| Grey Acumen said: In order for God to be able to be disproved, one would first have to know what god is. By definition god exists above our level of comprehension, hence is impossible to disprove. Anyone who actually makes an argument against God's existence can only do so based off of their own comprehension of what God is "supposed" to be, but all that does is prove that their comprehension of god is mistaken. Why do I know God exists? The very fact that we ask ourselves what the purpose of life is, the very fact that we question existence and how the world works, the very fact that despite everything we have learned, we still do not understand everything, everything is evidence. On top of this, the spontaneous moral standards are what I see as the most undeniable proof. Lying, Murder, Adultery, Stealing are all obstacles to forming a strong society, and yet these are also things that any individual would be able to benefit from if they had no moral standards to begin with. If a lion sees another lion eating something, and he's hungry, then if he's big enough to take the other lion's food, he will. This would likely be the lion that all others would have to defer to, so why would he impose rules that would no longer allow him to do this? The moral rules that are the fiber of society are made to protect the weak from the strong, yet nature dictates that the strong survive and the weak are culled. On top of this, morals are not part of instinct. They are purely learned behaviors. Any kid in the playground will attempt to take a toy from another kid if he has an interest in it, until he has been taught that is wrong to do. So with this in mind, there HAS to have been some point at which man was taught these lessons, and it could not come from a natural force, as those rules are directly opposed to natural selection. |
Sorry, but you need to do your homework. This is a flat out misrepresentation of natural selection, albiet a persistant one. Natural selection states not that the strong will thrive while the weak perish, but that those best able to adapt to their environment will, on average, outcompete those who cannot. Strength can get the job done in some cases, but so can meekness. So can sloth (see the sloth). And most especially, so can social cooperation (see kin selection and game theory). Most of our basic moral rules CAN BE* explained easily as adaptive behaviors to ensure the success of the group as it will benefit the majority of the individuals. Again, most social animals have their own rules of conduct, and there are many species that will cast out members who cannot follow those rules (though, like humans, some are better able to escape punishment than others). If this can be observed in organisms with rudimentary intelligence, then it is very possible to see how, as intelligence increased, these rules could eventually be codified into moral laws.
*the operative term being "can" not "must"
