“Contra Pychen 4”
Suggested reading:
-Abstract Entities and Atheism (tediously written just for Pychen)
-My response to Pychen’s defense of Abstract Entities that he won’t respond to.
-The list of important questions Pychen won’t answer.
Intro:
Pychen, in his never ending quest to stifle conversation for Jesus, decided that my last post dedicated exclusively to giving good answers to the issues he brought up was “just a rant,” and “not worth responding to.” This is roughly the equivalent of a slap in the face. I don't know what he was thinking:
He’s refused the rather simple avenues I’ve suggested for continuing the conversation and his reasons for that are not acceptable. While it is touching of course he’d rather talk to me on IM, we don’t get anywhere there either as I will get into later. I can’t as easily make a comprehensive case against his methodologies in the course of an IM conversation and he doesn’t have the right to distort what I’ve done here over his mere preference and pretend like I’m just going to bend over and take it. This post is entirely dedicated to comprehensively showing Pychen his own reflection without any apologies. He demands I return respect for his bigotry and that’s just not going to happen. Let’s see how long he can maintain his crazy denial of the obvious in the face of all I am about to present.
Pychen: Claiming that I accuse you of things that I did not, and taking my words out of context.
You can’t call what you are doing something else just because you don’t want to be saying that. I clearly defined what I meant:
“’Ontological bigotry’ means that as a theist you say that when people recognize the commonality of conscience that means something objective but when they are atheists it doesn’t exist and doesn’t mean anything. Therefore you are de-humanizing us with your negligent rhetoric *and* denying the obvious. I’m sure you have other motives in mind, but the end result is ontological bigotry and hairsplitting discrimination against atheist conscience for the sake of your *polemical* bigotry that absolutely excludes atheists from using their conscience to judge your God as good or evil without *any* discussion about content. Telling me that’s not what you mean does not make this go away from a logical standpoint.”
Notice how I already spearheaded what you just said…explained what ontological bigotry is and prophesied your response…
Perhaps you don’t recall all the things you’ve said? Fortunately I had some free time to go hunt for the context:
“If the atheist does not find God, that is because they are not seeking Him.”
“For those who will not to believe, there is no case could be made that they will not refuse.”
“You and everyone else knows that they need a savior. Every time a person does what is wrong, and not do what he should, feels guilty in agreement with the laws of God.”
“how does an atheist able to make any meaningful moral value claims at all?”
“[No, you will not be able to handle the simple truth, because atheist has robed you of your very foundation for thought it self.]”
“In other words, God is the ONLY one able to fill the gap, of all the most important fundamental questions of life.”
“Yes, the existence of God is like the nose on your face. You continue to over look him. No, everyone does know that they are accountable. Sure they don’t know God that clearly, but they know that they have wronged God.”
“The bible speaks of it as the issue of sin, a refusal to believe the God who is there and either distort Him or to deny his existence.”
“God is a reality that the atheist trys to run from.”
“I guess it does not matter to write with honesty and integrity? Then should any person trust what you have to say? How can you be trusted?”
“I hope you don't own a gun or a knife, God help those around a person who say that morality is optional or a convention of their whim. There is an image of a person like that, look for him in the film "Schindler's List." maybe that is the best example of what you are saying about a guy with so much power that "don't have to be moral." You watch him as he sits out his patio with a gun firing at any one as he so pleased.”
“and you have no morals, so writing honestly is optional to you anyways.”
“Should I expect honesty from atheist?”
“Atheism = Amoralism = no basis/standard to know right from wrong”
“they have no foundation to being moral.”
“the Atheist does not even have the ability to know if the action is morally good or bad, without basis to know good from evil.”
Did you notice the consistent theme of arbitrarily defining atheists out of the equation? Do I say theists have no basis for morality? Do I say all theists are running from atheism? Do I say that everyone born innately knows they have a need for the scientific method? Do I appeal to the Flying Spaghetti Monster to justify being a bigot and arbitrarily defining the opposition out of frame? What if I did? Would I get away with that crap? I think all of my rhetoric is consistent with the idea that people can be innocently mistaken in general while still maintaining the basic pretenses of being human. But I’m able to do that since my worldview allows for that pesky thing called nuance. Sure the non-existence of God puts a damper on the Christian’s basis for morality but it’s not like the Bible itself is absolutely devoid of moral content.
Oh yeah, while we’re on context, remember your previous nonsensical appeal to taking you “out of context”? Let me refresh your memory:
Pychen: “Guys, context matters!”
