Atheism Cannot Rationally Explain Morals.

In the moral big picture of the Earth's ecology, are humans or bees more important (worth more)?If humans were eliminated from the Earth, would the Earth's ecology be better off or worse off?If bees were eliminated from the Earth, would the Earth's ecology be better off or worse off?I say humans are of negative worth and bees are of positive worth. Bees are of more worth than humans.Moose

Science is a systematic methodology for studying natural phenomenon, not for inferring the value of human existence. Science "says" nothing about the relative importance of humans compared to other creatures. Human minds are what ascribes those values. Yes, people have used scientific findings to devalue human life, but that is not the problem of science, it is the problem of fallen human nature. Might be a step up from dust

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Gen 3:19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.

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Ecc 3:19 - 21
For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same. As one dies so dies the other; indeed, they all have the same breath and there is no advantage for man over beast, for all is vanity. All go to the same place. All came from the dust and all return to the dust. Who knows that the breath of man ascends upward and the breath of the beast descends downward to the earth?

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Job 10:9
Remember that you molded me like clay. Will you now turn me to dust again?

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2 Peter 2:12
But these people blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like unreasoning animals, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like animals they too will perish.

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And yet you don't complain that the Bible teaches we are merely animals or just dust. Why? Because it says other stuff too. As it is with evolution.The point of evolution is not to teach that we are merely animals or that we are cosmic accidents, it is an explanation as to how life has come to be the way it is. Conclusions that degrade human value come from the human mind and these types of value statements existed long before evolution was even thought of.HBD

Oh cut out the semantic hooha. "Science says" means what I said it means, it's certainly how Dredge meant it.Being created from dust isn't the salient point in the Bible, we know that human beings were created "in the image of God" and given responsibility over the entire Creation. Not just a bunch of mindless chemicals blindly thrown up from a cosmic burp as it were, obviously having NO intrinsic value over anything else brought about in the same way.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

It's not semantics. Science doesn't make those kinds of judgement calls. It doesn't ascribe value. That is YOUR judgement, not science's.HBD

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According to science we are a bunch of atoms assembled by a series of blind accidents to form a meaningless machine.

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That is hardly the whole of what science says, nor does science adequately cover the whole of what we are. You say nothing of human capabilities, of human achievements nor of human relationships.I am sorry that evolution offends your pride by not making you special enough to satisfy your ego. But that is hardly a good reason for rejecting it.Edited by PaulK, : Fixed 1 auto "correction"

Golly gosh, ya don't say? Imagine that. Aren't semantic distinctions clever? Evolutionism is built out of definitional cobwebs like that though, so what else is new? Surely a scientist or two now and then noticed that his science has the effect of demoting humanity from earlier assessments of our worth, particularly Biblical. Have to be brain-dead not to have noticed that. As I very clearly and carefully pointed out, it is INFERRED from (evolutionary) science and it is, your definitional pedantry notwithstanding.

Again (how many times is it necessary to explain this?) being "brought about in the same way" does not make things the same in every respect, or in any given respect. It does not necessarily mean that they have the same weight or color or temperature or value.If it did, then creationism would lead one to the same false "inference" you wish to draw from science. Humans and bugs, you claim, were both brought about by God doing magic. Therefore, by Creationist Logic, a human is no more valuable than a bug.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

God doesn't define us by what our physical bodies are made of, as evolution does. Evolution is materialism, has no way of recognizing the soul or spirit, and of course ridicules the very idea. "Invisible sky wizard" and all that, the soul can only be an invisible human invention on the same pattern. Just a delusion.Any value attached to humans as evolved is our own invention, and what authority does that have given that we evolved the same as bugs did anyway? You could point out that bugs can't think and perhaps assign them a lesser value than human beings for that reason, but that's a subjective assessment of ours you see, which has no objective standing because we too evolved just as the bug did.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

And evolution doesn't say that everything made of atoms is identical in every respect. Do you deny, then, that humans have intrinsic value?

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"Science says" is just a way of saying it is clearly inferable from (evolutionary) science that... I know that's what it means, why don't you?

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And it isn't. Neither you nor Dredge have even tried to support such a claim.

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We've both argued it. It is inferred from the fact that we are considered to be merely animals evolved from earlier animals, an accident of the blind arrangement of chemicals. Bugs are too, worms are too, wildebeests are too. That is a fact, right? So what's your problem?. There's nothing in the ToE to make us any more important than any of them.

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Science isn't about moral importance so saying that it doesn't give us any moral importance is a trivial truism without significance. All you are telling us is that YOU take a nihilistic and anti-human stance.

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I've mentioned the idea that Darwin, Freud and either Marx or Einstein, deflated the human ego with their theories

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As does the fact that our sun is just a pretty average star in a pretty average galaxy. Are you going to argue for geocentrism because of that ?The fact that we originated from animals instead of through direct divine creation may offend your ego but it does not deny anything we can observe about what humans are or can be. If you reject any of that then it is you doing the rejecting, not science.

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Golly gosh, ya don't say? Imagine that. Aren't semantic distinctions clever? Evolutionism is built out of definitional cobwebs like that thougH

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Apparently we are supposed to think your arguments are good because you falsely accuse opponents of playing semantic games.Not exactly moral behaviour by most people's standards. But maybe creationists have their own morality.

Diamond and graphite are composed of carbon, the arrangement of atoms being the only difference between them. And they are undeniably objectively different. For instance diamond is used as an abrasive, graphite as a lubricant. Anyone who would try to use an abrasive as a lubricant is making a very serious mistake !So, we have established at least the possibility that the vastly more complex arrangements of atoms that make up humans and bugs could produce objective differences.For instance a bug is incapable of composing a meaningful post in English. If Dredge and Faith really want us to consider them as no different from bugs their approach is self-defeating. By expecting us to take their posts as even attempts to express their views they are implicitly denying the very point they are trying to make.And, the mention of English and posts leads to another point. Written - or spoken - language is not objective. The forms of the letters, their assembly into words and the translation of words into meaning - all subjective human creations. And it is still not true that "anything goes". There is something to think about.

Aw.. does the little human animal feel dissed and demoted?Well guess what Faith...it is irrelevant what if you feel dissed or demoted.The fact is that humans are just animals. No Faith, it is simply your imagination. The rest of us understand that science does not make humans less, rather it raises us to equality with the worms and pond scum.

Which part do you disagree with?(Btw, you accuse other posters of making assertions without explanation, but I've noticed that you're pretty good at it yourself ; in fact, you're the worst offender.)

Why have you drooled this stupid lie? Who do you hope to deceive by telling it?
(Does that sound familiar? It should.)But seriously, you can deny the inescapable implications of your "science", but you can't change them. But, no matter, life is meaningless so you may as well live in a dreamworld.---------------------------------------------------------Do you need to exist? No, you don't - the universe will proceed quite nicely without human beings. So since you don't need to exist, what is your worth?Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.Edited by Dredge, : No reason given.