Showing posts with label right. Show all posts
Showing posts with label right. Show all posts

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Without God, does morality mean whatever we want?

A favorite claim among Christian apologists is that, without God, morality can mean whatever we want. That’s what happens when good and evil is not grounded by a divine standard. All we have are individuals with personal preferences judging others with preferences that may well be very different. As best, an individual or group can only impose their rules and judgements on others with a show of force, often referred to as “might makes right.” Those human rules and judgements can not be said to have inherent validity. While I’d love to rebut this claim entirely I can not do that any more than I can grant them that they are fully correct. Language and ethics are very complicated and both are at play here.

At the most literal level, yes, moral terms like good, evil, right, and wrong can mean whatever we want. Why? Because moral terms aren’t special. Any word can mean whatever we want. This should go without saying, but languages are invented and maintained by the population of speakers. If enough speakers evolve English so that evil means good, that is how it shall be moving forward. A single speaker redefining words will find himself unable to effectively communicate with everyone who hasn't adopted his fringe definition. That's why the meanings of good and evil tend to remain roughly the same within cultures, secular or religious. It’s hard to get everyone on board for an arbitrary remapping of terms.

The secular definition of moral good is essentially to behave in a way that is beneficial to others. Regardless of the letters written or sounds made to communicate this concept, it would not change it’s value. In other words, if “good” is renamed “evil” tomorrow, that would just mean that we would start to value “evil” over “good.” Now the question is: do we value the concept we call good because a divine third party made us? There’s no way to know, but we do know that there are reasons for social beings to value the concept we call good independent of supernatural mandates.

  1. Being good to others earns more opportunity for earn friends and make families. (Here I could argue that the odds of finding mates and living longer are increased with this behavior, making the instinct to be good a selected trait, but I think this argument is only additive and not required for my points. Since people who do not accept evolution will likely read this, I will not argue this further.)
  2. Being good allows for the creation of culture and societies that provide benefits ranging from the division of labor to shared resources.
  3. Being good, rather than evil, keeps animosity from others low and makes for a more safe and stress free life.

There are many more reasons to be good rather than evil, but evildoers still exist. Apologists argue that people who do wrong do so because they separate themselves from God or ignore that divine moral compass within them. Some even say that it’s an acceptance of moral relativism that swings open the door to sin. While it is always wrong for the slave to strike an owner, it may be right (in the owner’s mind) for the owner to strike a slave. The rapist isn’t wrong to rape because (in the rapist’s mind) what’s right and wrong are up to whatever we want and, the rapist wants to rape. While there are individual defectors who periodically discard their value of good to serve base desires, they are rarer exceptions. More common are those who maintain their value of good with a more narrow view of equality. The slave owner treats other whites as peers with the same understanding of good as you or I, but define blacks as a class in which the definition does not apply. The same could go for the rapist and how he sees women. It may not be the definition of good that’s a moving target, it could be the definition of human.

There is more to the secular meanings of good and evil after we take into account context, motives, consent, ect. What’s most important to the point is that every culture has a name for this concept and places a high value on it. Apologists who admit this attribute it to the aforementioned God-given moral compass within us. I’ll stick with the alternative that all humans share something else, a desire to not be alone. Don’t underestimate how lonely, and short, one’s life would be if they placed no value on being good.

Friday, April 28, 2017

Grounding Morality in Reason

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 unable to hurt you directly, he or she may have allies who will. Even if the person has no allies, anyone else who witnesses your transgression may make an example out of you in order to discourage such transgressions in there future against them. This is part of the foundational reasoning for enforced laws in societies.

2. To claim positive rewards.

There are a variety of incentives to act positively toward others. Some speak to other items on this list. Safety, camaraderie, freedom, and charity are just some things we can enjoy in a mutually altruistic culture. Hell, even after you do wrong, good behavior may lessen your sentence.

3. To conform.

Conformity is sometimes colored as a negative, but not here. If most people are violent, you need to conform to violence to defend yourself. However, if most people are generally peaceful except toward violent defectors, you’d do well fit in with the generally peaceful majority.

4. To collaborate.

The division of labor allows for some people to specialize in certain tasks and other people to specialize in others. The result is that each task is performed using less resources and time. Trade comes from collaboration, which is why we can barter or buy food rather than needing to grow or hunt it ourselves-an activity that would otherwise take up most of our time with less net nourishment. All this is possible only if you don’t scare or alienate your community by doing what we consider immoral-especially in excess.

