Can Atheism Justify Human Rights? | Subboor Ahmad & CosmicSkeptic (Alex J. O'Connor)

[Music] thank you everyone for coming we're delighted that there's so many of you turned out just some quick housekeeping for the forum the oxwas for and we're doing elections next wednesday at 7 p.m. in the boyd room at hertford college so submit applications online if you're interested in joining the society and and go to that room our next Wednesday at 7 p.m. I encourage you to apply like it's a small society but that gives us certain advantages unlike the Union if you have controversial speakers there you're enough sort of crowds are massing outside our events because normally cares about what we do so you can get away with some quite provocative debates which is quite fun so yeah and a quick clarification about the motion the motion is can a them can atheism justify human rights now Alex's position is actually that asian atheism doesn't have to as a non position so he'll actually be arguing that here we arguing the atheism is compatible with human rights and sabor will be arguing otherwise so I just introduced that's awful I'll just be in I'll just introduce the speakers sabor unmarred is an outreach specialist for a london-based charity I era he's a student of his and thought and the philosophy of biology he has a master's degree in philosophy he debates with atheists across the country he makes videos on science Darwinism and Islam Alex O'Connor is a student here at Oxford with us he's an extremely popular youtuber so go and check out his channel cosmic skeptic and he has discussions with people like ranging from Richard Dawkins to Matt Dillahunty it's a quite a diverse group of people all of them atheists obviously yeah well there you go so yeah without further ado I just I just outlined the format of tonight and then we'll get on with it so 20 minutes opening statements from each side will start with Alex and then we'll have a 30 minute discussion and then a 20 minute Q&A that will open it up so get thinking about questions because it's great to have some audience interaction okay so without further ado I asked Alex O'Connor otherwise known as a cosmic skeptic to open the debate can we have a round of applause to our speakers please yeah yeah give me a three-minute warning yes okay never the time starts up okay thank you I have to is we do this well thank you all for coming thank you for being here I think he's just getting a timer thank you to the forum of course the AUSA forum for hosting us thank you to the Socratic Society as well who agreed to move our regular debating session to tomorrow so that they could come and attend this event instead okay well let's just get going I'm excited to continue this exchange that I've been having with Sabourin line anybody who's seen my videos might know that this is a conversation that began online on some YouTube videos sabore not that long ago put out a video titled atheists can't talk about human rights which as considering myself a morally serious atheist so it kind of sent a shiver down my spine and I responded to the video that he made and we had a bit of a back-and-forth and it got a bit tedious a bit long and we thought there's only really one effective way to settle a YouTube dispute like that but the guy supplying the boxing ring didn't show up on time so I suppose a debate will have to do instead and what we're going to be debating is that issue of human rights what I consider to be one of humanity's proudest achievements despite its somewhat mixed history and perhaps vague justification it is true that once the idea of Rights were really justified invariably I think someone to get in the door we're really justified invariably on religious grounding beginning with the kind of with the vague notion of the Divine Right of Kings but now that we've kind of moved away from that lunacy and we began by replacing it with the idea of natural rights with reference to some vague creator such as the creator of that that was edited in by Congress to Thomas Jefferson's Declaration of Independence that was justified those natural rights before finally and that was that was progress you know flooring them away from the elite and moving them to the populous but before the the time in between that finally morphing into the broadly secular conception of human rights that we have today and these include such mandatory ethical baselines as the right to life the right to freedom and the right to a fair trial and all of these kinds of things and that's the first thing the human rights of today as opposed to it's botched forerunners is grounded in the individual it's the idea that you have moral worth and protection from those who deny you it not by virtue of the deficits of some monarch not by virtue of a supernatural creator but by virtue of being a person who is capable of suffering to me the idea in fact of describing your moral Worth and the rights that we derive from it necessarily as being necessarily predicated on someone else or something external to the human being is anathema to human rights because the rights are not grounded in the human but the interesting question is of course how do I derive these rights that we're talking about it may be a dodgy claim at best that these rights come from God but where else could they possibly come from aren't I as an atheist committed to moral subjectivism if I don't believe that there is a moral author of the universe that has control over us and over our conduct do I it does not follow from that ethical subjectivism that someone can come along and say look it's within my it's my subjective preference to violate your human rights and if ethics is also objective then you have no reason no way to say that I'm wrong if it's all to do with if ethics can just be whatever you desire it's objectively to be it's a good question it's an important question but I feel that it's a misdirected question first atheists are not committed to moral subjectivism as far as I'm concerned as our libraries are overflowing to attest to but second even if they were or even if you think that they are subjectivism is a loose term at best and may not and I believe does not apply in all areas of morality third where it does apply it's being subjective is not sufficient to show that it's flawed or to show that it's useless subjectivism moral subjectivism is a real thing with more coherence and I think my opponent would give it credit for but fourth and the crux is this even if ethics is grounded on a subjective base principle there are nonetheless objective to rivetted that we can get from that principle and there are circumstances under which an ethical principle being subjective does not mean that two people can simply disagree and both be right or us have no idea and no way to say who's right and who's wrong so to begin with I want to talk about the distinction between that I mean there are at least two conceptions of Rights that people generally talk about when they're discussing the issue the first is the issue of legal rights the second is moral rights now legal rights of course generally rests on the idea of moral rights but they require a lot less justification for example you need an in law think that human rights actually exists in any way shape or form really that is you don't need to think that they are a part of the universe so to speak to employ them as a concept and to do so justifiably and to rehash an example I use in one of my videos addressed to sabor you can take the legal concept of innocence until proven guilty right this is crucial to a functional legal system and I don't need to explain to you why but consider this does anyone actually believe that people are actually innocent until the moment that a jury decides that they're guilty that's obviously not what's going on right we don't actually believe that these people are innocent until proven guilty but we believe in this as a useful concept to bring about the goal of a stable legal system it's what Bret Weinstein has described as a metaphorical truth like going to the gun range I think that's a that's a clumsily worded label for it but if you go to the gun range the gun is always loaded right even though you know it's not it's good to treat it as though it is and not only that but we can show that innocence until proven guilty objectively brings about a more functional legal system objectively leads to less false imprisonment these kind of things what it does not tell us is why we should care about justice right it does not tell us why we should want people to be innocent or why we should want them to have fair trial but given that goal we can show that objectively this is the best way to achieve it right it's not a problem though because we wouldn't say that innocence until proven guilty is a subjective or an arbitrary principled weight based on whim alone just because it doesn't itself directly answer the most fundamental justification of law now this I think provides a useful analogy to the moral conception of human rights which we can now turn to I deny the following I deny that human rights exist in the sense that this podium exists or in the sense that I exists or sabor exists but this is not an admission of defeat after all who does think of human rights in this way what would it even look like they exists a list of rules somehow not in our nature but in nature some something kind of out there floating around it's nonsense obviously but that's not to say oh well that's not what I believe human rights actually are they exist in a different and more intelligible way they exist as a concept and as a method a mechanism for achieving a moral end and in my view this moral end is the minimization of suffering and suffering is a real thing now this might sound ladies and gentlemen suspiciously wishy-washy but I promise you two things firstly this is the correct way to think about human rights or at the very least a consistent way and one in which I can justify human rights and I also have to say that I think it requires significantly more wishy-washy nough ception of human rights based on precepts of organized religion but it's not wishy-washy and it's not wishful thinking I've been accused that I'm saying something like human rights don't actually exist but we'll just kind of pretend as though they do and we run our society like that that's not what I'm saying at all I didn't say that human rights don't exist I just clarified the way in which they do exist and that is as a concept and as a tool and I can demonstrate that this is the effective way or the accurate way to think about methods of behavior and conduct for example let me ask you a question does science exist like well it seems a silly question of course it does but how does it exist what is it right it's not something that you observe it's not out there and it exists as a concept it exists as a method right that's what it is the scientific method and it makes sense to call ourselves scientists and to say that we're practicing science to say that we employ science and to say that that which flatly contradicts science should be suspect and I think human rights exist in the same form right there our method there are mechanism we can use to achieve a moral and and it makes sense for us to talk about the practice and put of the protection of human rights to say that we employ human rights to say that things that flatly contradict human rights are x2 right and it wouldn't make any sense for someone to come along and say that I'm being inconsistent to call myself a scientist because I don't believe in God I think the same thing applies here now this is where things might get philosophically interesting I know because I know some of you in the audience tonight that some of you are beginning to get a bit seething maybe he's distracting from the important point right this isn't what we should be caring about okay yeah fine human rights exist as it is a method by which we can achieve some moral end but it's the moral end that we're interested in surely how do I justify that well of course this is the important question why why why would we want the end goal of the minimization of suffering I can show that human rights bring about that bring about that goal but why should we want the goal why do we want that goal well as I say I believe that the goal not only of my ethical ethical considerations but also all human endeavors almost is pleasure or more specifically the avoidance of pain now I know how it sounds pleasure is pleasure is something of a dirty word this is the first thing that John Stuart Mill addresses in utilitarianism says look I know it looks bad you know if I say that my ethical worldview is based on on pleasure if I say this people get this idea that maybe I'm talking about you know a life that consists in in in in food and sex and the music and drinking and though admittedly I do partake in my fair share of these things that's not the kind of pleasure that I'm talking about at the basis of my ethics instead I'm using a broader more philosophical definition and that is in line with Derek Parfit that says that pleasure is simply by definition what is wanted when experience and suffering is the opposite what is not wanted when experience notice this is somewhat tautological so to ask the question why do we want the maximize of maximization of pleasure why do we want the minimization of suffering I think is self evidence but again this isn't a full argument yet because we're still missing something yes okay so maybe we want pleasure maybe we want the minimization of suffering but why should we want it where's the ethical component of this the moral dimension and this finally is where I will concede the the essence of subjectivism that I alluded to earlier clearly nothing is more subjective than the belief that my pleasure is good for me this may be true but as I mentioned this does not condemn our deriving human rights from it to be similarly dismissively objective and the first point about this the first point to make I think is that ought implies can write this is this is a truism in moral philosophy to say that you should do something that you ought to do it implies and necessitates that you can actually do it that you're capable of doing it and if that's the case then it's the only thing that we can desire is pleasure and the minimization of suffering then to say that I am wrong because we ought to be desiring something else as the basis of our ethics is incoherent right now of course this relies on what might be called psychological utilitarianism right and I don't have enough time to defend it here but essentially the utilitarian of course believes that we should maximize pleasure and minimize suffering I'm not going that far yet at least not yet I'm just saying that what we do desire not what we should but what we do desire is pleasure and the avoidance of pain I don't have enough space to justify that here but remember I'm only trying to convince you here that my worldview is consistent right you don't need to think that it's right you just need to think that I can justify these things as an atheist despite the fact that I don't believe in God perhaps it something sabor can challenge me on in this vid in the next section or something that someone would like to ask about I'd be happy to do it but I also want to talk about something else I don't want to make sure I've got enough time to do so which is this if the desire for my pleasure if the idea that my pleasure is good is a subjective thing it's a very specific kind of subjective thing it's a universal subjective right that is to say it's necessarily shared by everyone in all places at all times and before someone tries to bring up masochist or BDSM or something