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[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by David E

\ Whether or not these depend on God for validity, it just happens to be historically true. Picasso’s sketches were criticized by those who said that an eight year old child could have drawn them. His response was: “Maybe, but the eight year old didn’t.” I am trying to build my case on results, not theory.

The fact that religion is the framework under which the current workable moral social contract was built is not proof that it's the only one that works.

I’m not sure if the idea of specific rights can even exist without someone conferring them to someone else – can molecules or matter or give us rights?

Can electrons and phosphorus make a TV show? The concepts of "rights" and "morality" exist solely on the level of interpreting brain activity. So the answer to your question is that molecules and matter give rise to the ability of humans to think about the concept of rights.

And, as a matter of fact, there is good evidence that there IS a universal morality. Responses to hypothetical moral dilemmas like these are very similar across cultures. That includes JC, tribal cultures, atheists, etc. Even when respondants are unable to articulate WHY they make the moral choice that they do, they seem to come to the same conclusion as most other people a large percentage of the time.

In the end, though, skimming some earlier posts, I think we all agree on some level. You made mention of the important part of religion being the stable, teachable framweork of morality that instills the particulars to the next generation (my paraphrasing). I believe in the same. I simply disagree that religion is the only possible source of that framework. It is irrelevant that religion happens to be the one that's been used recently to such a large degree. That doesn't make it right or the best option. I think the fact that we can have a public education system that teaches civics and ethics without resorting to "God said so", but rather, "Because the United States said so" should be proof enough.

No one is suggesting just dumping any attempt to define a group morality that may restrict some random individual's personal morality that might not agree with yours. All we're saying is that the desire for such is pretty universal and it would happen with or without religion. Religion is a result of that desire, not the cause. And in the end, those of us arguing against it feel that the benefits of religion as you defined them (a way of formalizing societal morallity) are available without it and thus without the drawbacks of religion (promotion of blind observance without critical thought).