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Without God, how can you be moral? (Frederick Edwords, American Humanist Association)

There is a tendency on the part of many theists to assume that the burden of proof is on the nontheist when it comes to the issue of morality ... — the assumption of the theist being that no morality is possible in the absence of some form of "higher" law....

For the question can still be raised as to how it is possible for human beings to behave morally, agree on moral rules and laws, and generally cooperate with each other in the absence of any divine impetus in this direction. After all, haven't modern philosophers, in particular analytical philosophers, argued that moral statements are basically emotional utterances without a rational base? And haven't they split "is" irrevocably from "ought" so that no foundation is even possible?...

From whence do moral values come?

Let's imagine for a moment that we have the earth, lifeless and dead, floating in a lifeless and dead universe.... Richard Taylor in his book, Good and Evil, has argued effectively that a "distinction between good and evil could not even theoretically be drawn in a world that we imagined to be devoid of all life."...

Enter Adam. Adam is a man who is fully human. He has deficiencies, and hence needs. He has longings and desires. He can experience pain and pleasure and often avoids the former and seeks the latter. Things matter to him. He can ask of a given thing, "Is this for me or against me?" and come to some determination.

At this point, and only at this point, do good and evil appear. Furthermore, as Taylor argues, "the judgments of this solitary being concerning good and evil are as ABSOLUTE as any judgment can be. Such a being is, indeed, the measure of all things: of good things as good and of bad things as bad. . . . No distinction can be made, in terms of this being, between what is merely good for HIM and what is good ABSOLUTELY; there is no higher standard of goodness. For what could it be?"

Here we have the very height of modern humanist philosophy. And yet its attitude -- it hardly deserves to be called "argument," for it assumes its conclusion -- is strikingly familiar. Credit should be given to the source of this attitude: the Serpent in Genesis.

Doesn't it refute Jeff's case for social evolution that we still argue today, and in the same words, about the issues debated by Adam, Eve, and the Serpent?

Posted by Paul Jaminet at June 3, 2003 12:19 PM