Pychen: “Here is fully what I wrote to ARU not broken out of context. It helps to be honest in reading as it was presented. And I was answering to what ARU wrote.”
Notice that the context you said I was denying was already part of that post. And the first person who commented, commented again saying:
Walter_Rat: “I was the first to comment and the post now looks exactly how it did when I commented. For what it's worth.”
No one seemed to see things your way regardless because what you seem to be calling denied context is merely your pretension to being right no matter what:
Pychen: “In all honesty, do you really believe that Christian or myself is so stupid as to believe that God is evil?”
“Don’t you get it, guys? I’m right. When I’m shown that I’m wrong that means I’ve been taken out of the context of always being right no matter what!” I think the fact you haven’t spoken even once on any of the content of my “God: Evil, Impotent, or Non-existent” settles your inability to be seriously critical about your own worldview and how easily you to just out of hand dismiss absolutely everything I say.
Pychen: I must say, that, as you know in person on our chats, thats you are not really talking with me as talking at me.
This isn’t about you, buddy. It’s about your arguments, ideas, and beliefs. Your refusal to take what I say seriously forces the discussion to be about your methodologies. If that reflects poorly on your competence or character, that's not my problem. I don’t have to be subject to your bigoted terms. Forgive me if I refuse to bow to your shell game. Just because that’s not what you want it to be doesn’t mean that’s not what it is. “I’m not racist. I just think black people are inferior to white people.” “I’m not an ontological bigot. I just think an atheist’s conscience isn’t a measure of morality unless he believes the same things I do about it.” You are not saying that we just believe different things about where the conscience came from and what it really is. You’re going a step further and saying there’s nothing moral in an atheist’s worldview. And that’s just not true.
If it wasn’t bigotry on your part, you’d have already interacted with the 99% of other things I’ve said instead of holding out. If your intentions actually mattered, you’d see what you were doing and adjust course appropriately. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. I’ll try something else.” I’ve listed three very simple options for a different course to take that you found “unbelievable.” Instead, what do you do, Pychen? Ask the same damn un-clarified question over and over and over again. You don’t interact with any other material. You don’t give any other information that would help sort it out. You blame me for everything. You constantly call my motivations and competence into question because of your own inadequacies. I had to sort through all the comments on Astrocreep’s site to get just a little more information. And when it comes down to it on IM all you do is ask me to think about it again! YOU DON’T EVEN SAY ANYTHING SPECIFIC! I’m just supposed to “know.” And if I’m in full agreement with my own position still, god forbid, what do you do? Ask me to “think about it” again. I’m a nice guy, Pychen and damn easy to get along with. But you have to have an iota of something to work with first. And even if not…I’m still easy to get along with no matter how many times you eff it up. But you never give it a test drive…so what can I do? All you gotta do is drop your defensive nonsense and talk. I’ll be the same guy I was before we hit rough water.
Pychen: NQbass7 is asking some very good questions and responding to what I wrote/the points made. I think it would help you to read it. Not because he is not doing a good job, it is because he is doing a good job, and real interaction.
Did you happen to notice that NQbass7 even said I’ve answered that question you dishonestly say is holding up our conversation? Let me refresh your memory:
“But further, ARU has already made the point that an innate sense of morality has evolved within us which causes us to generally be moral even without reasoning our way there.”
And let’s see what you said to Caveat Towers:
“I think I have been waiting on answers to my questions for months now... I would say take your turn, but I would just be kidding.”
You want me to go count how many times I’ve given you the answer to your loaded question? Here’s the long list:
The concept of morality “stands above you” but that does not mean anything. Guiding behavioral patterns that appear to “stand above you” make perfect sense from an evolutionary standpoint. The selfish gene can’t entirely allow goodwill to be a matter of absolute free will. It’s still all in your head no matter how much it strikes you otherwise. There are many emotional fallacies in the human experience that come to equally erroneous conclusions by being extrapolated and wrongly projected as such.
