality (as most theists would have us believe), then morality should be a timeless constant.

Never changing

That simply isn't true.  If we look at morality today, we might think this, but as soon as we look back at what was moral hundreds of years ago we can see an enormous shift.

Does this prove anything?  Maybe it is just our perception of morality that has changed, and morality itself has been constant while we keep struggling towards it.

Hmmmm, possible?

No.  It isn't.

From where would an objective morality originate?

God?

If morality is objective, then it exists OUTSIDE god and is a universal constant.

IF god didn't make it up, then it is universal and has no origin.


??


Ok, as little sense as a god made morality makes, this makes less.  Morality must be born from somewhere, as it is a set of rules to assist us in living together.  Since we haven't always existed, neither could rules for our coexistence have existed forever, so we can dismiss that one.


If it doesn't exist outside god, then he made it up.  Just made it up, according to how he thought things would work best.

Now it doesn't matter if you think that his knowledge is the best place to derive such a morality, it still means that it is SUBJECTIVE.

He made it up.

IF he made it up, and then failed to pass on that morality in such a way as to have us clearly understand it as a planetary whole (which he clearly hasn't), then his moral system fails.  It fails because if he creates a universal moral code, and then fails to give it to us, but yet still judges us for failure to adhere to it, we can judge HIM to be immoral.  And we can no longer trust in any subjective morality that he has created for fear that it too will fall prey to the same logical problems that the very creation of it did.   Even leaving that aside, if we forget all the issues with a god created and objective morality, then we still run into the problem of definitions.

Is an objective morality moral?

If there is a set of rules that is to be followed without question (because the very act of questioning it makes it subjective) is it still morality?

No.

It is obedience.


If you merely obey the universal moral code with no thought to the consequences of your actions for others, then you are not moral.

You not ethical.

You are not concerned with suffering.

You are not humane

You are merely a slave.

Obedient and unthinking.

Morality is more than that.

It has to be, and by definition I don't think that anyone would disagree.

So to say that god created morality is to say that morality doesn't exist.

WE decide morality, that is the only way that it can be moral.

That is why our laws change, that is why our morality changes, that is why our norms change.

Because when confronted with a problem, we think about it.
We consider the consequences from a position of concern for ourselves and for others.
And we attempt to move forward in our ability to live together without subjugating the lives of others under the umbrella of OUR morality.

So we change it as we discover the problems with it.


Think of morality like this;


Morality is a subjective conversation that best decides on how to enact the "My rights begin where yours end" tenet.


And remember two things;

Morality can't exist where obedience is the only virtue; and

We must think to survive.



Any thoughts?


Peace

What would YOU do if you were god?

How would YOU design creation?

Would you hide yourself?

Would you make your words open to abuse and interpretation?

Would you include terrible stories to be told in your name?

Would you make creatures whose very existence is to make another being suffer?

Would you make the reproductive act so very enjoyable and then cover it with guilt and have it end in the most painful of experiences?

Would you create beings who would fight each other and kill each other for petty reasons?

And would you be so insecure a supreme being as to care so deeply about being loved by them that you would torture them forever if they decided not to like you, or even believe you existed?

Or would you do something different?

I would give my creations a stable world to live in, one without unpredictable volcanoes and fault lines, without destructive weather patterns, and without conditions that were so harsh that they can and would kill those left in them. I just wouldn't THINK of making my creations world a harsh and inhospitable environment. Seems mean.

I would give them the ability to see me, and know that I was real, or to hide myself so completely that they wouldn't know I was there at all. This seems to be the way to keep them from dividing themselves along the lines of misunderstanding about me.

I would design bodies that were more efficient. Eyes that saw with no blind spot. Knees that were meant to withstand the rigors of being upright. A spine that was more curved so as to absorb shock more fully. I would not invent disease in the first place. To design a body that inherently causes pain in those who inhabit them seems malicious.

I would give them the gift of free thought, and then not punish them for using it. I would merely reveal to them, while they were living, why it might not be the best choice, and how it affects others. To give anything but the best mentoring to those in your charge seems irresponsible.

I would love them all equally, and ensure that wars and hatred didn't exist in my name. When people were in need, I would speak to them, and tell them that it will be ok. I mean appear individually and talk. Not just send a "feeling" of not being alone. I real tangible talk. Something that would assist in the healing process and not just drive a person to deeper delusion.

I would honour evidence and a robust standard of science. This would be the highest use of the free will and intellect that I could imagine, and I would honour those people who helped their race by discovering new and fascinating ways to interact with reality as saints. For it would be them who truly appreciated what I had given them.

I would ensure that women enjoyed guilt free sex, and understood that sex has no moral component. It would be my gift to them, and a gift that is to be enjoyed equally by men and women.

I would not enjoy seeing people on their knees nearly as much as I would enjoy seeing them on their feet, laughing, jumping, kissing, laughing, and singing.

That would be the whole point of MY creation, so see them loving and living as though it was a gift, and not one to be wasted in servitude but to be spent in the rapture of joy before coming to my house to watch the joy of all those who come after.

In short, my creation would make sense, make love, respect science, love life and live in the light of love of one another.

Doesn't that sound better?

What would YOU do?