Moral argument for Gods existence

The moral argument for gods existence

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1369-moral-argument-for-gods-existence

What is the final reference point for a final moral declaration? One needs a universal moral grounding or an objective standard. Something that is an absolute external to humanity.

Before an atheist can criticize me on any wrongdoing, he has to accept my Biblical worldview, or admit that his criticism is just his mere, subjective, nonbinding, nonauthoritative, personal opinion.

- No God = no ultimate moral standard - No ultimate moral standard = no evil exists (no law = no crime) - No evil exists = the atheist is a blind fool when appealing to moral standards that he claims do not exist in his own worldview. Ergo, the atheist attempting to call upon a moral law to condemn God, is either a hypocrite or an idiot or both.

If there is no God, there is also no real, objective moral law. (Moral law is conceptual, not material, it requires a mind to explain its existence)
If there is no such law, there is no such thing as evil or good.
Ergo, when the befuddled atheist invokes the problem of evil - as an argument against God, they are automatically contradicting their own atheism. Without the existence of real evil and good, nothing can be a "problem of evil" since evil doesn't exist.

Or as even Dawkins put it:
"This is one of the hardest lessons for humans to learn. We cannot admit that things might be neither good nor evil, neither cruel nor kind, but simply callous – indifferent to all suffering, lacking all purpose."
- River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, p96

Lewis wrote:
"The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But the standard that measures two things is something different from either. You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to be true about."
- Mere Christianity

Claim: Atheists can be good without God.
Answer: Since we have our moral values imprinted in our hearts and conscience, and that does not exempt unbelievers in God, they obviously know how to distinguish good from evil. There is an ultimate moral principle by which to measure good and evil. The point is, however, that morals are " ought to be's". They are prescribed by God.  There is an ultimate moral standard. This standard emanates from God's nature.

Pope Pius XI, 1937 Mit brennender Sorge,
It is on faith in God, preserved pure and stainless, that man's morality is based. All efforts to remove from under morality and the moral order the granite foundation of faith and to substitute for it the shifting sands of human regulations, sooner or later lead these individuals or societies to moral degradation. The fool who has said in his heart "there is no God" goes straight to moral corruption (Psalms xiii. 1), and the number of these fools who today are out to sever morality from religion, is legion.

Jeffrey Dahmer:
If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then—then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?,”  "That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing.”

1. If evil exists, good exists
2. If evil and good exists, God exists
3. Evil and good exists, therefore, God exists.

Why is there evil? This is a fallen world, and temporal. It will not last forever. Compared to infinity, no matter how evil this world is, this timespan on earth is just an instant.

1. If objective moral values exist, then God exists.
2. Objective moral values exist. It is always wrong to torture, rape, and kill little babies for fun.
3. Therefore, God exists.

The Argument from Moral Truth
1. There exist objective moral truths. (Slavery and torture and genocide are not just distasteful to us, but are actually wrong.)
2. These objective moral truths are not grounded in the way the world is but, rather, in the way the world ought to be.
3. The world itself—the way it is, the laws of physics, or physical being can not account for the way the world ought to be.
4. The only way to account for morality is that God established morality.
5. Therefore, God exists.

1. If there is no God, there are no objective moral values, since they are prescribed " ought to be's".
2. If there is no God, then moral values are just a matter of personal opinion, and as such, no objectively or universally valid at all. According to Naturalism/Materialism, any claims of morality have to be relativistic, utilitarian, and/or cultural in basis but *not* intrinsic or transcendent.
3. If that is the case, unbelievers have no moral standard to judge anything as morally good or bad.
4. Therefore, in order to criticize God, they need to borrow from the theistic worldview, and as such, their criticism is self-contradicting and invalid.
5. Even IF they could make a case to criticize God's choices, that would not refute his existence.

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1369-moral-argument-for-gods-existence

“Where no guiding ideals are left to point the way, the scale of values disappears and with it the meaning of our deeds and sufferings, and at the end can lie only negation and despair. Religion is therefore the foundation of ethics, and ethics the presupposition of life.”
[Heisenberg, Werner. 1973. “Naturwissenschaftliche und religioese Wahrheit.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 24 Maerz, pp. 7-8. (Speech before the Catholic Academy of Bavaria, on acceptance of the Guardini Prize, 23 March 1974)]

Chesterton was critical of nontheistic worldviews. He called atheism “the most daring of all dogmas.. . . It is the assertion of a universal negative; He criticized pantheism for being unable to inspire moral action. “For pantheism implies in its nature that one thing is as good as another; whereas action implies in its nature that one thing is greatly preferable to another” ( Orthodoxy , 143). Even paganism is better than pantheism, he added. “Paganism is free to imagine divinities, while pantheism is forced to pretend, in a priggish way, that all things are equally divine” ( Catholic Church and Conversion , 89).

The human apprehension of a moral condition is an indicator of something which is possibly outside of humanity in my view. It reaches beyond the Darwinian model of that which would create greater survival as well. Here is why I see it this way. One expectation humans have of the moral condition is that we expect things to be the way they ought to be. That, however, does not fully explain the existence of a moral law. What does rise to the level of a universal is the expectation one has of what others would do rightly toward us. We all have an expectation of what we see as the right, or just thing, as done in our own cases. When that is violated, we are offended. That offense is either a real reaction to a real infraction or it is a fiction. If we are nothing but particles moving, I fail to see how anyone can even use the word “Moral,” except as a colloquialism.