of that sort we define these people as people who take pleasure in what other people generally call suffering they're not actually enjoying the suffering if they enjoy the suffering it ceases to be suffering as we're defining it so I think it's something universal right in fact in fact there seems to be a psychological fact now what does this mean okay this this puts it in a very specific category of subject even a very useful one to consider an analogy for example let's say we lived in a universe or imagined a universe in which it was necessarily true of its inhabitants that everybody's favorite color was blue right everybody preferred blue subjectively but everybody shared it right when faced with decisions about what color to paint the town right you can objectively derive with the assumption of the goal of blueness that the color to paint it would be blue now the desire itself is subjective but because everybody shares it this isn't a problem and you can have objective ways to achieve that goal the thing that we're interested in justifying of course is the goal but once you have that goal and once we recognize that pleasure is something that we do desire universally there can be objective ways to get there and if someone came along and said no no I want to paint the town yellow I think that's what we should do right they would not be entitled to say this is all subjective the desire for blueness is subjective if I want it to be yellow why is that any more legitimate or less legitimate than your desire for it to be blue because they're being internally incoherent if we're living in a world where they necessarily think that blue is the best color then I can show them you think that to paint the town yellow is the thing to achieve our goal here but I also know that you necessarily think that blue is the preferable color and I can show objectively that they do not fit together right it's an internal inconsistency right yes sure the the desire for blueness is subjective but if they come along and say that they want to paint the town yellow they are wrong if they think that that's how to achieve their goal they are wrong right despite the fact that it's grounded and subjectivism because it's universally subjective we can talk in these means so the same thing can be true or pleasure right we can say that we universally share this subjective compulsion towards pleasure and if we assume that goal which we can't not do because it's in our nature then we can make objective derivatives from it in the same way now the next question you might want to ask is this if I desire my own pleasure sure why should I desire anybody else is why should I care about somebody else's pleasure right and there are many many ways to answer this question and some of them don't go all of the way some of the marks are part of the question but not all of it but again I'll give you one example you might not buy it I don't know but as long as it's consistent then I have you with me so one way to tackle this question is to make reference to what Peter Singer has called the expanding circle of moral consideration I know it's something that I think's aborts talking about in the past the idea that for example if you have two beings now this is the question that Peter Singer wishes wishes to answer if you have two beings in our evolutionary history one of which is selfish and one of which is selfless and the question is who is more likely to survive it seems that evolution natural selection would select for selfishness if somebody else is sharing their resources how could altruism survive in the genetic pool if that person is more likely to die out because they're not looking after themselves right well a potential answer to this question is that when Richard Dawkins revolutionized biology by popularizing in the 70s the idea of the gene central view of evolution this might provide us with an answer evolution does not work at the level of the individual it works at the level of the gene so for example my brother or my child or my cousin share genes with me and so it makes evolutionary sense for me to care about their survival prospects and try and allow them to continue surviving because they share my genes right now with this this only apply to family in a sense because of course evolutionarily speaking we are all familiar ly connected but this also explains why I care more seemingly when I know that someone is my brother when I know that someone is my child versus when I don't but it also explains because the second part of this is that when we were evolving as a species we were living in smaller groups and so the likelihood is that whoever you came across was likely to be a family member and so it makes sense to look out for their well-being too so that your genes can promulgate but if you know that they're your cousin if you know that they're your brother then you might care about them more based on that principle but we have a basic idea of why we should care about essentially anybody that we come across so this explains not only why I care more about my brother or my cousin than I care about a stranger but it explains why I would bestow upon that stranger to a basic level of ethical consideration despite perhaps caring about other people more and that's what we can call human rights now make no mistake I may not say that this evolutionary account of the origin of morality explains why things are right or wrong that like that I can't do I can't say that because something's evolved in a certain way that makes this principle correct or that principle wrong but that's not the question that I'm answering right now okay the question I'm answering right now is why it would make sense if we've evolved in such a way to take pleasure in certain things and pain in other things and we say that pleasure and pain are a potential basis for an ethical framework here why would I take pleasure in someone else's well-being right this isn't an thank you this isn't an altruistic thing in the traditional sense it can be this this can explain why it would be in my best interest to care about somebody else right so even if I I'm going off the subjective preference of my own well-being and not the other person right it still makes sense even if just for my own sake to care about that other person's work and it's from that descriptive fact that has no moral no moral component that we can then derive ideas about morality but this is just to answer the question of why I would care about them now I'm running out of time here but I think that once we once we develop reasoning faculties and I'll close on this I think that that is what begins to expand the circle rather than biology doing it for us and I think that that's what its continuing to do we're doing it through reason rather than biology and on that matter I feel like secular moralists are leading the way I resent the fact for instance I resent it that one day surely religion will do now to something like animal rights what it will do in the future to animal rights what it's doing now to human rights I resent the fact that one day it will try to annex the justification for these things and say we had it right all along and if it were not for religion you'd have no reasonable justification to ascribe rights to these animals even though it were the secular progression of atheists more or less like Peter Singer that led that way and I don't think we should allow this to happen right I don't think that we should allow them to monopolize the rights of the future is they're trying to monopolize the rights of today as I see it I think that human rights are not only possible without religion but in a broader sense they may be made possible by the rejection of religion the rejection of the claim that our worth is contingent on something external to ourselves and contingent upon what someone else decides to bestow upon us is there anything more in affimir to the idea of human rights than that our worth does not exist within us but on the permission of someone else we might do well to define human rights as the opposite of this right the history of human rights has often been a history of religious opposition the right to equal consideration under the law against something like the Islamic doctrine of a woman's testimony in court being worth half that of a man's the right of homosexuals to live freely and express Elif or their partners without clerical interference the right to life and religious freedom to which are simultaneously violated by the Islamic doctrine concerning apostasy in a Sharia state right I think I've I don't think I can have it said seriously that religion provides even the best basis for these kind of Rights let alone the only one then if there's anybody here who wants to do that but if they want to stand up and plain that if they want to make that claim then I think they need to have something more convincing than a vague assertion that atheists have no grounding what can't really talk about human rights because they won't legitimize a suffering based worldview as even consistent but I think that's my time [Applause] in the name of God the Lord of mercy the giver of mercy first thing I'd like to do is to thank all of you for coming out tonight thank Patrick from the Oxford forum for setting up this discussion which started online and then now we meet in person and of course to thank Alex for participating now what like to do is firstly speak about where do we agree now I had a chat with Alex we were walking around you know town trying to grab something to eat and I told him look I agree with you on some points that you've critiqued others for example he's critique Sam Harris right now Sam Harris has this idea of the moral landscape that he can object to give an objective basis for morals and based that in science and then that makes it binding and he's actually criticized that so I said look you know I respect that why because you're trying to come to a more reasonable view of you which is better grounded logically right and you know the critique you can actually see online so where we agree so far is that the way Human Rights is described by and ethics and models of these things are described by the likes of Sam Harris and others is actually incorrect and he's trying to come up with a view in which he's not committing the genetic not genetic the naturalistic fallacy of going from is to Auto just giving a description and trying to make people philosophically consistent now the question is why are we discussing human rights and atheism in particular why not Buddhism Hinduism or something else well it's because atheist posit themselves as champions of human rights as if there's something within the atheistic worldview which is going to make you more likely to be moral and ethical and believe in human rights pick up any book by a new atheist author watch one of their videos lectures talks you will see them speaking about human rights in a very emotional way and in a very powerful way and so you'll maybe perhaps start to think to yourself there must be something within atheism which is leading you to becoming more more moral more ethical the first thing to realize is that human rights as we have them in the world today are a hangover of Christianity now I'm glad Alex already admitted to that and you can imagine it to be like a house that you move into and you move into this house and you realize look wow the furniture and the way this especially laid out it's actually quite useful and you just start living there that's what the Western world is like today it's a remnant of Christianity in a something I was discussing with him earlier is that new atheist don't give that credit and I wanted actually I asked him to move away from new New Atheism and try and be more balanced because you have to give credit where it's due Christianity is the reason why we have human rights today as the UN declaration states them now going back to the Declaration of Independence here's why it says we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men were created equal and they endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among stemmer life liberty and pursuit of happiness so it's clear that the people who put together the idea of human rights they believed in God they believed these rights to be true to be self-evident and these were not to be changed so these didn't come from a secular worldview and he also agreed with that which is fine however the problem is now we can't just be happy in this house which Christianity has left over we have to actually try and justify within an atheistic world you now by justify here we mean being consistent now I'm going to be putting forward an argument because I want to have a discussion which is very clear and directed and focused which is how can if what I'm gonna say from what I'm going to present is true how can a theism justify human rights so my first premise is this atheism leads to moral nihilism secondly moral nihilism leads to sorry moral nihilism undermines human rights and the conclusion is atheism undermines human rights now these two premises I don't think these are going to be very easy to challenge the reason for this is I'm going to be using content from his channel what he's already agreed to and the concepts that he's already subscribed to to try and derive these conclusions okay the first time the first thing to realize is this if you're an atheist if you are naturalist if you believe that there is no supernatural what do you have in the world to actually come up with the idea of human rights well you have space time energy matter and chance that's all you have now using those Legos how are you gonna build up the idea of Rights because if all that exists in the world are these things then morality is not something which is true like in logic one plus one is two or the laws of logic law of non-contradiction no it's something invented it's something that we just use as a convention it's not actually true now it's interesting is that some atheist authors like Yvonne or her Aryan sapiens he admits this and he says look they all know gods in the universe no nations no money no human rights no laws and no justice outside the common imagination of human beings because according to him all we have are organs we don't actually have rights so birds have not the right to fly they have wings that's why they fly and some birds because of mutations they can't fly like ostriches so he rewrites the American Declaration of Independence in the following way we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men involve differently that they were born with their with they were born with certain mutable characteristics and that among these are life in the pursuit of pleasure so it's very clear that from an atheistic perspective there is a lot of difference of opinion there's a lot of disagreement there are those who believe it's objective there's those who believe it's subjective but either way there is actually some issues here now I want to do is this for the first premise that atheism leads to moral nihilism I'm going to be using the argument of the philosopher of biology Alex Rosenberg now what's the time sorry I've got 15 minutes 15 minutes left can you give me five and three please so Alex Rosenberg what he basically does is this he gives an argument for why moral atheism leads to modern nihilism now the first thing he does is he establishes the idea of core morality core morality is basically something all human beings agree to so things like you have the right to what you've earned don't hurt an innocent person don't hurt a child especially your own so on however we have in the world different moral codes and according to him the reason why we have