And:
Morality can come from non-morality just as houses can come from non-houses (bricks aren’t houses are they?). You aren't going to lose any sleep over the fact that circles in Photoshop and MSPaint are really made up of little squares are you? All you appeal to is the solipsism of your emotional continuum. It’s not some magic transcendent property of existence that should be hallowed above all else. It’s just an intellectually organized and socially influenced behavioral pattern based concurrently on survival and empathy for others that manifests in all sorts of ways such as social contract theory and projected divine mandates that makes perfect sense in terms of preserving evolutionary constructs for posterity. So what is really going on is that a complicated system of contingency (the ins and outs of morality) comes from a simpler system of contingency (the rules of the molecular world). Thus there is no cosmic breach of reality in an atheist universe as you would like to imagine. Prove that morality has some extra special place beyond the evolved structures of the pancreas and the spleen…the digestive system and anything else about evolutures such as ourselves. And prove that it is absolutely worthless if your claims about it are not true. Any atheist knows you are full of shit and have no idea what you are talking about. Theism popped your emotional cherry and you’ve wedded the concept to god…pure and simple…and you can’t fathom it being any other way…and yet there are those moral atheists that don’t see any contradiction. Don’t knock it till you try it.
And:
There are only so many ways to make morality work for our species…so it’s universal in terms of humanity and given its inherent logical function in preserving evolutures we could expect alien races to likely be subject to very similar empathetic terms.
And:
Such moral demands are conditional. If you want the benefits of living in a society then you will live by those mutually agreed on rules. If you want the benefits of being a husband, then you will treat your wife with respect. If you want to have friends, then you treat them as you would have yourself be treated. If you don’t want those things then you don’t have to do any thing and no demands are upon you. There may be consequences for that or there may not be. These are very simple observations of the way things actually work. To assert otherwise does not close any Pandora’s box as you would make believe…it would be called lying.
And:
I think I said that the core principles of morality work the same for everyone of our species independent of our choice to participate or not. Science shows that even monkeys show moral behavior. Any normal person that says, “Your morality doesn’t apply because I’m fundamentally different” can get a DNA test and be proven wrong and thus be subject to my good moral advice after all. They must have been listening to Stan Lee and not Richard Dawkins.
And:
My theory: Morality is a communally externalized internal system that is universal in the average person and is subject to the voluntary contexts that individuals choose to participate in…and is ultimately a common behavioral pattern that was cultivated and refined by evolution as it happened to preserve our species over the long haul. Oh yeah...and all of this is based on the physical world in albeit abstract ways. And the physical world is an inevitable incidental part of the Allverse.
And:
I inherited my mental system of moral buoyancy from my parents and ultimately from the process of evolution. It is an innate part of me. I didn’t put it there. It just is there. And if you deny that I have direct objective access to it you cripple your own worldview since the Bible makes the same basic LOCAL observation (as opposed to a GENERAL observation that perhaps God made it that way). In other words atheists point to the internal moral compass, and the Bible does as well. That’s common ground. The difference is what it is (physical or non), and how it got there (creation or evolution).
And:
Good and evil are systemic tautologies of our inherited behavioral patterns common to our entire species…and to many other mammals as well at a base emotional level. The most significant difference seems to be our ability to intellectually compute moral circumstances conceptually.
And:
How many times is the concept going to bounce off your thick meta-slammed skull that atheists are appealing to hardwired empathetic sensibilities that are already generally pre-established and are analogous to what you say is the “law of god in our hearts.” How we conceptualize that intellectually is the only difference…whether in social contract theory…or externalized in divine command theory…or what have you. They are all symptoms of the same inherited behavioral pathways that are universal in our species…because we’re the same species…that can be found permeating our wing of the tree of life that is the mammalian kingdom. If atheists who wanted to be moral couldn’t figure it out on their own on this basis, why wouldn’t they all come running back to theism?
And:
Perhaps they meant, “ways of going about morality are made up” and not that the gist of morality itself is entirely arbitrary whim fulfillment but is constrained by the natural terms of being inherently moral prone evolutures.
And:
Switching terms again. Just because there is no absolute ontological basis that transcends reality does not mean there is no basis whatsoever...or that that basis is too flakey to do the job. My ontological basis for morality has been field tested and refined by the trial and error of evolution over millions of years. Your basis is just some random ontological proposition you don't think you need to prove even exists much less how it came to be that way or why.
And:
All humans in general have inherited solidarity that is immutable from a practical standpoint as it is genetically prescribed by evolution to be that way. It is not a “shot in the dark” as you would like to imagine. Pretending that you are more in touch with the arbitrary nature of the “image of god” is much more a shot in the dark than one’s own conscience. Thus however subjective you find atheism’s basis for morality to be…yours can only be that much worse.
And:
Social laws are merely a symptom of that innate basis for morality we all have called the conscience.
Looks like at least 13 times. Where were you? Am I to believe NQBass7 is giving you a completely different answer? I don’t think so.
