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Religious apologists often overlook secular reasons to be decent to our fellow man in order to make their arguments that morality can only be grounded in God. For them, I present these ten secular incentives to ground one's morality in reason. Points one and two can be seen as a catch all and that all following points can be seen as subsets of one and two. The truth is, by making one and two so broad was the only way to cover all the ways people can come to what we consider good behavior. The rest are just some specifics that are probably obvious to all but the most religious of apologists. 1. To avoid negative consequences. Try to kill, rape, or steal from someone and that someone will be pissed. If the person is able to hurt you, he or she is much more likely to hurt you as a punishment of your previous action. The motivation for the retaliation could be revenge or just to put you on notice that if you try that shit again then you�ll be hurt again. If that person is unabl...

The moral argument for God is very convincing to Internet apologists because they believe in something called transcendent morality. It comes up by many names including objective morality, absolute morality--and as I prefer, cosmic morality and magical morality. Regardless of the name, it is seen as a moral standard that exists somewhere independent of the minds of mere mortals and supersedes alternative judgements. That�s the claim. Is there proof? No. Is there evidence? No. The defense for the claim is essentially finding a moral value agreed upon between the apologist and the non-apologist, such as �murder is wrong,� and using that shared common ground to say all other assessments aren�t just wrong from their perspective, but wrong independent of perspective. What do you think, is murder wrong independent of perspective? In my experience, �wrong� means different things to different people. It is like saying not murdering is better than murdering. �Better,� like �wrong� in this case,...

Some theists claim that when atheists judge the character of God in the Bible as immoral, they show that they have a sense of objective morality which could only be present if God is a foundation for morality. By claiming this they are implying that the atheist's judgement is objectively correct. These theists either must agree that God is objectively immoral or admit that the atheist's judgement isn't objectively true thereby discounting their claim that the atheist's judgement shows that we have a sense of objective morality.?

The following is my personal assessment of the validity of popular apologetic arguments. The list goes from most valid to least valid. The Fine Tuning of the Universe: Could be valid, currently based on assumptions. There are a vast number of physically possible universes. A universe that would be hospitable to the appearance of life must conform to some very strict conditions. Everything from the mass ratios of atomic particles and the number of dimensions of space to the cosmological parameters that rule the expansion of the universe must be just right for stable galaxies, solar systems, planets, and complex life to evolve. The percentage of possible universes that would support life is infinitesimally small (from 2). Our universe is one of those infinitesimally improbable universes. Our universe has been fine-tuned to support life (from 3 and 4). There is a Fine-Tuner (from 5). Only God could have the power and the purpose to be the Fine- Tuner. God exists. This argument, had we jus...

Here�s a moral dilemma for the sci-fi fans. Consider a form of teleportation in which you can walk into a pod in Chicago where your body is deconstructed molecule by molecule providing the information that is used to make copies of those molecules to be built again at the chosen destination, let�s say Tokyo. While this a million times faster than any other mode of transportation, it�s legitimate to say that the you in Chicago painlessly and instantaneously died while a perfect clone of you was born in Tokyo. From the perspective of the new and now only you in Tokyo, it seems like you were �beamed-up� Star Trek style, with your last memory walking into the Chicago pod. From the perspective of the old you in Chicago, well, there is no longer a perspective to be had. Is this a morally acceptable technology to you? For well-adjusted atheists, I think it should be. For the most part, atheists don�t believe in souls. Post-deconstruction the teleporter is a non-entity, I needn�t worry that th...

I�ve been thinking ( again ) about what truth the phrase �there are no atheists in foxholes� might hold. I know what it�s like to believe in God and I know what it was like to gradually dismiss this belief. There were points in my life where a version of this phrase could have been applied to my experience, but those versions didn�t include the word �atheist�--they applied to a pre-atheist label. Maybe it's There are no lapsed Christians in foxholes. For a long while I identified as Christian without any intention of attending church. I believed Jesus was a good example to live by and still entertained the idea of the resurrection. In retrospect, it�s an odd state to be in to only kind of believe Biblical miracles. They are so outside the realm of our experience that I�d think belief in them should be all or nothing; either have complete faith in your indoctrination or soberly dismiss magic in a nonmagical world. During this time I met the periodic hardships of life and, occasion...

Atheists usually argue that morality is subjective because, well, theists argue that morality is objective. Some atheists also argue this because they accept the reality that people define their morality in different ways. This is undebatably the way it is, but doesn�t have to be. If everyone defined morality identically, it could be objective sans deity. Apologists claim that God is needed for a moral standard. The way I see it, a moral standard is needed and this standard not only needn't be God, but it can�t be God. I define right conduct as simply that which benefits others more than it harms. Wrong conduct is obviously that which harms others more than it benefits. This is a moral standard. From here we can take any action and determine it�s morality objectively. Going on a shooting spree causes direct harm to everyone hit and therefore is morally wrong. Stopping the shooter benefits all those who would have been hit and is therefore morally right. Even if one must kill the s...

For this to make sense, please check out my post exchange with Dr. Luke Conway here and here . You might as well check my Rebuttal, Part One  and Rebuttal, Part Two also. I�ve covered the moral argument for God multiple times on this blog and consider it the worst argument in the long, sad history of apologetic arguments. The only way I can address this again and remain sane is if I break up Dr. Conway�s post and address it in segments. The bold bits are the words of The Apologetic Professor. Here it goes. Theism provides a more coherent view of morality than atheism. No, it doesn�t. It doesn�t. It. Does. Not. If you are an atheist, you believe in a universe that has absolutely no moral will. This part is true. I believe the universe has no will, moral or otherwise. The materialist must assume that I have a moral will for the same set of reasons that I have blue eyes or a love of the Indigo Girls, or that the sky appears blue or rocks are solid substances � they are the...