This completely misunderstands natural law, the “intrinsically wrong (evil)” bit, not the bit where the author rejects an enduring ethical framework because it makes him feel icky. We should ask what is sex for? It's for two things: making babies and uniting the people doing it. It's for both of those things at the same time, not just one or the other. So, if a sexual act is in principle opposed to either of these ends, it's intrinsically evil. In principle is the keyword here.
There's a throwaway line in there about infertile/sterile couples, but it doesn't even steelman the sterile couples objection. The objection here is that sterile couples are just as permanently incapable of conception as are homosexual couples, thus we ought to conclude from the principle given above that sterile couples are doing something wrong when they copulate.
But the problem is that heterosexual, sterile couples are in principle capable of reproduction. They are impeded by a defect: sterility, but this doesn't change the fact that it is true that man+woman=baby. This is unlike the homosexual couple. It is not the fact, and no one would agree, that man+man=baby, nor that woman+woman=baby (and thus, with a bit of humor, we conclude by the law of identity that man+woman is not equal to man+man nor to woman+woman).
To prove that this is the right way to think about it, we could consider a hypothetical case: a sterile couple where the husband is unable to produce sperm. He's colloquially shooting blanks. Say that pharmacists research and develop a pill that addresses whatever causes his testicles to malfunction, and now he can produce sperm. We would expect that his wife will get pregnant now, assuming no other infertility factors exist, no? Yet if the same were true of a homosexual man, we would not expect that taking the pill designed to remove this sterility/infertility would result in the impregnation of his male sexual partner, since we know that in principle two men cannot reproduce.
I think you're gonna have a lot of trouble coming up with a non-arbitrary way of defining how strict "in principle" here is, while getting the conclusion you want. Your pill-example is actually great here. We can also imagine a medical intervention or drug or whatever that would allow a man to get pregnant (perhaps through operating in some artificial womb, or through inducing the body to grow one, or what have you). This is a more far-fetched possibility, but it still clearly seems possible! Yet if that's right then homosexual people are in principle capable of reproducing (man+man=baby in some possible world).
Hence you need some way of saying how wide the scope is here. I have a hard time seeing how you would do so to get the result that it's evil for two men to have sex and that it's okay for an infertile straight couple to have sex, without it just being gerrymandered to get the conclusion you want--in which case I can just gerrymander it to get the conclusion I want, and it's hard to say anything to prefer your version over mine
No, the difference here is that in one case you fix a defect (we think that men should be producing sperm), whereas in the other case you are not fixing a defect, but trying through scientific experimentation to introduce a change which most people find either horrifying (when played straight in fiction: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/bloodchild/summary) or outrageously silly (when played for laughs: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0110216/). I find it very helpful to ask what do most people think on a basic moral intuitive level. We tend to think very teleologically when we are left to common sense. The basic teleological intuitions most people have around sex, when they are not traumatized or propagandized, is that it's for making babies and for uniting the participants in a bond, and in fact both of those things tend to happen on a physical level when people have sex. So concluding that sex which is done in ways that are in principle opposed to either of these ends are a misuse of sex is not a far leap at all, any more than it would be a leap to say that I'm misusing my butter knife by trying to cut a steak with it, or my steak knife by trying to use it to mend a tear in a garment. If we think misusing things is immoral, the conclusion that gay sex, and also heterosexual sodomy and artificial contraception, is immoral follows naturally.
I don't see anything arbitrary here at all. One specific kind of sexual activity is the kind that all people everywhere and at all times look at and say "this is what makes babies and unites spouses." They will all say that even if some defect in one or both spouses prevents pregnancy (or unity, if there is some kind of trauma or other psychological defect). Any kind that doesn't fit that definition is opposed to at least one of these ends. What is arbitrary here?
I agree that it very much seems like there are clear distinctions about what it means for homosexual people to be "in principle" unable to reproduce, while infertile couples are "in principle" capable of reproducing. Clearly, it seems, we can tell what the difference is here. But once we actually try to closely examine what we want to say, I think we find that it ends up being much more arbitrary than it initially appears.
Firstly you try to ground "in principle" on some notion of defect. But what exactly is the difference between something defective (like a sterile couple), and something unaltered (like a man without a uterus)?
Is it something about what usually happens? Surely not! For a long time, humans usually didn't live very long, and many died in childbirth, etc., yet those were surely defects.
