Is this a good argument against atheists?

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LeonardDeNoblac

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I’m a Catholic.
This is an apologetic argument I’m currently developing. I don’t know if it has been already made by anyone. The point isn’t so much to prove the existence of any deity or the falsity of atheism as it is to leave atheists with no room left to argue in matter of morality.
The argument goes pretty much like this:
  • if atheism is true, there’s no spiritual/supernatural reality;
  • if there’s no spiritual/supernatural reality, naturalism is true;
  • if naturalism is true, determinism is true (because natural laws are deterministic );
  • if determinism is true, no one can really choose what to think or what to do;
  • if no one can really choose what to think or what to do, no one can be reasonably blamed for his beliefs and actions;
  • if no one can be reasonably blamed for his beliefs and actions, no one has any logical basis at all for morally judging anyone.
Conclusion: atheists, given their worldview, have no logical basis at all for morally judging anyone.
So they can’t reasonably blame believers of any religion for believing what they believe (for example the intrinsc wrongness of abortion, assisted suicide, homosexual acts, etc. ), refusing to change their mind or pushing for their beliefs to be institutionalized by the law (for example by outlawing abortion and same-sex unions or even by proposing the death penalty for apostates, unbelievers and heretics ), even if the believers’ beliefs were wrong.
Feel free to express your opinion about it, as long as it’s done in a respectful way.
 
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Are you an atheists?
However, no one has ever denied that an atheist can have a personal ethics: indeed, it has to be expected, by a Christian theistic point of view.
The point is, I can’t find any reasonable way to reconcile determinism (wich is implied in an atheistic worldview ) with any ethics.
 
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LeonardDeNoblac said:
determinism is true, no one can really choose what to think or what to do;
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I think it breaks down here. Just because our universe is deterministic doesn’t mean our thoughts are. From the brain comes the emergence of intelligence and rational thought. From that, we have choice.
 
If naturalism is true (wich is implied in atheism ), our minds are nothing more than a complex biological machine that follows physical deterministic laws, wich leads you to determinism.
 
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That’s true. But, even if one embraces casual indeterminism, it still isn’t the same as free will.
 
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There’s one particular argument for the existence of God I have seen on youtube that I liked.

Could a book, full of pages with lots of information in it, write itself? No
Do you know what DNA is? What?
DNA is the book of life.
Your DNA has coherent information on what colour your eyes will be, what your hair will be like, what type blood you will have etc.
So what would you think of somebody who thinks a book can write itself? They’re insane.
If you think they are insane, why would you believe DNA can write itself? Wouldn’t that be insane?

I don’t think it’s a completely flawless argument (I’m sure people will be able to poke holes in it), but it’s quite a good one.
 
LeonardDeNoblac said:
wich leads you to determinism.
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Which has to be proven. So far, evidence shows an emergence of reason in the human brain…if every neuron is deterministic, we don’t have evidence of that. I’m neither a neuroscientist nor a philosopher so I can’t argue much beyond this. So far, my reasoning leads me to no supernatural and a brain that can make choices.
 
If everything exists in nature (naturalism), and nature follows deterministic physical laws, why should our brains behave differently?
 
Didn’t Bertrand Russell believe in free will? I think he did.
 
Maybe they do but naturalism also includes randomness, our brains are effected by more than just neurons firing in a deterministic way. Hormones effect it, many chemicals effect it and the environment effects it.

Is weather completely deterministic? Would we ever have every piece of information needed to truly predict every minutiae of it…does random events change it? I just don’t buy a completely deterministic universe.
 
I’m not saying that everything in the universe is deterministic (for example, even thought chemistry and classical physics is pretty much deterministic, quantum physics isn’t )
 
Maybe he did, I don’t know for sure but I think he did. I think also Sartre believed in free will. Still, I can’t see how they justified their belief in free will given their atheism.
 
Hormones, chemistry and the environment effecting the brain seems to me pretty much deterministic. Also, randomness isn’t the same as free will.
 
Why? For my argument to work, I don’t have to demonstrate that determinism is true. I simply assume it for the sake of argument, in order to show the ethical implications of determinism.
 
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LeonardDeNoblac said:
I don’t have to demonstrate that determinism is true. I simply assume it for the sake of argument.
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Then your argument is no different than arguing that God is real because you assume it for the sake of argument. If determinism has to be assumed, it can also be rejected and the argument fails from there.
 
That’s an interesting argument but I think it fails. Comparing a book to the process of evolution is a false analogy.
 
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