different moral codes that we have different beliefs but we have the same core morality now this call morality is something which evolved over time and now like Alex mentioned the way that you know if we just cared about ourselves in if we play a game theory over time our genes are not likely to survive in the environment and henceforth if we just keep extrapolating from that then you start having the expanding circle and people are being more nice to each other so what he does is he speaks about core morality as an adaptation and what he says is is and he gives a new version of Plato's dialogue he says is call morality true therefore it was selected or is it the case that it was selected therefore is true and of course both of these are absurd so therefore he concludes that moral nihilism is the only conclusion for an atheist to hold he says our core morality isn't true right correct and neither as any other nature just seduced us into thinking is right it did that because that made core morality work better all believing in his truth increases our genetic fitness now what's interesting about this is this is something which Darwin himself noted Darwin himself noted that if we actually evolved under different environmental conditions like social insects we would have a complete different set of morals so for example we would consider if we evolved under the condition that hive bees actually evolved we would consider it perfectly normal for mother to try and kill her fertile daughter and no one would call that murder we would just think that's perfectly fine and what's interesting is Alex mentioned Richard Dawkins that you know in terms of The Selfish Gene idea popularizing it and the idea of he mentioned kin selection and then your reciprocal altruism and you have the expanding circle and so on and so forth however look that is the nice stuff I'm gonna give you the back end stuff right which is yes that's fine that is the way that we've actually evolved according to the standard Darwinian story but that isn't necessarily the case if we rewind the tape of life and replay for example when Richard Dawkins was pushed about this pushed about the idea about what Darwin said that if we evolve them the different environmental conditions then we will have a different set of morals he was pushed look ultimately you'll believe that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we evolved Five Fingers rather than six and he had to admit that he couldn't actually go pasta so that was my first premise that atheism leads to moral nihilism how long do I have okay moral nihilism undermines human rights now the first premise I I can't think of why Alex would disagree with that and the second premise actually this is going to be even more difficult for him to actually deny more nihilism undermines human rights and the first thing is why are we speaking about human rights and not bacterial rights or mango rights well we're speaking about human rights because we have this religious hangover of the idea of human exceptionalism human-beings are exceptional human beings are different human beings are special we have a soul we have a moral worth that other things in the biological world do not actually have now this idea of human exceptionalism is the basis of human rights hence human rights and guess who argues against human exceptionalism vegan activists including Alex who's a very famous vegan activist so it's gonna be very difficult for him to deny this idea of human exception in fact in one of his videos he was actually speaking out against even the idea of humanism because you're focusing on the human so with the idea of human exceptionalism out for anybody who subscribes to veganism or vegan rights then it's gonna be very difficult for Alex to challenge this premise now if I write now if I start cleaning this table right with some Dettol or whatever if I kill bacteria you're not gonna call me a murderer I hope not anyway you know what to call me a murderer likewise if I die of the crow they're gonna pull the virus a murderer if a lion attacks a deer you're not going to take the line and put it into jail those are actions which are happening in nature and we will not give them a moral label where there is an insect an elephant grass whatever however when a human being attacks another human kills them rapes their mutilates them we say that is wrong that's murder that's rate that's killing why are we making an exception when it comes to humans attacking humans but not when a human attacks bacteria when a bacteria attacks a human being because we subscribe to the idea of human exceptionalism which is again another hangover from Christianity so therefore since atheism leads to moral nihilism and moral nihilism undermines human rights because of human exceptionalism therefore atheism undermines the idea of human rights now look it doesn't matter how sophisticated and how complicated somebody comes up with an ethical idea irrelevant totally irrelevant because fundamentally if morality is an adaptation we could have evolved in the different environmental conditions regardless of whether you believe in country in attics or you know like Alex believes in utilitarianism or virtue ethics ultimately those are illusory Michael ruse who's a Darwinian academic this is what he says morality is a biological adaptation no less than our hands and our feet considered as a rational justifiable self claims about an objective something its ethics is illusory so it doesn't actually matter how sophisticated Alex's argument actually sounds because fundamentally it's no better than another ethical system from an objective perspective so I'm just going to summarize the argument here atheism leads to moral nihilism or online ISM undermines human rights atheism and therefore undermines human rights however let's look at Alex's argument here his particular form now his form what I want you to understand about it is even if you don't challenge it it's not binding it's not something you can reinforce now look alex is intelligent he's studying here Oxford University however if we point in a scenario way he ends up on a island with some primitive and there's a solar eclipse and they decide to kill off 20% of their population they just decide to do that Alex cannot enforce human rights all he can do is try and reason with them try to teach them the philosophical concepts he's learnt here try to teach them why they're being philosophically inconsistent but he's assuming there's some hidden assumptions that they value consistency that they value truth that they value rationality in that situation as intelligent as he is he's probably just gonna get stabbed up and probably served up his meal the fact is he's making assumptions about them which he actually holds this is why sam Harris's idea which he challenged is in a way better because he would be able to enforce it now even if Alex had an army to enforce human rights on the island he couldn't actually do it now secondly Alex said pleasure is a good thing and pleasure is what he's trying to maximize and minimize pain okay why pleasure why not maximize anxiety because from an evolutionary perspective we evolved not for pleasure not for anxiety but those approximate mechanisms to help us survive reproduce so it doesn't actually matter whether we're trying to maximize pleasure or which one and maximize anxiety he needs to give us a relevant difference between pleasure and anxiety secondly another claim that he actually made is that pleasure and pain are not arbitrary we couldn't have evolved in a different way this is again problematic because if we remind the tape of life and in the words of Stephen Eagle to use the analogy of the VHS a VHS tape and we replay we will end up with a completely different evolutionary directory with different set of morals and ethics and values and organs and whatever ethical system he's come up with we will not actually have that we may not even have the pain receptors we have now we may not even have the concepts of pleasure we may have some concepts which are way beyond us to even comprehend we just happen to have these so there's a misunderstanding here of the way that evolution works now in five minutes okay now another thing that Alex mentioned is Brett Winston's idea of metaphorical truths what I want to do is I thought this was quite interesting when you mention Brett Weinstein because Brett Weinstein says a lot more than just the idea that you know of the loaded gun and this idea of metaphorical truth he's an evolutionary bar psychologist who actually believes religion is adaptive and if we take alex's argument and we not challenge it we don't actually challenge it we simply change the variables we take Alex's argument and we change the variables he's trying to maximize pleasure right and you have to be philosophically consistent with your worldview well in that case according to studies including the person that you reference Brett Greenstein religion reduces stress increases life increases reproductive success increases social keys now we can go over the studies in which belief in God does this thing makes you less depressed and so on whatnot so if we insert that new variable into Alex's argument then essentially we will have billions of atheists who overnight becoming to Jordan Petersons they'll pretend as if God exists to maximize pleasure right so the fact is that if we use his argument we come to an absurd conclusion which is this if an atheist wants to maximize pleasure and therefore they pretend to believe in human rights as if they do actually exist then they actually have to pretend as if God exists to also maximize pleasure but then they you come to a very weird place where you don't have any atheist left in the world to believe in human rights because they all now believe in God three minutes okay now it's not enough for Alex to show that the belief in God is false in order for him to challenge the argument I just presented where I change the variables in his argument he needs to actually give a relevant difference between the belief in human rights and the belief in God because from an evolutionary perspective truth is not intrinsically valuable why is that the case well if we take the naturalistic story correctly then natural selection has Foster's us with lots of false beliefs in according to Alex religion belief in God why have we had this for so long well it has adaptive benefits so for him to break break this deadlock he actually has to give her a relevant difference between the two now the last thing I'd like to mention and I did mention this to Alex earlier that you know I didn't want to be harsh on him because I don't consider him to be a new atheist and I hope he moves away from even sharing platform with those guys but they have a how long do I have 3 minutes to an ETSU minute two minutes okay they have this anti a theater anti theist convention happening in Brighton right next month and this I found hilarious because Alex's entire arguments based upon consistency and alex is one of the speakers alongside Richard Dawkins in Lon's Krauss and they're speaking about human rights issues yet the greatest human right violation that is happening on earth right now is not mentioned on the agenda what an atheist state China is doing to his Muslim population putting them into concentration camps giving them taking away their children taking away their organs sterilizing the women and they're giving them physical they're torturing them and they have at this program to remove Islam from the entire society millions of people reverse the script imagine if it was a Muslim state doing that to atheists you think it wouldn't be on the agenda next month well the consistency here okay so just to summarize atheism leads to moral nihilism moral nihilism undermines human rights therefore atheism undermines human rights my argument is not that aid the atheist argument for human rights is dead in the water he was never alive to begin with everything good I've said is from God every mistake is for myself thank you very much [Applause] thank you for that support I see you've been writing furiously Alex have you got anything to pick up on so yeah I mean yeah it's hard to know how to begin I think I should I should begin on the point about Brett Weinstein believing religion to be adaptive and beneficial I probably where I've seen a Margaret myself but as in the same way that I might appeal to the to the Benthamite principle the pain and pleasure our sovereign masters even though he may have said that rights are nonsense and and that natural rights are not sin son still can reference a person's idea without taking what they're saying wholesale but also the idea that you know on this worldview that I'm promoting if religion is adaptive which you know I don't know if it is I'm willing to grind it for the sake of discussion that I'd be committed to a worldview that says that atheists would be continually pretending as their religion exists I'm wondering if the audience remembers when I when I issued a throat-clearing that said that that's precisely not what I'm doing with human rights and I even said my name that I'm not saying that human rights do not exist and we just pretend as though they do but just clarifying the nature of their existence so if I take your argument and I input the new variable of God and why would that be incorrect well I'm not I'm not sure it would be but I'm just arguing that as an atheist it's coherent to how could it be coherent if if we grant that religion is adaptive right belief in God is adaptive according to your argument should we shouldn't read therefore to maximize pleasure believe in God it depends what you so this is the thing when we say that the existence of God when we're discussing whether or not God exists we are talking about something more metaphysical we're talking about the actual it we're not talking about the existence of a concept or a method to maximizing pleasure when we're arguing about the existence of God we're arguing about whether or not something is true we're arguing about human rights we're arguing about a method I think you misunderstand while trying to do what I'm doing is I'm taking your argument yeah I'm not challenging it I'm just changing the variables I see so maximizing pleasure Yeah right belief in God reduces stress makes you less depressed and increase his reproductive success and so on like Brett Weinstein mentions then why shouldn't we just pretend as if there is a God just to maximize pleasure for a number of reasons firstly I'm not sure I agree with Brett Weinstein on his on his diagnosis there you denied the premise deny the premise you didn't you deny that religion is adaptive but I think I'm I'm capable of denying it I'm just saying don't think I mean I I don't know I don't know if it's adaptive or not but also I think it's a category area that you're making I don't think that you can swap them in that respect right if I talk about human rights as being something which are beneficial to achieving a moral end that does actually exist I'm not saying that anything that is beneficial to believe exists can be placed in there I'm saying Human Rights is of a specific category that they exist as a concept by definite thats what they are that's the nature of a human right it's it's a moral mechanism it's not something that tangibly exists in the way that a god would yeah I'm not challenging that I'm saying that so you can't see you can't swap them for that no no you see what you what you're doing is this right you're misunderstanding what I'm trying to do I'm simply saying if we just take the structure of the argument and we assume because you may you may not agree with it I have some studies here which we