[Hank Kerchief]

“Perhaps, a definition reference will help resolve this issue for you”

What issue. I don’t have an issue. Call me whatever you like. Call me a Shmoo if you like. (Err..., you might not be old enought to know what those are.) What’s with the labels? I told you what I believe, and couldn’t care less what label you’d like to put on it. Good grief!

“... it is a statement of inference based upon premises ...”

Yes, it is your premises I do not accept.

“Morals are sets of rules intended to govern human behavior.”

No, morals, or better, ethical principles, are the means of determining correct choices, not a collection of prohibitions and admonitions.

Written about the Ten Commandments, but the principles apply to any so-called “moral code.”

http://usabig.com/iindv/articles_stand/phil_gen/religion_ten.php

(I can use it, I wrote it.)

“Your assertion is patently false. First, if moral principles were absolutes, there would be no competing systems of morality ...”

Silly! There were at one time competing views of chemistry, which is the state of moral research today. Just because you and others have not discovered the absolute moral principles does not mean they do not exist, it just means you’re still in the phlogiston stage of moral understanding. You haven’t discovered oxygen yet.

[Have you read the two links I sent in the earlier post. They will help explain this.]

Hank

[Lucky Dog]

“Perhaps, a definition reference will help resolve this issue for you”

What issue. I don’t have an issue. Call me whatever you like. Call me a Shmoo if you like. (Err..., you might not be old enought to know what those are.) What’s with the labels? I told you what I believe, and couldn’t care less what label you’d like to put on it. Good grief!

Quite to the contrary, I know what Shmoo means as well as Btfsplk and many other, wonderful Al Capp inventions. (I used to read his delightful and insightful comics when I was younger… I suspect our ages may be fairly close.)

However, the real point is that to communicate unambiguously, we must have, at least, a minimum vocabulary that we agree upon. Without such, only confusion exists.

“... it is a statement of inference based upon premises ...”

Yes, it is your premises I do not accept.

Perhaps, you could specify exactly which premise(s) you refuse to accept…

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause for its coming into being.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause for its coming into being.

One of the original question repeated for clarity: If there is no God, as you (the atheist) maintain, why should not the "law of the jungle" be the governing moral code of humanity?

“Morals are sets of rules intended to govern human behavior.”

No, morals, or better, ethical principles, are the means of determining correct choices, not a collection of prohibitions and admonitions.

Again, “Perhaps, a definition reference will help resolve this …”

mor·als 

–plural noun

principles or habits with respect to right or wrong conduct.

eth·ics 

–plural noun

the rules of conduct recognized in respect to a particular class of human actions or a particular group, culture, etc.: medical ethics; Christian ethics.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

Of course, the above definitions can become somewhat circular because of the definition required for right conduct. For example, most moral sources hold that it is not right conduct for one human to kill another. However, is it wrong to kill a human being if that is that is the only way that person can be stopped from killing another person? If so, then killing can be judged to be right conduct in some circumstances. Consequently, there is no moral absolute in this principle.

Again, most moral sources hold that it is not right conduct for a person to steal. Additionally, these same sources, also, hold that it also wrong to intentionally allow another person to die unnecessarily when you have the power to intervene to stop that death. Therefore, is it not right conduct for a person to steal if that is the only way that individual can stop another from dying? Again, it seems there is no moral absolute in this principle, either.

There are literally hundreds of dilemmas that could be posed showing that without resorting to a Divine revelation as a source of morals, everything is relative. If in deed, everything is relative, there are no moral absolutes. Therefore, an atheist (one who denies or disbelieves the Divine) has extreme difficulty proclaiming any behavior always right conduct leading to the conclusion that, for an atheist, there are no moral absolutes.

“Your assertion is patently false. First, if moral principles were absolutes, there would be no competing systems of morality ...”

“Silly! There were at one time competing views of chemistry, which is the state of moral research today. Just because you and others have not discovered the absolute moral principles does not mean they do not exist, it just means you’re still in the phlogiston stage of moral understanding. You haven’t discovered oxygen yet.

Please, allow me to point out that the study of chemistry, or the “views” thereof, has existed as a discipline for only a few hundred years. On the other hand, the study of human right conduct, or morality, has existed for millennia. Therefore, I submit that this discipline is far more mature as a field of systematic study than is chemistry. A great many learned philosophers studying this field through the millennia have all come to the same conclusion: absent an appeal to Divine revelation, any set of moral principles is relative… that is, there are no moral absolutes without God.