Pychen: I did not see real intreactions to what I was talkingabout.
More conversational bigotry as though my entire post, Contra Pychen 3 is devoid of all content and relates zilcho to anything you said (oh look, polemical bigotry). So we have ontological bigotry (atheist’s consciences are no good unless they believe what you do about them), polemical bigotry (we can’t talk about your god’s evils no matter what), conversational bigotry (ARU hasn’t tried, responded, interacted, answered anything), and lastly let’s not forget the moral bigotry (atheists are immoral for not accepting a god who doesn’t exist). And this all because it has to be emotionally true to you that you understand atheism and that its wrong no matter what and I’m not playing that game. I even deliberately skipped all interpersonal conflicts and tangents and hit all issues:
“For this round I’m going to avoid the personal confrontation issues, internal redundancy, and all the tangents and try to focus solely on Pychen’s latest misconceptions of atheism that he’s been posting on The_Astrocreep’s site.”
Didn’t matter did it? Its almost like atheists aren’t real people to you and as a result you can treat them like shit because they believe something differently than you do. What do you think? Don’t worry, God thinks that’s okay:
“Because the Israelites are my servants, whom I brought out of Egypt, they must not be sold as slaves. Do not rule over them ruthlessly, but fear your God. Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can will them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.”
But those non-Jews can be ruled over ruthlessly…they have different arbitrary beliefs about what’s in heaven. That makes them inferior…not just different and worthy of equal respect on an individual case by case basis.
Outro:
I’ll close by referencing another conversation of mine that is going much, much better (and that’s an understatement). I’ve gotten farther in two comments with Dan (not to mention infinity8ball in xanga messaging as well) than I have in 20 comments/posts with you, Pychen. How many people over on Astrocreep’s site did you cock block with your ever growing portfolio of Christian bigotry? Half a dozen? Is one wittle success for whatever reason with NQBass7 really that impressive? Reading over what he’s said…I can’t help but notice I’ve said the virtually the exact same things and covered virtually the exact same territory.
Comments (53)
JT
""SLAP""
Breathe man, breathe!
Lol...well done.
"Don’t like the reflection of yourself? Change. Don’t blame the mirror. "
I think that's something atheists and Christians (well some, at least) can both agree on.
IM is my preferred form of communication if you would care to chat sometime over epistemology. Blogging percolates too many of the vital elements of the dialectical process, IMO. Instant Messanging amends the problem slightly, but nothing is the same as a good ole' vis-à-vis interlocution over coffee.
If you haven't had time to notice in the midst of your bout with Pychen, I have briefly covered your rebuttal to my paper back at the post.
Cheers,
Philip
I admire your tenacity and thoroughness. If only worldviews could be compared and agreed upon based on their merit rather than foregone conclusions. I read your responses and think how powerful your arguments are. But then I know how little impact it will have on those who have been given the "gift" of faith.
To coin a phrase intended very differently... "To him who has ears, let him hear."
I remember the half baked emotional bullying I participated in back in the day, and its one of the things I regret most from when I believed Christianity was true. I just don't want to see Pychen have even an iota of credibility more than he deserves on topics that can be rather difficult to sort out, but easy to bring up in distorted fashion. Thus I'm providing the back up for the atheistic xangateers out there that aren't as equipped to own these ill conceived ideas outright. That makes the emphasis more custodial.
There are an infinite number of ways of how to get things wrong, but not the other way around. Who can learn them all? If you do learn something of value...by all means, let me know. Reading my original responses to Pychen it seems I pegged it right up front and said everything that needed to be said. Everything after that was denial on his part and me learning the ins and outs of his defensiveness. I have learned quite a bit on how to execute even more on point arguments that cater directly to the pathology of such theolosophy and I've taken every opportunity to update my reference material. I am forever improving my craft.
If you manage to get through to him in a more delicate manner, I applaud it, even if its still basically hypocrisy on his part. He's a grown up (four years older than me). It shouldn't matter. At least the job is done. He can be insulted by this all he wants, but he's the one ultimately in control of that now isn't he?
ARU
Ontological Bigotry: Often the instance where an indefensible worldview artificially defines a subject matter out of the opponent’s worldview simply because they disagree about the nature or origin of it.