Or is it about what would happen if nothing interfered? If so, you'll have to specify what non-interference looks like. It can't be absolute non-interference, as we need to get food and water from the outside. It's unclear that there is some privileged non-interference environment.
Or is it something about what fits with the "essence" of the creature? Then firstly, why think there is such an essence? Second, and more importantly, how do we know what the essence is? Might it not be that the essence of males is to develop uteruses, and males on earth are just defective? Is it just some direct intuitive grasp of essences? You probably think this suggestion sounds silly, but seriously, how would you know this is not the case?
You might not prefer any of these routes, but I'm quite skeptical that there is any plausible way of making the distinction non-arbitrarily.
Secondly, you need to individuate kinds of acts to get your theory off the ground. We can describe acts on different levels of detail. For example: Level 1: Sexual intercourse. Level 2: Heterosexual intercourse, and homosexual intercourse. Level 3: Heterosexual intercourse between sterile parties, heterosexual intercourse between fertile parties, and homosexual intercourse.
If we use level 1, homosexual acts turn out okay. If we use level 2, they do not, and infertile acts turn out okay. If we use level 3, both homosexual and infertile acts turn out wrong. And we could of course come up with any number of ways of individuating acts. You need some principled way to decide on an individuation for your theory to get of the ground, but how in the world would you do that? What makes level 2 more correct than 1 or 3?
Also, if we're now appealing to common intuitions, I think it's worth noting that most people will likely find it very counter-intuitive that it is categorically wrong to have gay sex, use condoms, lie, etc., no matter how arbitrarily large negative consequences refraining would have (e.g. if you had to lie about what you had for breakfast to prevent your family from being tortured).
Common intuitions are useful for ethical reasoning, but those who reject them often do what is being done here and conflate them with absolute principles. It's not false that "lying is always wrong" just because there are extreme circumstances where someone might want to lie. The intuition is that lying is always wrong, and as we refine that intuition by gathering data in the world, we might adjust the rule to fit the data better, and say something like "lying without a grave cause is always wrong" or even "lying is generally immoral." Now, I personally think lying is always wrong, but not gravely so, but I don't want to get too far off track here. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of assumptions that go into that debate on both sides, and if we make careful distinctions, we'll see things more clearly.
But making careful distinctions is precisely what we want to do here. I think your examination of things on different levels is actually counter-productive to good distinction making when it comes to kinds of human acts. Our distinctions ought to "carve reality at the joints," so to speak. Distinguishing between heterosexual and homosexual activity makes sense because it is non-arbitrary for the same reasons that what is male and what is female is non-arbitrary. When you try to introduce a concept like "infertile/sterile heterosexual sex" you end up with a very messy set of conditions that could influence the morality of the act, as opposed to the simple activity itself. For instance, you end up with intentionally and unintentionally sterile acts, and under unintentionally sterile acts, you end up with accidentally unintentionally sterile acts (for instance, pollution when a couple engages in something like fellatio) and biologically unintentionally sterile acts (for instance, a male cannot produce sperm). Under these biologically unintentionally sterile acts, you end up with a sliding scale from people who are totally sterile (for instance, post-menopausal women) to "sterility" in a particular act just because it occurred right after ovulation, and every combination of infertility factors that lie in-between. But the problem with going this deep is that it stops telling you about the nature of the act. You end up missing the forest for the trees.
As to what metaphysical presuppositions ground this ethical claim, yes, it has to do with the essence of humankind, and the telos of particular kinds of human acts, such as sexual intercourse. As for why suppose such an essence exists, well, now I think we've truly gotten to the heart of the disagreement, and the reason I think you haven't actually answered any objections at all. We are approaching an ethical question with opposing metaphysics. There are numerous good arguments for and against metaphysical realism, and I am convinced by pro-metaphysical realist arguments. I presume you are not because of your question. But your ethical arguments depend upon anti-realist premises, so there is no way that you could really respond to a metaphysical realist like me with a compelling objection to an ethical claim I've made without either appealing to my metaphysical framework (which you can't do while making the ethical claims you want to make) or disproving or at least calling into serious doubt my metaphysical framework (which you haven't even taken a shot at here). I understand that the scope of the article would be insanely large were you to actually take a stab at answering every good argument in favor of metaphysical realism, but the issue is that if you don't, your article can't really claim to have debunked even most arguments concluding homosexual activity is immoral.
