Morality IS Just Opinion ~ That's a Fact

Judeo-Christian Moral Values?

Dennis Prager, founder of Prager 'University', recently posted a video on You Tube entitled "If There Is No God, Murder Isn't Wrong". The video, attempting to affirm that morality is objective, or absolutist, coming alone from the God of Judeo-Christian belief, singularly fails in doing so, is one of the funniest things I've ever seen, and in which Dennis Prager sets up a nice little row of strawmen just waiting to be blown down, shows an appalling lack of historical knowledge, and ultimately contradicts his own arguments.

But I am going to shock anyone who thinks like Dennis Prager, that without God, there is no morality. I am going to agree with him, he's absolutely correct ~ at least certainly not in any absolutist sense.

"Do you believe that good and evil exists?" Prager asks, "The answer to this question separates Judeo-Christian values from secular values."

Right away, Prager attempts to play with a marked deck. He automatically affirms that secular means atheist, when it most certainly does not. The definition of secular in Chambers Dictionary is given as; "the view or belief that society's values and standards should not be influenced or controlled by religion or the Church". I am a proud member of the Scottish Secular Society, who seek to reduce the influence of religions in government, law, and public bodies. While most of our members are indeed atheists, we also have members of various faiths, including Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and even Wiccan. There is no doubting the faith of these people, but they do not believe that faith should have any influence over government, law, or public life. Secularism does not mean atheism, and apart from my example above, this shall become very important later in this article.

Next we have to address the question, whether we believe in good and evil. Well, that depends upon what you mean by good and evil. You have to be able to define just what good and evil are before you can even attempt to answer that question. Well, 'evil' itself is a religious construct, and using that term plays right into Prager's moral absolutist standpoint. It may be a word we use commonly, but when we do so, we usually ascribe it to the most heinous acts. Most realise that the lines between good and bad, acceptable and unacceptable behaviour often become clouded, but to use the terms of “good and evil” immediately sets up a binary where there are no grey areas, and no room for manoeuvre between the two. And that is one of the fatal flaws of Dennis Prager's argument.

But probably his worst fault of all in his opening two sentences is Dennis Prager attempting to prescribe knowledge of right and wrong to the Judeo-Christian tradition alone, without taking into account many other faiths, cultures and societies. In doing so he sets up yet another binary which is not only impossible to defend but ultimately can easily be disproven.

"Is murder wrong? Is it evil?" asks Prager, stating that nearly everybody would say yes, then goes on to pose his further question, "How do you know? I am sure that you think that murder is wrong. But how do you know?"

Having posed this question, Prager goes on;

"If I asked you how you know that that the earth is round, you would show me photographs from outer space, or offer me measurable data. But what photographs could you show, what measurements could you provide, that prove that murder or rape or theft is wrong? The fact is, you can’t. There are scientific facts, but without God there are no moral facts."

Well, actually, there is indeed measurable data. Society rejects certain actions we base as crimes - including murder or rape or theft. As actions have consequences, we punish wrongdoers for crimes, and the more serious the crime, the greater the sentence. There is your measurable data.

As to moral facts, Dennis Prager is absolutely correct; there are in fact no 'moral' facts. Morality does not follow facts, it follows the rules and laws of society, and those are ever changing and constantly evolving. Therefore, as we shall see, what we call morality changes with them, and in reality cannot be said to exist.

"In a secular world, there can only be opinions about morality.” Says Prager, “They may be personal opinions or society’s opinion. But only opinions. Every atheist philosopher I have read or debated on this subject has acknowledged that if there is no God, there is no objective morality."

Except that's all morality really is; the opinion of an individual, or of a collective society. This is exactly why every atheist philosopher(?) Dennis Prager has read or engaged with has rejected (and to be fair, there have been more than one or two) objective morality; because study and observation of human behaviour, be it as individuals or as a collective, proves that objective morality just does not exist, it cannot exist. It may be opinion based upon experience, but it still only opinion nonetheless.

"Judeo-Christian values are predicated on the existence of a God of morality. In other words, only if there is a God who says murder is wrong, is murder wrong. Otherwise, all morality is opinion."

Let us for a moment examine this "God of morality" of the Judeo-Christian tradition. This is a deity whom if the Bible were to be believed destroyed almost every living creature on the face of the planet in a hissy fit; who told his “chosen people” to kill all, right down to babies, except the virgin girls, whom they could keep to rape and as slaves; who destroyed two entire cities for sexual licentiousness, but then apparently had no problem with the survivors committing incest; who deliberately hardened Pharaoh's heart against Moses' pleas, and then killed every first-born child in Egypt; who had a bear tear some little children apart for no more than being cheeky to a bald man.

