While Hitchins is an enjoyable read who says many true things, I would not use him in a discussion with an atheist. His arguments result in distractions and side issues, such as (1) societies which are openly atheist, like most of Scandinavia, have far lower crime rates than the religious USA; and (2) the biggest threat to the world right now is not atheists but Islam; the 9/11 hijackers all believed in God and perhaps we would all be better off if they hadn't. And the important thing is not whether those side distractions are ultimately legitimate as much as that they are distractions that get in the way of the more important question.

Instead, I think the central point is that the claims of Christianity are either true or they are not. If true, then it really doesn't matter whether believing in God is socially useful or not. If false, then it simply doesn't matter. Ultimately truth or falsity is what's important.

First of all, LongShot, I haven't argued anything. I explicitly said that I wasn't conceding the atheistic argument was legitimate. What I did say was that arguments such as Hitchens' lend themselves to such-and-such responses from atheists, and so we should not make Hitchens' argument unless we are prepared to answer the counterpoints atheists will inevitably throw back. And quite candidly, your hyper-defensiveness tells far more about how secure you are in your views than it does about me.

From the top: Hitchens asserts that atheism has taken England to the state in which it finds itself now, in which law and order has broken down and there is no longer respect for them or for community. So the opposing sides set up by Hitchen -- not by me -- are theism vs. atheism. His hypothesis is only valid if non-theistic societies have more social problems than do theistic ones.

But back to my original point: I don't actually care whether theism in general or Christianity in particular are socially beneficial nearly so much as I care whether they are true, and that is the issue on which this discussion should hinge. God -- or for that matter Allah -- either exists or he does not; if he does, it has profound implications for how we should live, whether or not in our opinion society is better off as a result. You think the average Muslim on the streets of Riyadh or Baghdad or Islamabad doesn't know that America is a better place to live than where he lives? Of course he does. But he doesn't care. He thinks his religion is true, and he perceives -- correctly -- that truth is what's important. And anyone who tries pointing out to him that his religion has produced a hell on earth will either be attacked, laughed at, or ignored. And that's why Islam is the force to be reckoned with that Christianity is fast ceasing to be.

Bottom line, if Hitchins wants to waste his time arguing that Christianity makes the world into a better place, the theological answer is "so what? what matters is if it's true" and the practical answer is "so why then does Scandinavia -- or for that matter Massachusetts -- have better crime statistics than Idaho or Mississippi?" And I'm hardly a heretic for pointing that double edged problem out.

LongShot, you and I have had this discussion before, and neither of us convinced the other, and I don't think either of us will this time either, so I'm tempted to simply wish you pleasant dreams and go off to bed myself since my alarm goes off at 4:30 a.m. But before I do, I just want to articulate what I think is the central point of disagreement between us.

If I understand you correctly, your position is that atheists are somehow inherently incapable of determining what makes for a pleasant society and writing rules that are more likely to lead to a pleasant society (which is what atheistic morality boils down to). Why you would believe that is a mystery to me. Why would an atheist want to live in a world in which rape, pillage and plunder were acceptable behavior? And why would an atheist not understand that the best way to protect himself from such behavior on the part of others is to agree to a moral code that forbids them? In fact, just intuitively I would think that being an atheist would make someone far more likely to be a good neighbor just because if this world is all there is, make it as pleasant as possible.

Gianni, I believe the truth is that God exists. I also believe that Christians do ourselves no favors by making arguments that are easily rebutted and persuade no one except the already converted. And I believe the argument that God is required for standards and morality is one such argument.

A Darwinist can answer that without breaking a sweat. Humans are social creatures; we live together in groups. The only way a group can survive is if the individual members behave in ways that don't threaten the group. Therefore, animals that live together in groups -- ants, bees, chimpanzees and humans -- have well-developed standards of behavior, whereas solitary animals -- cats, dragonflies and birds of prey -- don't. The latter cannibalize, steal from one another and destroy each other's nests with wild abandon; a bee or an ant who did that would be dealt with by the rest of the colony in short order because it would be a matter of colony survival.

Now, from a Christian perspective, here is where God enters into all of this: The Bible says that the plowing of the wicked is sin. The issue is not that he CAN'T plow -- or come up with a basis for a moral system, or be a good neighbor -- without God. Rather, the issue is that God doesn't want him to. God wants to be at the center of every thought, word and deed, including our belief systems.