"Can atheists be good?" and the answer from both sides is always yes, but after long consideration, I'm here to emphatically disagree, and here's why. Good as well as evil are religious concepts. In an atheistic/materialistic/Darwinian framework, human beings are nothing more than animals, and in the animal kingdom there is only one law. The law of the jungle. Kill and eat...... I recently watched my cat play with a lizard to within an inch of it's life. Was what the cat did wrong? of course not. Neither was it right or wrong, good or evil, for that lizard to eat all the bugs it had consumed, because right and wrong, good and evil don't exist in the animal kingdom, otherwise there's a whole lotta beasts, bugs, birds and fish that need to be tried for murder. This is why atheism is totally self refuting. As soon as the atheists complains about any wrong, any evil, or approves of anything good, he completely contradicts himself by appealing to a standard of behavior that can't, and doesn't exist according to his world view. Although, I, can recognize the good or evil behaviours of the atheist, to his credit, or not. There is absolutely no basis for the atheist to make any, that's ANY, value judgement, of any kind, because life has no intrinsic value or meaning in an atheistic frame work. We're all just a meaningless compilation of chemicals in a random, purposeless universe that somehow sprouted out of nothing. We are all just part of the same decaying compost heap. Therefore, logically, in his own eye's, the atheist cannot be good, or bad, because he's just a dumb animal, No offence. So. The atheist is either blind as a bat, or very dishonest, or both.....Thus endeth the rant........................ Oh no! There's more. A real, 100%, died in the wool, card carrying atheist, would never open his mouth for any reason other than to meet his physical needs, or perhaps to howl at the moon. The reason being that, there is no point. Life is pointless. Atheistic existentialism acknowledges the meaninglessness (pointlessness) of existence. Therefore, to open ones mouth (as in to make a point, or to persuade) is once again, contradicting the basic premise of the atheist.

“Duty arises in response to an imperative from a competent authority. For example, if some random person were to tell me to pull my car over, I would have absolutely no legal obligation to do so. But if a policeman were to issue such a command, I’d have a legal obligation to obey. The difference in the two cases lies in the persons who issued the commands: one is qualified to do so, while the other is not.”

Morals  can't come from a natural contingent force, or nature since these are impersonal sources, and no morality can come from impersonal energy, matter, since there is no scientific rationale for energy/matter/nature providing a standard of behaviour and thinking that we ought to follow with true and right values, nor is there a means for it to translate it to humans, since impersonal objects/entities have no proven means of language to convey such moral standards. Only a personal being who is not contingent or temporal, maximally great, not just quasi maximally great, and eternal with language capability, and the means to convey his standards to humanity would be the only logical answer for a transcendent moral lawgiver that can actually have a conscious mind with language capability to formulate and articulate and express to humanity moral standards. A theistic God fits the bill nicely, who conveys his morality via conscience, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

Atheists commonly argue that the Bible is full of lies, atrocities and crimes and that the biblical God is evil, but can't explain why all this is wrong without assuming a biblical worldview. The fact of a rock rolling down a hill and randomly and accidentally killing people on its way, cannot be classified as good or evil. If atheism is true, someone PURPOSEFULLY triggering a rock rolling down, hitting and killing who is on its way, cannot be classified as good or evil either. Based on the naturalistic worldview, all actions and intentions are equal. Neither can love be classified as good, since love is unprovable, and abstract. Makes sense ?!!

If you agree, that its wrong in any circumstances to rape, torture and kill little babies for fun,  then you agree that objective moral values exist. Since that is the case,  this takes you to really believe much more than you might think you do. This is a very big thing that you are admitting here. I don't think you realized how big. You are saying that you are confident -- you have a reasonable certainty -- that something exists somewhere in a realm which you can't see, taste, touch, smell or hear. You believe something exists that you can't prove empirically. Think for a moment about a moral absolute. Where did it come from?

 The implications of this fact  you believe that that rule applies to everyone, in other words, it is a moral absolute, then you have just affirmed a belief in something that is immaterial that you don't access by your five senses but you do access with some certainty by some other means. There is a sense of moral intuition that has a play here. If a moral absolute exists, it's fair to ask the question, what kind of thing is it? It's not a physical thing. A moral thing is not physical. It doesn't extend into space, it doesn't weigh something, it has no physical qualities or characteristics. It is a non-physical thing that really exists. It's an immaterial thing, something that you know exists but you can't get at with any of your five senses. If it seems that the moral thing exists and has moral force on our behavior, then it seems to me the most reasonable option is that Someone made that moral thing and so that moral rule is a rule of Somebody's, and it's not just a disembodied principle. When you break the moral rule, you offend the Person Who made the rule itself.

That's true for a lot of people who object to the idea of God because they can't find Him with their senses.   In other words, there are other ways to learn about things than just the five senses.   I think there is a sense of moral intuition that has a play here. But in any event, you can be considered rational in believing that such a rule actually exists. Once you do that, it does a lot of work for you.

Well, when you say that a thing like an absolute moral rule exists, you've made an admission that has profound implications for many other beliefs. In other words, a whole bunch of other beliefs are bound up in that statement.

For example, when you say that some absolute moral laws exist, you're saying that immaterial things -- like moral laws which aren't made out of physical stuff -- certainly do exist. Therefore, materialism as a worldview is false. Instead, it is reasonable to believe in things you don't see and can't test with the five senses. Strict empiricism would be false, then. Now this is a big step, because in the case of many atheists one of their frequent  arguments against God is that He hasn't shown Himself to us. But by your own admission, it can be reasonable to believe in something you simply can't see. In other words, there are different ways to "show" things to people, ways that don't involve the senses.

Given that this moral rule is out there somewhere, where did it come from?

You have only a limited number of options.

1.  It could have just come into existence out of nowhere. It could have just "poofed" into existence.
2.  It could have self-created itself. Though if it did then one could ask how is it that an arbitrary thing like a moral rule could have any moral force?  If it is an accident, if it just comes from nowhere, why would it have any moral force on me? And part of our argument is that a moral rule does have moral force. Maybe it assembled itself by accident out of available immaterial stuff floating around in wherever that world is that morals float around in. Of course, if it happened by accident then you'd still have to answer the question, how does an accidental thing have moral force? Or,
3.  it could be that the moral law was made by Someone Who lives in that immaterial realm. Now, those are your options. I don't know how many other options there are, but it seems to me you are stuck with these three.

You see, you do not have the liberty of standing in a neutral place on this issue. You've got to believe something. If you refuse to believe God made moral laws, given that you admit that they are there, then you're opting for one of the other two alternatives. And if you say that they just popped into existence or that they assembled themselves by chance, you have new problems to solve. In other words, I don't think those are tenable alternatives.