can discuss if we assume that belief in God does have these adaptive benefits and it does lead to maximization of pleasure then why don't we just simply believe in God I've got no problem saying if people think that it's going to maximize pleasure to act as though God exists in some vague sense and so do so for that reason but then and there'll be no atheists you believe in human rights only if it is actually true yeah the religion is adaptive and that these people don't and that don't let these people go SIF agrees so let's evaluate this is very and that these people specifically place a value sure not on the knowledge of truth suppose to say to say to someone when talking about human rights that human rights don't tangibly exist yeah that's not a problem for them they're not going to mind that because that's not what they think you've already we're a with religion I think that if you say well that God is beneficial to you but doesn't actually exist I think that's going to be more troublesome to the religious believer someone's talking about - please believe it I'm not making an argument for God I was just trying yeah I was just showing the if premises this is what we gonna discuss now so I could cite studies where there is this benefit recently pew throughout this research that belief in God makes you happier and so on and so forth so if that is granted then that conclusion is valid what what concludes the conclusion that we'd have to pretend as if God exists no I know because again this is what this is I think that that you're missing here is that these are two different types of thing right religion the existence of God our metaphysical truth claims yet human rights yes what I'm doing here is I'm only changing the variables in your argument and I know what you're changing them in such a way that they can't be done right but you you client just you can't just swap in something that isn't of the same category why not I mean I I don't I mean III Pope that okay so do you believe do you believe if for example you don't believe ontological morals exist what is that what do you mean by that you mean your previous video like talking about human rights thing as own principles existing as something tangible in natures yeah then no no okay so for the sake of a better society we can believe in these models mm-hmm right but that's not that that there's not a case of pretending as though they exist fine fine fine one for you for you yeah right but what's wrong with hostages doing that with God just to maximize pleasure nothing nothing that's the point that's the point is not that if you like yet but my point is that you're now let's carry on one more step that then that would mean to have you know if he's to believe in human rights cuz didn't end up believing in God it's not true why not it because again you're discounting the fact that people take pleasure from knowing what's true or they can't help but want to know what's true and if they know that they're living under a misapprehension then they can't believe something to be the case now why would this not apply with human rights this is why the category air is being made why can't you turn around and say well somebody would say the same thing about human rights they don't actually exist but what I'm saying is that when people talk about human rights they're already talking about something that doesn't exist in that way so for me to point out these don't exist in nature they're not tangible that doesn't make someone go oh okay what now I guess I'll pretend exist right it's that's just how they're already thought of and now I'm showing why I think that they're beneficial words to the religious person if I say God doesn't exist in a tangible sense they're not gonna say well that's what I believed all along yeah they're gonna say that's true again and I say Ana and I cannot live under a misapprehension again you and that's ending arguably all God no I'm saying that's what's gonna prevent an atheist from just becoming religious for the sake of it because they they wouldn't be able to convince himself of a no people can do that people can pretend to believe is something to make themselves happier people do it all the time you can't choose what you believe look people do this people come up with these delusions right because they want to be happier so all I was doing was I was trying to show that using your argument you can come up with this conclusion you're showing with my argument that if somebody was somehow capable of being able to convince themselves of a proposition that would make them more happy then they'd have an interest in doing it I think that that self-evident of course yeah but but what you can't say is that if people accept my argument atheists would be going a religious wholesale because whereas with human rights I'm not asking people to delude themselves I'm just asking to recognize what human rights actually are as a concept to do it with religion you'd have to say that they don't exist but you do just have to pretend as though they are in other words you're asking people to believe two contradictory premise this is a few things I'm ago it's not only wouldn't be done couldn't be done sure so of my first two premises atheism beliefs tomorrow nihilism moral nihilism undermines human rights yes and therefore atheism undermines human rights so which one of these do you disagree I disagree with the atheism leading to moral nihilism you you kind of co-opted Plato's Euthyphro dilemma I don't I else to say so of course the traditionally differ dilemma being for an argument against morality and God are things good because God commands them or does God command them because they're good and if I understand the version that you're using it is is this moral statement true because it's selected for or is it selected for because it's yep now of course myself I can't believe that it's selected for because it's true right like we'd agree that that would be a non tentacle on my worldview but we have to be careful here I can say something like it is it is true because it's selected for in the same now what I mean by this is when I talked about the expanding circle of Peter Singer I explained why it is that we have certain moral propositions why it is that we have certain moral desires I then separately justify why we act in accordance with those desires so I can say that something would be selected for right but well something can be true because it's selected for like an experience of pleasure like the ability to experience pleasure in pain that's something that's selected for and it becomes true because it's been selected for that suffering is an experience suffering of something okay so from that we can then re sure so what you said there yeah I'm just going to use that to change the variables again if we evolved in a different environmental conditions and they were selected for and like and I didn't have time to go into D p.m. to Y Alex Rosenberg denied the second yeah that use selection for therefore it's true in that case then killing the elderly would be selected for and that would be according to you a good thing that's interesting it's like you bring the the point to Richard Dawkins I think you're quoting my friend Justin Breyer yeah if you put that question to him and I put it to him myself and he has this kind of well I guess I don't know I think it's and then goes off and some nothing about about he waffled about pleasure and pain but here's the thing I don't think that the thing that has been selected for that is an ability to experience pleasure and pain I don't think that can be different right okay so that's where I disagree to you again and so for example Stephen Jay Gould who gives you who gives the student a Agulhas evolutionary biologist who gives the VHS example that if you replay the tape of life and you and you start again we would have a complete different set of organs complete a set of morals the amply different set of ethics and so on and so forth we may not even have the idea of pain and pleasure but that but that can't be true this is the thing that this is the thing that's crucial right so what you can say is that we'd have evolved in such a way that different things would have been pleasurable and different things would have caused suffering all you're saying there is why is there not conceivable that we don't even have the concept of pleasure well I'll tell you the reason being that sentience itself is predicated on a recognition a pleasure and pain in order to make volitional ACMA that's that's because you're a sentient being on this eeveelution trajectory no not true it's because sentience is the to make decisions the ability to be conscious the ability to do something of your own volition in other words requires you to make that decision requires you to have a choice requires you in other words to have a desire to do something the Faculty of desire is incoherent without the concept of the avoidance of subledger for you do you know why because you've evolved on this trajectory no no this is a philosophical point that's fine it can't it can't be done I mean how would it be possible for example see what see this is this is the problem with the universe is hard to think out of what we're experiencing from a naturalistic perspective if you rewind the tape of life and replay it again we may not even have the concept of pleasure we may have a different concept in Thai this is what's wrong I I have no problem stepping out of our own experience and saying something we might have evolved for instance people people might have thought that rape was a good thing right this is the point I'm not speaking about the pain receptors quite short but this is the distinction I'm making like somebody might be able to say that and I don't think it sounds problematic of course to say that people might think rape is okay but obviously if all the parties involved in a rape actually want the rate to be occurring then it's by definition not what we would consider to be immoral rape it would just become sex right so it's it would be different in that sense but morally speaking it wouldn't be problematic now one of the reason the pain and pleasure is different is because like the reason that those things are conceivable that the reason you are let you're even able to say that we could have evolved to say that this thing would have been would have been good or that thing would have been bad for us well we would have wanted this or wanted that instead is because we have an experience of pleasure and pain and because different things could have evolved to maximize the pain and the subtler in my question but having pain and suffering is a necessary predicate of having consciousness you you cannot make what no no not not for it not for me not for you it is sentience as if if defined as the ability to be a conscious agent making volitional decisions you cannot have that without an explicit laser sylvain how you experience the pleasure and pain might be differently it might be different but the fact that you have a capacity for pleasure and pain that has to be there why because without it you can't make it without without pleasure and pain there can be notice that the concept of desire is incoherent and without the concept of desire you can't make volitional action okay and then you're an animal and then you're not sent him okay so what I'm trying to understand from you is why do you think it's incoherent that we could have evolved in a way that we do not have even the concept of pleasure well I don't you haven't given me a reason for that I hate to I feel as though I'm repeating myself and I I hope that perhaps it's because I'm not expressing myself and it is actually worth going over again what I'm saying is that if we had evolved let's say to not have an experience of pleasure and pain yep we would not be sent you according to our definition now we would be inanimate according to our definition right now on that second evolutionary trajectory a called evo2 they may have a different definition for sentience maybe non-sentient means can't define sentience but we have to be careful here what we're talking about is what that what that other evolutionary trajectory would have brought about right and I'm saying that what we are now calling sentience would not have evolved not because they wouldn't call it sentience but because what we're calling sentience just the the thing that the word sentience is attaching it to not the terminology but the thing itself that would not have evolved to say that that would not have evolved that is what to say is to say that sentence wouldn't of okay so let's make it more simple in right now we're here yeah we're here with our pleasure with your philosophical ideas with with these things rewind the tape back we would have something different now your determinist but I want to make the argument general against atheism it's not all atheists are determinist so it's conceivable yeah yeah it's conceivable yes it's conceivable and so definite we have two directories yes evil one evil to you why is yours better than this better yeah why do you mean you mean morally better why is yours true in this false I know so that this is this is the mistakes we made if assuming on both trajectories pain and pleasure as a faculty is evolved because physically this argument for the sake of this particular but then you say yeah let's just say for the sake of this argument to make it easier for you it's evolved mimics no easy but but not because you're you're finding it difficult to know I'm not finding it difficult I'm saying it is incoherent to say that you can have sentient creatures without an experience of pleasure and pain or capacity yes but like I said they they may have a different definition that they there's no they to be talking okay look your what you're trying to do is you're trying to put yourselves put yourself in the shoe of a different evolutionary trajectory which is hard to imagine so this is make it easier - yes sets Evo one evil to your particular maximizing pleasure here is leading us to what Alex was and workers call morality so hand a lot of the things that the UN speaks about right you won't know where that's better than what what else then something in which say rape is absolutely fine yeah well this is the thing right as I've already said on this worldview if rape is okay that would be because it does not impact cause the suffering that it does in this universe and if it did not cause that suffering then it would not be what we currently call right it would just be sets in which case it would be okay so I can't say one's better than the other well that's the point that's point you can't say one is better than any other yeah reason being because if we'd have evolved differently to experience different things of suffering my principle all that the kind of tautological principle that i thought at the basis of this is that our suffering is a bad thing and so what you're asking is that in another in another in another revolutionary trajectory if something else caused us suffering like it's something good cool stuff suffering something bad cools does pleasure I'm saying that's incoherent because it would just become good and bad it would just swap over oh it's going for five minutes in the night if I can ask a question in return because I this isn't an interview here after all I want to have it have it have a conversation I can't help but pick you up yeah on the point you made about human exceptionalism yeah okay good to go - yeah because I'm vegan and stuff yeah the vegan and I can never pass up an opportunity to talk about veganism it's the same reason I wear little a little floyd on my lapel here and that's probably why you didn't