So rather than argue that a system of morality necessarily requires theistic presuppositions -- an argument belied by any number of secular philosophers from Aristotle to Ayn Rand who in point of fact developed various bases for morality without theistic presuppositions -- I think the better argument, again, is what's the truth of the matter. God does exist, we're not him, and he has decreed that our morality shall be based on his righteous laws.

Jane, I think that depends on how broadly one defines "religion" and "worship" and I suspect, sight unseen, that Bret uses a much broader definition than is commonly understood. Perhaps Bret could define his terms for us.

Gianni, I wasn't bluffing; I hadn't taken a position AS OF THAT TIME because we hadn't gotten there yet. When the discussion progressed to where I had to take a position, I did.

At any rate, I accept your concession.

The form of Gianni's response is a concession, whether or not he intended it to be.

How exactly is morality's motivation relevant? The question we were discussing is whether there is a non-theistic basis for morality. You now seem to be arguing that it's not good enough to find a basis for morality, but you have to find the basis esthetically appealing. Do you hold your own belief system to that standard?

That said, it so happens that much of the time there is a huge overlap between an individual's self interest and what is best for society. So Bob and Joe will have the same vision for an orderly society most of the time. And our discussion then comes down to "why does water boil at 100 C?" "Well, because it does." "But why does it?" "Well, because it does."

If for some reason rape, pillage and plunder were good for society, then humans would no doubt hold rape, pillage and plunder up as virtues. But they don't, so they aren't. This really is not as complicated as you're trying to make it.

As for why Joe or Bob should care about society, most Joes and Bobs are not strong enough or bright enough to become robber barons themselves, so it's in their interest to band together to bind other would-be robber barons. I don't understand why you think this is so complicated.

Matt asks "How exactly is morality's motivation relevant?" Amazing how quickly he abandoned ethical truth here.

Matt continues, "As for why Joe or Bob should care about society, most Joes and Bobs are not strong enough or bright enough to become robber barons themselves, so it's in their interest to band together to bind other would-be robber barons. I don't understand why you think this is so complicated." Yep, Matt is back to pragmatic, consequentialist ethics without regard for truth.

Amazing. And quite telling.

Katecho, I never said consequentialism was per se a bad thing -- there are reasons not to stick your bare hand on a hot stove that have nothing to do with high principles. What I said was that for Christians it isn't the only consideration, or even the most important one. The truth of God's existence is ultimately the most important consideration, whether or not it produces good results in a given situation from a consequentialist standpoint.

So rather than argue that a system of morality necessarily requires theistic presuppositions -- an argument belied by any number of secular philosophers from Aristotle to Ayn Rand who in point of fact developed various bases for morality without theistic presuppositions -- I think the better argument, again, is what's the truth of the matter. God does exist, we're not him, and he has decreed that our morality shall be based on his righteous laws.

As for whether atheists can have a morality, Matt misses the larger point. The issue is not that atheists have no moral compass. Moral compasses are a dime a dozen. The problem is that atheism has no magnetic field to direct the compass. Atheists can make the needle point wherever they want it to because it is all fabricated.

Not only is there no magnetic field in
atheism, but there is nowhere to go. There is no moral destination that would even require a compass.

LongShot, someone who is horny might choose to not rape a woman for the same reason I don't roll over and go back to sleep when my alarm goes off, even though that's what I feel like doing. The short term gain is less than the long term loss. He's soiling his own nest by making the world a less pleasant place, and what goes around comes around. Even if he's too stupid to understand that, or too swinish to care, most men won't easily shake thousands of years of socialization.

Are there men who rape anyway? Of course, and that's true no matter what ethical system they claim to be part of. But they're the minority. Some people have no natural affection toward their parents (or children) either, but they're the minority.

Asking why is like asking why water boils at a certain temperature. People naturally live in communities, just as water naturally boils at a certain temperature. It just does. And it is impossible to live in community without fairly clear minimal rules about what is and is not acceptable behavior. So asking men to stop behaving ethically is like asking water not to boil until it reaches 250 F. And your telling me that I haven't established a basis for why is like telling me that I haven't shown why water boils at the temperature it does. I don't have to; all I have to do is show that that's the way it works.

They pride themselves on skepticism right up until the point where they could actually use some.

Ayn Rand is the classic example of what happens when you fail to apply any skepticism. She builds herself a moral compass, points it where she wants to go, and heads off at full gallop.