My point is to look at what seems to be the obvious existence of moral absolutes and to then look and see where that observation leads us, and it seems to lead us to the existence of a God who makes those moral rules because moral rules are designed kinds of things that don't make themselves, it appears. And it seems that a very good explanation for their existence is that a God with moral character made a set of moral rules that express His character and those rules then become absolutes which are incumbent upon us

Apart from God, there is no ultimate reference point to distinguish between what is human and what is inhuman. There is no ontological human compass - certain actions may be held in contempt by society because those actions jeopardise the safety and flourishing of others, but there is no ultimate anchor in which to place those OPINIONS – no commandments from the Divine to endorse or condemn

I usually use a imaginary illustration  to make a point in regard of the moral argument of Gods existence. I ask :  Is  there a case where it could be considered a morally good thing to torture, rape, and kill babies for fun ? Obviously, the only correct straightforward answer is:  no, its always wrong ( which has the implication that it would be then objectively  wrong ) , and a pointer to prescriptive moral values that can only derive from God.  A better illustration is this real life case :

Grandmother admits to horrifying abuse of two grandchildren while dressed as her witch alter-ego Nelda

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/okla-witch-grandmother-boyfriend-sentenced-article-1.3056478
http://www.news9.com/story/26683352/child-says-okc-woman-dressed-up-as-witch-abused-her
http://newsok.com/oklahoma-city-woman-dressed-up-as-witch-to-punish-child-police-say/article/5347371/?page=2
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4189982/Grandmother-admits-horrifying-abuse-grandchildren.html
https://www.facebook.com/geneva.robinson.35

OKLAHOMA CITY - A shocking confession from a little girl as she exposes an Oklahoma City woman's alleged child abuse scheme, which includes dressing as a witch. Geneva Robinson, 49, is in jail for the allegations. This all came to light when she took a severely abused child to the hospital, and what that little girl told the workers lead to the discovery. Police said the child was "malnourished and very thin,” her "armpits were bruised with small cut” and " "her face had scratches and whelps on it.” They also said "the back of her neck had scarring" and "along her jaw line she had whelps and bruising." Reports state the child's skin was coming off her infected ankles. Hospital workers called DHS, and the little girl told them Robinson "would dress up as a witch, wearing a green mask, and would take her out to the garage, bind her up at night and make her sleep on a pair of jeans, because she was in trouble." The child told them "the witches name was Nelda," and that "she got the marks under her arms because Nelda would take a pink dog leash and hang her in the middle of the garage underneath her arms.” The girl also said Nelda told her "the creatures in the attic were going to come and get her at tonight,” and that she was "hit with an orange and black whip.” The girl "talked about fire and being burned" and said "Nelda would use a wand knife and put it to her neck." Police showed up to Robinson's house, and they said as soon as they walked into the garage, they saw "a pink dog leash hanging with a black dog leash connected and attached to the garage door railings on the ceiling."

They also found a "horse whip" and "dagger" along with a witch hat, black wig and "hooded cloak with red eyes costume." They said the items are evidence that backs up the child's story. Robinson's home was described as a "house of horrors," the outlet reported.  "What she did was horrific and what she did will forever impact this child and her siblings," assistant district attorney Merydith Easter told the judge. "She deserves the same amount of mercy that she showed this child, and that's none."

Geneva Robinson, 51, was sentenced Thursday to three consecutive life terms, The Oklahoman ( http://bit.ly/2pf0p6u ) reported. Her boyfriend, 33-year-old Joshua Granger, was also sentenced after he admitted to helping Robinson frighten her granddaughter. According to the outlet, he would dress up as a demon named "Coogro." He will serve 30 years in prison.

Could there be a situation, where we could classify Geneva Roberts's behavior as morally justifiable, or even as good, or morally virtuous? What, if we would invert our moral standard?   

The founder of an orphanage in Burundi,  Marguerite Barankitse,  defied death threats and witnessed unspeakable violence as she saved thousands of children from ethnic slaughters in the 1990s. She was the winner of a new prize created in memory of the Armenian genocide a century ago. 2

Could we imagine inverting moral values, setting a new standard, and it would become suddenly extraordinarily good and morally desirable, and appreciable of what Geneva did, and give the prize, which Marguerite won, to her and her boyfriend? Imagine: " Geneva Robinson  is the winner of a new prize created in memory of the Armenian genocide a century ago because of her extraordinary humanitarian achievement of torturing little children." In other words: could it depend just on someone's or a society's preferences or a new determination, or a simple change to introduce a new moral standard? 

TOM PYMAN FOR MAILONLINE: 'Depraved' female paedophile, 37, who raped young girl with two men, filmed the abuse to share online and said she wanted to 'kidnap, rape, torture, kill and then eat children' is jailed for life 13 May 2022
A 'depraved' paedophile who raped a young girl with two men and filmed the abuse so it could be shared online has been jailed for life. Vicki Bevan had discussed with another man their desire to 'kidnap, rape, torture, kill and then eat children' after sexually abusing them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10813709/Depraved-paedophile-37-raped-young-girl-two-men-jailed-life.html
https://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/woman-arranged-rape-young-child-7078730

1. http://www.str.org/articles/morality-as-a-clue-to-god#.UqJb1uI_Avk
2. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/25/world/africa/orphanage-founder-from-africa-wins-prize-in-memory-of-armenian-genocide.html?_r=0



Steven Guzzi Posit another adequate source of morality as a proper foundational source for a moral lawgiver other than God, but if you can't then God stands as the most probable moral lawgiver. Polytheistic gods don't work, since they are temporal semi quasi maximally great beings who are contingent beings, thus can't be the foundational moral source of morality since they owe their existence and their qualities and morality to outside sources on which they are contingent upon. It can't be a force or entity, or nature since these are impersonal sources, and no morality can come from impersonal energy, matter since there is no scientific rationale for energy/matter/nature providing a standard of behavior and thinking that we ought to follow with true and right values, nor is there a means for it to translate it to humans since impersonal objects/entities have no proven means of language to convey such moral standards. Only a personal being who is not contingent or temporal, maximally great, not just quasi maximally great, and eternal with language capability, and the means to convey his standards to humanity would be the only logical answer for a transcendent moral lawgiver that can actually have a conscious mind with language capability to formulate and articulate and express to humanity moral standards. A theistic God fits the bill nicely, who conveys his morality via conscience, the Word of God and the Holy Spirit.

