Skeptic Blog

sungyak:

In his book ‘The Moral Landscape,’ Sam Harris takes the presuppositional stance in regards to morality. He simply asserts that we must take it without evidence (by faith) that certain moral axioms are true. The criticism he receives from both atheist/theist ethicists is that he doesn’t provide the foundation for his axioms - where do they come from and why must we heed them? Harris resorts to blind faith. (I think the same challenge applies to the atheist scientist who holds to the axioms that make science possible. How does their worldview account for such faith beliefs?) 

Evidence has been atheism’s Messiah. Evidence, atheists have claimed, is always on their side. But faith, inferring from Harris, has a definite place in atheistic morality. In fact, theists and atheists alike live by faith in some dogmatic set of presuppositions. Very often we even share common presuppositions (in the existence of reality, the laws of logic, objective morality, etc). The only question is whether the atheistic worldview explains these presuppositions better than the theistic one.

What accounts for your presuppositions?

You asked some good questions which, answered properly, would require a good amount of explaining. I’ll start by explaining logic. 

To begin with we have to talk about the difference between logic and logical absolutes, the conceptual statements such as ‘A=A’, and the physical underpinning on which the conceptual statement is based. It is true that the conceptual statement that ‘A=A’ cannot be photographed, frozen weighed or measured. It is an abstract. However the semantic statement refers to the physical nature of things that do exist and are material and are absolutely contingent on physical existence. Atoms are [Atoms]. Motion is not, [not motion]. Heat is not [heat and not heat] at the same time. These are not arbitrary prescriptive conceptual statements about what logic can and can’t do. They are descriptive statements about the nature of the reality we observe, on which the laws of formal logic are then based. 

Asking how an atheist can explain how/why the absolutes which descriptions like A=A describe exists is no more to the point of asking him how/why the universe came into being, and then prescribing a supernatural being when he or she can’t answer. It’s an argument from ignorance.