Christians who give atheists like Rand a free pass need to learn a bit of skepticism themselves.

"Asking why is like asking why water boils at a certain temperature. People naturally live in communities, just as water naturally boils at a certain temperature. It just does."

Also, by stopping at "It just is", Matt is saying that he doesn't really believe his earlier comment that ethics should be about what is true. Now, regarding ethical patterns, Matt is simply saying that "It just is".

Matt's statements are especially informative. Ethics have simply come about a certain way. Ethics just are. Matt is telling us, point blank, that reason does not prescribe anything here. It just is. Ethics are off limits to reason. In such a paradigm the only use for reason is to describe whatever already is.

The obvious problem with such an ethic is that "It just is" includes everything, even rape. Rape just is. Now what?

Bret, I agree with you that communism is at least a dogma if not a religion. However, I'm not sure most individuals who live in communist countries are themselves communist, any more than most people who live in nominally Christian countries are Christians. And you still haven't told me how you are defining religion.

That said, let me see if I can illustrate the root of our disagreement. Suppose I decide that henceforth I will no longer eat dessert, even though up until now it has been a central part of my dining pleasure. Along comes Bret to tell me that dinner is defined in terms of dessert, and we will simply re-name anything else I eat "dessert" so that it is impossible for me to avoid eating dessert. So, what I call chicken gumbo, pot roast and green beans, Bret now calls dessert and tells everyone within earshot that Matt is fooling himself if he thinks he's not eating dessert.

There are people and cultures that simply are non-religious because religion plays no role in their lives. Of course, other things now occupy their time and energy, but it's a tautology to rename those things "religion" and then insist that they are religious after all. Not collecting stamps isn't a hobby.

Katecho, there is no conflict between Christianity and materialism. Yes, God exists, but so does this keyboard on which I am typing. We can discuss the keyboard in terms of the laws of science, or in terms of the laws of creation, or both, but having a conversation about one does not vitiate the other.

And you're exactly right about morality being descriptive rather than prescriptive. Same with the "laws of nature". The laws of nature do not dictate how bodies of matter shall behave; they describe how bodies of matter do in fact behave. So what's the problem?

Most of us know the difference between believing that there are material things, and the philosophy of materialism. So your semantic games aren't going to win anything here.

That you think morality is purely descriptive rather than prescriptive means that you have come to an end in this discussion. You are no longer able to engage with us in any debate about what ought to be believed or done. All you can do is describe one belief or another as it already is.

You can merely describe and catalog that most men don't rape, but that some do rape. Your ethical paradigm does not allow you to comment in a debate about whether anyone ought to rape. In regard to all such ethical subjects, you have reduced yourself and your views to the role of boiling water.

Katecho, how is it a semantic game to point out that material laws apply to material things? And you've missed half my point: morality describes BOTH how things are and HOW THEY CAME TO BE that way. The fact that most men don't rape doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are reasons, having to do with our ability to live together in communities necessary to our survival, for how that bit of morality came about.

By the way, I hope you have better sense than to use your line about atheists not being skeptical enough on someone who really is an atheist. His likely response would be that that's pretty rich coming from someone who most likely believes that Noah's ark was an actual historical event.

I'm perfectly happy to answer your question about a non-religious culture, but first you have to tell me how you are defining "religious". If, as I suspect, you're going to give me a tautology, then there's no point to me answering your question using a conventional definition of religion.

So, tell me how you're defining religion.

"Katecho, how is it a semantic game to point out that material laws apply to material things?"

And you've missed half my point: morality describes BOTH how things are and HOW THEY CAME TO BE that way. The fact that most men don't rape doesn't exist in a vacuum; there are reasons, having to do with our ability to live together in communities necessary to our survival, for how that bit of morality came about.

If I described, in step-by-step detail, the facts leading up to a person killing his neighbor, this would tell us nothing about whether he ought to have done so.

No matter how high Matt sets the magnification on his materialistic microscope, he will find nothing in the matter itself that tells him anything about how that matter ought to have moved or not moved. All Matt can do is catalog how it did move.

In materialism, it turns out that all matter simply moves according to the laws of matter. Matter can't argue with those laws-- and so Matt can't either. In other words, if a rape happens, it happens because the laws of matter required it. In materialism, ethics have nothing to do with how matter moves.

