Well allow me to retort...

In response to KMan's post, I bashed out the following response.

For those who subscribe to Judeo-Christian values, right and wrong, good and evil, are derived from God, not from reason alone, nor from the human heart, the state or through majority rule.
And for those who don't, from Greek philosophers to modern scientists, good and evil derive from the heart, the mind, and society around you.

Though most college-educated Westerners never hear the case for the need for God-based morality because of the secular outlook that pervades modern education and the media, the case is both clear and compelling:
The idea that modern media is secular is a bit of stretch but I can let it slide.
If there is no transcendent source of morality (morality is the word I use for the standard of good and evil), "good" and "evil" are subjective opinions, not objective realities.
Correct.

In other words, if there is no God who says, "Do not murder" ("Do not kill" is a mistranslation of the Hebrew which, like English, has two words for homicide), murder is not wrong.
Idiot. Stupid stupid idiot. You're ignoring what you just implied earlier.
I've heard this argument put forward by idiots talking about drugs. Saying things like, if cocaine wasn't illegal, we'd all be driving to work high as kite, etc... That's so idiotic. If you need it explained, I'll explain it for you, but holy crap, is this a losing way to start your argument.
Many people may think it is wrong, but that is their opinion, not objective moral fact. There are no moral "facts" if there is no God; there are only moral opinions.
For those who don't believe in God, good and evil derive from the heart, the mind, and society around you.

Years ago, I debated this issue at Oxford with Jonathan Glover, currently the professor of ethics at King's College, University of London, and one of the leading atheist moralists of our time.
Because he is a man of rare intellectual honesty, he acknowledged that without God, morality is subjective. He is one of the few secularists who do.
Nah, I don't think that's true. It's more likely that in the debate, Prof. Glover admitted this, and you couldn't just pretend he didn't. So you're ascribing the belief as "rare". It really isn't.

This is the reason for the moral relativism -- "What I think is right is right for me, what you think is right is right for you" -- that pervades modern society.
Generalisation and taking a legitimate point to absurd extremes.
The secularization of society is the primary reason vast numbers of people believe, for example, that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter";
No, I don't believe that because I'm secular. I believe it because it's true. :p Or to put it another way, I believe it because that's what I think, feel, and so do the people around me.
why the best educated were not able say that free America was a more moral society than the totalitarian Soviet Union;
The best educated were not able to say this, because they saw the world was not black and white.
why, in short, deep moral confusion afflicted the 20th century and continues in this century.

That is why The New York Times, the voice of secular moral relativism,
I think that's meant to be insulting, but the New York Times is not the voice of s.m.r. by any means. It certainly doesn't represent my views, for example.
was so repulsed by President Ronald Reagan's declaration that the Soviet Union was an "evil empire."
Well, I wasn't repulsed by it. I thought it was stupid and dismissed it. Reagan was feeding a line of propaganda that was at variance with reality. Those who knew this, knew this. Those who didn't, didn't. His comment was meaningless, at least to people like me.

The secular world -- especially its left -- fears and rejects the language of good and evil because it smacks of religious values and violates their moral relativism.
He is saying a lot about the secular world, but he knows very little about the secular world. No surprise there. The secular world uses the terms good and evil, just not liberally. And certainly not always on the same targets that the religious right in America would like to use them on. Pre-Emptive War is evil. Spending hundreds of billions on weapons while you have hungry and homeless people in your own country, is evil. Bombing innocent people is evil. What happened on 9/11 was evil. See? Not afraid to use it at all.

It is perhaps the major difference between America and Europe. As a New York Times article on European-American differences noted last year, "Americans are widely regarded as more comfortable with notions of good and evil, right and wrong, than Europeans. . . . " No wonder. America is a Judeo-Christian society; Europe (and the American Democratic Party) is largely secular.
Wrong again, but oh don't get me started on the ignorance of the average republican when it comes to Europe...

In the late 1970s, in a public interview in Los Angeles, I asked one of the leading secular liberal thinkers of the past generation, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr., if he would say that the United States was a morally superior society to that of the Soviet Union. Even when I repeated the question, and clarified that I readily acknowledged the existence of good individuals in the Soviet Union and bad ones in America, he refused to do so.
Possibly because he knew some history. About atrocities committed by America.

A major reason for the left's loathing of George W. Bush is his use of moral language
Again, wrong. It just goes to show you have no interest in examing why people don't approve of George. His language is actually one of the more amusing things about him. If you want to know why I personally hate George, I'll make a list. You won't find his use of moral language anywhere on it.
-- such as in his widely condemned description of the regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil." These people reject the central Judeo-Christian value of the existence of objective good and evil and our obligation to make such judgments.
You know, I think even the JudeoChristian should object to you making such judgements. Wasn't it some famous Jewish guy who said "Judge not, lest ye be judged" ?
Secularism has led to moral confusion, which in turn has led to moral paralysis.
I disagree, but it's too complex to go into here.

If you could not call the Soviet Union an "evil empire" or the Iranian, North Korean and Iraqi regimes an "evil axis," you have rendered the word "evil" useless.
No, you could just disagree with your usage of the term. I don't call the Soviet Union an evil empire, and I just used evil a few moments ago. And it was useful, thanks.

And indeed it is not used in sophisticated secular company -- except in reference to those who do use it (usually religious Christians and Jews).
Again, displaying his righteous ignorance of secular conversation.

Is abortion morally wrong? To the secular world, the answer is "It's between a woman and her physician."
No, I think you'll find that even among atheists that is not a clear cut issue. But then, you'd actually have to talk to some of them to find that out, and clearly that's never going to happen...

There is no clearer expression of moral relativism: Every woman determines whether abortion is moral.
Again, nonsense. Every woman might (and I say might) decide for herself if she is going to have an abortion, but she is still capable of being wracked with guilt because she has decided that it was an immoral thing but that she had no choice under the circumstances. Again, the world is not as simple as you'd like to believe.
On the other hand, to the individual with Judeo-Christian values, it is not between anyone and anyone else. It is between society and God. Even among religious people who differ in their reading of God's will, it is still never merely "between a woman and her physician."

And to those who counter these arguments for God-based morality with the question, "Whose God?" the answer is the God who revealed His moral will in the Old Testament, which Jews and Christians -- and no other people -- regard as divine revelation.

The best-known verse in the Bible is "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Leviticus 19:18). It is a reflection of the secular age in which we live that few people are aware that the verse concludes with the words, "I am God." Though entirely secularized in common parlance, the greatest of the ethical principles comes from God. Otherwise it is just another man-made suggestion, no more compelling than "Cross at the green, not in between."
posted by Manchild at 6:20 PM