Hi Vlad,
To respond to your post 23735:
I disagree that there are no signs of God.
Then we are simply going to disagree because I can't find them.
I think that if we are to agree on morality being to do with human agency then we cannot exclude human evil.
If you are simply saying that humans do bad things, then I would agree, according to my morality which is probably very much the same as most people's morality. At no time have I excluded the idea that humans do bad things. They also, according to my moral attitudes, do good things. I'm not sure why you have brought this point up.
If we resort to scientific views on human agency then that eliminates good and evil and that is clearly avoiding morality.
Science does not take any stance on morality, except to attempt to explain it.
So we are left with human morality as a realism...and that for me is a pointer to God.
It would depend upon what you actually mean here as a realism. What is considered moral/immoral seems to be a consistent part of human culture and thinking. Nothing suggests anything other than that it is a characteristic of the human brain. However If you mean that morality has some existence apart from human beings(and proto-morality in some animals) then I see no evidence of that existence at all.
That the gymnastics of a moral irrealist or relativist appears as avoidance reinforces that pointer.
I see morality as a product of evolution, culture and upbringing(put at its most basic). If a human dies, from my point of view, that person's moral attitudes die with them, although, of course, those attitudes may well remain in others and may well be modified as time goes on. I simply don't see that as avoidance or mental gymnastics(assuming that you mean an avoidance of some sort of moral principles laid down by humans but suggesting that they came from a god, and are therefore absolute).
Removing God gets us back to God because human evil has to be acknowledged or denied...even in Zeitgeist situations.Eg someoneacting against zeitgeist is either immoral or different or wrong at the time of writing. Being different carries no actual moral statement, wrong at the time of writing is just the same thing with a meaningless arbitrary label. Wrong today reviewed tomorrow is different from the moral certainty of someone who declares that the declaration of immorality on Gay behaviour has itself always been immoral. Moral relatives who declare in the fashion of moral absolutists are Humbug.
Removing the idea of a god giving us an absolute morality necessitates looking at morality as it has played out throughout the millenia. It also necessitates giving explanations as to the origins, need and usefulness of moral behaviour.
To convince me that an objective or an absolute morality exists, or that there are moral truths associated with particular acts, some form of demonstration backing up such a belief(or opinion) is needed that this is so. As none seems to be forthcoming, then I am left with what I find to be compelling evidence that humanity's focus on the moral dimension is in fact the result of evolutionary traits.
I would suggest that our moral reasoning and feelings fit well with the evolutionary model . Most of our moral decisions are directed towards the smoother functioning of the society we live in, and as society changes, our moral decisions tend to alter accordingly. Also, we have evidence that in certain circumstances which involve brain damage or indoctrination, our moral attitudes can also change. For me, this suggests that it is the working of our brain which is the focal point of our feelings of morality/immorality, not any outside agency.
Hence I see no evidence of a god at all in all this, and certainly not a benevolent god.
