davidm wrote: ↑Thu Jul 06, 2017 5:34 pm
I wish to emphasize that in justifying mortality, he runs afoul of Hume’s Guillotine as much as atheists; but, unlike atheists, he also runs afoul of Hume’s Fork...
Neither, actually. For Hume assumes a world that contains only material facts...no moral facts. The Guillotine refers to a world containing only material facts, and the Fork only to statements pertaining to it. Yet I would argue we do not live in Hume's supposed world.
Ironically, Hume's Fork falls afoul
of itself, as has often been pointed out. Hume can't pass
his own test.
The belief that facts are only material cannot be shown by any "prong" of the fork itself...so Atheists have to take Hume on faith!
Meanwhile, we Theists do not believe in a world of merely material facts. By definition, Theists believe the world has not only physical facts but moral ones as well; and that the latter are revealed by God. You can dispute that, of course; but whereas Atheists are unable to live in rational consistency with their own worldview, Theists can live consistently with theirs. And while logical consistency is not an absolute verifier of truth, it is a first-order falsifier of nonsense...that is, such rational consistency would show that whatever else was true, Atheism was irrational.
We can observe morality.
No, this is not true. What you can "observe" is only that human societies
seem to have a strange propensity to believe in things called "moralities." Whether any of these is "right," an Atheist can never know. Moreover, as per Hume, even the idea of "right" can make no sense to an Atheist, in this context. It must be, as Hume thought, emotive; an arbitrary "I like" or "I dislike" this or that moral...not a statement of the rightness or wrongness of that particular moral itself.
Atheism cannot even show that
Atheism is moral.
We cannot observe God.
Apparently,
you cannot. I believe you. But you cannot say more, for you could not possibly know what
other people can observe. Moreover, IF, as Theists believe, God has made Himself knowable, then the Atheist is not only wrong about that, but
obstinately so, and
in defiance of real evidence. Other people might indeed know things about God; and while the Atheist's ignorance might be understandable, his insistence about what others do not know would not. That would simply be irrational again.
The key question again is always, "Has God spoken?" If He has not, then we are all poking about in the dark equally, and nothing can be moral or immoral in any universal, agreed-upon or binding sense (i.e. it cannot be believe to be legitimate). If, however, He has spoken, then true claims about God can be made, and even if not everybody is equally acquainted with the evidence, morality exists and is binding and universal.