5. To not be alone.

There is a reason long-term solitary confinement is among the worst treatments of prisoners. Everyone I know values some amount of socialization.  It should be obvious that one needs to ingratiate themselves to others to avoid this treatment occurring. At the very least, your actions need to not offend others, as immoral actions often will.

6. To be left alone.

Even if you want solace, you will not find any by being immoral. Act against others and they will naturally act against you. To be alone you need to be neither moral or immoral. You need to be isolated.

7. To realize a winning game theory strategy.

Cooperation may seem like a bad idea when you can cheat to achieve a short-term win, but even if you ignore the other listed reasons, you’d still know that’s a bad idea with a little experience or foresight. Game theory shows that groups that don’t screw each other profit more than groups that defect from cooperation. Caring only for yourself as an individual means gaining less in the long run.

8. To protect oneself.

One, even the strongest one, will never be able to defend himself or herself from a group. I don’t care if you’re Batman, a large enough group will prevail. Being a dick to everyone ensures you will have no allies because everyone will either actively want you to fail or passively stand by while you do. Sure, you can be a dick to some and not others. That happens. In fact, that explains most of the world. Absolute dickishness, however, is a horrible life strategy.

9. To explore emotions.

If you resist acting immorally toward people long enough, you might start to like some of them. Love and other emotions are some of the most valued aspects of life, whether you want to say they are from chemicals in the brain or deities in the sky. Either way, a deity in the sky isn’t needed to explain why we might refrain from acting a fool in order to explore these emotions.

10. To live out one’s indoctrination.

How many of the beliefs that inform our behavior are taken for granted because their source was our first authority figures: our family. You probably know someone who acts in a way different from you because of their different upbringing. To that person, the same applies to you. The things my family told me to do and not do are informed by the other items on this list, but even if they weren’t, I would have still listened, at least when I was young.

Thursday, May 29, 2014

When Life Gives You Objectively Good Lemons

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, is imprecise language that the apologist can leverage during these exchanges. Analogy time. What if I said lemons are an objectively better fruit than blueberries? This seems laughable because we understand taste preferences are opinions. However, we can say something is objectively true here if only I use a clear metric. I value sour flavor. Lemons are objectively more sour than blueberries. This isn’t a matter of taste, we can actually compare pH levels and know for a fact that lemons are more sour and are therefore objectively more appealing to one who values sour flavor.

Apply this to morality. Instead of saying something imprecise like not murdering is better than murdering, which could be subjective or objective depending on the metric used to judge something as “better,” let’s say not murdering allows for a safer world than murdering. This specification allows us to say not murdering is better for those who value safety. That is an objective fact and an instance of an objective moral.

I cannot say anything about one’s morality without saying something about one’s values. Because the majority of us value human life, safety, and equality (at least to some degree) the discouragement of murder is near universal...but transcendent? No, that is neither justified nor demonstrable.

Monday, January 13, 2014

"How can you judge something as immoral without a divine moral foundation?"

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.

Monday, December 9, 2013

God Argument Power Rankings

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.
  1. There are a vast number of physically possible universes.
  2. 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.
  3. The percentage of possible universes that would support life is infinitesimally small (from 2).
  4. Our universe is one of those infinitesimally improbable universes.
  5. Our universe has been fine-tuned to support life (from 3 and 4).
  6. There is a Fine-Tuner (from 5).
  7. Only God could have the power and the purpose to be the Fine- Tuner.
  8. God exists.
This argument, had we just a little more supporting knowledge, could make me deist. It says that the physical laws and constants that allow for a life-sustaining universe lie in a very small fraction of the possible spectrum of values and the fact that our universe is within that unlikely range is evidence that it was designed with us in mind. Many atheists argue the anthropic principle here, which says that we can only come to this conclusion because we are, in fact, here. If we weren’t, we wouldn’t. Obvious, I know. The anthropic principle is worthwhile when arguing against the fine tuning of earth specifically, but we don't have enough information for it to be meaningful in terms of the fine tuning of the universe.