First, those of you who are atheists don’t have any good reason to talk about anything as “intrinsically” or objectively right or wrong or good or evil. Those concepts aren’t part of your world. Ultimately, if you’re an atheist, you’re living in on a planet where eventually all life will disappear and, indeed, will disappear in the whole universe, and the universe will go on disinterested as ever. That’s why so many atheist philosophers turn to the so-called “creation of meaning.” They are trying to avoid the absurdity that is the ultimate result of their worldview.
So, to me, it’s incoherent for atheists to have a moral theory or obsess over what ought to be rather than what is.
Second, the critique of the Biblical view is really off. For Biblical theists, and a particularly a Christian, there’s every reason to have a strong inference that what the Bible says is wrong is indeed wrong, regardless of how implausible it otherwise may seem.
That doesn’t mean implausibility doesn’t factor in for thinking Christians like myself. The proper essence of Christian beliefs is a belief in God at the core (which by the way, on natural theology alone is clearly more plausible than not). Close to that is a belief in Christ as the divine incarnate based first and foremost on the resurrection- and there’s plenty of evident for that.
Biblical inerrancy is somewhere farther out from that. But the idea that because because you consider a literal reading of some part of the Bible (without any context as to the intended meaning or even the genre of writing your reading) as implausible means you should assert your own view of implausibility to overrule anything you just don’t like in the Bible is quite silly. The modern theologians who want to argue that the passages in the Bible against homosexuality aren’t, or shouldn’t be, arguing such because in their mind it’s implausible that homosexuality is wrong. What I believe they are trying to argue is that it is more plausible than not that those passages are referring to more specific practices rather than a broad condemnation of homosexuality in general. The problem is that there are equally as many, if not more, not-dumb theologians who present very good arguments against that interpretation. They’re not concerned with concordism to modern culture. They are concerned with what the intent of the passage is.
P.S. “homophobic bigots” is anything but a proper philosophical term. It’s a misguided post-modern social construct that is much more interested in ad hominem attacks than any sort of truth seeking. Sad to see it pop up here.
I'm not an atheist myself, but there are plenty of atheists are moral realists. It's gonna take more than a simple assertion to show that one cannot plausibly hold those two together. In fact it's unclear how God helps. E.g. if you believe in divine command theory, then 1) it's hard to see why that would not be some sort of subjectivism (since moral truths depend on God's stances), and 2) why is it more plausible that something being a divine command makes it objectively right, rather than it being a, say, platonic moral fact?
I certainly agree that a Christian should take the fact that the bible appears to say X as reason to believe X, even if they're errantist. Still, it's a balancing act, and if X is sufficiently implausible then you should change your reading or your view of scripture on that point. E.g. if the bible appeared to condone slavery (as it does initially seem to at certain places), you should not just go along and accept that--rather that is a strong reason to revise your view of that passage one way or another. Likewise, if you accept that there is a strong presumption against thinking that homosexuality is wrong, then (assuming it's not incredibly implausible to interpret those passages another way or say that they were not properly inspired or whatever) you should give up the surface-reading of those passages, rather than say that homosexuality is wrong.
On the P.S.: I don't know what you mean with it being a post-modern social construct--it's just a combination of words to describe people. I do agree that it's not a very technical term, but I have to balance writing something I think is entertaining and has a strong voice with being impartial and technical. That will end up alienating certain readers, but for the goal I have in mind with my writing, that's sadly a sacrifice I have to make sometimes. For the record, it was meant as a joke in the form of hyperbole here (like how I might have said "only unbelieving dogs wouldn't subscribe" if it were a post about Islam or something. It's just a joke, not me seriously calling anyone that).
Oh my gosh, I just found it. Please forgive my last message.
Okay. Here we go.
Yes, many atheists are indeed moral realists (of course pointing that out is an appeal to authority), but none of them have explained how you can arrive at objective moral values given a worldview that the human race, and all other life, is doomed to perish and therefore everything we ever do is meaningless. Explain to me how that’s wrong on an atheistic view.
Separately, Silas, I’m so glad to hear you say you’re not an atheist. That’s wonderful! In that regard, I don’t care about our differences in philosophy. I hope you share more with me about your beliefs. Thank you!