A God not merciful enough to just let unbelievers die and cease to be; he has to keep their souls alive, to be tormented for all eternity.

That's the 'morality' of a kind, loving, and merciful God, is it? Sounds more like the sadistically cruel, merciless, dangerous, clinically-insane, certifiable psychopath to me.

And now let me come to the crux of the rest of that statement; "Only if there is a God who says murder is wrong, is murder wrong." And this is where I will throw Dennis Prager's question right back at him. Just WHY does God say murder is wrong? What MAKES it wrong in the eyes of your God? What explanation or rationale does God give for saying that murder is wrong?

And want to know something? Nowhere, not on one page of the entire Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is there one single explanation given as to just WHY murder is wrong, WHY it is forbidden by God. It simply IS forbidden, with no explanation as to just why it should be at all.

As I've shown above, it can hardly be a case of God leading by example, for if he existed, then the Judeo-Christian God would be the most prolific serial killer of all time. We can therefore take it that God is a "Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do" sort of god. And that of course feeds right into the circular reasoning of many Christians, including Dennis Prager: Why is murder wrong? Because God says so in the Bible. Who wrote the Bible? God did. As you can see, absolutely no explanation or rationale given.

It was suggested to me by a Christian friend that God expects us to be good to each other and alluded to Matthew 25:40; "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

That is one explanation. However, if it is one, it is again self-seeking of God. Think about it; a good parent makes sacrifices for their children, puts their child before themselves, would even face death to save the life of their child. And while it may hurt the parent to see their child hurt, at no point to they think of that hurt as being personal to them. Indeed, many parents may ask themselves where they failed their child in some way where they could have avoided that hurt.

A better Biblical explanation may actually be the 'Golden Rule'; "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them." (Matthew 7:12). That would be fair enough. However, not only is the historicity of Jesus nowadays serverly questioned, the Golden Rule was said by many before Jesus and predates Judeo-Christian culture by many centuries. However, if the Christian wishes to play this card, then that plays more into the atheist/rationalist/secular narrative than it does the Christian one, as I shall demonstrate later.

"The entire Western world – what we call Western Civilization – is based on this understanding." Prager says.

The arrogance of this statement is only eclipsed by the sheer ignorance of history and other cultures. When white Christian Europeans went out into the world, time and time again they encountered cultures which had had absolutely no prior experience of Judeo-Christian teaching, yet many of them had similar societal moral codes, and some were actually superior to that of Christendom. In culture after culture, the societal norms said that killing, violence, theft, cheating and lying were forbidden. Respecting parents and other elders was the right thing to do. Caring for the sick and invalided was commonplace. Parents made every sacrifice possible to give their children a decent life.

The Jainists of India believe so fervently that life is so sacred that they wear gauze across their faces to prevent flies from being killed entering their eyes, nose or mouth. In Japanese and Chinese cultures the elderly are enormously respected and protected, and ancestors are revered almost to the status of demi-gods.

So, if Dennis Prager is so insistent that not only is morality objective, but it comes from his God, and only his God alone, then just where did these non-Christian, non-Jewish cultures get their morality from?

Dennis Prager continues by stating that atheists can indeed be good, moral people (Gee! Thanks, Dennis. That's mighty white of you.), and that there are believers in God who can indeed be "evil", while at the same time saying of the said good atheists "the existence of these good people has nothing – nothing – to do with the question of whether good and evil really exist if there is no God."

Well, actually, yes it does. That is precisely what Dennis Prager is claiming in his video; that without God, we cannot know the difference between right from wrong. And this is actually a very important point, which buries Prager's own argument. He states "more than a few have been evil – and have even committed evil in God’s name. The existence of God doesn't ensure people will do good. I wish it did. The existence of God only ensures that good and evil objectively exist and are not merely opinions."

That statement is self-contradictory. For if objective morality were true, then the faithful would know they were doing wrong in the eyes of their own God, they would in fact be blaspheming their own faith, but doing so anyway. It's not like Prager is playing the "No true Scotsman" fallacy here, by saying that the Godly who do wrong are "not true Christians"; he rather is openly admitting that some Christians do wrong. If they do so, then they do it knowingly, and there goes his objective morality straight out of the window.