The difference is that the variables that can vary widely and affect the possibility of life on a planet (such as distance from a star, having a moon/asteroid belt to deflect impacts with space objects, the presence of water, etc.) are most likely all fulfilled throughout the universe. There are enough planets that one can say, “sure, we are alive on this planet because we couldn’t be alive elsewhere.” However, we can only account for one universe. If this universe is all there has ever been, and if the aforementioned laws and constants can vary to the degree apologists claim, then I agree that we are such a coincidence that a designer is a better explanation than chance. I’m just not convinced because those "if"s are not answered. I tend to think that the laws and constants can vary, but that enough other universes either have, will or currently exist to make the anthropic principle meaningful--but that’s just personal speculation.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument: Invalid, only replaces one mystery with another.
  1. Everything that has a beginning of its existence has a cause of its existence;
  2. The universe has a beginning of its existence;
  3. Therefore: The universe has a cause of its existence.
  4. (Implied) God is that cause.
This argument is at least based on something that is most likely true--the Big Bang Theory. So, I won't argue premise 2. As much as they like the Big Bang, apologists stop paying attention to the science after it can be used to support their beliefs. Traditional causation could very well not apply in general at the quantum level in which we find the singularity, and especially in the case of the universe with no prior time or space for a cause to occur or God to exist. The Big Bang, after all, isn't just the beginning of our universe, but also space and time as we understand it. To posit otherwise is merely an "of the gaps" argument. The implication of 4 is hasty now that there are more hypotheses than ever for possible causes of the universe and likely others that haven't occurred to us. In the end, the biggest weakness is that the argument establishes a rule because a lack of counter examples and then arbitrarily makes what they want to believe an exception. If we say that everything that begins to exist has a cause because we have no examples of things that exist without a cause, then we can also say everything that exists is within time and space because we have no examples of things that exist outside time and space. Since apologists require their God to be outside time and space for this argument to work, they would have to explain why the first statement is legitimate while the second it not.

The Ontological Argument: Invalid, basically it's just wordplay.
  1. Nothing greater than God can be conceived (this is stipulated as part of the definition of “God”).
  2. It is greater to exist than not to exist.
  3. If we conceive of God as not existing, then we can conceive of some-thing greater than God (from 2).
  4. To conceive of God as not existing is not to conceive of God (from 1 and 3).
  5. It is inconceivable that God not exist (from 4).
  6. God exists.
"Greater" is a value judgement that can vary from person to person, which is problematic to this argument. However, the real problem is that the argument works for any concept that includes the linguistic trick of including "must exist" in it's definition. For example, if one said the Fly Spaghetti Monster exists, by definition, then it exists. Somehow I doubt many Christian apologists would accept that definition. Nor should they, because existence isn't a property one can prescribe conceptually. Neither is "greatness" for that matter.

The Argument from Moral Truth. Invalid for a variety of reasons.
  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 science that explain why it is that way—cannot account for the way the world ought to be.
  4. The only way to account for morality is that God established morality (from 2 and 3).
  5. God exists.
I don’t know if this is the worst argument for God in my book, but it is certainly the worst of those still popular in the apologetic community. Why? Because it has so many points of failure. There is Euthyphro’ Dilemma that shows that God is a redundant factor if objective morality is valid. There is the impossibility of ascertaining exactly what the objective morals are if they exist, unless. of course, they are defined by humans in relation to social interactions which would discount a need of a supernatural law giver. There is the question if morality is objective at all (I see morality as a broad concept including the possibility for a variety of moral codes--which may be applied objectively but are hardly transcendent.) There is evolutionary biology that suggests moral instincts are selected traits which are passed down genetically. I feel apologists over estimate the argument’s power because the opposition can seem scatter brained when refuting it because the number of ways to refute it makes one’s mind spin out. That, and it’s the one argument that allows them to both claim there is a god and take the moral high ground in one fallacious move.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Atheist Ethics: Teleportation

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 the essence of the Chicago teleporter is going anywhere. I can imagine that a person who believed every time teleportation was used someone would be condemned to hell, exalted to heaven, or prematurely partaking in another afterlife would oppose the technology.

For the most part, atheists don’t accept transcendent moral standards. The act of teleportation could be seen as a willful killing and therefore immoral according to the most popular verses of most holy books. If we consider teleportation in regards to the negative impact of involved parties, one could argue that it isn’t immoral at all. Even if we see the Chicagoan's action as suicide, it lacks all the negative consequences of a suicide. The person’s replacement is indistinguishable from the original, meaning there is no one to morn. The victim is painlessly turned off knowing that a redundancy will be turned on elsewhere.

