Ciro Galli

We often here Dr. William Lane Craig utter the collocation: "objective moral values" or similar. Doesn't that round weird to anybody? That both the words "objective" and "value" are used together when they mean opposite things on the range? How could a value ever be objective? Does Dr. Craig even know what a value is and where the word value stems from? A value requires some form of conscious evaluation to exist because for whatever reason a value is what a mind "values" precisely. To say that a value is objective is to say that it can exist independently of a mind. Dr. Craig always refers to these objective moral values in relation to God. His personal god by the way. He claims that if God exists then He is the source of those moral values. I see many problems there.  Let's pretend God is the source of moral values. At that very moment they would stop being objective to become subjective since they exist in a mind. We might obey the

Believers will have to stop wanting to dismiss determinism on the basis of moral responsibility. As Sam Harris wisely said, it's not a matter of free-will or absence thereof that we punish or incarcerate. If tornadoes and tsunamis and other natural disasters could be incarcerated, they would be. They don't need free-will for that. For, some times we incarcerate to keep the danger out of reach.   When systems have consciousness and can learn, we punish and incarcerate for two reasons: (1) to teach a lesson and to (2) deter those who think might get away with their own plans. But when we finally prove that there's no free-will, -because there isn't-, we won't stop punishing conscious creatures, because it's genetically constrained in a moral sentiment known as moralistic aggression: Moralistic aggression: A protection mechanism from cheaters acts to regulate the advantage of cheaters in selection against altruists. The moralistic altruist may want t

Theists often ask, "If there is no God why should we be moral?" In this evolutionary theory of morality, asking "Why should we be moral?" is like asking "Why should we be hungry?" or "Why should we be horny?" For that matter, we could ask, "Why should we be jealous?" or "Why should we fall in love?" The answer is that it is a much part of human nature to be moral as it is to be hungry, horny, jealous, and in love.