"Without God," Prager says, "we therefore end up with what is known as moral relativism – meaning that morality is not absolute, but only relative to the individual or to the society. Without God, the words “good” and “evil” are just another way of saying “I like” and “I don’t like.” If there is no God, the statement “Murder is evil” is the same as the statement “I don't like murder.”

And on that Dennis Prager and I are completely agreed; only seeing it from the different sides of the fence. Morality is nothing more than opinion, and I shall not only say that, I shall demonstrate exactly why it is nothing more than opinion.

I am old enough to recall being given the Lochgelly Tawse for misbehaving at school. This was an 18", 20", or 24" leather strap cut into two or three prongs at one end, which was administered sharply across the hands of an errant child (see accompanying photograph) - and it stung like hell. England and other countries had the cane, the USA had the paddle, Scotland had the tawse, or strap or belt, as it was variously known. Today we look back upon corporal punishment in schools as barbaric, and it is actually now against the law to strike a child in Scottish schools. Yet the physical punishment of children in schools was supposedly for their moral good, and based upon Biblical theology.

It was in 1976 in Scotland and 1979 in the USA that test cases in courts established that it was possible for a husband to rape his wife. Before these cases rapist husbands were considered to merely be taking their conjugal rights, as laid down in the Bible, and morally doing no wrong.

Well into the 20th century, there were still left-handed children being punished and forced to write with their right hands in the UK and Ireland. In some more extreme cases in Irish 'Christian' schools, children had their left arms tied behind their backs and forced to attempt to write with their right hands. Why? Because the left hand was traditionally considered 'evil' due to Biblical teaching. Note that the Latin for left is 'sinistere', from where we get the word 'sinister'.

Gay men were commonly imprisoned well into the latter 20th century in the UK, and some forced to undergo chemical castration. In the USA, there were still some trying to administer 'gay cures' until VERY recently. It is only in the past ten years that there has been an explosion of countries accepting equal marriage.

Into the early years of the 20th century husbands could beat their wives with a rod "no thicker than the breadth of your thumb" in the UK, for their moral good. It was only in the later 19th century in the UK that wives had the right to divorce their husbands. Young women who dared to have a child outside of wedlock, or were sexually liberated, were shunned by society, and in some cases placed in mental asylums for the rest of their lives.

Those are just some of the facts of Christian-based 'morality' in the past 150 years alone (and don't even start me on paedophile clergy). We look upon these with abject horror in this day and age ~ precisely because we are far more enlightened, and because of that, what we call morality has indeed evolved and changed with time. That is how it works, people. And if morality is that changeable, that much prone to evolving, then it can in fact be nothing more than societal opinion.

So, if morality is nothing more than opinion, then can we say that murder is indeed wrong? Yes, we can indeed.

"Now, many will argue that you don't need moral absolutes; people won’t murder because they don't want to be murdered." Prager says. And that really is the crux of it. We don't kill because we prefer a society in which we are not likely to be killed. This is where the Golden Rule fits into the rationalist narrative. At the basest element it is a survival mechanism, which we evolved with, and which many species also display. It is most commonly seen in our nearest cousins, the great apes. Chimpanzees, baboons, and gibbons, like us, are societal creatures who form their own groups or clans. And they will also defend themselves or even attack other clans or individuals of other species, they will kill them, and in the more extreme cases, will even eat them. Hey, we're not that far removed from that. Don't forget it was once believed even in some early European cultures that by eating your enemy's heart, you gained his strength.

Dennis Prager says that this survival instinct is not so, and sets up another tired old strawman;

"But that argument is just wishful thinking. Hitler, Stalin, and Mao didn’t want to be murdered, but that hardly stopped them from murdering about a hundred million people. It is not a coincidence that the rejection of Judeo-Christian values in the Western world – by Nazism and Communism – led to the murder of all these innocent people."

Usually Godwin's Law states that the longer an internet debate goes on, the more likely Hitler or the Nazis will be brought into it. Prager doesn't even wait for a debate but jumps the shark and goes straight in there.