Where do you stand on this? Is it moral? Would you do it? Why or why not?

Monday, July 1, 2013

Morality? What Morality?

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 shooter to save the rest, it is a morally right action because a greater benefit comes from the one instance of harm. Few would say that this isn't a more nuanced and correct application of morality then strictly following the commandment "thou shalt not kill."

Christian’s define morality in terms of God then use that definition of morality as evidence for God--hold on, y'know I don’t want to generalize.
If there is a Christian within the sight of my text who both believes our morality is evidence for God yet doesn’t use a specific definition of morality in terms of God, please comment or e-mail me. Any definitions referring to the nature of God or an obligation to God are obviously invalid.
Okay, if and when I hear back from someone I’ll update, until then I’ll continue.

Christian’s define morality in terms of God then use that definition of morality as evidence for God. This is textbook circular reasoning which is completely invalid. The Christian doesn’t believe morality exists as I define it and I don’t believe morality exists as they define it. When whether or not this or that version of morality exists is put into question, it makes debate over its objectivity mute. All we can do is bring into focus their fallacious thinking--which is almost always met with defensivness. It’s best to be gentle when pointing out to someone their mental record is skipping.*

*Wow, timely reference. Maybe I should have gone with “their mental streaming video is buffering.” That’s awful wordy. I feel old.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

The Rebuttal: Part Three

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 result of a long chain of purely physical events guided by physical laws or chance or what-have-you. I presume none of you believe that, at the Big Bang (or whatever), the atoms there assembled in the way they did so that someday they could produce the thought I should not kill my neighbor for fun inside my head. Such a thought exists because of chance physical processes.

This harkens back to Rebuttal, Part Two talking about instincts. It could be said that we have a moral instinct brought to us by the very same long chain of physical event that which Dr. Conway takes issue. Think of aspects of morality as adaptions that are selected for survival. The survival of the altruistic can be simplified to a generational game theory. Like the famous prisoner’s dilemma, two socially interacting creatures share a larger net gain by cooperating, even at the cost of personal loss by not defecting and claiming an individually larger gain for themselves. This defection could get the creature killed or made an outcast--taking it out of the gene pool either way. In addition, by leaving the increased gain on the table by continuously acting selfishly ends with the result of less resources than those held by cooperating creatures.

This is an example of how everything from instinctual sharing to general empathy could have evolved. I also find it difficult how one couldn’t see that cooperation is the best policy from the experience of just a single lifetime. This is, in part, what apologists argue when morality comes up.

Now, if the professor is saying that thought in general couldn’t have evolved through “a long chain of purely physical events,” that is a actually a better argument than saying moral thought specifically could not. Still, that is an entirely different debate. I’d like to know that he admits the moral argument is bunk before delving into cognitive sciences.

The atheist universe isn’t an immoral universe, as some have claimed. It’s an amoral universe. Morality isn’t bad in the atheist universe; morality doesn’t exist in the atheist universe. Morality has no meaning in that world.

Dr. Conway, I don’t think morality means what you think it means. Seriously, this is a fundamental conflict of definitions that is an insurmountable hurdle in every atheist/theist debate I’ve ever had. Morality as defined by God’s nature is invalid in my book and morality as defined by human culture is invalid in theirs.

Pretty much every atheist I know actually believes in morality (including all of the “new” atheists, e.g., Dawkins, Harris, etc.). And they don’t just believe in it in a “well, that’s nice” kind of way; they don’t believe that it’s wrong to kill people for fun is just a chance-y neuronal deal and they’d be fine if it had turned out the other way around. No; they really believe in it – like it matters that it turned out this way. In fact, they believe in it so much that they often use moral arguments against theism, as a reason to get rid of it.