-For instance, theolosophers will often claim that there is absolutely no moral basis in an atheistic worldview because innate morality does not have an absolute ontological status as it is based on the physical constitution of matter and not a direct property of the universe itself…even though the very same thing (the general alignment of conscience across our species) that theolosophers have to accept (law of god in the heart) and will use to infer the existence of a divine moral law is the very same basis that atheists (i.e. natural humans) use to make their moral assessments. It is not just a difference of opinion on the origin and true ontological status of the inner “moral compass”…it is the categorical bigotry of defining morality out of existence for the atheist worldview so that you can feign the moral superiority of your own and claim the false bankruptcy and artificially defined depravity of the other. Of course such ontological bigotry normally is pre-emptive polemical bigotry so as to insure that God’s moral status cannot be touched no matter the quality of the argument (or its applicability in terms of internal coherence).
-Another livid example of this is the song “Your Beautiful Mind” sung to an atheist who after being flattered for being beautiful herself is bigotedly asked to “show me something beautiful.” Again…its not that beauty is merely understood on different terms…it’s that it is artificially defined out of existence because of a difference of opinion on its true nature.
-A future example of likely religious ontological bigotry will be the discrimination between artificial intelligence and the sentient beings made of the things we are familiar with even though every indication that has ever been experienced in regards to the “image of god” will likely be on display in the robot’s behavior. Therefore it will be labeled soul-less no matter how sophisticated or analogous its behavior is to our own. Naturally there will be people who are willing to have feelings for robots and those that will inevitably become robot racists. Hence, probable ontological bigotry we can look forward to in the future.-A fictional example is in the television series, “Stargate SG1” where the parasitical species, the goa’uld who more often than not impersonate the various deities of superstitious cultures after taking host bodies will claim, “Nothing of the host survives.” Of course it is perfectly clear they merely define the host’s ontological status out of existence for their own convenience even though every evidential matter of the host’s original consciousness can in fact be established. They will call it a “fragmented personality” or some other artificially demeaning label.
-Another example could be the claim of a white supremacist who may assert that a black man’s love for his wife is not “real love” simply because he is black…even though the exact same behavioral patterns can be seen in progress across the spectrum of ethnicities.
ARU
Atheist Deniers:
Meta-scam Peddling Catch 22:
Ontological Bigotry:
Radioactive Mole (a "hack" on the job):
Raw Reversal (failed attempt to “turn the tables”):
Sensibility Squatting:
That's the kind of stuff I'm looking for. Call it "the personal side of things" or whatever - but I'm looking at the story behind the person, even if the person has ideas that I think are wrong.
ARU says, "I remember the half baked emotional bullying I participated in back in the day, and its one of the things I regret most from when I believed Christianity was true."
Back in the day?? Is "back in the day" referring to the last couple of months up to yesterday? Take NZbass7's advice.
And what ARU does now has nothing to do with emotions - it's logical bullying, which I think is often perfectly justified, unlike emotional bullying which is almost never justified.
And to answer courtney - my deconversion was helped along by ARU, and my formation of my own personal philosophy came a lot from Richard Carrier, who I discovered through ARU.
I’m sure this looks like “hate crime on Christian” but every time I use the power I have to influence the politics of xanga, its for a short term correctional measure with a specific legitimate purpose in mind that I can entirely back up with the necessary evidence. It's like you think police officers shouldn't carry or use guns because, "that makes them just like the criminals."
For instance, Lonos_Rants let me back on his site after agreeing he over-reacted. Job done. I immediately removed the complaint and will never bring it up again. Whatever humiliation he experienced was earned. And, none of it had to do with whose worldview is right…it was all about his administrative policies. I entirely stuck to business (with the one slip up, of course) when it came to his actual arguments.
You’ll notice here too, this has very little to do with whether Pychen’s worldview is right…it’s about his ontological bigotry, something I clearly defined and proved with the textual evidence. Who knows? Perhaps nonphysical things do exist and perhaps evolution didn’t happen. But does that justify his shell game? Pychen reaps what he sows and letting him off the hook means he’s going to go out and continue to spread the same kind of emotional bullying completely unchecked. I can’t control him, or threaten him with eternal damnation, or call his entire character into question because he’s not believer in atheism (like he would do in my shoes), but I can control what I can control. And I have every right to use that power to do what I think is right. If I’ve said something unjustified somewhere that is purely nonsensical hurtful anti-Christian passion…prove it. In the off chance you succeed, I will remove it immediately.
Personally, and this is just speculation on my part, so if I’ve misjudged the situation, forgive me: I think your own pride is wounded and you are desperate and looking for a hopeless way out of having lost our debate over OT slavery on your site. Hence we get this raw reversal hoping against hope that somewhere somehow I haven’t done my job and that it’s really me with the desperate wounded pride. I think you are going to have to get used to being disappointed.
