Is there an intelligent metaphysical beginning...

[George]

The Topic

[apothanein kerdos]

The one thing I'll add before posting is that the affirmative rebuttal at the end should be 2,000, not 6,000 words. Seeing as how this limits me I have no problem pointing this out and implementing the change. This keeps us evened up in the maximum amount of words we can use.

[apothanein kerdos]

You don't have to. Those are just the maximum words allowed, that way neither of us can just go on forever.

[apothanein kerdos]

I want to argue and take the position that morals, without God, essentially mean nothing. Though we might live a good life without a belief in God, the purpose of this paper is to display that it means nothing. Our good actions are just constructs and therefore not binding. The argument I will make is that if we are to have true moral value that we can act upon as an objective truth, then there must be a God. If there is no God, then morals must be relative at all levels and therefore we are not obliged to follow them nor should face consequences for not following them.

We must first look to the fact that morals do in fact exist. The hyper relativist will argue that morals do not exist, but this ignores the experience of humans. Humans naturally feel guilt when they commit certain acts even if they later suppress this guilt. Why else does the child come crying to her parents after committing a moral injustice? Though children do commit natural immoralities, they feel guilt for these most times and have natural moralities. Thus, morals are natural to the human experience.

Morals also transcend cultures, for all cultures have some form of morality. The ancient Greeks held that suicide in the fact of dishonor was a moral act, and in fact, to live with one

[apothanein kerdos]

I'm going to say that I see your basic premise as flawed. You argue that since morals have no absolute basis and are not universal, and that evolution cannot explain the existance of morals, and since without something to back them up, morals are subjective and therefore worthless, there must be a God.

(Is that a good basic summation?)

No, that is not a good summarization of my argument. I am arguing that morality must be absolute in order for us to apply it across the board and that evolution does not (and in fact contradicts) supply this absolute. I am arguing that evolution makes morals subjective and therefore useless to society, unexplainable, and impossible to actually follow and enforce.

There's several stumbling points in your arguments. First, nitpicking on the evolutionary basis, humans and other forms of primates are social beings. They would usually roam around in a pack, not alone. If you're in a pack, and you murder a rival male within that pack and rape the woman he was after, you would probably face immediate reprisal from your pack members, who would not want to die themselves. They would probably kill you, therefore ensuring that you don't get more than one chance to spread your genes. This is, of course, assuming that the male wins in the combat, which is 50/50 anyways, and that the female doesn't get away. The odds of such a successful murder-rape would be extremely small, with half the outcomes being the death of the agressor. That would probably make an anti-killing moral a very adaptive trait to have. No, the naturalistic explanation for morals is not disproven.

The inherent problem with this argumentation is that it is inherently denied in observing nature. It is a fallacy to state what you have stated when it contradicts the evidence. In essence, it is a paper tiger argument

[apothanein kerdos]

Ahh. Well, it's a moot point, because I don't think evolution justifies the enforcement of anything.

Then you lack your justification of morality. The problem is you are advocating morality without providing any ground for why we should be moral. It is like me saying,