Katecho, of course I understand the difference between the philosophy known as materialism versus belief in the existence of material things. But you can't seem to keep track of what is actually being discussed.

There are two different approaches for finding a basis for morality: material, and theological. And one has little to do with the other, just as the theological reasons for celebrating Christmas have little to do with applying the laws of heat to cooking the Christmas turkey. If I'm explaining how, as a matter of physics, the laws of heat act on the turkey in the oven to cause it to roast, and you come along and object that the laws of heat are descriptive rather than prescriptive, my response will be "True, and what's your point?"

Like you, I believe that God exists. Apparently unlike you, I believe that even if God did not exist, there would be separate and independent reasons not to engage in rape, pillage and plunder. Those separate and independent reasons happen to be descriptive rather than prescriptive -- humans in order to survive live in community, which requires adhering to certain norms.

"And you're exactly right about morality being descriptive rather than prescriptive."

Apparently Matt hasn't encountered the problems of materialism, or else is just very trusting of his materialist friends.

Matt seems to be deeply confused on what morality and ethics are even about. Matt might as well be suggesting that a description of the reasons for why a river meanders west through the valley, instead of east over the foothills, indicates that the river is morally in the right to have flowed west instead of east. Matt can point to many material reasons and descriptions, after all. The river had several reasons not to flow over the foothills, right? Isn't this enough to tell us how moral the river is?

We've tried to explain why this approach is empty, but such attempts just bounce off of Matt. Collecting descriptions and reasons can be done whether you are talking about rivers or rapists, but a collection of descriptions about a river does not make the flow of rivers moral or immoral. Collecting a set of reasons why someone killed their neighbor tells you zip about whether he should have killed him, or whether the reasons were good or bad. I.e. Matt hasn't begun to even do ethics yet.

"Apparently unlike you, I believe that even if God did not exist, there would be separate and independent reasons not to engage in rape, pillage and plunder. Those separate and independent reasons happen to be descriptive rather than prescriptive -- humans in order to survive live in community, which requires adhering to certain norms.

Two can play that game. For example, there are material and physiological reasons why a rapist tends to use the cover of darkness rather than broad daylight. It has to do with the victim's eyes not seeing as well in the dark.

There are reasons why rapists tend to be men and victims tend to be women. It has to do with men being physically stronger than women.

There are reasons why rapists tend to use drugs or restrains on their victims. This is so their victims don't fight back.

Finally, there is a whole raft of physiological, social, and hormonal reasons why rapists rape. Envy, feelings of being outcast, loneliness, desire to feel dominant, on and on.

There. We've described why rapists rape, and why they are required to follow particular norms of behavior when they rape. Therefore, using Matt's logic, rape is moral. We've described the reasons for patterns of rape being what they are.

I can't wait to hear Matt's objection.

LongShot, whether you want to live in community is a separate question from whether people who do wish to live in community will organize and defend themselves if you attack their community. The rapist has not merely said he doesn't want to live in community; he's launched an attack on the community (or at least one of its members, which in this context is the same thing.)

There's no great moral question in whether I have the right to swat a malaria-carrying mosquito (I do), or whether the community collectively has the right to put a rapist out of commission. Again, you are making this far more complicated than it is.

Katecho, the rapist is an anomoly and one doesn't make general rules based on anomolies. Most people would not commit murder, or rape, or rob banks, whether legal or not. (I'm not saying I think those things should be legal; just that I'm not sure the murder rates would go up that much if they were legal, simply because most people aren't going to choose to commit murder.) You'd have a better illustration if you'd chosen, say, Auschwitz, which was the collective act of a community that had collectively lost its moral compass.

(By the way, a minor factual correction: Statistically, most rapes occur in prison and most rape victims are male.)

But even in the case of the Nazis, and even if they had won the war, those gas chambers came at a huge cost. They dehumanized the culture (especially those who worked there), they inculcated cruelty rather than kindness as the standard for human behavior. And since they were a threat to the rest of the world community, ultimately the rest of the world rose up to put a stop to it.

Matt resorts to, "most people wouldn't commit such acts", as if frequency of occurrence is supposed to tell us if something is right or wrong. I'm having trouble taking Matt seriously.

Matt thinks Auschwitz is a better example, but he doesn't address it either. He just casually says that the rest of the world put a stop to it. More description, with zero prescription. Should the rest of the world have put a stop to it? Matt doesn't (can't) say.