Courtney,
NQBass7 would be the first to say anything. No one’s ever came to me and said, “I converted to being an atheist because of something you said.” I’m no JT. It appears from more modest testimonies I’ve received my specialty is adding the next few levels of sophistication to apostasy and unbelief, helping them understand the ramifications of their new paradigm, and of course arming them with ever improving polemics.
ARU
Like NQBass, you know I am also influenced by what you do. I'm just a public figure - it's easier for people to share their conversions with me. I also spend a lot of time throwing the line out, so I'm bound to haul in a fish eventually. I'm sure there are additional converts who have never said a word to me about it, and I'm sure the same holds true for you.
JT
There you go again ARU, you just won't learn will you? Still letting your emotion get the best of you. Still assuming the thoughts and feelings and turning them into character attacks As I said and still will say,
Fletch: "Now I'm not taking away the many good points you have made and I'm not taking away your intellect."
However, your too involved in 'winning an argument' and inflating your ego, its a shame because your very intellegent. About losing a debate; Xanga is the worst place to have a debate I never intended in having a debate but rather throw out my thoughts and have some feedback. I could easily continue on your Thomas Jefferson analogy and respond but I frankly have no desire to hold a 'debate' 'conversation' or whatever with you. Your way to aggressive. But I'll leave it at this, I'm sure you will want to get the last word in.
FFF,
Well I will grant you that. It'd been two weeks since you responded and I'd forgotten that part of your comment. I must have had Pychen on the brain (who basically does dismiss everything I say outright) and thus I inadvertently smushed you two together. I apologize.
Please let me explain my zealous persistence (and forgive my OVEREMPHASIS of nuances that could easily be overlooked): You admit I make a number of good points and yet I have a hard time believing that you are going to change your attitude towards condemning the so-called shortsightedness of public atheists that criticize the ethics of the Bible on a pop-cultural level. I was UNDER THE IMPRESSION from a previous banner of yours that your entire site here was dedicated to that. Thus FROM MY PERSPECTIVE you SEEM to be flattering me so you can “flee the scene” and commit further “intellectual crimes” elsewhere as though none of this happened. AM I MISTAKEN?
I FEEL RESPONSIBLE for all the atheists and agnostics (not to mention Christians) out there that may not be as prepared to respond to the scholarly complexities of a Glenn Miller essay. Thus I have a hard time maintaining the pretenses of a casual discussion of thoughts. I do not believe it is a good thing for someone to try and reinforce and justify the Bible's immorality. It can have serious consequences (this I know first hand) especially since any moral error gets a divine seal of approval and is ten times harder to correct than the errors generated by natural ethics.
ARU
Criticality Displacement:
Disconfirmation Ruse:
Intellectuals without Options:
Metaphysical Scam: New section
Over-Engraving the Metaphysical Wall:
Theolosopher: New section
Un-Tuning the Objectivity Piano:
ARU
That does seem to be a primary motivation. Where have you been? I've known that for a like a decade?! lol It would be nice to give them credit for also believing that creationism is the best explanation of the evidence in addition to their emotional agenda, but it gets hard to do that when very simple ideas about atheism and morality never seem to get corrected...ideas that don't technically have anything to do with one worldview being right or the other being wrong.
So what if evolution can account for morality if its true in general? Does that mean creationism didn't happen? So what if mental events are "nonphysical"? Does that mean God couldn't create a totally physical person? So what if a human being is capable of living without a god in their life? Does that mean they can't make a new friend? So what if they can live and find purpose and meaning and good reason to be moral in this short life? Does that mean they can't find even more if it happens to continue? How does any of this make theism not true on its own? Why aren't they rejoicing that atheism consistently allows more people to be good people? Something irrational is driving this end of the debate because only theists seem to be interested in bringing it up and it never makes sense as a purely intellectual exercise.
ARU
It helps me realize that I hold the moral high ground, man never thought I'd be there!
I dont think theists mean to be following such a bad ethical teaching, they just refuse to make a choice because any other contender in that choice is automatically bad because its not 'of God'. Of course its not of God, its his competition. By poisoning the well, religion poisons the mind. What I cant understand is why obviously intelligent people would hold up an obvious myth like creationism, just so they dont have to work on their own ethical philosophy and can instead say its handed down from on high. Seems easier to study philosophy to me.