deny the second premise absolutely not no i want it i want to talk talk about this so just just remind me if you will of of why you why the denial of human exceptionalism so you deny human exceptionalism well okay so this way we have to be careful it depends what we mean by human exceptionalism I agree when I when I argue against human exceptionalism it's because I think that other other sentient creatures because this is what I'm grounding morality in deserve moral consideration for the same we same reason we do it's not to say that they're the same right it's not to say that they have all the same characters of the same qualities is to say that they deserve consideration sorry would a lion attack aadya do you call that grievous bodily harm no you wouldn't why because they don't have moral agency but that doesn't mean they don't have money they don't have moral agents you're a mean mother well we have to distinguish moral agency from moral worth if a child like if a three-month-old child which is swing and hit somebody would you blame that child for doing it no because it doesn't have a moral agency right but it doesn't mean doesn't have moral worth if I try to hit that child he'd probably be quite annoyed at me right it doesn't know saying animals don't have more religion saying they don't have moral age or other animals certain animals some animals because some at some of the some of the the great apes potentially have some kind of yes I mean they like torturing the moral age of the rock whatever whatever it may be they have that right and if it's also our so those those particular scenarios in which you admit they do have moral agency we don't admit that they do I'm saying I'm saying that the okay you you think they no I'm saying we observe altruistic behavior we have no reason okay fine to really believe one way or the other well what I am what I am saying is this would you would you agree with me on this point that lets you say you know it seems somehow incoherent for me to not judge the lion eating the eating a gazelle but I'm saying well the lion has moral head does not have moral agency but it does have moral worth so we can extend moral worth to sentient creatures even while accepting that there are kind of categorical differences between humans and other animals is that consistent no why not because you're assuming that it doesn't have moral agency would you say that a lion has moral agency as moral agency yeah as it has the capacity to make moral decisions and be judged for those moral decision not judge see this is not judged but in terms of making moral decisions so you think that you think the Lions can make moral decisions I think animals do have a capacity for morality as in they can they can make moral decisions yeah they can make cruel decisions in good decisions right and wrong actions he can do some actions which are better than others well this may be a better buy compared to by what standard buy less suffering your own standard okay well I guess look I'm gonna I don't want to spend too much time on this but my view is the line human exception is a stick to the restrictive or stuff you disagree with human exceptionalism if by human exception is you mean you mean the view which it's generally taken to mean that human beings are the only people capable of being part of our absolutely that's not to say that other animals are not so so how are you what wait never mind the concept of humor so why human rights well let me give you an example because that was another interesting point I hope you picked up and why would I talk about human rights when obviously I care about other animals to human rights for a derivative of animal rights if someone came up here and was talking about women's rights right and you said but this is ridiculous elsewhere has tried to argue in favor of human rights so why would you come up here and talk about women's rights it's totally incoherent of course it's not incoherent I care about animal rights and humans are an animal human rights are a derivative look like argues against human exceptionalism the marking against human exceptionalism yes and the whole idea of human rights is based on human exception it's not true so what why do we call it human rights I think that all animals have well or some I don't say all animals of course but all sentient animals that say have a capacity for moral consideration and which can lead to rights and I think that humans are one example of such an animal any-any incoherent this is what I'm looking for what is the in coherence with my atheistic worldview and my care for non-human animals and my care for the rights of human animals too because what you're doing is you're undermining the value of human rights by arguing against human exceptionalism no I'm simply saying that I believe do you believe a deer is equivalent to a human being no you don't okay so human exceptionalism no human difference right I don't believe that a deer is he got to her I definitely fear is equal to a shark but you wouldn't all that deer exceptionalism oh it's just it's just a difference right and you can consider all of them as part of your moral community and I can say that a deer has different kinds of rights perhaps afforded to it than a shark for instance I'm not going to say a deer has the right to swim in the ocean right but I can say that my care for the rights of a deer and my care for the rights of a sighted I think you might care for the rights of a human I think you couldn't drive the same principle look I think you're using rights in the incorrect way here we're speaking about you made a distinction when it comes to human Worth and dear worth right sure yeah and what I'm trying to get to is why what's the relevant difference here well the relevant difference is for instance human beings have a capacity to predict the future that deers will not so you might afford human beings rights that are that they're pertain to that and you wouldn't afford it to it the idea the only thing tears have theories of mine let me that well I'm unconvinced of that of that I think I don't even crows have to use them but let me give you an example to quit good well I want to clear this up because I don't want take up too much time on this but let me give you this example this might help to shed some light on the issue when we talk about equal consideration morally for women and men when we talk about women's rights right we might say for example yeah that it doesn't make any sense to say that will give men abortion rights it makes no sense right but that's that's not to say that we've got some kind of like female exceptionalism because we're giving them these kind of rights and not to this other why would you come and talk about women's rights when you care about human rights why would you give them rights only not otherwise are you saying that's a different vision and women it's like yes yeah this does not undermine in any way either women's rights all human yeah but there's a catch a mistake here none of women women are human yes and humans are animals okay but you think that they're not exactly equal no I do I think a deer is equal to him in the same way that a woman is not literally the same to a man no no no we're speaking about the life here right so would you for example consider a human being who killed the deer would you say that human being should be killed killed no no why well I don't think that a human being that kills another human being should be killed okay so would you don't think capital would be the punishment for killing a deer no I don't know what the punishment would be but I see what you're trying to say you're trying to I'm trying to get your essence you're asking if I care about the deer less than the human yes yes why because I because I think that there are some morally relevant but look like you're making a few quick statements which I've complete disagrees for example theory of mind yeah right crows have theory of mind why would you think that the idea doesn't have everyone as a predictor I mean in terms of like so for instance let me give you it let me give you a more like trivial example humans can humans can be anxious about their tax returns whereas it here cannot write like right it's a trivial example but it's true there are there are certain things that are true of some animals but not of other animals which which afford them certain pains and sufferings which might be more numerous or more intense than other animals but they all they all matter in the same way right so there are some morally relevant some morally relevant differences between a human being and a deer right which allow me to say that a deer is worth less than a human being because it was capacity for pain because of those things which are relates to its capacity for pain yes it's got if it's got less of a cabeza so according to that logic again I'm changing variables according to that logic if there was a animal which had a great capacity for pain okay say a super sensitive panda that we discovered it yeah they then the moral variables would change and that would party may be worth to humans yes I'm just trying to show the absurd conclusion yeah I'm just absurd I don't think this is a tool because you're you're asking to quote that Kai of this morning you are you asking if my grandmother had wheels would she be a bicycle like it's just if things were different would they be different yes they would no problem so therefore what's the difference between one world view and another world view I'm sorry you're gonna have to be more specific okay so if one world view you know which we have evolution a different trajectory and another evolutionary trajectory you couldn't say one is better than another this is true in this well no but that's not a problem it is if you're arguing that this is what we should be doing I'm saying that given the way that we have evolved in this evolutionary trajectory there are certain things we can do to maximize our suffering would it be true to minimize our suffering would it be true in another evolutionary trajectory but those would be the wrong things to do this is sure why is that a problem look there's something I complete skip and is the first challenge I put to you about you ending up on a primitive Island yeah then not valuing consistency and truth and rationality how would you deal with that problem I mean on the literal point of could I could I enforce it by reason alone no I couldn't because they probably stab me in the throat but the same would be true or the same would be true of any kind of Christian or Islamic missionary there's no but I'm saying here you have the ability to save those children those 20% of the population is gonna be killed so you have an army you still cannot enforce those human rights all you simply can do is try to reason with them assuming that the value consistency they value rationality they value yeah this is a dis analogy and they understand all of your you know philosophical no they don't well this is the thing you don't need to you don't need to understand something for it to be true of you right now I'm not saying I'm thinking enforceable right but this is it this is a dis analogy because we can ask on the one hand if we'd have evolved differently to have different kind of characteristics then would I be able to kind of would I be able to say that things are right on wrong on that on on that trajectory I'm saying no and you're saying but what if we found that thing on a desert island somewhere and I'm saying that that wouldn't be the case right because we are in this evolutionary trajectory right in this evolutionary trajectory if there is a human population a different evolutionary tree if there is you couldn't say that the evolutionary trajectory is better than just the different the difference in evolutionary trajectory is not analogous to finding a human population on the desert island because they are still human beings and they'll still have the capacity for pleasure and pain that that all sentient creatures on this planet do right right because we evolved from a common ancestor which means that they would have the same capacity for pleasure and pain so it's a dis analogy but how would you save those children I'm scared I'm scared of taking up to I do I know how long we had left and I want to make sure that we I think we should because that particular look why find is that you are feeling a lot right you're not getting to the point yeah okay I'm asking of that if you can answer this and we'll just move on from here can you make it brief sure why do you think they should value the idea of consistency or truth or rationality like you do well I'm not saying that they I'm not saying that they should I'm saying that they do value suffering and pleasure in the same way that I do yeah but they don't agree with your argument yeah it doesn't matter it doesn't make it any less true right how do you know my argument force my argument is that they care about their suffering and doing this will minimize their suffering it doesn't matter if they agree with me on that I'm either right or wrong about it like whether or not they agree with me whether or not I can convince them of it has absolutely no bearing on whether it's actually what one thing is this is why some Harris's view is better because it's enforceable its objective when your view is impotent because you couldn't actually do anything in that situation so a bit and and I will close it here but look this is this is a point about not whether my view is right or wrong but whether or not I'm capable of enforcing it I don't care if I'm capable of enforcing it but you can't enforce human right I make the day's impotent ladies an gentlemen that human rights are consistently it is consistent for me to be an atheist and believe in human rights whether or not I can whether or not I can whether or not I can enforce them on a desert island whether or not that would apply in another revolutionary trajectory that we don't currently live in irrelevant to the point of whether the I'm making now in this evolutionary trajectory is true right if the argument is true then whether or not I can enforce it holds no bearing on that and the question where we're being asked to consider is whether or not it is true that it is consistent and I hope that you can see that at the very least even if you disagree with me that it's consistent for instance I would think that a Muslim might be able to accept that a Christian that a Christian could justify human rights they might say that Christianity has an ability to justify human rights even though they think it's wrong right because it's because it's consistent at the very least I just ask the same thing of myself well this is why and I think this is very important to understand there's a reason why some Harris as I should put his argument in the way that he actually has because if human rights are to be taken to a alex has actually explained they're impotent you couldn't actually enforce them you couldn't actually impose them you'd simply have to reason with people and you're going to assume that they value the things that they do and they understand your particular worldview and they don't need to and if that's the case then human rights are just written on paper and they don't actually make a real change in the world okay we'll leave it there does any does anyone want to ask a question hopefully there are some ok can I just quickly ask Alex something in in this or in an ideal world yeah would we create a justice system subjective to each species feeling of pleasure and pain I mean depending on exactly what you mean I think so that the argument for Animal Liberation is one of saying that all pleasures and pains should