Yeah, for two reasons. One, most of us have a high degree of empathy--a trait selected for survival (see above.) And two, because morality works. What’s the alternative? Killing fellow humans on sight? Most of us are intelligent beings who can see that would result in living in fear and constant danger. The Golden Rule is the best thing in the bible, yet pre-dates it. If you see moral acts as those that benefit others and immoral acts as those that harm others--pair that with reasoning to weigh the scales of a given situation fairly and our desire to be benefited and avoid harm, ta-da! Morality. I really don’t see why this is so hard. Yes, it allows for some things to be morally ambiguous, which it distasteful, but some things are morally ambiguous. That’s why we are constantly debating things like capital punishment and abortion. It’s objectively clear that at least some moral issues have no objectively clear answer. Saying that you believe you are right on a divided issue is fine, but saying that you are absolutely right because it was written in a book in another language from a less civilized culture over a thousand years ago is crazy. Doesn’t it sound crazy? I think it’s crazy.

My philosophy says that God built morality into the fabric of the universe.

Do rocks have morality then? Do tornadoes strive to be nice? Or is this only evident in intelligent, social beings who have a vested interest to act civil, all things being equal?

Theists attempt to show that morality without God is arbitrary. On the contrary, I can think of multiple reasons why any given moral choice is right or wrong. To apologists I ask, does God have reasons for what is right and what is wrong? Is there a reason His nature is how it is? If so, let’s say we can come to the same reasoning and cut out the middle god. If not, then it’s the theist's morality that is arbitrary. Even if the Christian God exists, we face the exact same pointless morals...except, y’know, my perceived source of morality doesn’t occasionally commit genocide.

Monday, January 14, 2013

The Twofold Problem of Fairness

Christians believe, by definition, that there is but one way into heaven and that is the acceptance of Jesus Christ. From here, there are as many disagreements as there are churches. I picture a sliding scale with “live according to Christ’s teachings” on one side and “have complete faith that Jesus died for our, and, more importantly, Adam and Eve’s sins” on the other. Most Christian traditions value both ends of the spectrum, but all seem to implicitly or explicitly place more weight on one more than the other. I’d argue both premises for the most widely distributed religion in the world are flawed by something I call the problem of fairness. In fact, I will argue it, right now.

Let’s look first at “live according to Christ’s teachings.” This is already ambiguous in that the biblical carpenter sends mixed (if not contradictory) messages about how to live. While a problem in it’s own right, it doesn’t factor into my argument from fairness, so let’s imagine Christ’s message is wholly positive and consistent with modern values.

The problem of fairness lies in the fact that not every person has the same opportunity to be good. A poor child without a positive role model--say with a deadbeat dad and an alcoholic mother--statistically has a much higher likelihood to sin than an upper-class kid with an intact family. I’m talking about the BIG sins here--theft, rape, murder--harmful deeds rather than the less-than-honorable thoughts some theists claim are their equal.

Ask yourself, why would God judge someone born into a culture that doesn’t value ethics and must sin to survive as harshly as someone who wants for nothing and was raised into a compatible moral code? As the world is, the Almighty needs to grade on a curve. If He was truly fair, we’d all be put on the same playing field and terms like “the cycle of violence” would have no meaning.

On the other end of the spectrum we are more concerned with belief and less with sin, yet the problem of fairness is still in full effect. For a child born into the “correct” faith of such-and-such flavor of Christianity, indoctrination makes acceptance of Christ natural, but consider a Indian kid who dies before he is ever exposed to religion outside Hinduism. Consider people of a different place and time isolated from evangelization. Consider someone like me who has a skeptical disposition and seeks truth in the form of evidence and logical consistency. If, in fact, it’s Christ’s way or the highway to hell, God has screwed us all with a scarcity of or an aversion to the one true God.

Atheists often cite the problem of evil as a defeater of a benevolent God, but I tend to opt out of this cliche despite it’s obvious truth for two reasons. First, Christians often have a response chambered from their apologetic source of choice--usually placing the responsibility of evil on man, citing free will or the fall from Eden. While neither avenue is valid (considering that God’s omnipotence in regards to the future implies a lack of free will and the fall was preceded by evil serpents) the chambered response shows they’ve heard it all before and have defended their mind against conflicting input. Second, an atheist admitting that evil exists at all will prompt some Christian debaters to detour the conversation to the argument from morality because they only define “evil” in terms of their religion. I’d rather the debate stay on topic. Replacing “evil” with “fairness” is both more specific and more accurate for my biggest problems with religious dogma.

Sadly, the world isn’t fair. This leaves two options: the universe is unguided and shit just happens, or the universe is guided by a force unlike what the Abrahamic religions have to offer.