If there is no God, there are no objective moral values, since they are prescribed " ought to be's".
Then, moral values are just a matter of personal opinion, and as such, no objectively or universally valid at all.
If that is the case, unbelievers have no moral standard to judge anything as morally good or bad.
So, in order for an atheist to say that he is moral without God, he has to borrow from the theistic worldview.
Thats cheating. And cheating is immoral.
So, in order for an atheist to say that he acknowledges morality, he must adopt a theistic worldview.
If he adopts the Christian worldview, he will have to recognize that he is a sinner, unable to meet Gods standard of perfection.
So he either is not aware of the discrepancy, or he has to deal with cognitive dissonance.
In one case he is ignorant, in the other, he will remain dissatisfact until he becomes a Christian, submits to Christ,
surrenders and starts a new life where Christ is the boss.

We have two competing worldviews one a theistic which says we have free will in a fallen world so both good evil are going to exist.
Versus the atheist worldview where we have the free will to do whatever and there is nothing beyond.
Evil exists in both and neither worldview is completely conclusive or empirically proven to be true, but think about this, a child who was being abused will eventually be in the arms of a loving savior and there will be justice against the abuser.
The alternative is what? No justice, both abuser and child go into the grave, and that's it?


it doesn’t matter if all humans that ever lived agreed on a set of morals. That’s the point of objective morality.
Even if human beings don’t agree with objective morality they would be wrong.
Their subjective experiences are deficient.
We are all moral agents in that we have a sense of right and wrong, good and evil, but we do not have sufficient knowledge to truly judge them and so we mishandle that information.
If morality does exist then there is an objective standard. This sense of right and wrong points to an objective standard.
This is one reason why we know there is something which transcends us.
Of course if all we are is time plus matter plus chance then life is meaningless and morality is arbitrary and it doesn’t actually matter if you go about murdering your neighbor, or stealing all their stuff. As the brilliant Existential Atheist Philosopher Nietzsche says all that matters is the will to power good and evil do not exist the one who exerts his will the most in the world gets to determine the rules.


In his book, In the Blood: God, Genes and Destiny, Steve Jones
suggested that criminal behavior was determined largely by
genetic make-up (1996, pp. 207-220). In discussing Jones’
book, one writer, Janet Daley, insisted that if genetics is indeed
ultimately responsible for “bad” traits, it also must account
for “good” ones. She observed: “If we can never be
truly guilty, thenwecan never be truly virtuous either.” Daley
went on to say:

Human beings are only capable of being moral insofar
as they are free to choose how they behave. If they
have no power to makereal choices—if their freedom
to decide how to act is severely limited by forces outside
their control—then it is nonsense to make any
ethical judgements about them. It would be wrong,
as well, to base a judicial system on the assumption
that people are free to choose how they will act. The
idea of putting anyone on trial for anything at all becomes
absurd (1996).


Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist,
and manis in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find
anything todependuponeither within or outsidehimself....
Nor, on the other hand, if God does not exist,
are we provided with any values or commands that
could legitimize our behavior (1961, p. 485).

Agnostic philosopher Bertrand Russell
observed:

We feel that the man who brings widespread happiness
at the expense of misery to himself is a better
man than themanwhobrings unhappiness to others
and happiness to himself. I do not know of any rational
ground for this view, or, perhaps, for the somewhat
more rational view that whatever the majority
desires (called utilitarian hedonism) is preferable to
what theminority desires.Theseare truly ethicalproblems
but I do not know of any way in which they can
be solved except by politics or war. All that I can find
to say on this subject is that an ethical opinion can
only be defended by an ethical axiom, but, if the
axiom is not accepted, there is no way of reaching
a rational conclusion(1969, 3:29,emp.added).

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/72189.William_Lane_Craig

Without a divine lawgiver, there can be no objective right and wrong, only our culturally and personally relative, subjective judgments. This means that it is impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, and love as good. For in a universe without God, good and evil do not exist—there is only the bare valueless fact of existence, and there is no one to say that you are right and I am wrong.

The moral argument:

http://truthbomb.blogspot.com/2013/01/video-god-and-arguments-from-morality.html

http://coldcasechristianity.com/2013/our-sense-of-moral-obligation-proves-materialism-is-false/

   Our recognition of the moral culpability of the driver (rather than the car) is an admission that materialism (physicalism) fails to explain who we are as humans. Consider the following argument:

   No Physical System is a Free Agent Physical systems are either “determined” (one event necessarily following the other) or “random”

   Therefore No Physical System Has Moral Responsibility Moral responsibility requires moral freedom of choice

   Human Beings DO Have Moral Responsibility We recognize that each of us has the responsibility and choice to act morally, and indeed, we seek to hold each other legally accountable for each other’s free-will choices

   Therefore, Human Beings Are NOT Simply Physical Systems Our recognition of moral responsibility and our efforts to hold each other accountable are irrational and unwarranted if humans are merely physical systems

If we, as humans, are only physical systems (merely matter), we ought to stop trying to hold each other accountable for misbehavior. In fact, there can be no misbehavior if we are only physical brains and bodies; there can only be behavior. Our actions have no moral content at all unless we truly have the freedom to choose and the ability to break the bondage of physical event causation. As a homicide detective, I can’t prosecute the gun or knife that was used by the murderer, but I can certainly arrest the free-agent human that used the physical tool to commit the murder in the first place. I can’t do this if the human was only another purely physical object in a sequence of caused events. If materialism (physicalism) is true, there is no need for homicide detectives. We still employ detectives, however, because our sense of moral obligation proves materialism to be false.

