Discussion Grounds

Luke,

Thank you again for working through our common ground questions here. We do agree on a lot. I did some research on #8, the moral sensibilities of animals, and I will agree with you that there is an open question there: not whether there is a difference between humans and animals, since obviously there is, but how great that difference is.

Apparently we are going to continue to disagree on Item 10. With respect to this:

In contrast, the nations that are considered to be the most “progressive” – and also, incidentally, the least religious – are triumphant beacons of moral progress.

First, it doesn’t address the historical question, it’s a different topic. Second, while I have not studied all the references you linked to on your blog, I have looked at a number of them in the past and found frequent methodological problems in them (especially in one you footnoted, see also here). The chief complaint is that there is a lot of data-picking going on in studies like these.

The 20th century’s violence cannot be attributed just to efficiency of weaponry. In Rwanda, the tool of choice was the machete. In Ukraine it was starvation. You refer to weapons “that could kill hundreds of millions in a single stroke,” but you know that’s not what was used. Perhaps the real murderous innovation of the 20th century was the death camp, where disease, starvation, guns, and gas have made killing an assembly line operation.

Slavery rates are dropping, yes. Some day perhaps we’ll talk about the reason for that, and for this as well:

And now racial boundaries are beginning to fall, and many of us care for our entire species. We even send money and food to people on the other side of the planet we will never meet, and who can never help us in return.

For now, though, we can leave it as moot, and if we come back to it later, we come back to it later.

In the meantime, one more point of agreement: we are off to a good start. I do appreciate your narrowing the focus of your position to naturalism, because atheism includes too wide a range of possible beliefs.

You wrote,

Originally, I had proposed we mostly avoid the usual arguments for and against supernaturalism. In considering the above question, the usual arguments will be unavoidable. But I think that’s okay.

Actually the starting place I would suggest is one that’s not on the beaten path. It drew the attention of Blaise Pascal, and more recently Chesterton, Lewis, and Schaeffer among others, but it still doesn’t get as much play among apologists as some other points of discussion do. It is the existential argument for Christianity: that human life and the human condition make considerably more sense under a Christian understanding of reality than under naturalism. Worded that way the topic could be very broad, but I propose starting on it with a post I will write on a focused subset of that topic. How does that sound to you?

Thank you again, by the way, for making this a friendly discussion. I wish we could be doing this at Starbucks. (At least I have a good cup of coffee right here with me in the living room.) I’m looking forward to launching from here into points of dispute, and it’s encouraging to be able to be confident that the discussion will remain positive as we do so.

Best regards,

Tom