The Atheist Blogger

The Raytractors dispersed at the beginning of 2009, citing their coming together as a skeptic group as a reason for abandoning the blog. They argued that although they had all met as detractors of Ray, they should focus their efforts on debunking all attacks on science and reason. Whilst this policy is logical, I think Ray does need some special attention for the simple reason that he is one of the most verbose creationists on the net, and almost everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie. So this new segment, the “(Almost) Daily Dose Of Comfort” will be just that. As often as I can (hopefully daily) I will be responding to posts that Ray makes on his blog, expressing a logical detraction of the contents. If he has nothing worth blogging about, I will instead debunk certain claims in his newly released book “You can lead an atheist to evidence, but you can’t make him think”, of which I have a signed copy (he sent it, free of charge).

This first post will cover his recent claims about morality, in which he attacked the concept of atheistic morality. The person whom Ray is responding to says that there is no right or wrong in the natural world, which is perfectly true as far as nature goes. Where I would disagree though is where this person makes a somewhat of a strawman argument, reducing the concepts of “right” and “wrong” to “good ideas” and “bad ideas”. Firstly I think this is untrue, and secondly I think it simply redefines morality. It was this mistake that allowed Ray to ease in his attack, because the word “idea” is so general.

So what I would say then, is that there are things that are “right” and “wrong” in human nature, but they are certainly not set in stone, and they certainly do not come from God. The first thing we must realise is that human beings are very social animals; we live in groups, always have done. We get along better if we work together, and this can be easily demonstrated by the way we have evolved. We haven’t needed to be overly strong to survive or have eyesight that enables us to view 360 degrees, because we live in groups where members are looking after each other. Individually, we could not hope to take on the prey we hunted, but as a group we could do it easily. It was our need on each other to survive that bore our evolutionary morality.

If we start from this platform and scrap all our moral values that we hold, logically we should be able to deduce them from a purely evolutionary standpoint. The constant here is that working together is beneficial for the survival of the group. Murder is therefore automatically classified as “wrong”, and it is obvious why. If the group allowed murder, it would die out very quickly indeed. With the concept of ownership brought in, stealing can also be deduced to be “wrong”. If somebody owns a tool, and another person steals the tool for their own need, the original owner is left tool-less and unable to work, thus negatively affecting the group. An example of something that is morally “right” would be the concept of lending, possibly the simplest charitable act. If a member of the group is in need of a tool and you have one, it would be beneficial to lend your tool to them, as it would further their productivity to the group. As a bonus, the charity you have shown to them would be reciprocal as they would have a reason for helping you out in the future (other than simply advancing the group).

Ray gives us two examples of moral decisions that he reckons can only be solved through absolute moral law:

Do you remember little Jessica Lunsford? She was the nine-year-old girl who was kidnapped from her home in Homosassa, Florida in the early morning of February 24, 2005. She was raped and later buried alive (clutching her teddy bear) by 47-year-old John Couey who was living nearby. Nothing wrong there. Just a bad idea. I wonder why the judge gave him the death sentence?

The rape and murder of a young girl (or any person for that matter) is morally wrong because it does not do anything to advance our society. In fact it massively impedes upon that goal. Not only is the girl killed (and therefore unable to grow up and contribute to society as would have happened), but the family are upset by the loss of the child and have to go through various stages of mourning. It simply isn’t beneficial in any way to allow people to go around raping or murdering, as all it leads to is pain and suffering.

Six million Jews gassed to death by Nazis. Bad idea, depending on your perspective. There were 200,000 people murdered in the United States in the 1990’s. A lot of bad ideas. Never mind. Nothing wrong done there.

Of course the same stands for the above case. Gassing six million Jews isn’t going to have a good effect on society, and this negative effect is perhaps increased when considering that Jewish people tend to be more intelligent (a result of possible genetic traits and general tradition of high levels of education). Ray’s last jibe is at the concept of “good ideas” and “bad ideas” and how we do not need to prosecute people for having ideas. Well of course now it is Ray who is dishonestly redefining things in order to make his argument sound. Even today we don’t prosecute people for thinking about murdering or raping. We prosecute people for actually carrying out (or actively planning to) murders and rapes. So no Ray, we will never need to prosecute people for having an idea, but that wasn’t the point raised. We prosecute people for commiting acts that society has decided are wrong.