: : : : :: Absolutely not. 'conscience,' like 'morality' is a social construct. : : : : Barry, in all honesty, don't you have to disprove the existence of God and therefore any moral standard He may have endowed us with to claim the above as an axiom?
: : : Stuart, before you can even say the above, try providing any meaningful and verifiable justification of your statement.
: : : Much as I may disagree with Barry on some points, he is entirely within his rights to make his statement; since he is starting from verifiable first principles; whereas you are not.
: : : Thus, to make any vaguely substantial argument, you have to provide some empirical justification for believing that morality and conscience are universal.
: : : : These statments, and others like them, made by you are predicated on belief, no? You believe there is no God - right?
: : : : You certainly can't prove that.
:
: : : Just as you can't prove the opposite; but you are basing your beliefs on something eternally unproveable, whereas he is basing his assertion on lack of evidence to the contrary.
: : Wait a minute. The Bible is a basis for belief.
: It is a basis for belief only if you assume that it is a basis for belief - which is circular reasoning.
Piper: Come now that is hardly fair. It is a basis for belief because (inter alia) it is universally accepted by christians as containing the word of god. There are no unilateral assumptions going on at all.
You might as well say that i can't believe in electrons because i assume that a scientist is competent to tell me of such things.