have equal consideration right now that that means there will be different ways there we did like because their suffering and pain has experienced and expressed in different ways there'll be different things we'll do for instance each species yeah so like for one species we might say that they need a certain amount of space but another species might not like that amount of space so we'll end up treating them differently in having different rules different rights different different literal rules but the actual principle that we care about your suffering and we're going to do what we can to protect you from suffering would apply consistently you think that would be possible absolutely we already have libraries filled with human justice yes system we would fill in in for every spirit we it would be moly complain we was just we would just come to realize the same thing about animal animal ethics as we've come to realize about any other justice issue under the Sun people used to talk about women's justice they used to talk about racial justice but we've stopped doing that because we realized that racial justice is justice right gender justice is justice and animal justice is justice I think would you be able to draw a line say where would you draw your line would you draw it before bacteria and the ability to feel pleasure and pain okay who wants to ask a question yes sir the back thank you thank you right here's something I just don't understand and perhaps you could clarify for me and presumably a fundamental principle for grinding human rights is that of moral equality how do you justify the equality of human beings on utilitarianism and just to clarify my question and here's an example despite the fact that a comatose patient has neither the the present capacity nor preference for pleasure or pain she is still a morally equal human being with equal entitlement to human rights such as the right not to be killed yeah well I think that the difference between you and me on our consideration of that of that particular instance of the person in the coma would be that you would presumably from from discussions I've had with you before think that the kind of the moral value is is is something to do with the kind of human integrity or something right on the utilitarian framework this is about a balance of pleasure and pain and we have to take into consideration what it would be like to live in a world where we allowed people to treat people in the coma as they like even if the person in the coma isn't gonna isn't going to suffer from it we have to consider a world in which that would be the norm or in which we've normalized that as part of our as part of our ethical system and I think that even for your own sake you wouldn't want to live in such a world in other words the protection of other people's rights even if they're in a position where they're not benefiting from as far as like their consciousness is concerned because they're in a coma or something right the the way that we identify a failing society and one that we would not want to live in if even just for our own sake is one that refuses to recognize or violates human rights right even if just for our own sake we say I don't want to live in a country where that could happen to me I don't want to live in a situation where that could happen to me and I think that the same could apply here but I'd also actually thank you for bringing up the point about something like equality because you're right like the issue of justice requires impartiality right and so I actually would want it if we'd have had more time during the previous section to ask essentially the same question of sabor about whether something like impartiality a quality of consideration exists right because it seems a really strange thing to say that impartiality exists I mean what is it it's not something again it's not something tangible it's not something that that's out there right but if you have a conception of human rights and even if it's based on a religious worldview as you say Human Rights requires impartiality and I could say but doesn't partiality exist so well no but we've got this we've got this principle that we've gotten from God if you like of of human rights and we recognize that the best tool or in fact the the necessary tool to actually bring that about and respect those rights is impartial 'ti now I could turn around so but in partiality isn't something that exists you know you've just kind of plucked out of thin air that's just subjective and arbitrary it's like no it's objectively the best tool the only tool a necessary tool we can use to achieve the end of justice right and in the same way that the analogy the analogy is this in the same way that the religious person would have to say that about impartiality I can say that about human rights in general and their relationship to to suffering to suffering and pleasure but I actually think the same question should be directed to sabor like do you think impartiality exists or do you or do you grant that it only exists in the same way that I think human rights exist and if that's the case am I not entitled to do that I think look ontological II as an ontological principle we believe justice does exist right justice is a real thing now it's not I think alex is a physicalist he's trying to say okay how does it physically exist right it doesn't exist like that physically but it's something true so for example the laws of logic the law of non-contradiction the law of excluded middle and low inference or whatever do they exist is it true that one plus one is two regardless of your opinion yes that's true so that's the way that I'm actually speaking about human rights and justice now when it comes to Alex here and I think this is this is really confusing about what he's saying here because in one sense he's saying human rights do not exist in another sense he's saying they do actually exist now what it basically is is the I think you'll be easier to actually sort out this discussion if we speak about this from the perspective of atheism versus theism now from an atheistic perspective all you have is space time matter energy and chance using those building blocks how can you come up with the idea of right and wrong and impartiality you can't but from a theistic worldview you have the idea of justice as an ontological principle she's real and true alex is saying but I can't touch it but again he's got this limited physical idea of okay but if I can't touch it it's not there right but that's it that's a very limited crude way of actually thinking about reality now look but something Alex said in his video on and bring up here and I quoted him directly so that he you know there's no thing about coal mining he says look because there are other questions yeah but you know he gave him time to descend into another discussion sure yeah so he says in this video again natural selection it doesn't prove or disprove moral ontology it says nothing about it and he says repeatedly repeatedly and I found this very strange because you have philosophers speaking about evolution moral realism you have other philosophers like I mentioned Alex Rosenberg speaking about evolutionary anti-realism as in moral ontology being false and he doesn't seem to be aware of those things and he's just repeating the idea that look I can be consistent but you can be consistent in nonsense and want on a show is that his worldview is leading to absurd conclusions such as believing in God eventually if we change the variables and he has no no way of actually challenging them so for me I think what he needs to do is he needs to accept the idea that his conception of human rights being something physical that's the root of the problem because the theistic case is not that human rights are something physical and you can actually touch okay has anyone else got a question the gentleman at the front on the left hi Alex and you mentioned consistency being one of your main points I just have two short questions for you from two of many inconsistencies within your rhetoric you said human rights to you is a concept to achieve maximize to maximize pleasure and avoid pain ie get more of what is wanted when experienced you then try to challenge the war on lines being moral agents according to your criteria there are far more advanced at this than you because they strive a lot more to seek their pleasure and avoid pain so why are they not moral agents according to your criteria and secondly you resent the external the idea of an external lawgiver to human beings so by what criteria do you exhort yourself to being an external lawgiver to the animal kingdom thank you sure so on the first point moral agency is more than just this is precisely the distinction I made a minute ago about moral agency and moral worth you're absolutely right animals are perfectly capable of desiring their pleasures and desiring the avoidance of suffering just as we do right the difference between that which gives them moral worth and there's that in fact that's what gives them moral worth in the same way that it gives us more or less the difference between that and moral agency is the fact that we can reflect on it and make decisions in accordance with what will make those maximisation that's right like you can't have the same kind of yeah the end goal is the same would you want that yeah use that when you say better at it when you say better at it what do you mean when you say better at it you could say that because they don't have the ability to use their intellect to reason and they are more instinctive it is easier for them to seek pleasure they have less distractions and it's also easier for them to avoid pain but yet you claim they don't have moral agency you've comforted again this is a again I hate to repeat myself but this is this is why I clarified at the beginning that when I say pleasure and suffering I'm not talking about trivial pleasures and suffering right I'm not talking about the ability to just go and have sex with whom you please it's all true but not true the reason being is because like the reason why we have these constraints on our on our behavior is because we recognize that it achieves a greater good achieves a greater pleasure achieves a further minimization of suffering even if in this particular instance right I might want to go and do something immoral I might want to go and do something wrong that causes suffering fine and you could say well the Lions better at you than doing that because he'll just go and do it right but if I don't do that if I restrain myself from doing that and an Institute of rule that stopped me from doing that then overrule my suffering will be minimized because I'll live in a society that's more stable and morally coherent that I hope that makes sense I could I would like to talk to you maybe some other time about a big answer the second question please about why you would you put yourself in the position of an external law giver to the lines in the animal kingdom yeah you said you resent anything outside of human beings being an external lawgiver this is known as cosmic authority syndrome now I do you exhort yourself I'm not I'm not I'm not a lawgiver in the way that the way you posited yourself as one in the way that in the way that sabore would it would say that not only you said it you said you you are going to champion animal rights I didn't say that I'm a lawgiver you heard that I'm a lawgiver okay the religious like to claim that Google follows his own desire the rule I just got the the the reason the the reason why the religious see that God is a log ever is because they see him as the author or the dimension right these are made your personal log even I'm not a another potted plant here can I respond I am not Arlington why not a lawgiver can we maybe take my friend I mean I if you want me to respond though respond right the the what was the what was I just saying someone Ramona really no it's just I'm not okay I'm not a law giver in the same way that God is law is a law get that right the religion claim that God is a lawgiver because they believe he's the author of the moral laws humans and if other animals have consideration other animals have moral worth because I determine it to be so because God determines it to be so that's where it comes from that's what it's grounded it I don't say that these animals have worth because I say that they have worth right I say that they have worth for other reasons I'm simply trying to make people recognize that they have that moral worth I'm not saying this lion has moral worth because I say so in the way that the religious will claim that a human has rights and moral worth because God says so that's not what I'm doing I'm not the author of their moral worth I'm just trying to make people realize that that moral worth exists for reasons for reasons external to myself I think I think I'll leave that up to the audience is is that does that sufficiently answer the question is that does anybody else have a quarrel with with with that does anybody else interpret me telling people that because animals have a capacity for feeling suffering in the same way that we do we should extend the moral consideration does anybody else interpret that as me saying that I'm a moral lawgiver that I'm the author of their moral worth does anybody else think that that's what I'm saying anybody any hands I think it's just what you heard let's have a final question gentlemen at the back in the middle these questions were Alex first of all actually thank you it was an interesting discussion and some of your arguments were really really interesting thank you and I'm sorry I'm going to ask a question about pain and suffering I'm sure you must be sick of it so would it be justified to consider differences in suffering based upon the implied suffering that is caused for example there's a rich person his property is damaged and he might not suffer as much as a poor person who has been subject to the same level of damage what we therefore be required to implement a justice system which is not equal for both individuals but varies depending on this point on this points based system of suffering as opposed to simply applying a set of punishment based upon damaged cost as opposed to the amount of suffering hopefully it was clear yeah this is fantastic question actually because it seems to contradict our idea of justice that I can say that for the same crime two people get different punishments just because of the implied suffering I think that's a fantastic question right on the on the kind of ontological point on the moral point of this I think that what you're heading out is actually correct right this is something that Peter Singer talks about quite effectively in relation to animals in the sense of like flicking one animal versus flicking another animal it's kind of is different not because of what I'm doing but because of the way it's experienced right for instance if I were to punch the boar in the arm or something right I probably wouldn't hurt that much I mean I plant power can wave even I only get you so far it I think it would be worse however for me to punch a baby even if I punch them with the same force not because of what I'm actually doing but because of how is experience right so on the moral point I think it's absolutely true that I would be less justified to punch the baby than to punch the ball and I promise only because of the the amount of suffering that the baby not for any other reason I'd I would think that of course both would be a moral right now the question is that should we apply this in law should we apply this practically right should we then say therefore that if somebody suffers left that suffers less from a