Now, unlike many other atheists, I am not going to claim Hitler was a Christian. He certainly paid lip-service to the Judeo-Christian God (just as Theresa May and Donald Trump do today), but his allowance of occult beliefs in Nazism were most certainly not Christian. And as a Roman Catholic friend of mine pointed out, if Hitler were a devout Catholic, he would never have committed suicide, because at that time the RC Church still taught that suicides went straight to Hell. Many other Nazis - from the high ranks right down to common soldiers - however were Christians, and every Nazi soldier had the words "Gott Mitt Uns" (God is with us) embossed on their belt buckles. Christian charities in Nazi Germany openly supported the Nazi regime, as did many in the hierarchy of the Lutheran and the Roman Catholic Churches. So make no mistake about it, Nazi Germany had the tacit support of the vast majority of the Christian people of Germany, and of the Christian churches, who wanted rid of the Jews - rid of the 'Christ killers'.

Stalin, who had trained to be an Orthodox Christian priest before becoming a communist was clinically insane. But communism in Russia grew out of an equally brutal regime under the Tsars, which had been going on for hundreds of years. Prager claims that it was the rejection of Christian values which led to mass killings in the Soviet Union, yet conveniently says nothing of the peasants beaten, shot, starved under the feudal laws still operated by the Tsars, who had the blessing of the Orthodox Church. He says nothing of the continual pogroms of Jews, under which millions were killed or died of starvation or exposure, in Russia ordered by the Tsars ministers, egged on by the church. Tsar Nicholas II, his family, his ministers, and the Russian ruling class lived in the most obscene wealth while people were starving and/or freezing to death, and the church either turned a blind eye to it all, told the peasants they would have their reward in Heaven, or even blamed them for their lot.

And China under Mao rejecting Judeo-Christian values? Ermm, will someone please educate Dennis Prager what the state religion of China was pre-revolution. Oh, and don't forget to add that Chinese people were slaughtered, ritually executed, or died of starvation or exposure in their millions, possibly billions, in the thousands of years of imperial China.

I could not believe that Dennis Prager came out with his next statement, which shows a horrendous rewriting of world and US history.

"It is also not a coincidence that the first societies in the world to abolish slavery – an institution that existed in every known society in human history – were Western societies rooted in Judeo-Christian values."

Right away, not every society in the world has practised slavery. There are cultures to this day, cut off from western society who do not and never have practised slavery. Slavery was unknown in my own native Scotland until after the Act of Union of 1707 which formed the United Kingdom. And even then included not only African slaves, but in the 18th century (white) Jacobites being sold into slavery in the Americas (as were many Irish rebels). But even then, there are scant records of slaves in Scotland, and where they have been mentioned, they have been freed. Australia has never allowed slavery, nor has Canada.

And yes, many Christians were very active in the abolition of slavery, not least here in the UK. And so they should have been; given that it was Christians who introduced it in the first place, when they went into Africa with a Bible in one hand, and a gun in the other. And they did so by hiding behind Biblical rules on keeping slaves as their justification. Even when abolitionism came along, there were Christian slave owners and traders who used the selfsame Biblical arguments.

And this is an important point. Most western slave owners were indeed Christian, and honestly believed they were doing Africans a kindness. They thought that black people were incapable of looking after themselves, and so by giving them a roof over their heads, clothes on their backs, food to eat, and jobs to do, they were doing the right, Christian, thing ~ they were being "moral".

Which brings me onto America, and where Dennis Prager's arguments fall down yet again. Dennis Prager insists that western society is based upon Judeo-Christian beliefs, and goes on to claim that this why we reject wrongdoing, and even got rid of slavery. But this was never the case for the United States of America, for the simple fact that the USA is not and never was a Christian country.

Prager is obviously trying to have us believe the hoary old chestnut that the USA was founded upon Christian principles, when nothing could actually be further from the truth. Certainly, it was and remains largely culturally Christian, but there is no proof that the Founding Fathers were all Christians, some most certainly were not, and the very legal basis of the of the USA, as laid out in the US Constitution, agreed and signed by all the founding fathers, is not only not Christian, it rejects all notions of a state religion, or of religious interference in government, completely. The First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America could not be clearer;

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

In other words, the USA is not a Christian state, it is not a theocracy or any other form of religious state, it is by law, enshrined in the Constitution a secular state.

And there goes Dennis Prager's opening gambit straight out of the window.

The Founding Fathers worded the Constitution very carefully. They made sure that religion was not going to interfere with government or public life, and they had very good reasons for doing so; because so may had fled to the Americas to escape religious persecution at the hands of the state in their own countries. Therefore, the only way to ensure freedom of (and from) religion was to establish the largest secular country on the face of the planet.

