I would suggest that you’re begging an awful lot of questions and making an awful lot of assumptions.
He answers more questions than not, and further does us the service of pointing out who is actually relying on too many assumptions.
An atheist would argue that morality was a projection of the behaviours that were beneficial to our evolution - that rape, say, was disruptive of the kind of social cohesion that makes the complex series of interactions that constitute human society possible.
Illogical. Please demonstrate the pre-requisite beliefs or social cohesion/organization that makes rape a problem. In male dominated societies, which nature makes quite easy, what is the objection to rape ? One would say that in each case of rape, a man’s daughter, wife, mother, sister, etc., was being violated, and this also was thought to somehow injure him ; however, this presumes a patriarchal social organization wherein men knew who their immediate relatives were ; furthermore, it presumes a non-communal view of women ; that is, that women belonged to certain men, by law or nature, and that it was not beneficial to rather treat women as common-property sex slaves and take dibs on whatever children might be produced. In any case, how and why did this patriarchal organization develop ? Why would men want to be responsible for women ; afterall, aren’t they likely to be a grievous burden to him when they become pregnant and cannot perform much work ? Aren’t her offspring going to be a drain on his livelihood ? Why not rather be pillagers and mauraders ? Was patriarchal social organization the default social organization of humans ? If it was the default organization, then is it not, by extension, also the natural one ? If it is not the natural one, how and why did it come about ?
As you can see, as many questions appear at your contrary contention and not a few assumptions are made on your part.
It would be perfectly possible to criticise another society for, say, human sacrifice, because such societies were very plainly social/economic/cultural failures - they collapsed when faced with more dynamic cultures despite, one might suggest, having strong ‘objective moralities’ of their own.
This is not true. The Christian explorers and colonizers came across not a few instances of advanced societies engaging in human sacrifice. The Romans did not do it for religious reasons, but purely entertainment ones, though likely early on the spectacle and its consequent blood may have been offered to some god. Is it not okay to sacrifice human beings for religious reasons but perfectly okay to do so for the sake of entertainment ? Where do we draw the distinction ? Why is it wrong to kill people in the first place ? Is it okay for the mob to kill, but not the individual ? If so, why are private cases of murder universally condemned even in bronze age societies regardless of the motive ?
Atheistic morality is specious. It is incapable of resisting any novelty or the chipping away at morality. It requires some pre-decided and indonctrinated code of ethics to give it any force whatsoever (e.g., the Constitution and laws in America). Even then, seeing as such things are changeable, so is the morality. It would follow that if we are “more evolved,” (which is unsubstantiated nonsense, mind you) then our morality ought, consequently, to improve ; not disintegrate. Yet today - even with widespread, universal education, and easy access to information - we find violence, human trafficking, gangs, drug abuse, prostitution, child abuse,
ad infinitum just as - if not more - problematic than in times past ; furthermore, we see a tendency in many societies to de-criminalize many of these problems, much to the detriment of the weakest (in terms of physical powers) members of society ; namely, women and children.
Tim