home invasion that you know the punishment is less well I don't think so because we have to consider the practical implications of enshrining that as a law for instance what would that do to the economic incentive of people who wish to grow a larger estate right if you have the capability to grow a slightly larger estate have a bigger house with the nicer garden but you think to yourself but if that happens then when someone comes onto my onto my property tries to murder me tries to steal my property I'm gonna get less legal protection I probably wouldn't want to do it right so for that reason I think that we should have a consistent rule but not because I think that the moral point is actually the same I do think there is a difference in in kind of morality between stealing from Jeff Bezos and stealing from someone on from a homeless person on the street right but I think that the law should come down the same on theft it like across the board will be consistent with it for other practical considerations if that makes sense okay I'm just one more question guy on the right here yeah yeah yeah all right so I just have a kind of a technical question so it seems like like Alan's rough position is that it's possible that atheism grounds moral rights I hope you're not talking about me Alan Alex sorry nice to meet you yeah so like your like favorite way of making this work like it doesn't really matter just take the resources of atheism and ask whether you know some of those resources can account for moral rights let's say it's pleasure and so really what this view is saying is that basically that you couldn't have moral rights without pleasure that's what the view amounts to and now that's that's like a modally charged way of putting it and so if if we buy that step then your position is it could be that you couldn't have moral rights without pleasure and now most philosophers most logicians agree that if something is if it's possible that something's impossible then it's impossible okay and so in other words if it could be that there couldn't be goodness or moral rights without pleasure then that just simply implies that there couldn't be goodness without pleasure okay I mean I know that's a along I actually actually completely agree with you right this is this is what I was saying a minute ago I go further than to say that human rights don't exist without pleasure I'm saying without pleasure there is no sentience there is no contract acity there is no morality human rights is a derivative of a moral system sure but that entire moral system disappears if there's no pleasure in suffering in any possible universe there is no possible universe in which there is no pleasure in pain and yet sentient so showing that it's consistent for atheism to make sense of moral rights isn't enough you in order in order to make this claim like given all the logic you actually have to show that it that you simply couldn't have moral rights without pleasure which I think I've at least tried to do by saying that if morality cannot exist if sentience cannot exist without pleasure and pain then of course human rights cannot exist without pleasure and pain it follows logically I think but I know it's of support was yeah yep so look Alex's entire argument is based on the idea of pleasure right and he thinks it's not an arbitrary metric he thinks this is something objective and he's agreeing now and he said this previously and want Ronna educate him on is actually you've misunderstood the way evolution works here right you've completely misunderstood the way evolution works here evolution doesn't work the way that it needs to fit in line with my particular pet theory right evolution works in the following way if we rewind the tape of life and replay it again we can end up with completely different set of morals ethics values including our emotions and we may not even have the idea of pleasure and pain we may have a complete different set of something else that's hard to conceive if that's the case then what our alex is saying right now is completely arbitrary he doesn't seem to think it's the problem that's because he's misunderstood the way evolution actually works and this is what I'm trying to it doesn't matter how sophisticated of an ethic you actually come up with it is not objectively true and the the simple argument that I've been repeating throughout the night that 80 is released to moralizing alex is a moralist he does believe in moral nihilism and that moral nihilism this is something that you've previously said unless you change your position I you are your moral - what do you mean by moral Nile okay what did you mean when you said in your YouTube clips that you're a modern are you talking it so there were many many years ago had some discussions with Stephen Woodford where I was describing myself as kind of falling into tomorrow nihilism yeah but yeah I've since changed my mind as you know from watching the goods illusion right so you moral nihilism for you is a position that's what is it true as it falls what is it that moral statements are meaningless meaningless perfect you believe that's the right position no so you don't say I'm saying I'm not that okay okay so do you believe a particular moral proposition is true objectively that's not what I said I said it can be meaningful okay do okay is rape Robert look was being done it look what's being done here I say I say I'm not a eyelets because I don't think that I don't think the moral language is meaningless and you say ah so no but you think its objective look look what you're doing is not I even apply it I think moral moral mean Amol nihilism is the idea that morals can be neither true nor false so I'm just asked a simple question products just want this one version of a simple question just to wrap it up is rape wrong objectively past present future yes or no give it yes you shouldn't hesitate here it's an object why not because oh I'm sorry I'm sorry so so why should so the the base the base idea of ethics right the base idea of doing ethics is that we reevaluate why we believe certain things and see if they're accurate right if there is a proposition that you believe to be totally true as I thought for instance of something like not being a racist right if somebody asked me why you're not a racist and I immediately say or are you not a racist and I immediately said yes of course I'm not a racist right whereas it pays sometimes even if it seems ethically obvious to sit back and think well why do I think that am I wrong about that and the answer can lead you to other moral plans so the answer is this right it is objectively true that to allow people to rape morally would not be an achievement of the goal that we all share that's not the question that's that's that's the objectivity yeah but you're answering what do you want me to do what you want one second you're answering a question I didn't ask I asked a very critical a question everybody I think understood here right I also is rape wrong of is that objectively true and yours being around the bush but the reason why I have to beat around the bush is because I have to clarify that remember how I said that a base principle can be subjective but you can have objective derivatives right right in terms of the objective derivative from our nature yes it is objectively wrong yes is the answer your question based upon the site you're gonna want to turn around then and say but it's based upon subjective principle yes yes it is right but that doesn't mean that I can say rape is not objectively wrong I say that if we agree on this objective moral principle which we do then we can make the objective reality would a rapist agree to that of course they wouldn't know they wouldn't been again whether or not someone agrees with me is irrelevant to whether it's correct look this is another job Alex what you're doing is you're building a house when a sand castle yeah you are trying to say look if you ask me the question I would say it's wrong rape is wrong yes it's wrong objectively yeah when your case what you basically do you do you're doing is you're saying right subjectively some people may hold this opinion according to that then since they also looked evenly all people do hold that opinion okay from that we object when we derive the rape rape this doesn't of course doesn't hold that we know a rapist does value their pleasure and the avoidance value a pleasure right so it's not wrong for them Yeah right okay but look again this is the mistake we're making I said I remember no we're making you're making because this is this is the man going into town and saying let's paint the round yellow the town yellow this is what the rapist is doing right just because they're saying it's all subjective I want this to be a low I don't want it to be blue it's like you being I think says you are this unit doesn't work you are wrong right you are incorrect even if it's based on a subjective base principle here but it is objectively Ronix he has a derivative always higher argument is based upon the assumption that everybody likes the color blue that's not true I think it looks that's not true but by analogy normally me liking the color me like chocolate or vanilla yeah it's as arbitrary for Alex as someone committing rape or not committing rape but it's not as necessarily true but it's not as necessary yes not as necessary do you see so for him it's just as subjective whether you like chocolate vanilla or something else it's just as subjective when it comes to rape murder pillage all of these things and behind all the sophisticated technical jargon and saw take that as a compliment essentially essentially what it boils down to is the same thing which we should all Keynes admitted to the eye yeah that rape is wrong is as arbitrary the fact that we have five fingers rather than six simply it's it's simply not my position I hope you can see that that is simply not my business i'ma leave it out if we if we must but if if anybody if anybody leaves this room if anybody leaves this room thinking that that is an accurate representation of what I think and you have to come and speak to me afterwards because it's simply not the case simply not the case okay we're going to do a two minute summary each but you're you're free to go if you want to so no - would you like are we doing we're doing closing remarks everyone I want I don't want to keep people if they said no I think that's fine fine I can never never deny myself an opportunity to stand at the podium look I mean perhaps this gives me an opportunity it's an opportunity to clear this up right hesitation on what seems to be an obvious moral issue shouldn't be an indication that there's something wrong with you it should be an indication that you're giving it serious consideration right the reason I bring up something like racism is because when I ask someone are you a racist and they say of course I'm not right I want them to stop I want I want them to say why not I would think about it what's the principle that you're justifying that upon I want you to stop and think that why am I not a racist so that you can apply that moral principle that you have consistently because I believe for instance that it will ultimately lead to a rejection of the exploitation of animals perhaps right it might be a useful thing to do so when someone asks me a question and I don't answer immediately I'm just paying the question the compliment of taking it seriously right now as I specify the last time I was stood in this position I believed that at the basis of ethics is the subjective preference for our well-being for pleasure and the avoidance of pain right given that goal given that shared universal subjective that we necessarily all share is rape objectively wrong yes but I need to clarify that's the case because if if I said without that clarification that something is objectively wrong serve or would be able to say at any point in the future alex has said on one instance that ethics is subjectively based but on this other thing he wants to be able to say that this thing is objectively true he wants to be able to say that rape is objectively wrong but he's contradicting himself because he says ethics is subjective I'm simply just trying to disallow you the opportunity to do that by clarifying that I'm speaking under very strict moral terms when I say that certain things are objectively wrong all right right the objective derivatives that we make from a subjective principle can be objectively legitimate even if the thing is subjective itself I just don't want anybody to be able to turn around and misinterpret my position not because it will make me look bad I don't care what you think of me really I genuinely don't but if somebody thinks for instance that I'm contradicting myself then it means they've misunderstood my position and if they've misunderstood my position then I've not expressed myself fully and I want to make sure that people leave the room recognizing that what I'm saying is that the desire at the basis of ethics is subjective but the derivatives we have such as that rape being wrong and other human rights can be legitimate can be meaningful and can be consistent right and I think that those alone those alone are enough to talk meaningfully and consistently about the rights that I assert for myself and for my friends and for my enemies and for non-human animals too and thank you [Applause] now I just wanted to explain why I was contrasting Sam Harris's position with Alex's position there's a reason why Sam Harris is one of the Four Horsemen has come up with a moral landscape there's a reason why he's understood that he needs to make a moral argument which is objectively true and there's a reason why he wouldn't subscribe to Alex's position and that is simply because if we take the position for what it is and not challenge the logic and we look at the assumptions that are there and we change those assumptions we will come to absurd conclusions so Alex's entire argument why is someone like sam harris wouldn't accept it is because if we go to the base level of this subjective idea that we want to maximize pleasure and reduce pain that is assuming everybody has that same goal but of course they don't if we go back to Nazi Germany and we were to do a poll and people had this idea of killing Jewish people they don't have that they don't share the same base moral ideas so look no matter how sophisticated your ethical system is no matter how flowery it sounds no matter how much technical jargon and rhetoric you're going to use fundamentally it's in losery because there's no better than another system if we had a different evolutionary trajectory and all of this all of these could confusions which actually coming these are coming because of a misunderstanding of the way that Darwinian evolution actually works which is my Alex's conclusions here are not peer-reviewed they're not published you won't find a single philosopher biology who would say ethics is not illusory unless they of course are atheist because they understand fundamentally there is no objective truth to any ethical system regardless whether if somebody came up with it while they were studying at Oxford or whether somebody spent years and they actually come up with it there's no there's no objective difference between the two so just to summarize my argument atheism leads to moral nihilism modernizers and undermines human rights therefore atheism undermines human rights my show of hands for either side of the motion so firstly can atheism justify human rights can it all those in favor the proposing on my supposition and then all those not in favor okay I think the motion passes voila thank you we've also just discovered that truth is democratic

