Hello. I'm talking to an atheist friend. And am using the route of the "moral argument" as the method to show him evidence of God's existence. And as can be expected, he pushed back the the usual atheist's stance and said "evolution can explain objective moral absolutes". To which I responded with the typical theist replies given at this junction : Attempting to show various civilizations and eras would perhaps condone racism, or throw Jews into gas chambers, etc... So the atheist therefore has to explain how to adjudicate between those "evolved morals", and the ones he holds.
If he answers that evolution can adjudicate, then he's just contradicted himself. Since, of course, evolution brought about various things he's going to try to point to, and say "that's wrong". It's a vicious circle that evolution can't solve. Hence known as the moral argument.
However, my friend pushed back with 2 answers, that appear to crush the theist's stance. And appear to allow for evolution to ground morals after all. Two things I've never thought of. So can you guys see if his points hold water or not :
1) The minute I tossed out the examples of Nazi Germany, Jim Crow laws in the deep south in the 1950s and early 1960s, and other examples , he was quick to point out that in all the examples I was giving, they were isolated locations at isolated times in history. So that while it's true that they had a societal norm (that we might even say they "evolved" to), yet that wasn't taking into account that the larger populace . Like if we include the whole world, for instance, they WOULD NOT have "voted that way". So example: Even though German sentiment, for a short while, was indeed anti-Semitic, and did indeed vote the Nazi party into power, yet .... if you had taken all of Europe's vote, then it could be argued that the vote would NOT have gone that way.
Because, let's be perfectly honest :
Whenever you measure evolution's effects on the population, you don't study the "outliers" . You don't study the "flukes". You don't study "the exceptions". You study the accumulated whole. Ie.: not a "vote of a single horrible person" or a "single horrible country". Otherwise you'd be saying you're only studying THAT INDIVIDUAL person or country's "evolution". So when HE is saying "evolution", he's meaning OF ALL OF MANKIND.
Such that: If it were theoretically possible to take a vote of the entire world, across time, for their opinion on the murder of innocent people, or racism, or rape, etc... I think we can all agree they'd say "it's wrong". EVEN though we can find singular isolated flukes (like Nazi Germany, or Jim Crow law days/places) where such things were condoned.
Therefore he rejected the examples I gave, since they're studying the fluke outliers . And that is not what he means by "evolution". He's saying all of mankind's evolution, not the vote of an isolated sect or people at some individual point.
I realize, for this to be true, that it would assume that the vote taken of the entire world WOULD INDEED say "murder is wrong", etc.... And at this point I can speak hypothetically and say : "Well perhaps they WOULD vote that way. *HOWEVER*, if they hypothetically voted that murder is good, THEN do we have an adjudicating score card that is higher than the popular vote ?". But I'm going to look mighty silly throwing out that hypothetical. Since common sense reason dictates that the *average* person does NOT think it's right to murder. And therefore such a vote would never perform & fulfill the hypothetical in-the-first place.
2) His other objection was a little easier to address, but it was still one that initially caught me off guard : He was of the opinion, that ... using the Hitler/Nazi example, that those people KNEW what they were doing was wrong. Yet did it anyways. So in that sense, when I ask my atheist friend "what adjudicates between your moral view of murder and their moral view of murder ?", my friend could say that there isn't an adjudication needed IN THE FIRST PLACE. Because on BOTH sides of aisle, they're BOTH saying "this is wrong". It's merely that the other side of the aisle (the Nazis) are saying "we don't care and we're going to do it anyhow". My friend seems to think that Hitler and the Nazis would NOT have said "this is a good moral" (in which case, yes, you'd need an adjudication). Instead, he thinks the Nazis KNEW it was wrong (just like we do) and simply said "too bad, we're going to do it". Therefore, in that sense, there's no disagreement to adjudicate, since BOTH sides are saying "murder is wrong".
Does that make sense ? I did have some pushback to answer this one. But before I list it, I wanted to see what you folks would say.
Do these two points support evolution's ability to ground objective moral absolutes ?
If he answers that evolution can adjudicate, then he's just contradicted himself. Since, of course, evolution brought about various things he's going to try to point to, and say "that's wrong". It's a vicious circle that evolution can't solve. Hence known as the moral argument.
However, my friend pushed back with 2 answers, that appear to crush the theist's stance. And appear to allow for evolution to ground morals after all. Two things I've never thought of. So can you guys see if his points hold water or not :
1) The minute I tossed out the examples of Nazi Germany, Jim Crow laws in the deep south in the 1950s and early 1960s, and other examples , he was quick to point out that in all the examples I was giving, they were isolated locations at isolated times in history. So that while it's true that they had a societal norm (that we might even say they "evolved" to), yet that wasn't taking into account that the larger populace . Like if we include the whole world, for instance, they WOULD NOT have "voted that way". So example: Even though German sentiment, for a short while, was indeed anti-Semitic, and did indeed vote the Nazi party into power, yet .... if you had taken all of Europe's vote, then it could be argued that the vote would NOT have gone that way.
Because, let's be perfectly honest :
Whenever you measure evolution's effects on the population, you don't study the "outliers" . You don't study the "flukes". You don't study "the exceptions". You study the accumulated whole. Ie.: not a "vote of a single horrible person" or a "single horrible country". Otherwise you'd be saying you're only studying THAT INDIVIDUAL person or country's "evolution". So when HE is saying "evolution", he's meaning OF ALL OF MANKIND.
Such that: If it were theoretically possible to take a vote of the entire world, across time, for their opinion on the murder of innocent people, or racism, or rape, etc... I think we can all agree they'd say "it's wrong". EVEN though we can find singular isolated flukes (like Nazi Germany, or Jim Crow law days/places) where such things were condoned.
Therefore he rejected the examples I gave, since they're studying the fluke outliers . And that is not what he means by "evolution". He's saying all of mankind's evolution, not the vote of an isolated sect or people at some individual point.
I realize, for this to be true, that it would assume that the vote taken of the entire world WOULD INDEED say "murder is wrong", etc.... And at this point I can speak hypothetically and say : "Well perhaps they WOULD vote that way. *HOWEVER*, if they hypothetically voted that murder is good, THEN do we have an adjudicating score card that is higher than the popular vote ?". But I'm going to look mighty silly throwing out that hypothetical. Since common sense reason dictates that the *average* person does NOT think it's right to murder. And therefore such a vote would never perform & fulfill the hypothetical in-the-first place.
2) His other objection was a little easier to address, but it was still one that initially caught me off guard : He was of the opinion, that ... using the Hitler/Nazi example, that those people KNEW what they were doing was wrong. Yet did it anyways. So in that sense, when I ask my atheist friend "what adjudicates between your moral view of murder and their moral view of murder ?", my friend could say that there isn't an adjudication needed IN THE FIRST PLACE. Because on BOTH sides of aisle, they're BOTH saying "this is wrong". It's merely that the other side of the aisle (the Nazis) are saying "we don't care and we're going to do it anyhow". My friend seems to think that Hitler and the Nazis would NOT have said "this is a good moral" (in which case, yes, you'd need an adjudication). Instead, he thinks the Nazis KNEW it was wrong (just like we do) and simply said "too bad, we're going to do it". Therefore, in that sense, there's no disagreement to adjudicate, since BOTH sides are saying "murder is wrong".
Does that make sense ? I did have some pushback to answer this one. But before I list it, I wanted to see what you folks would say.
Do these two points support evolution's ability to ground objective moral absolutes ?