Hitchens' Morality Challenge

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The distinction is only artificial if you think morals are completely subjective & anything anyone thinks is morally right is morally right "for them".

Many religious people do indeed posit God's will as selfsame with morality - clearly I think they are all wrong.

OK then, if they are not subjective give me some basis for an absolute morality, and prove to me why I should accept your morality over my own. You thinking people are wrong does not necessarily make it so, unless you are positing yourself to be infallible.

Well, no. I mean, it seems pretty random to say that a religious person acting from conviction and doing wrong is somehow qualitatively different from someone doing wrong from a non religious moral conviction. As I've argued, there isn't much room to argue an objective difference so even if you want to have a moral valuation you're still left with the same results (man does evil against his sentiment) and the same subjective perception of the action ("my sentiments do not represent the greater moral good") and hence the same evil has been done by the religious person and the atheist, or else this becomes as silly as saying that doing something exclusively for religious reasons somehow makes it good in a way that an atheist can't match.

Wowzers, does every single person on this planet have the same view of, what's moral and what's not?

The question that AspieAtheistAlly asked is silly

in all cases, the "cultural practice" is steeped in religious tradition.




Yes, I did reply to it, but it got erased due to kitty interference (that's a bad kitty!! that's my chicken pot pie!! !)

I asked you to provide a source for that info. I'm betting it came from Focus on the Family or some other group.

Such as??


Would atheists burn unpopular women at the steak just for being different??



your best argument so far, but i don't entirely agree. A common moral framework has existed throughout civilization, across cultures and time. Don't murder, don't steal, don't bear false witness, etc... these are necessary moral rules that no society can function without.

To some extent, but why then do such practices continue even after a change in religion?


I try to keep my kitties away from the computer. Don't like it when they shed all over the keyboard.

I wasn't pointing to any one source; there have been a vast number of studies on the subject done by various organizations, not all with a religious agenda. In any case, if you want a source, remember that as always Google is your friend.

Stalin didn't commit mass murder because of no god, he did it to consolidate his own power. It was done under the name of a true "ism" Stalinism not atheism. Atheism isn't even a real "ism" because it has no teachings or doctrines.

You're dodging the point. Because "atheism" isn't a doctrine it can coexist with an "ism" and hence this is an example of a brutal yet non religious regime.

Unless by atheism you are supposing something quite a bit more specific, in which case your argument seems to become "my system is better than your system nya nya nya".

Prayer and praise for the deity, duh. My own statement presupposes that those can be considered good but not doable by an atheist.

You mean at the stake, and no, they would instead purge them from society or lock them away for "their own good". We have outgrown stakes a long time ago.

The major issue here AspieAtheistAlly is that a "common moral framework" does not have anything to do with morality. In any case, your examples presuppose themselves, if murder was right, it wouldn't be called murder, if theft was right then it wouldn't be called theft, and as such it ignores the idea that property can be defined differently in different societies as can unjust killing. And to say that many societies will have rules about just killing, and that many societies will have rules about property rights and that following these socially circumscribed rules can be fulfilled without reference to god seems plain and good, however, the question isn't about socially circumscribed rules, and to say so is ridiculous, as then we can have a socially circumscribed rule saying "atheism is bad" as we've had for centuries and atheists would not be able to be good according to it, and the only other device to appeal to would be evolutionary biology and let's be honest, one of the arguments against religion is that their ideas fall in with evolutionary biology but are otherwise hard to justify. As such, the entire argument is stupid unless you are referring to moral facts, which are little metaphysical things seemingly without any existence at all, and as such, what is then the point???

I question your reading comprehension. The point was that religion is not necessary to do horrible things, thus you still have failed to answer your second question. Now do so, or give up and admit that you've just been being an arrogant, elitist ass.

No, I'm defining morality in terms that have been common through history and cultures. Praising a diety isn't one of these since it has no tangible benefit to anyone (yes, there HAVE been scientific studies showing that prayer doesn't work, suprise suprise)
Dying for an umnproven (all religions are unproven) would fall under the same category.

Christians have longer life expectancies than atheists.

Which must be quite frustrating since they are all so anxious to get to heaven.

Last edited by Sand on 31 Dec 2008, 2:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, Christians generally don't see a need to rush towards death. But it is rather ironic.

I'd be curious to see the average overall health of Atheists verses the average of Christians, also along with average cause of death.