Morality: Atheism vs Christian View-4

Marie said: “Natural selection is not the most positive way to go about it, but it gets the job done.”

Russ: Natural selection is unguided accidental chance because your understanding of “nature” has no intelligence behind it. That means that there is nothing either “positive” or “negative” behind what happens and that murder and rape are just as much part of “nature” as couples paring up and getting married.

Marie said “Greed is about hoarding resources, which keep you alive long enough to reproduce.”

Russ: Insects, birds and animals would call this “survival” –not greed. It is not “right” or “wrong” for them. I suppose you think we should stop calling humans “greedy” for the same reason. You have no basis for calling anything “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad.” Rather than being “immoral” you are “a-moral.”

Marie: Paranoia is also about keeping you alive long enough to reproduce …

Russ: Nice. Your mindless evolution-creator god has made some aggressive, others greedy, others, lusty and others paranoid in order to achieve the same purpose of survival. Like I said before, after eons of trial and error, instead of one of these achieving more success and replacing the others, we still have all four. One would think that, after eons, only the most successful would still survive.

Marie said: Fortunately, these are counterbalanced by another trait we have passed on.

Russ: I’m sorry, but you are not in a place to use the words “fortunately.” “Fortune” implies something “good” happening instead of something “bad” and natural selection has no conscience to do this with.

Marie said: Groups whose members value morality or practice unselfish altruism are more likely to survive and thrive, passing on the genetic traits that encourage ethical behavior such as empathy, fairness and generosity.

Russ: You are destroying your own argument for natural selection. Because I begin with the assumption of a moral God, I can use words like “morality,” “selflessness (altruism),” “ethical,” “empathy,” “fairness” and “generosity.” You cannot use those terms without imbuing natural selection (unintelligent dirt) with morality to pass along.

Marie said: Brain scans have shown this genetic legacy in humans, and it's probably present in other mammals as well.

Russ: That, my friend, does not in any way prove that it got there because of mindless amoral natural selection. Your arguments are making my convictions stronger.

What gives you the “right” (or “wrong”) to discipline your children? Could it be that what YOUR amoral evolved mind calls “disobedience” and “wrong actions” are only natural selection evolving into its next phase into better sentient human beings?