Instigator / Pro
1
1510
rating
4
debates
75.0%
won
Topic
#2348

God is not necessary for objective morality

Status
Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics
Winner
1
0

After 1 vote and with 1 point ahead, the winner is...

Jarrett_Ludolph
Parameters
Publication date
Last updated date
Type
Standard
Number of rounds
5
Time for argument
Two days
Max argument characters
10,000
Voting period
One week
Point system
Winner selection
Voting system
Open
Contender / Con
0
1377
rating
62
debates
25.81%
won
Description

I, Jarrett_Ludolph, will be supporting the position that God is not necessary for objective morality, while my opponent will be supporting the position that God is necessary for objective morality. the winner will be the debater who supports their position the best. Note that we are not debating whether God is necessary morality itself, (for example, subjective morality can exist without objective morality),or if you need to be religious to be a good person. I look forward to a good debate.

Criterion
Pro
Tie
Con
Points
Winner
1 point(s)
Reason:

Seriously if anyone else tries to get through this, you would do well to stop after R2 (ctrl+f to look for key terms you wish to follow), the debate turns into a real mess.

In short: Pro swiftly shows objective morality that is not dependant on God. This never gets adequately challenged, even if it were proven that divine command theory can also be objective.

Summary...

R1:
Pro wastes no time getting to the meat and potatoes of this, with a declaration Utilitarianism > Divine Command Theory, and goes on to critic the Euthyphro Dilemma (the bit about God commanding murder, would have been strengthened with a quick example or two from religious texts).

Con declares there is a soul. (not sure how that was supposed to refute the conclusion)
Con goes on to call the Euthyphro Dilemma off topic to objective morality, since God is immoral (but then later God is beyond morals due to special pleading); but that if we obey Divine Command theory we are moral... huh?!
Oh and Batman!

R2:
Pro defends, and even uses con's own sources to explain that no car was magically lifted like a soccer ball in Top Gun (I don't think con implied it was that easy, but it's a nice mental image for the criticism all the same). And goes on to introduce the concept of biologically being able to explain things.
Pro clarifies the lack of an objective standard to God's morality within the Euthyphro Dilemma, and hammers home that hell would prove God to be immoral via infinitely disproportionate punishments.

Con asserts that killers have yellow eyes; and mostly drops pro's case (something about how death would be meaningless if it actually killed us, God will eternally burn all parents in hell...).

R3:
Pro does point by point extensions.

Con talks about shooting fireballs from his hands. And makes a very confusing sentence: "Rape stealing drinking milk from a carton pedophilia" I think it's missing the IS, but that still wouldn't make sense of it. ... Ok, he intended that to be a list separated by commas.

R4:
Dear god, I'm only half way through...

Pro denies that people shoot fireballs out of their hands (ok, I need to go to the store to get some Fireball whiskey!).

Con says drinking olive oil cures cancer...

R5:
Nothing that wasn't in the earlier rounds.

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There is more to this debate. When I see the start to dead end things like rants against gay people, I skim right past looking for things that could affect the outcome.