Hitchens on morality

Can morality exist without god?

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Education

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• christopher
• hitchens
• authors at google
• morality
• innate
• dostoyevsky
• religion

[SQuiRR3LM0nk3y]

Can morality exist without God? Morality is a value systemthat existed in many forms without the concept or belief in the Abrahamic God, so the answer is yes.

[jwiddle]

@SQuiRR3LM0nk3y Yes, except that religious people will argue that since god created everything it created morals long before humans were around, and implemented them in humans. god only managed to officially tell the humans later on. Obviously they would have never made it to some mountain without some kind of morals or laws. They would just be cavemen slaying each other.

The 'clever' religious folks will always argue with you to the first cause pretty quickly, and dump everything on that.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

@phrdao

Dawkins is a an evolutionary biologist that states the theory of "speciation" is a fact. He also claims that biological determinism is fact, meaning that there is no such thing in human free-will and that all that humans are is merely evolved biochemistry programmed to react to it's external environment with no agent of free-will. He claims science as tool for all of these believed self-claimed facts. This is the dogmatic modern self-described science I refer to.

[phrdao]

@WILLTHEWGMAN You make a good point regarding what happened before the big bang. A point I wanted to make and expand upon but the restrictive character limit precludes rational intellectual discourse on subjects as complex and nuanced as science and physics. As for what happened before the big bang, see point 1 of my first comment: we don't know what happened before big bang and physics admits that. You also have to remember that Dawkins is a special kind of individual and is not a physicist.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

@phrdao

There is no "fact" in science that the "big bang" came from "nothing". Science has no idea about what was a ten millionth of a second before the big bang theory therefore to conclude as "fact" that "literally nothing" was the cause of the big bang is totally baseless! "Possibly real" and "fact" are not far from the same. Again, statements like this are based solely on dogmatic beliefs and not scientific bases on empirical observation. Not sure why you just can't admit this???

[phrdao]

@WILLTHEWGMAN There is considerable evidence to support the big bang theory. Approximately 80 years worth of evidence. The "universe from nothing" is a reference to that. It is a staggering fact but currently supported. Life coming from nothing: in the last 24 months I have heard of a staggering series of experiments that demonstrate how the precursors to living cells have been created in the lab out of nothing but simply molecules. "Something from nothing" sounds crazy, but is possibly real.

[WILLTHEWGMAN]

@phrdao

"The fact that life evolved out of nearly nothing, some 10 billion years after the universe evolved out of literally nothing, is a fact so staggering that I would be mad to attempt words to do it justice." ~Richard Dawkins

When did these theories become fact, is this statement dogmatic? Something from nothing a "fact", really??? This is the dogma I am referring to, what is the empirical data to make any of these claim "facts"? I can list thousands more of these as well!!!

[phrdao]

@WILLTHEWGMAN Two things. 1) The fundamental position of science is "we don't know". Science also takes the view that a theory can never be proved, only disproved. Evidence may point to a theory being correct, but it takes one experiment to blow the doors open again. 2) A definition of dogmatic: "based on assumption rather than empirical observation". Science *is* empirical. Theories are based in part on assumptions but these assumptions and theories are continually tested. See point 1.

[cablepanos]

Not to mention the Bible actually says nothing against rape per se, only that you get to own the girl you rape (more or less) after you pay off the father.

[ShahnamPersia]

Religious people would rape their own mom if there was no God?

[IneffableLifestyle]

@lukeyboy5 wow, weird

[SirDruhHu]

Woah. That was a juicy 2 mins and 27. *claps*