William Lane Craig, PhD University of Birmingham, England-  on the moral argument:

http://winteryknight.wordpress.com/2012/12/19/william-lane-craig-explains-the-moral-argument-to-georgia-tech-students-and-faculty/

http://www.reasonablefaith.org/media/talks/latest

http://www.strangenotions.com/god-exists/#1

   Real moral obligation is a fact. We are really, truly, objectively obligated to do good and avoid evil.
   Either the atheistic view of reality is correct or the "religious" one.
   But the atheistic one is incompatible with there being moral obligation.
   Therefore the "religious" view of reality is correct.

How can I be absolutely obligated by something less than me—for example, by animal instinct or practical need for material survival?
How can I obligate myself absolutely? Am I absolute? Do I have the right to demand absolute obedience from anyone, even myself? And if I am the one who locked myself in this prison of obligation, I can also let myself out, thus destroying the absoluteness of the obligation which we admitted as our premise.
How can society obligate me? What right do my equals have to impose their values on me? Does quantity make quality? Do a million human beings make a relative into an absolute? Is "society" God?
The only source of absolute moral obligation left is something superior to me. This binds my will, morally, with rightful demands for complete obedience

There are four possible relations between religion and morality, God and goodness.

Religion and morality may be thought to be independent. Kierkegaard's sharp contrast between "the ethical" and "the religious," especially in Fear and Trembling, may lead to such a supposition. But (a) an amoral God, indifferent to morality, would not be a wholly good God, for one of the primary meanings of "good" involves the "moral"—just, loving, wise, righteous, holy, kind. And (b) such a morality, not having any connection with God, the Absolute Being, would not have absolute reality behind it.
God may be thought of as the inventor of morality, as he is the inventor of birds. The moral law is often thought of as simply a product of God's choice. This is the Divine Command Theory: a thing is good only because God commands it and evil because he forbids it. If that is all, however, we have a serious problem: God and his morality are arbitrary and based on mere power. If God commanded us to kill innocent people, that would become good, since good here means "whatever God commands." The Divine Command Theory reduces morality to power. Socrates refuted the Divine Command Theory pretty conclusively in Plato's Euthyphro. He asked Euthyphro, "Is a thing pious because the gods will it, or do the gods will it because it is pious?" He refuted the first alternative, and thought he was left with the second as the only alternative.
But the idea that God commands a thing because it is good is also unacceptable, because it makes God conform to a law higher than himself, a law that overarches God and humanity alike. The God of the Bible is no more separated from moral goodness by being under it than he is by being over it. He no more obeys a higher law that binds him, than he creates the law as an artifact that could change and could well have been different, like a planet.
The only rationally acceptable answer to the question of the relation between God and morality is the biblical one: morality is based on God's eternal nature. That is why morality is essentially unchangeable. "I am the Lord your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy" (Lev. 11:44). Our obligation to be just, kind, honest, loving and righteous "goes all the way up" to ultimate reality, to the eternal nature of God, to what God is. That is why morality has absolute and unchangeable binding force on our conscience.

The only other possible sources of moral obligation are:

My ideals, purposes, aspirations, and desires, something created by my mind or will, like the rules of baseball. This utterly fails to account for why it is always wrong to disobey or change the rules.
My moral will itself. Some read Kant this way: I impose morality on myself. But how can the one bound and the one who binds be the same? If the locksmith locks himself in a room, he is not really locked in, for he can also unlock himself.
Another human being may be thought to be the one who imposes morality on me—my parents, for example. But this fails to account for its binding character. If your father commands you to deal drugs, your moral obligation is to disobey him. No human being can have absolute authority over another.
"Society" is a popular answer to the question of the origin of morality "this or that specific person" is a very unpopular answer. Yet the two are the same. "Society" only means more individuals. What right do they have to legislate morality to me? Quantity cannot yield quality; adding numbers cannot change the rules of a relative game to the rightful absolute demands of conscience.
The universe, evolution, natural selection and survival all fare even worse as explanations for morality. You cannot get more out of less. The principle of causality is violated here. How could the primordial slime pools gurgle up the Sermon on the Mount?

Robert J. Sawyer, Calculating God
“If theft is advantageous to everyone who succeeds at it, and adultery is a good strategy, at least for males, for increasing presence in the gene pool, why do we feel they are wrong? Shouldn't the only morality that evolution produces be the kind Bill Clinton had - being sorry you got caught?”

Police: 3-year-old hung up by feet, beaten, killed in Chester County



WEST CALN TWP., Pa. (WPVI) -- Police say a man and his girlfriend are charged with murdering the girlfriend's 3-year-old son in what a prosecutor described as an "unspeakable act of depravity.".

Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan announced the arrests of Gary Fellenbaum and Jillian Tait Thursday morning. He says Fellenbaum, his wife, and girlfriend, Tait, all lived together in a mobile home in West Caln Township and worked at a local Walmart.
On Tuesday authorities were called to their residence for the report of an unresponsive child. Responding EMTs found 3-year-old Scott McMillan suffering from bruises, lacerations and puncture wounds all over his body.
Police say Fellenbaum, Tait, and Fellenbaum's wife, Amber, confessed that the little boy had been beaten with blunt and sharp objects, whipped, taped to a chair with electrical tape and beaten, hung up by his feet and beaten, leading to his death.
Authorities say they beat Scott to death using homemade weapons, like a whip, a curtain rod, a frying pan, and an aluminum strip.
Police say Tait explained that the fatal beating began when the boy wouldn't eat his breakfast.
Hogan said, "Little Scotty McMillan is dead. Over a three day period ... he was systematically tortured and beaten to death. He was punched in the face and in the stomach. He was scourged with a homemade whip. He was lashed with a metal rod. He was tied to a chair and beaten. He was tied upside down by his feet and beaten. His head was smashed through a wall."