And of course, if Prager on anyone else insists that the USA was founded on Christian principles, then that completely fails to explain why it took from 1776 to 1865 to abolish slavery. Not only did it not do so, it never sought to do so, and it took a civil war with Christians to see it abolished.

Now, unlike Daniel Day Lewis or Steven Spielberg, I am not about to pretend that slavery was the overriding or only cause for the American Civil War. In fact, the peoples of the Confederate States, disliking how Washington DC was telling them how to live their lives, was probably the biggest factor; it was largely about sovereignty (“Texit” perhaps?). Slavery was however a huge issue in the war; that cannot be denied. Unlike the US Constitution, the Constitution of the Confederate States was anything but secular, but called upon the Judeo-Christian God to guide them. The Preamble to the Confederate Constitution states:

"We, the people of the Confederate States, each state acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity — invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God — do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America."

So instead of the "Christian USA" abolishing slavery, what history actually tells us that its abolition was only brought about by a savage and bloody war by a secular country upon Christian rebel states.

And there goes Dennis Prager's argument about Judeo-Christian values abolishing slavery right out of the window, sailing across the lawn, landing in the road, and under the wheels of a bus.

"Ah,” but you say, “Abraham Lincoln was a Christian". I don't deny that for one moment. Honest Abe was indeed a very committed Christian, and in my eyes arguably the finest president the USA has ever had. He was also possessed of a marvellous mind, he knew the US Constitution backwards, and never let his faith interfere with the enormous task he had at hand. Just as every US President has been a Christian, and few of them (with a few notable exceptions) have attempted to let their faith cloud their judgement. They realised they could not and should not; it would be unconstitutional to do so, and they could not say they were serving all of the people if they did. This clearly demonstrates that one can be both a believer in God and a secularist; contrary to what Dennis Prager and other Christian fundamentalists may think, the two are not mutually exclusive, and secularism by no measure means atheism.

The next bit by Prager is just laughable. He insists the Judeo-Christian values led to "the first societies to affirm universal human rights; to emancipate women; and to proclaim the value of liberty."

No, Dennis. Absolutely not. Wherever you look at the history of Christian states, you find that they have been instrumental in holding back human rights wherever possible, and wherever some have attempted to fight for their rights, the Christian churches have been one of the most powerful enemies they have had to fight. Look above at what I said about Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, and the slave-owning Confederacy. Throw in the millions kept down at heel across Europe with the express approval of the Churches. The millions burned at the stake or hanged for blasphemy, heresy, or witchcraft on the slightest pretext. When the French Revolution took place it was not only their monarchy they beheaded, but their clergy as well, who were equally guilty of living in opulence while the poor starved. The right to a fair trial only came about when law moved away from theocracy, and became more secular. Secular society learned long ago that if justice is not tempered with mercy, then it cannot claim to be just; which is miles away from the uncompromising absolutism of theocratic laws. It is true that the Christian churches instituted free schools, originally held in churches with the Bible as the first text book (an idea which grew out of the Scottish Protestant Reformation - yes, USA, it's all our fault, sorry about that), but it was only when education moved away from religion and became more secular that it really advanced - often against the teachings of the Christian churches. Christianity has almost always been implemental in holding back and crushing human rights - and responsible for the deaths of millions, perhaps billions, in doing so.

To suggest that Christianity has in any way, shape, or form affirmed women's rights is downright derisory. This deeply misogynistic, sexist religion, which has always treated women as mere chattels of their husbands, and should stay silent. Consider this: "Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." (Genesis 3:16). That right there is your "Judeo-Christian - moral - values" concerning women. I could of course go further and quote how the Bible teaches that women should not have power, how a husband should chastise his wife, and about conjugal rights (recall what I said earlier?), and even how a woman should lock herself away when she is on her period. If the Bible were taken literally, there would not be so much as any women teachers, let alone state leaders. You would not have so much as girls working in McDonalds.

Sure, Emmeline Pankhurst in the UK and Susan B Anthony in the USA were indeed Christians, as were many of their followers. It be unusual were they not, as that was the culture of their times. But if you look at the history of both, you will find that Christian churches were one of the many walls they came up against in fighting for women's suffrage, as they were against women having authority. Amelia Bloomer was against the sexist, wasp-waist corsets which destroyed many women's bodies, sometimes to death, and advocated loose tops and the huge elastic-legged, pantaloon knickers named after her. But another reason for inventing these was that so women could ride horses properly instead of side-saddle, and ride bicycles (Gasp! Brazen hussies!). And the loudest voices against her were those from the churches.

