Llyricist

no, bandwidth conservation.

Anyone with eyes can look at your posts and see how you have been equivocating.

The fact that you complained about my formatting when I pointed out where the portion I quoted was just another phrasing of the so called strawman in the OP, was an equivocation designed to distract from the fact that you couldn't deny the equivalence (which you did not).

And frankly ALL of your other posts up to the point of my last post consisted of nothing but equivocations about exact wordings while re asserting the same CONTENT that the other posters are refuting.

Spenser

I see nothing wrong with this as an explanation.

Spenser

Why can't you see the arrogance of this statement? Even if your argument of no explanation for morals in a 'purely' materialistic world were correct, the above statement still says nothing. Let me parody:

On the other hand, man and his experience, are capable of being explained by the nature of Allah, of his creation, of his purpose, etc, as they are contained in scripture (for the Qur'an) , then you are bound, if you want to be intellectually honest, to acknowledge so.

Or where Allah was inserted feel free to place: Thor, Vishnu, Superchicken, The writers of the Matrix, 365 different Gods that work only one day each a year, Theophilus Himself, The God of Deism, Satan, Tooth Fairy, Elizabeth Hurley (I vote for this one), add infinity.

You have ZERO BASIS for equating the lack of materialistic explanation for morals to the CHRISTIAN GOD. The best you can say with your argument is you don't know, yet there is probably no way that you'll ever say it...

Wiploc

Your point is twofold, I believe. You stated the first part:

1. Materialism cannot account for [something].

and you implied the other part:

2. Theism can account for [that same something].

In other words, you are saying that theism can account for something that atheism cannot. Am I right?

I'm a skeptic on this issue, not believing that theists can account for morality any better than atheists. So I'd like you to go first, justifying morality theistically. Then I'll be happy to provide an atheistic explanation that is just as good.



I'm with you. Picture two guys at an intersection arguing over who gets to go first. One says the car to the right gets to go first. The other says the car that arrives first gets to go first. They don't agree on what the standard is, but they do agree that there's a standard.



I'm not sure I'm with you anymore. If you are saying,

- 1. You can't explain X.
- 2. Therefore Y.

I'm going to object. I've never heard a Christian explain morality, but I don't say, "Well, you can't explain it so it must be natural."

crc

Mike

Absolute morality stems from imperative desire for autonomy/freedom. Imperative autonomy/freedom interacts in interesting ways with ignorance of the future (innocent until proven guilty). Autonomy/freedom allows all to become what they will. An irrepressible drive toward autonomy/freedom is evident in even (especially) the most oppressive societies. In free societies a drive toward freedom is a given. In oppressive societies, an underlying drive for freedom is the impetus for the oppression (else why oppress?). The irreducible purpose for justice is to preserve freedom/autonomy (all other types of false justice eventually fail because of the bubbling desire for freedom that is being oppressed) ie. when one person infringes on the freedom of another, justice is invoked--any other use of oppressive force runs counter to the original purpose for the existence of such force.

However, even only using justice to take autonomy/freedom from some in order to preserve autonomy/freedom in others creates an inevitible tension between the original impetus for justice (ignorance of the future)and the autonomy/freedom of the offender since although we may know s/he has offended we do not know if s/he will offend again. Yet we desire to protect our own autonomy/freedom against the offender. So ultimately, we all become theoretical offenders in that in order to believe in the concept of freedom (that we naturally crave while in ignorance) we must theoretically either take away freedom or have it taken away. None of us know what anyone else will do, so we cannot really obtain universal freedom (especially from cognitive tension or fear) without contradicting the principles of freedom (by not allowing the possibility that someone else may use their freedom to take our freedom). Such an impasse should result in widespread cognitive paralysis, but it does not. Why? Because of a widespread belief in an all knowing Mediator. Being in ignorance, our only hope for cognitive, emotional, and actual freedom is to ultimately place justice in the hands of an all knowing being.

A widespread belief in God becomes necessary, then, to keep a society that tends toward freedom running smoothly. So how do we explain this impetus for belief, this interaction between a desire to be free and our own ignorance? Two possibilities come to mind: there is a God who desires both our freedom and our belief, and has thus arranged this state of affairs; or random mutation has somehow "selected" a need for belief in order to compensate for a system otherwise gone awry (an unexplained development of a taste for freedom in ignorant creatures) that might otherwise threaten the cognitive breakdown of the species. The problem with the second view is that the development of a belief in God must necessarily come after a realization of an impasse--so why would such an impasse ever have been adaptive in the first place? There is no logical evolutionary explanation for a paradoxical cognitive existence (this by the way was what Lewis was getting at: why would we so universally want to be something that we [biologically] so obviously are not; unless such a desire stemmed from an aspect of ourselves that transcended our biology [spirituality]).

Ask yourselves this question: If you were a God that wished to be in relationship with your people, how best might you ensure that they seek you out? You could impose your presence on them suddenly, but perhaps that would result in a cognitive breakdown as well. Hmmm...perhaps you could try giving them a paradoxical cognitive existence: a drive for freedom plus a profound ignorance of the future. This paradox would provide an impetus for a gradual, but inevitable drawing of your people toward you. So that by degrees they become cognitively prepared for your otherwise overwhelming presence.

That we are ignorant of the future is self-evident, so to believe in God we simply have to ask ourselves one question: Do I have an inexplicable desire to be free? If your answer is no, then let me place you in a cage for a few years and see if your opinion changes.

Shadowy Man

Well, to me it is pretty obvious that life exists. I, myself, am a good example of such life, as I suppose you are too.

Anyway, what I am getting at is that you said that the materialistic viewpoint can't even account for such things as the survival instinct, which is one of the more basic attributes that virtually all life has.

Thus, since the materialistic viewpoint can't account for it, you believe that that means there must be a god that instilled these "values" into life, and these things can't just be complicated chemical reactions that follow the same basic principles on which the rest of material objects (like rocks) follow.

Normal

Sorry to jump in, but I think the argument goes:

Let X be materialism.
Let Y be morality.

1. X can't explain Y
Therefore
2. Not X

Spenser

Hmmm,

Let X be science.
Let Y be the seasons.
Let it be year 1

1. X can't explain Y
Therefore
2. Not X

It still doesn't float, it just says:

1. X can't explain Y (but eventually maybe it could)
Therefore
2. Y = Mystery or unknown.

Normal

Yes, in year 1, science was an incomplete system. Nothing has changed.

But materialism claims everything is explainable as a function of matter. If just one thing is not explainable, materialism is false.

Spenser

And just like the first point, even if it wasn't explainable yet, doesn't mean it's not explainable. (Though I think it is and already posted reasons why) Basically what I am getting at, is if we follow that because the seasons were not explainable by materialism in year one, you suggest materialism is false (in the context of that argument). But later it is explainable by materialism so your argument was false. Even if you can't explain it by matter currently, that doesn't make it false, and that definitely provides nothing to support the idea of the Xian God...