This completely misunderstands natural law, the “intrinsically wrong (evil)” bit, not the bit where the author rejects an enduring ethical framework because it makes him feel icky. We should ask what is sex for? It's for two things: making babies and uniting the people doing it. It's for both of those things at the same time, not just one or the other. So, if a sexual act is in principle opposed to either of these ends, it's intrinsically evil. In principle is the keyword here.
There's a throwaway line in there about infertile/sterile couples, but it doesn't even steelman the sterile couples objection. The objection here is that sterile couples are just as permanently incapable of conception as are homosexual couples, thus we ought to conclude from the principle given above that sterile couples are doing something wrong when they copulate.
But the problem is that heterosexual, sterile couples are in principle capable of reproduction. They are impeded by a defect: sterility, but this doesn't change the fact that it is true that man+woman=baby. This is unlike the homosexual couple. It is not the fact, and no one would agree, that man+man=baby, nor that woman+woman=baby (and thus, with a bit of humor, we conclude by the law of identity that man+woman is not equal to man+man nor to woman+woman).
To prove that this is the right way to think about it, we could consider a hypothetical case: a sterile couple where the husband is unable to produce sperm. He's colloquially shooting blanks. Say that pharmacists research and develop a pill that addresses whatever causes his testicles to malfunction, and now he can produce sperm. We would expect that his wife will get pregnant now, assuming no other infertility factors exist, no? Yet if the same were true of a homosexual man, we would not expect that taking the pill designed to remove this sterility/infertility would result in the impregnation of his male sexual partner, since we know that in principle two men cannot reproduce.
I think you're gonna have a lot of trouble coming up with a non-arbitrary way of defining how strict "in principle" here is, while getting the conclusion you want. Your pill-example is actually great here. We can also imagine a medical intervention or drug or whatever that would allow a man to get pregnant (perhaps through operating in some artificial womb, or through inducing the body to grow one, or what have you). This is a more far-fetched possibility, but it still clearly seems possible! Yet if that's right then homosexual people are in principle capable of reproducing (man+man=baby in some possible world).
Hence you need some way of saying how wide the scope is here. I have a hard time seeing how you would do so to get the result that it's evil for two men to have sex and that it's okay for an infertile straight couple to have sex, without it just being gerrymandered to get the conclusion you want--in which case I can just gerrymander it to get the conclusion I want, and it's hard to say anything to prefer your version over mine
No, the difference here is that in one case you fix a defect (we think that men should be producing sperm), whereas in the other case you are not fixing a defect, but trying through scientific experimentation to introduce a change which most people find either horrifying (when played straight in fiction: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/bloodchild/summary) or outrageously silly (when played for laughs: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0110216/). I find it very helpful to ask what do most people think on a basic moral intuitive level. We tend to think very teleologically when we are left to common sense. The basic teleological intuitions most people have around sex, when they are not traumatized or propagandized, is that it's for making babies and for uniting the participants in a bond, and in fact both of those things tend to happen on a physical level when people have sex. So concluding that sex which is done in ways that are in principle opposed to either of these ends are a misuse of sex is not a far leap at all, any more than it would be a leap to say that I'm misusing my butter knife by trying to cut a steak with it, or my steak knife by trying to use it to mend a tear in a garment. If we think misusing things is immoral, the conclusion that gay sex, and also heterosexual sodomy and artificial contraception, is immoral follows naturally.
I don't see anything arbitrary here at all. One specific kind of sexual activity is the kind that all people everywhere and at all times look at and say "this is what makes babies and unites spouses." They will all say that even if some defect in one or both spouses prevents pregnancy (or unity, if there is some kind of trauma or other psychological defect). Any kind that doesn't fit that definition is opposed to at least one of these ends. What is arbitrary here?
I agree that it very much seems like there are clear distinctions about what it means for homosexual people to be "in principle" unable to reproduce, while infertile couples are "in principle" capable of reproducing. Clearly, it seems, we can tell what the difference is here. But once we actually try to closely examine what we want to say, I think we find that it ends up being much more arbitrary than it initially appears.
Firstly you try to ground "in principle" on some notion of defect. But what exactly is the difference between something defective (like a sterile couple), and something unaltered (like a man without a uterus)?
Is it something about what usually happens? Surely not! For a long time, humans usually didn't live very long, and many died in childbirth, etc., yet those were surely defects.