Hogan said professionals with deep experience in these types of cases were brought to tears.
"Our ER nurses see a lot of terrible things. But when they saw his body, they wept," Hogan said.
The district attorney says Gary Fellanbaum and Tait went car shopping, bought pizza, took a nap and engaged in sexual activity - all while the child lay dying after weeks of relentless torture.
Tait allegedly told police that Fellenbaum beat her 6 and 3-year-old boys on a number of occasions. He would allegedly hit them with a closed fist in the head, face, chest and buttocks, and on one occasion she says he strung the boys up by their feet and beat them, while she and Fellenbaum laughed.
That 6-year-old boy is now in the care of relatives.
Fellenbaum and Tait are charged with murder and are currently being held without bail. Hogan says he will be seeking the death penalty.
One neighbor told us, "I don't know if they should [be sentenced to death]or not... because they would probably suffer more in jail all their lives."
The Fellenbaums and Tait only moved into the mobile home community last month. Authorities say there are no signs of drug use in the home.


The fruits of atheism. When there is no God, you can do whatever you want, without consequences....
Paterson, the kidnapper's words: "He also says he thinks he would've gotten away with it if he had planned it perfectly. "

https://www.yourerie.com/news/local-news/man-who-kills-parents-of-13-year-old-girl-and-kidnaps-her-allegedly-admits-he-chose-her/1701895870


1. http://6abc.com/news/da-boys-beating-death-an-unspeakable-act-of-depravity/383512/

Johno: As many of you know, I am a conceptual nominalist.

Wiki: In metaphysics, nominalism is a philosophical view which denies the existence of universals.

Question: In what case is it fine to torture, rape, and kill little babies for fun ?  I don't know of any circumstance where such behavior could and would be classified as " very good". So it seems to me that it is universally or objectively wrong, in any circumstances, to do so. Therefore nominalism is false.

Johno:   The fact that no moral philosophy works perfectly,, the fact that we all believe slightly different things of morality, shows that there is, descriptively, subjectivity concerning moral philosophy.

Answer: Johno has yet to demonstrate a case, where torturing, raping, and killing babies for fun is acceptable or good in certain particular circumstances. If they exist, what are they ? If he cannot mention them, there is no ground to hold a nominalist view of morality.

Johno: " with the position that the mental supervenes on the physical (as I claim), then there is a sense that such mental states of intentions are themselves reducible to physical properties. "

Answer: Einstein's Gulf: Can Evolution cross it? by John Oller, Ph.d

The mind cannot emerge from matter

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1283-einstein-s-gulf

On the one side, we find the real world of objects, events, and tensional spacetime relations. On the other side, we find fully abstract representations that contain information about the material world. That articulate information is abstracted first by our senses, secondarily by our bodily actions, and tertiarily by our ability to use one or more particular languages . Between the two realms we find what appears to be an uncrossable gulf.

A small part of the materialists problem is that hard objects are never observed spontaneously to transform themselves (on their own recognizance) into abstract ideas.

The Mind is Not The Brain

https://reasonandscience.catsboard.com/t1662-the-mind-is-not-the-brain

You can know for sure just with a moment's reflection that your brain is not your soul.

The headline in the article says, "A memory is nothing more than a few thousand brain cells firing in a particular pattern." In other words, they are saying that a memory is identical with brain cells firing in a pattern. It is not correlated with a [b]mind state such that the brain cells firing causes your mind or soul to have a memory. It is saying that that's all it is.[/b]

That's like saying that a movie is nothing more than light shining through a piece of celluloid. A movie requires light shining through a piece of celluloid and then you can see it projected on the screen. But to say that it is nothing more than that misses something very obvious. Did you ever go upstairs in a movie theater and look through the window of the projection room? There is a big giant disc spinning, the celluloid goes through an apparatus, and there is hot light.

Now, what if I were to tell you that that is the movie right there. The movie is the physical action that I can see happening. You'd think that was ridiculous. A movie is much more than the physical mechanism, the machinery with the celluloid passing through it with a sharp, bright light behind it. Rather, the movie is the image that is being projected on the screen, and it's even more than just an image. There is a story, dialogue, characterization. There are all these other things that go beyond just the physical representation.

When one tries to limit mental activity to the physical processes that I believe produce the mental activity, but isn't the mental activity itself, it is the same as trying to say that a movie is merely the shining of a light through a celluloid strip. You can't capture the movie at all by looking at light shining through celluloid, which shows that a physicalistic explanation of what a movie amounts to falls far short of what the movie really is. What's more, if you look at the light on the celluloid, you will never, ever even see the movie.

Johno:  For me, there is no ether or locus for morality outside of our brains where such ideas can exist in an ontic sense.

Answer: If that is true, moral values are just reduced to personal opinion and preference. If there is no prescribing moral entitiy which says what ought to be, then morals are subjective, and there are no morals at all. Only individual opinions, and its " my opinion against yours ". If i think that robbing a bank is fine, and your view is that its not ok: Why is your opinion more worth than mine ?

If morals are a mere issue of different points of view, how can someone say Trump was wrong to have extramarital affairs? Or Hillary using her charity foundation and the funds raised, rather than for helping the poor in Haiti, for herself ?

Johno: Simply put, if there were no minds to conceive of morality, there would be no morality.

Answer: And the point is ?

Johno: oughts are goal-oriented and the goal is contained in a viable protasis.

that dodges the main issue:

Either there is a prescribing entity above us, which says what ought to be, and is binding, or
there is not.

If there is no such entity, than " oughts " are merely based on personal opinion, and no binding  "oughts" at all.

Johno:  But if I was to ask, simply, “Why?” to the theist, then we start to see how problems can arise. The theist is in danger, without a viable protasis, of merely asserting oughts in a vacuum, that you must be good…in order to be good. This is rather circular and tells us nothing.

Answer: Of course not. The prescribing entityt which says what ought to be, is God. Which is above us. So we have a valid protasis, while the atheist sans God has none.

An atheist moral code

http://unsane.info/pmdg-atheist-moral-code/

One of the criticisms often levelled at atheists is that we have no moral code. I don’t agree with that assessment, and eventually reached the point where I wanted to put out there, as succinctly and accurately, what mine is. Ironically, there’s 10 rules in my moral code.

