> On the other hand, > assuming there was a BIG BANG and the universe as we > know/understand it had a beginning, whether it was an act of > creation or a spontaneous event, one can ask what > came before it? Eternity is a difficult thing for humans to > grasp,
Can't disagree with you on that one! However, the the Big Bang (if there was one) was also the beginning of time, so the question of what went before is meaningless. [...] > Strangely enough I believe this to be the heart and soul of > evolutionary reasoning. No creator imples no accountability > to a higher power. > That's correct, although atheism doesn't require one to accept evolution as you seem to suggest. There were plenty of perfectly adequate atheists before the theory of evolution. No accountability does not mean that there is no reason to act in a moral way (sorry for the triple negative!). People everywhere, whatever their religion or absence of religion, tend to come up with much the same set of morals. The reason for this is probably that they work and tend to increase the success of the groups which adopt them (the evolutionary reasoning here has probably not escaped you). Groups in which lying, stealing, murdering, coveting thy neighbour's ass and so on, probably don't last long, so their moral codes die with them. > > Strangely enough... but if there's no bigger purpose who > gives a damn about the smaller ones? > See above. We want the best things for ourselves and our children, our close relatives and our friends. Enlightened self-interest tends to maximise the benefits for all; selfishness tends to minimise them. > But we've come to the conclusion because we've thought it > >through, not because God has told us to and we'll go to hell if we > >don't do as we're told. > > > > I'm sure you don't truly mean to imply that those who believe > in a God with a purpose have *not* thought it through. I'm > sure you must not mean to imply that we just gulp down and > swallow what we're told. No, I don't mean to imply that. But you are faced with something similar to the Euthyphro question. If God has ordained a certain set of moral values, and we have free will, we are at liberty to think about our own moral values. Having thought them through we could discover that the ones we accept are more or less exactly those that God ordained, and we live by them. This means that we have chosen our own set of moral values, not God's. The fact that they are the same is a coincidence. If, having thought things through, we decide we prefer a different set of moral values to God's, we have a choice. We can live by our own values, in which case we must face the consequences, or we can reluctantly go along with God's because we're frightened of the consequences. In this latter case we have indeed gulped and swallowed. In the other 2 cases where we've made our choice, God is no longer the source of morality, we are and that's exactly the atheist's position. It follows from this that if you believe God is the source of morality and you want to do his will, then you must accept his morality, and thinking it through is pointless - you might just as well gulp and swallow. Bob