Or is it about what would happen if nothing interfered? If so, you'll have to specify what non-interference looks like. It can't be absolute non-interference, as we need to get food and water from the outside. It's unclear that there is some privileged non-interference environment.
Or is it something about what fits with the "essence" of the creature? Then firstly, why think there is such an essence? Second, and more importantly, how do we know what the essence is? Might it not be that the essence of males is to develop uteruses, and males on earth are just defective? Is it just some direct intuitive grasp of essences? You probably think this suggestion sounds silly, but seriously, how would you know this is not the case?
You might not prefer any of these routes, but I'm quite skeptical that there is any plausible way of making the distinction non-arbitrarily.
Secondly, you need to individuate kinds of acts to get your theory off the ground. We can describe acts on different levels of detail. For example: Level 1: Sexual intercourse. Level 2: Heterosexual intercourse, and homosexual intercourse. Level 3: Heterosexual intercourse between sterile parties, heterosexual intercourse between fertile parties, and homosexual intercourse.
If we use level 1, homosexual acts turn out okay. If we use level 2, they do not, and infertile acts turn out okay. If we use level 3, both homosexual and infertile acts turn out wrong. And we could of course come up with any number of ways of individuating acts. You need some principled way to decide on an individuation for your theory to get of the ground, but how in the world would you do that? What makes level 2 more correct than 1 or 3?
Also, if we're now appealing to common intuitions, I think it's worth noting that most people will likely find it very counter-intuitive that it is categorically wrong to have gay sex, use condoms, lie, etc., no matter how arbitrarily large negative consequences refraining would have (e.g. if you had to lie about what you had for breakfast to prevent your family from being tortured).
Common intuitions are useful for ethical reasoning, but those who reject them often do what is being done here and conflate them with absolute principles. It's not false that "lying is always wrong" just because there are extreme circumstances where someone might want to lie. The intuition is that lying is always wrong, and as we refine that intuition by gathering data in the world, we might adjust the rule to fit the data better, and say something like "lying without a grave cause is always wrong" or even "lying is generally immoral." Now, I personally think lying is always wrong, but not gravely so, but I don't want to get too far off track here. Suffice it to say, there are a lot of assumptions that go into that debate on both sides, and if we make careful distinctions, we'll see things more clearly.
But making careful distinctions is precisely what we want to do here. I think your examination of things on different levels is actually counter-productive to good distinction making when it comes to kinds of human acts. Our distinctions ought to "carve reality at the joints," so to speak. Distinguishing between heterosexual and homosexual activity makes sense because it is non-arbitrary for the same reasons that what is male and what is female is non-arbitrary. When you try to introduce a concept like "infertile/sterile heterosexual sex" you end up with a very messy set of conditions that could influence the morality of the act, as opposed to the simple activity itself. For instance, you end up with intentionally and unintentionally sterile acts, and under unintentionally sterile acts, you end up with accidentally unintentionally sterile acts (for instance, pollution when a couple engages in something like fellatio) and biologically unintentionally sterile acts (for instance, a male cannot produce sperm). Under these biologically unintentionally sterile acts, you end up with a sliding scale from people who are totally sterile (for instance, post-menopausal women) to "sterility" in a particular act just because it occurred right after ovulation, and every combination of infertility factors that lie in-between. But the problem with going this deep is that it stops telling you about the nature of the act. You end up missing the forest for the trees.
As to what metaphysical presuppositions ground this ethical claim, yes, it has to do with the essence of humankind, and the telos of particular kinds of human acts, such as sexual intercourse. As for why suppose such an essence exists, well, now I think we've truly gotten to the heart of the disagreement, and the reason I think you haven't actually answered any objections at all. We are approaching an ethical question with opposing metaphysics. There are numerous good arguments for and against metaphysical realism, and I am convinced by pro-metaphysical realist arguments. I presume you are not because of your question. But your ethical arguments depend upon anti-realist premises, so there is no way that you could really respond to a metaphysical realist like me with a compelling objection to an ethical claim I've made without either appealing to my metaphysical framework (which you can't do while making the ethical claims you want to make) or disproving or at least calling into serious doubt my metaphysical framework (which you haven't even taken a shot at here). I understand that the scope of the article would be insanely large were you to actually take a stab at answering every good argument in favor of metaphysical realism, but the issue is that if you don't, your article can't really claim to have debunked even most arguments concluding homosexual activity is immoral.
It’s dysfunctional.
