Instigator / Pro
21
1500
rating
2
debates
75.0%
won
Topic
#5573

If God does not exist, then morality is speculative at best

Status
Voting

The participant that receives the most points from the voters is declared a winner.

Voting will end in:

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DD
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HH
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SS
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
3
Time for argument
Two weeks
Max argument characters
2,000
Voting period
Six months
Point system
Multiple criterions
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
3
1500
rating
0
debates
0.0%
won
Description

In Dostoevsky's classic, "The Brothers Karamazov," one of the brilliant characters, Ivan Fyodorovich, states the following:
"...were mankind's belief in its immortality to be destroyed, not only love but also any living power to continue the life of the world would at once dry up in it. Not only that but then nothing would be immoral any longer, everything would be permitted, even the eating of human flesh (anthropophagy)."

Another character summarizes Ivan's view this way: "Evildoing should not only be permitted but even should be acknowledged as the most necessary and most intelligent solution for the situation of every godless person!"

The contention of this debate is to answer the age-old question, "Does atheism imply immorality, or can the moral landscape be salvaged some other way than in the existence of the divine?"

Round 1
Pro
#1
 If God does not exist, then morality is solely determined by human rationality. Human rationality is susceptible to bias, and egoism, so what humans deem as moral is often times highly dependent on circumstance, and can be contorted to benefit only an individual or a minority group. A classic example of this is the Nazi party of the 1930s - 1940s, who through a series of escalating laws of persecution against he Jews (The Nuremberg Race Laws), the Nazi party was successfully able to define morality for Germans in the 1930s-1940s as though it was good to imprison, torture and kill Jews. Unless morality can be grounded in something else besides human rationality, then what is considered moral today can be considered immoral tomorrow (and vice versa). Unfortunately, without the existence of God, there is no higher standard of morality to appeal to. 


Con
#2
Forfeited
Round 2
Pro
#3
Looks like my opponent has forfeited his round. And that is because is not hard to argue for something that is also true, as is the case with the subjectivity of morality once God leaves the picture. 

The existence of objective moral values and our ability to apprehend them pose profound challenges if we exclude God from the picture. In a universe devoid of a divine being, our moral faculties, shaped solely by evolutionary processes, are geared towards survival rather than truth, particularly moral truth. This leads to a fundamental problem: without God, how can we trust our moral intuitions and judgments to reflect any objective moral reality? Consider this: if our brains are merely the product of blind evolutionary forces, there's no reason to believe they are equipped to discover moral truths, as these truths are not necessary for survival. However, if God exists, our moral faculties are not just random byproducts but are designed with a purpose, enabling us to grasp objective moral values. God provides the necessary foundation for moral knowledge, ensuring our moral beliefs can indeed correspond to an objective moral reality. As John Lennox aptly put it, "If we are the product of mere chance, our ability to discover truth, let alone moral truth, is greatly undermined." Thus, without God, we are left in a state of moral skepticism, with no solid ground to claim any moral knowledge, ultimately leading to relativism. Only with God can we have a robust foundation for both the existence of and the knowledge of objective moral values, transcending the limitations imposed by a purely naturalistic worldview.
Con
#4
Forfeited
Round 3
Pro
#5
My opponent has forfeited  another round, but I will use this opportunity to provide further support that morality as awash in an atheistic landscape. 

This is a quote from the brilliant philosopher Alvin Plantinga: "If we think about the nature of objective moral obligation—moral obligation that holds whether or not we want it to, or whether or not we think it does—what could be the source of such obligation? What would make it the case that we really are obliged to do something, or obliged to refrain from doing something? It’s hard to see how it could be anything other than God or something very much like God: a being who is perfectly good, who cares about how we behave, and who has the authority to issue commands or imperatives. It’s very hard to see how there could be any objective moral obligations if it isn’t the case that God exists." (Warranted Christian Belief, p. 209).
Con
#6
Forfeited