This life is the only time you exist. Make the most of it.
This life is the only time anyone else exists. Do not take it from them.
That which we leave behind when we’re gone are the memories and thoughts others have of us. Do your best to ensure they’re good ones.
It’s valid to feel angry about things from time to time. Hate is not valid.
Do not attack the personal religious or spiritual beliefs of another, unless it is to defend against those beliefs being used to impinge your rights.
Good and bad, or good and evil, are discoverable without religion, and we should always try to do good.
Good and bad, or good and evil, are evolving concepts.
Believe that which can be empirically proven.
Follow Hanlon’s Razor until Occam’s Razor demands otherwise.
Our “purpose” should be three-fold:
Contribute, in some way, however small, to the evolution of the human mind.
Be mindful that we’re not the last generation to inhabit the earth.
Be mindful that we’re not the only species to inhabit the earth.

The author elaborated this list upon whoms moral standard, and why does he think it is binding ??!!

Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov: 
"A Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow," Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They bum villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them-all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it. These Turks took a pleasure in torturing children, too; cutting the unborn child from the mother's womb, and tossing babies up in the air and catching them on the points of their bayonets before their mother's eyes. Doing it before the mother's eyes was what gave zest to the amusement. Here is another scene that I thought very interesting. Imagine a trembling mother with her baby in her arms, a circle of invading Turks around her. They've planned a diversion; they pet the baby, laugh to make it laugh. They succeed, the baby laughs. At that moment a Turk points a pistol four inches from the baby's face. The baby laughs with glee, holds out his little hands to the pistol, and he pulls the trigger in the baby's face and blows out its brains. Artistic, wasn't it? By the way, Turks are particularly fond of sweet things, they say. "2

How is it that blind, non-thinking processes manage to produce creatures that apprehend and respond to abstract moral principles?

Could a non-thinking moral realm have possible seen humanity coming?

How could non-aligned realms like the natural and the abstract accidentally intermesh?

Isn't it a far more plausible concept that both the natural and the abstract are subject to God?

How can the materialist ascribe moral principles and purpose to our existence from mere energy and matter?

Is it not troubling that philosophical naturalism’s best explanation for our having moral beliefs makes no essential reference to their being true?

If human moral sense and moral beliefs arise from natural selection, then isn’t their value found in the resulting adaptive behavior? If so, isn't such a natural process of gaining moral sense ultimately survival aimed rather than truth aimed?

If the underlying purpose of our moral sense is the survival fitness conferred by the resulting behavior, then wouldn't we have had those beliefs whether or not they were true?

Our overarching point in this line of inquiry is simple. As creatures with the power of reason, we owe it ourselves to seek what is actually true, not what is only ostensibly pragmatic or utilitarian at best. As an aside, it is worth briefly pointing to the importance of what philosophers call moral realism here. If there is no actual moral realm to see, our moral sense is but an illusion. Additionally, if moral standards are not objective, our moral sense discovers nothing outside of our own minds or social framework. Simply put, if objective moral standards are not tangible, discoverable features of the Universe, aren’t our senses playing tricks on us to get us to cooperate and survive? If that is the case, moral facts are an illusory concept and we needn’t consider it further. Now we could be charitable and say this is unlikely, but the truth is that this concept is unambiguously absurd. Matter has no mind by which to deceive us for our own good nor can it set social goals for us.

The Bible contains the highest information/semantic content in world literature.

Genesis 1.1:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

That informs us in one short sentence of our origins.

John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

That informs us in one sentence of how we can be saved and receive eternal life.

Matthew 22:38
Jesus declared, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’…

That informs us in one sentence of how we ought to live.

If someone can propose a better/higher moral standard, which, if followed, would provide better good for humans to live together in society, I would like to hear it.

Now let us suppose that you would KNOW with absolute certainty that the whole Bible is a made-up story by some genius guy and that ontologically speaking, there is no God, but the material world is all there is and brought forward life and humans. Not only that, but you had the BEST arguments to back that up.

It would still be more reasonable to defend the Biblical worldview because it shapes humanity to the better. In contrast, without a creator, there can be no enforcing agency of moral good, and man basically could give a free go to his own inclinations, without fear of consequences besides eventually the direct consequences of his actions.

The only manifestation of atheism in state power is totalitarianism. No exceptions. For two centuries-- from 1789-- every atheist philosophy that has risen to power has brought hell to earth among the people under its boot. Atheist 'secular humanism' has one salient characteristic-- it never survives the rise of atheism. What begins with an edited Jefferson always ends with a pockmarked Caligula. Atheism in power has always been totalitarian.

I have yet to find a confessing atheist, which would passionately love to become a believer, but the supposed lack of evidence hinders him rationally to become one. Someone, that truly griefs, that based on the supposed lack of evidence of God's existence, injustice rules the world.

Which acknowledges, that the rapist, the murderer, the thief, the torturer that never was caught, will not receive his just punishment. Which would truly desire a just God to exist, which brings judgment and justice to a fallen sinful humanity.

But i have met atheists on every corner, which judge to be morally superior to the God of the Bible, criticize the Bible for supposedly promoting slavery, but never do anything to promote it to end at this current day, where there are more enslaved people than ever in the world.

Atheists, who promote or see no moral problem with abortion, who consider premarital sex morally acceptable, who think its not a big deal to get divorced, who think same-sex marriage is ok, that see no problem in consuming porn and paying for sex, that anyone is free to choose to be male or female and to change gender.

I have yet to find an atheist, which considers, that getting rid of God, means lowering the threshold where one is willing to commit a crime for self-benefit and considers that negatively, leading to a more violent and unjust society. Which understands that atheism leads to universal anarchy and chaos or totalitarian despotism.

And that is truly and seriously disappointed with a materialistic worldview but is in despair because there is no evidence of God.

I have never, even once, met an atheist, hating a materialistic worldview, but grieving for not finding reasons to believe in a creator, who could settle all these things.

Why? Because, atheists, despite of all the negative consequences that such a worldview would bring, desire it to be true. That no God exists. Because he is interfering in their life and their decisions. They want to make up their own meaning of life. They want to be happy without God. And think, the God of the Bible is only there to judge, to command, to restrain freedom and happiness.