Where have the churches been when women have wanted to go out and work? To earn the same wages as men doing the same jobs? To have a right to family planning? To have the right over their own bodies? To be sexually liberated? For lesbians to marry? The church has always, and continues to be, one of the most stringent opponents to these things. Some churches even try to rule what women choose to wear. A true story; a very dear online friend of mine was once in a horrendous car accident in which she almost lost her life. She had to be cut out of her burning, wrecked car, and spent weeks in hospital. Her legs were and remain horribly scarred as a result. The first Sunday after her release, she returned to her local Baptist church, which she had attended since childhood - and found the pastor blocking her way and refusing her entry. Why? Because she was wearing trousers to cover her scarred legs. She explained why but the pastor was adamant and turned her away. There's those good old western Judeo-Christian moral values for you.

And if anyone thinks that Prager University support women's rights, I invite you to go have look through their vast number of anti-feminist, openly sexist, and downright misogynistic You Tube videos.

And of course Judeo-Christian culture has never valued liberty. Quite the opposite in fact. Where Christianity has had a hand in law, it has often been the cruellest, most merciless, most oppressive of all systems. As I have said above, people constantly being kept down at heel while the church abetted the rich and powerful, people being condemned on the flimsiest of evidence and subjected to the cruellest of punishments and even torture - consider the Holy Inquisitions (NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition). The atrocities we see carried out by fundamental Islamists today are very much an echo of our own theocratic past. The pogroms, the hangings, the burning at the stake, the support for despotic regimes, the collusion in slavery, the holding back of women's rights, the suppression of LGBTI rights, and through the oppression of many, many more, Judeo-Christian culture has always been at the forefront of holding back liberty. Yet one more reason why the Founding Fathers established the USA as a secular state.

No good Christian moralist is complete without an anecdote to have his captive audience throw their hands up in horror, and Dennis Prager does not let us down in that respect. He claims that in 2015 a professor of philosophy wrote in the New York Times "What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun? Would you be surprised? I was." and claims the professor continues, "The overwhelming majority of college freshmen view moral claims as mere opinions."

I have learned from experience to be wary of Christians using the argument from authority, which they often cherry-pick certain things, take the statements out of context, and/or use a biased source who shares the same view as them. So, given that Prager did not supply as much as a name, let alone a link, I did the legwork he did not, and found the article. It was written by Justin P McBrayer, an associate professor at Fort Lewis College, Durango, and who specialises in "ethics and philosophy of religion". Bingo! We have a winner.

And upon reading the article which Prager cites, I found that Prof McBrayer is merely touting the same nonsense which Prager is; that there are moral absolutes. Certainly, he cites a single billboard in his son's school with two signs which he found disturbing. The signs said;

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

That seems fair enough to me, so what is McBrayer's argument with it? Here's what;

"First, the definition of a fact waffles between truth and proof — two obviously different features. Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false. For example, many people once thought that the earth was flat. It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives). Furthermore, if proof is required for facts, then facts become person-relative. Something might be a fact for me if I can prove it but not a fact for you if you can’t. In that case, E=MC² is a fact for a physicist but not for me."

Now, this guy has several academic qualifications in philosophy remember, and it appears he don't know SHIT. Right away let me say that given that life started here and the universe is teeming with the necessary elements for life, then the probability of life existing on another planet is extremely high. However, probability does not equal fact, and until it is proven that there is life elsewhere, then to claim so is nothing more than postulation, educated guesswork, a hypothesis; it is indeed an opinion. By equal measure, however unlikely, there is the remote possibility that Earth may be unique in the universe in supporting life, and there be no life elsewhere. This is the opposing opinion.

This is the Fortean position, which I fully endorse (I'm a member of the Edinburgh Fortean Society). Charles Hoy Fort said it best; “One measures a circle beginning anywhere.” In other words, unless something can be conclusively proven, then all hypotheses have value. That is not saying that life does not exist elsewhere in the universe, it is saying that is but one opinion which, until proven or disproven, is a valid position to take.