The function of sexual organs is sexual reproduction.
Homosexuality is like binging and purging and then eating your vomit because you like the taste.
Much of this thinking is fundamentally flawed.
First, those of you who are atheists don’t have any good reason to talk about anything as “intrinsically” or objectively right or wrong or good or evil. Those concepts aren’t part of your world. Ultimately, if you’re an atheist, you’re living in on a planet where eventually all life will disappear and, indeed, will disappear in the whole universe, and the universe will go on disinterested as ever. That’s why so many atheist philosophers turn to the so-called “creation of meaning.” They are trying to avoid the absurdity that is the ultimate result of their worldview.
So, to me, it’s incoherent for atheists to have a moral theory or obsess over what ought to be rather than what is.
Second, the critique of the Biblical view is really off. For Biblical theists, and a particularly a Christian, there’s every reason to have a strong inference that what the Bible says is wrong is indeed wrong, regardless of how implausible it otherwise may seem.
That doesn’t mean implausibility doesn’t factor in for thinking Christians like myself. The proper essence of Christian beliefs is a belief in God at the core (which by the way, on natural theology alone is clearly more plausible than not). Close to that is a belief in Christ as the divine incarnate based first and foremost on the resurrection- and there’s plenty of evident for that.
Biblical inerrancy is somewhere farther out from that. But the idea that because because you consider a literal reading of some part of the Bible (without any context as to the intended meaning or even the genre of writing your reading) as implausible means you should assert your own view of implausibility to overrule anything you just don’t like in the Bible is quite silly. The modern theologians who want to argue that the passages in the Bible against homosexuality aren’t, or shouldn’t be, arguing such because in their mind it’s implausible that homosexuality is wrong. What I believe they are trying to argue is that it is more plausible than not that those passages are referring to more specific practices rather than a broad condemnation of homosexuality in general. The problem is that there are equally as many, if not more, not-dumb theologians who present very good arguments against that interpretation. They’re not concerned with concordism to modern culture. They are concerned with what the intent of the passage is.
P.S. “homophobic bigots” is anything but a proper philosophical term. It’s a misguided post-modern social construct that is much more interested in ad hominem attacks than any sort of truth seeking. Sad to see it pop up here.
I'm not an atheist myself, but there are plenty of atheists are moral realists. It's gonna take more than a simple assertion to show that one cannot plausibly hold those two together. In fact it's unclear how God helps. E.g. if you believe in divine command theory, then 1) it's hard to see why that would not be some sort of subjectivism (since moral truths depend on God's stances), and 2) why is it more plausible that something being a divine command makes it objectively right, rather than it being a, say, platonic moral fact?
I certainly agree that a Christian should take the fact that the bible appears to say X as reason to believe X, even if they're errantist. Still, it's a balancing act, and if X is sufficiently implausible then you should change your reading or your view of scripture on that point. E.g. if the bible appeared to condone slavery (as it does initially seem to at certain places), you should not just go along and accept that--rather that is a strong reason to revise your view of that passage one way or another. Likewise, if you accept that there is a strong presumption against thinking that homosexuality is wrong, then (assuming it's not incredibly implausible to interpret those passages another way or say that they were not properly inspired or whatever) you should give up the surface-reading of those passages, rather than say that homosexuality is wrong.
On the P.S.: I don't know what you mean with it being a post-modern social construct--it's just a combination of words to describe people. I do agree that it's not a very technical term, but I have to balance writing something I think is entertaining and has a strong voice with being impartial and technical. That will end up alienating certain readers, but for the goal I have in mind with my writing, that's sadly a sacrifice I have to make sometimes. For the record, it was meant as a joke in the form of hyperbole here (like how I might have said "only unbelieving dogs wouldn't subscribe" if it were a post about Islam or something. It's just a joke, not me seriously calling anyone that).
Oh my gosh, I just found it. Please forgive my last message.
Okay. Here we go.
Yes, many atheists are indeed moral realists (of course pointing that out is an appeal to authority), but none of them have explained how you can arrive at objective moral values given a worldview that the human race, and all other life, is doomed to perish and therefore everything we ever do is meaningless. Explain to me how that’s wrong on an atheistic view.
Separately, Silas, I’m so glad to hear you say you’re not an atheist. That’s wonderful! In that regard, I don’t care about our differences in philosophy. I hope you share more with me about your beliefs. Thank you!