Hi Darren,
I thought u might chime in on this one! (i'm surprised I missed it before)
I post this with trepidation after the last debate we had about God about a year ago!)
This is a commonly argued point and one that we could debate again for pages again and probably get no where. Just a question though, why does all this stuff bother you? Why do you care that wars happen, children die, earthquakes happen etc?
Especially to people you have never met and never will?
I think it was Dawkins who said there is no right and wrong just blind pitiless indifference. However as humans the vast majority of us feel something very deep for someone else we have never met when we see them suffer. We don't feel indifference, we also live like there are clearly defined measures of right and wrong, but can we really hold to this claim? How can any of us say our version of what is right or wrong is more right or wrong than anyone else's?
See my debates with Walthy on this. In short. I am not a moral intutionist. I don't believe that there is an absolute moral authority (whether human or divine, internal or external) that says something is always right or wrong. There are things I feel very strongly about, but I cannot say that anything I feel strongly is wrong is thought wrong by every other person in every time and place througout history and thus I cannot say any moral axiom is universally held.
In short what is and is not deemed to be moral or immoral at any one time is decided by what most people say is moral or immoral.
Good examples are paedophilia and slavery. An Athenian at around 400 BC thought both were ok. We think that both are terrible. I happen to think our view is the better one, but that;s because I live in the UK in 2014. Had I been Socrates, I would have thought different.
I think what you want to argue is that without God there is no absolute morality, to which I would say:
(a) so what? Even if you are right, the fact that a particular thing cannot exist without God does not prove God exists. You first have to prove that absolute morality exists and, for the reasons set out above, I don't think it does.
(b) Even if God exists, why should his fiat determine what is and isn't moral? In the OT God declares plenty of things to be ok which we would revolt from as being utterly immoral - I can't see why it human beings, to whom God (apparently) has given free will necessarily have to agree with God as to what is and isn't moral.