And if Prof McBrayer wishes to stand at the centre of North Korea's next nuclear test, then he shall soon discover (momentarily before being vapourised) that his opinion that E=MC² is not a fact is very much mistaken. To say it is a fact for a physicist but not for him is a complete asshat thing to say, and leaves me seriously questioning the professor's academic credentials, or his fitness to teach. It is people like this who lead to evolution being challenged and creationism being taught in schools – because people like this claim that both are opinions.

I could go on about Professor McBrayer's article but the bottom line is that US public schools are most certainly not teaching that it is not true that it is wrong to kill people. What his son's school was doing was carrying out an exercise to demonstrate the difference between fact and opinion. It is Professor McBrayer who attempts to confuse those lines, and makes the claim that schools are teaching that killing is not wrong, when they never in fact said that. Indeed, it is McBrayer in attempting to cloud the issue, by claiming that something can be both fact and opinion, who could be said to be supporting the position that killing is not wrong. I shall leave a link to the article below for others to make their own mind up.

Prager signs off by thinking he's scored a victory by saying "So, then, whatever you believe about God or religion, here is a fact: Without a God who is the source of morality, morality is just a matter of opinion. So, if you want a good world, the death of Judeo-Christian values should frighten you."

Well, I'm not frightened, Dennis. Morality is merely opinion - and that's a fact (okay Leslie, quit it with the mindfucks). I have demonstrated conclusively above that each and every one of Dennis Prager's assertions is incorrect, contradictory, in many places absurd, and worst of all, he still does not give any coherent reasons why murder, or other wrongdoing is wrong, other than "God says so, and he'll burn you if you disobey him." I am more frightened of people who ascribe to that sort of mindset.

So if 'morality' is an ever-changing, constantly-evolving opinion (or set of opinions) just where exactly do we get our 'moral compass' from. Firstly, from our parents (there is much truth in the old Scots saying “Fools and bairns speak at the cross whit they hear by the ingleside.”), then as we grow the society we grow into. We learn and adopt the mores of the families and societies we grow up in. We instinctively accept a society which rejects killing as a survival instinct, but I believe there is much more to it than that.

Despite how horrible mankind can be to our own species, as well as other species, deep down we are in fact empathic and deeply caring creatures. We don't use violence because we know it hurts. We tend not to steal, because we have had things stolen from us, and we know that burns. And certainly only vermin steal from those most in need. We tend to stay faithful to one partner and don't cheat because that is a shitty thing to do to another person – anyone who has been cheated on knows just how deeply that hurts. Despite lying being part of the human condition, we try our best to be honest and open with others, because we like to be trusted. We respect our parents and most elderly people because they deserve it. We are kind to the disabled, the infirm, the vulnerable, because we know they are least able to defend themselves and often need our help. Most men do not hit women because they do tend to be more physically able to defend themselves. We are kind to and cherish children, even those of us who are not parents, because they are a joy in life, and we wish only the best for them. Where people have been denied a decent life, most of us seek to redress that and give them a little dignity.

We do these things not because any god tells us to do so; we do it because of our capability to feel, to empathise and sympathise, to think, to care – to love. We do it because of who we are as societal creatures, because it defines us as a species, because it is who we are; Homo Sapiens Sapiens ~ thinking man.

We were learning the beginnings of that more than 200,000 years ago in Sub-Saharan east Africa; we are still learning to this day, because we are still evolving. We do not need the Judeo-Christian God for that, or any gods for that matter, because they were never any part of the picture. As we have evolved, as we have become more enlightened, more knowledgeable, our opinions on what is right and wrong, what is 'good' or 'evil', which some would call morality, have evolved with us.

And notice that I am careful how I word the above; that we do our best to be good and kind. Because we are indeed human, and as such, often all too prone to human weakness and failings. That is where our greatest attribute of all comes in ~ forgiveness.

And in the final instance, which is better? That we evolved as a society to be good and kind to others with no thought of personal reward, not only because it makes us happy, but because it makes the others happy, and that enhances us all as a society?

Or is it because we live in perpetual fear of eternal and merciless retribution from an unbending God, and thereby see to score points with him in a feeble attempt to save our own sorry asses?

I certainly know which I ascribe to.

~ ~ ~ 

Link to the Prager Univsersity video and transcript:

https://www.prageru.com/courses/religionphilosophy/if-there-no-god-murder-isnt-wrong

Link to New York Times opinion article of 2 March 2015; "Why Our Children Don't Think There Are Moral Facts" by Professor Justin P MacBrayer:

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/03/02/why-our-children-dont-think-there-are-moral-facts/?_r=1