Channel: iERA

Views: 235,209

Rating: 4.8563452 out of 5

Keywords: subboor ahmad, subboor ahmed, cosmicskeptic debate, iera debate, can atheism justify human rights?, cosmic skeptic

Id: -Ysux8vA1TM

Length: 104min 59sec (6299 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 10 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Repentant_Revenant]

As a Christian, I actually really like Alex O'Connor. He treats these subjects with charity and intellectual authenticity that the other atheists are not known for.

He still gets stuck in some of the semantic mires that the New Atheist thinkers he admires get stuck in (this being one of them.)

I truly believe that Alex is charitable enough and willing to listen that he could even someday adjust his position on atheism - provided he speaks to theists that are just as intelligent and charitable and willing to listen as he is.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say if he does NOT change his perspective, theists will have no one to blame but ourselves.

[u/[deleted]]

Whilst trying to abide by rule 1, there is a discord server that can probably help you when you learn about Islamic Philosophy (based on your title description). I hope this doesnt go under proselytizing, since everyone is welcome to join:

https://discord.gg/GxJJ5T2

[u/Repentant_Revenant]

Any highlights from the debate you'd like to point out?

You're absolutely right, though. It's impossible to ground Human Rights in a materialist worldview.

Here is a revealing moment from a debate with Matt Dilahunty: https://youtu.be/7gL0MxUUDm8