Toying With Apologists: Absolute Morality

By far, my favorite debates are those with a proponent of absolute morality.  No other component of the modern apologist's assertions is, to me, weaker or more easily refuted.

The idea of absolute morality is that there is a moral code that is somehow innate within us all or at least beyond the realm of opinion.  Simply put, it says that something is good or bad regardless of what our individual opinion on it may be.  Coincidently, this code always comes from the proponent's version of their god, and exactly mirrors their own morality.

Despite the fact that any basic review of human history shows this idea to be utter nonsense, a majority of apologists, both amateur and pro, still hold onto the idea.  However, they never seem to be able to show evidence for it which isn't summarily destroyed by simple historical cultural reference, or even just their own comments.

The following is a short example of how such a debate generally plays out, and how easily it is shot down:



(The redacted portion was a reply to another comment poster)

In this exchange Ebenezer (E) and I have been going back and forth for a couple of days.  To this point, E had tried using "murder" and "rape" as the morals for discussion.  As usual, I summarily shot both down as subjective legal terms which could not be used as an example of morality.  E apparently did some research, and came back with the "torture a baby" question, which seems to have become a standard with these guys.  It is a question which would seem to invoke some emotion, and what they apparently assume is a slam dunk.

E starts well enough by simply asking if it is morally ok to "torture a baby" to which I answer:  "for me: no."  At this point his entire ploy falls completely apart due to my qualified answer.  Note that I don't simply say "no."  It is this simplistic answer that E, and all of the other users of this ploy, expect.  But to say simply "no" would be to admit some objective source for my answer, which doesn't exist, and would be dishonest as my morals are, like everyone else's, purely subjective and only apply to me.

Also note that I immediately make reference to definitions.  A very common problem with debates like this, is that the two sides are often using differing definitions for the same word or phrase, so it's important to remove this obstacle at the earliest possible time. So far everything is going according to script.

But then, in an attempt to bypass my qualifier, E makes the fatal mistake.  With his next question he brings in other societies and asks: 

"is it ever morally OK to torture a baby, in any society."

His obvious assumption is that my answer will be the same.  But the question is about other societies so my answer is an obvious yes.  I say obvious, because, by my definition, which hadn't been given yet, the morally accepted practice of infanticide by 'exposure' in many cultures, shows that in those cultures the torture (intentional infliction of undo suffering) of babies was often accepted as moral.

The answer obviously confuses E, so he asks me the initial question again, and I give the same answer I gave the first time.

E asks the same question for a third time, obviously still confused.  This time he is starting to show annoyance and frustration which manifests with his condescending definition.  Ignoring the attempted slight, I answer the question for a third time.

At this point E could ask about the answer to his other question, but seems to have spotted his mistake, so he moves on to the inevitable fallacious conclusion:

He starts immediately with a presupposition that has absolutely no basis.  And then goes on to make another fatal mistake by unintentionally giving a usable definition of subjective morality followed by a slippery slope argument.  The following was my reply:

At this point E stopped replying.  Note that the second paragraph of my reply was not accurate, as he didn't actually say that I had advocated torturing a baby.  I put this in there because I knew that he was likely finished, and couldn't respond to what followed.  It, admittedly, was a cheap attempt to pull him back in so I could continue to thrash his point.

And, it worked:

E repeats his assertion that my answers, somehow show that I believe in exactly what I told him I did not believe in.  While this may look somewhat silly to many onlookers, it is a common strawman-like tactic employed by most of the people I have debated this subject with.  It is, as far as I can tell, an attempt to either confuse their opponent, or try to rescue their own validity.

He immediately follows this assertion with a comment which contradicts it, and brings his god into the fray with a syllogism.  Syllogisms are a common tool used by people like E and other followers of the William Lane Craig school of what they think is 'logic.'  Most of the time these syllogisms are severely flawed and poorly constructed like the one E uses here. 

To explain:

Syllogisms like this one only work if both P1 and P2 are factual.  Since P1 hasn't been shown to be factual, and P2 had already been shown to be not-factual then there is no way to reach the conclusion (C) which has here been mistakenly called "3."

In my reply to this I pointed out that the name for any mythological being could be used in place of "god." and it would have the same amount of validity (none).

E follows this failure of a syllogism with a set of horribly illogical assertions about how, while I don't believe in his god, I am somehow questioning this god's morality.  This too is a very common play by such people.  It is an attempt to shift the burden away from themselves onto their opponents by setting up a discussion on the morality of their god, instead of having to defend an already failed premise:  that objective morality actually exists.  In this case, as in all others, I merely replied that I don't believe in his god, and reminded him that he still hadn't proven his initial assertion about the existence of absolute morality so there was nothing for his god to be the "foundation" of.

He then gave another farewell, along with the obligatory (and disingenuous) statement about "looking forward to" further discussions.  Oh, and a blessing.

Generally, such discussions are stretched out a lot more than this one, but they always contain the exact same amount of evidence for their case, and, as I mentioned in my post about WLC, ultimately end in a very similar way.   To many, it would seem that such conversations are useless, since no new information is ever offered, and they always end the same way.  However, it is important to remember that there are always onlookers, and it is to them that I always aim my refutation of these silly claims.