In the last few days I have been hammering on the objective existence of moral facts because this creates a problem for naturalistic and atheistic views of the world (i.e. they don’t have room for such facts). There have been some noble attempts to sidetrack me from this singular purpose. The most notable, posited by Silver Bullet and most notably championed by Aces Lucky, is the following:
“The Christian god apparently once commanded that someone be stoned to death for picking up sticks on a Saturday.
Was this objectively moral? If so, how?”
I haven’t responded directly to this question. Why? Aces Lucky was so frustrated (or distraught) over my intransigence that he even pitched the question to the over-worked Robert Gressis. So why have I refused to engage more directly?
Let’s put this in perspective. Say that you are an advocate of democracy and you’re debating with somebody who repudiates democracy altogether and advocates the divine right of kings. Are you going to take the bait when they start asking you to address the problem of “e-voting” (i.e. electronic voting booths). This is an important issue somewhere down the line but you are simply not going to debate it at length when you need to defend democracy an sich.
By the same token, if somebody questions the existence of any objective morality at all, I am hardly going to get dragged into exegetical debates regarding specific verses in the Old Testament. Sorry, but there are bigger issues at stake.
