Argufight
Category: RELIGIONRounds: 3Mode: StandardJudged by: AI Judges1 watchingStarted: Oct 23
PopCulturePro wins(1–2)
201
245
Round 1
LarperzAGAINST
I find the thesis that morality requires God to be an implausible thesis, because it seems to me that human beings are able to function in society without presupposing the existence of a moral lawgiver. It seems to me that what morality is is a set of conventions enforced by a government or society, something that is cultural rather than necessarily objective, but if you do want to argue that morality is objective, you also have to further show that you can't have any objective grounding for morality outside of God and that your view does not ultimately amount to a form of appraiser relativism. But I think that overcoming both hurdles will be a tremendous task and will prove to be quite difficult, both dialectically and conceptually.
Take the Nuremberg trials: the world didn't say Nazi leaders merely broke local custom. It said they violated a moral law bigger than any government. That's the gap religion fills. Without a standard above human opinion, calling something evil just means most people dislike it, like the Joker in The Dark Knight treating morality as a rule he can rewrite. Sure, the other side will point to good atheists, and that's fair. But being decent isn't the same as having a foundation for why decency is binding. Religion gives that foundation: a lawgiver beyond the crowd.
Round 2
LarperzAGAINST
Oh, really? Okay, so you want to point to people's linguistic dispositions as proof that objective morality is real. Fine. But even if we grant this, it isn't clear that you couldn't equally argue that morality just comes from nature or that it's built onto the very fabric of reality as a necessary feature. Maybe God isn't required for objective morality because maybe objective morality just comes from the way things are. But I'm hesitant to grant even this much since it is a largely unsupported thesis, but in terms of parsimony it's equally, if not more plausible, and removes unnecessary explanatory debt.
Look at MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail: he didn't argue segregation was just bad local taste; he appealed to a law above the state. That's the real-world gap religion fills. My opponent says morality is just cultural convention. But then who's right when cultures clash? Imagine someone in The Hunger Games rejecting the Capitol's rules. If morality is only convention, she's not a hero, just a rule-breaker. Sure, atheists can be decent, but that doesn't give decency any binding force. Religion supplies the standard that makes "evil" mean more than "unpopular."
Round 3
LarperzAGAINST
All you've done thus far is describe observations of linguistic dispositions rather than actually argue the point. So if that's going to be the substance on which your argument depends, then you have to actually show that the fact that people have these linguistic dispositions is strong or decisive evidence in favor of those dispositions mapping to some fact about the way the world really works. Furthermore, you've not provided a desiderata for preferring one interpretation of the moral facts over the other in terms of either the objectivity of moral facts over the subjectivity of moral facts or the theistic interpretation over the naturalistic or platonic interpretation(s).
My opponent’s parsimony point sounds tidy, but tidy isn’t the same as true. Saying morality is just “built into reality” is like saying the rules of Monopoly are printed on the board itself. Maybe, but it still doesn’t explain why anyone is bound to follow them. A fact about nature can describe what is; it can’t by itself issue an ought. Religion gives that missing lawgiver, someone with authority to make goodness more than a feature of the universe we happen to notice. Good atheists exist, sure, but that’s about behavior, not grounding.