Many make up a God in their mind, that does not exist. A strawman God. And by practicing their unbelief, they shut down a God that does not exist, outside of their imagination. That's delusion at its best...

Objective, eternal truths, moral values, and ethics can only exist if God exists. If they are just based on human conventions, they are subjective, and therefore, not authoritative, nor binding.
If another higher world, and God exists, which sets objective morals based on his authority, then real ought-to-be's exist. If only this world exists, then morals are just human conventions and not binding based on a higher authority. Moral relativism means there are no real, objective moral values. In a God-world, moral duties are objective and binding. In a No-God world, moral duties are human conventions and are not binding. They can change, and be different, from one society to another.
https://iep.utm.edu/ethics/

Is it not interesting, the double standard of unbelievers? When it is regarding God, they are never satisfied, and it doesn't matter what you present, it's never enough evidence. Even Dawkins admitted, that if he met God, and God would ask him, why he did not believe, he said: I would respond: Not enough evidence !!

They strain out a gnat and swallow a camel! When I asked Pincreek what would make him believe, he said, I want God to do a miracle in front of me, like lightning fire in my hand on command, and I will believe. Nothing else would persuade him.

But yesterday, when the topic was morals, he said: I know you don't believe this, but our morals are shaped by evolution. Is it not remarkable? They believe evolution does such a feat BLINDLY. There is NO evidence that evolution gave us this trait of knowing what is right and wrong but believe it nonetheless.

How do molecules care what we do with our zipper? How is it, that killing is the norm in the animal world? Even cannibalism. Female spiders eat their male partner after sex. I guess they don't feel guilt. Do they? Bears and lions kill and eat the offspring of adult females. Why have they not evolved morals that prevent them from doing that? Imagine we would do that with our children.

I mean, sorry, but this is an INSANE proposition, and shows how far atheists are willing to go and believe anything when the aim is to deny God.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV--b0x58bo&fbclid=IwAR1OBPx1dAOaeP3MY_j7hQ6MfcUVzZhV53a1pnlozwHEUSIlWDZra4rxZRU

What is your measuring device for determining that one stance is more moral than another?
Here are the moral theories discussed in the college textbook I teach from:
1. Ethical Relativism (the vast majority of students arrive at college with this theory)
• Cultural (or Societal) relativism
• Individual relativism
2. Ethical Egoism (very common these days in evolutionary psychology, including Richard Dawkins book The Selfish Gene)
3. Utilitarianism (proposed by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. With a critique by Ursula K. Le Guin and the Trolley Problem)
•Act utilitarianism
•Rule utilitarianism.
4. Kant’s Categorical Imperative (compared with hypothetical imperatives)
• First formulation
• Second formulation
5. Contractarianism (or the social contract of Rousseau, Hobbes, et al. and modernized by John Rawls and his “original position” and the “veil of ignorance”)
6. Natural Law theory (with examples from Sophocles, the Nuremberg Trials, and Martin Luther King)
7. Virtue Ethics (Aristotle’s theory revived in modern times by Alisdair MacIntyre et al.)
8. Feminist Ethics (or The Ethics of Care)
9. Divine Command theory (given short shrift in the book, but common among theistic philosophers of religion).

Audios reveal sexual harassment by a pastor against a ten-year-old child in Maceió In one of them, he tells the girl to lie to her grandmother and go to her house, where the room would be tidy. Pastor was arrested red-handed and the police are investigating whether there are other victims.

https://g1.globo.com/al/alagoas/noticia/2021/11/25/audios-revelam-assedio-sexual-de-pastor-contra-crianca-de-dez-anos-em-maceio.ghtml

Relatives of the 10-year-old girl who was the victim of sexual harassment, whose crime suspect is a 45-year-old evangelical pastor, were on Thursday afternoon (25) at the Police Station for Crimes against Children and Adolescents, in Maceió. The grandmother testified and revealed the audio that the pastor sent to her granddaughter. The man was arrested red-handed on Wednesday (24), in Fernão Velho.

In one of the audios sent, the pastor tells the girl that her father could die, and to avoid that, she would have to find him.

"I saw a spirit of death surrounding your father. I'm waiting for you here at the door of my house. Better, sooner is better", says the man.

In another passage, he asks the child to lie to his grandmother so that she would come to his house. And he makes his intentions clear.

"You say you're going to the house of a colleague of yours, whom God sent, you understand? Your grandmother will understand because she knows that God himself wants to use you. And we do what I've been talking about there before, right? Don't be afraid My room is ready and everything is waiting for you. Do what I want to do, understand? Which is your virginity, understand? You are relaxed. Don't be ashamed, understand?", says the pastor.
Not knowing that the granddaughter had shown the audio to her grandmother, the pastor went to the family home to invite the girl to go with him for a visit. That's when the grandmother revealed that she was aware of the messages. At that point, she says that she was threatened by him.

"He put his hand against the wall and said: 'I'm going to prison, but when I let go I'm going to kill them one by one", says Alba da Conceição.

It was a family friend who called the Military Police as soon as he found out what was happening. "When I opened the first audio, I didn't have the structure to listen to the content of the other audios. At the same time, I contacted Sergeant Rômulo, who is the commander of the Military Police base there in Osman Loureiro and immediately, he already mobilized the garrisons", said Heidman Marques.

According to Alan Barbosa, head of service at the specialized police station, the pastor must answer for the crime of sexual violence through fraud with the aggravating factor of having used the role of pastor. "He made use of this function to copy this child", said the clerk.

The Civil Police will continue the investigations because there is a possibility that he may have made other victims.

"A normal person is not attracted to a 10-year-old child. So if he is interested in a 10-year-old child, that's his profile. church, so he had access to these kids," concluded Alan.

The girl will be referred to a psychologist and the case is also being monitored by the Tutelary Council.

Comment: In a Godless world, any evil-doer, that is not caught and punished here on earth for his crimes, and dies, will not be either on the other side. But if the God of the Bible exists, evildoers WILL be punished, and pay.
In Gods world, there is justice. In a Godless world, evil prevails, and in the end, wins.