Actually, it proves that absolutely no particular system of belief is necessary for ethics, as you may as well put that challenge to any odd system of belief. None can answer it.

The challenge is largely anti religious not because religion specifically cannot answer it (thus failing to prove its logical necessity for ethics), but because that claim has mostly been made on behalf of religions. Most secular ethics work fine without.

Any religious person who understands and accepts that atheists can be just as ethical as religious people need not worry about the challenge.

They just need to worry about the second part…

speaking as someone currently in a course on ethics, I have to say that most ethicists would agree that worshiping God is not a moral good per se. I mean, technically it can be included in a deontologic definition of morality, but pure deontologic ethics isn’t that popular for the simple reason that it doesn’t work in a lot of real-world situations. Neither does pure utilitarianism, either, of course…

Gah. It’s just past midnight and I’m trying to answer one of the Great Questions of philosophy in less than 200 words. Not going to happen. But it’s true that I can’t see any basis, other than the Divine Command theory (which has to be dismissed on the basis that there is no way to know whether a particular command really is from God), for claiming that worshiping God is morally right. So I don’t think that’s the answer to Hitchens’ question.

Oh, and as to the square circle… by making use of a curved space, I can create a shape which would be a circle in uncurved space but appears to be a square. There are probably other answers, but that’s the most mathematically viable one I can think of this close to bedtime.

Let’s change the subject to see if it becomes clearer. Someone claims that their race is more intelligent than another. Suppose I asked, “name me one feat of intelligence that your race can do that mine cannot.” Is not that question valid? If they’re race truly was smarter, there would be a correct answer like “we can calculate sums 10x quicker than any of you from age 5.” But if they are wrong, there would be no answer.

Some believers claim they are more than unbelievers. So we ask the question, what can you do that is moral than we can’t do? Now I agree there is no answer. That’s the point. If the claim was believers were more intelligent, the same question would be asked to prove that claim.

Daniel, I appreciate your tone and reasonableness, as well. Thanks! I just want to make a quick note about this comment, though, because it looks like a few other people had this objection, and I think this is an important point.

The question about the unicorn has no true answer because there are no unicorns, but it is not *invalid* because an answer is *logically possible* even if unicorns don’t exist. The answer could be white, or pink, or whatever. But if a question logically defeats itself, it is not valid because an answer is *logically* impossible. For example, what if I asked you to draw me a square circle?

The unicorn question is unanswerable, but not in the same way as the circle question. The first can’t be answered truly because there is no answer, but there *are* logically possible answers. The second can’t be answered because of logical impossibilities, rendering it invalid. Because of this, the unicorn question is not “as unanswerable” as the other question. Asking what the unicorn’s color smells like would be “as unanswerable,” so to use that in a debate to prove unicorns don’t exist would be just as invalid.

Can you see the difference?

However, I also thought Dan L. (#39) made an excellent point that just because a question does not or cannot be answered does not mean it’s not a valid question. Asking what color a unicorn is has no answer to the person using it to show the absurdity of believing in unicorns, and it’s just as unanswerable, even though some might try (”from research we’ve done asking various witnesses, it seems most are grey to a slight blue color…”).

Back to the question. It doesn’t have any implications on the existence of God. Completely agreed. But I think it’s a good question to show that unbelievers can be just as “good” as believers.

Then again, maybe you’re right and it’s all bunk. Still I would argue Hitchens’s point behind the question is right. I do think that the meaning behind it is important.

Thanks for your thoughtful comments, Ben. I hope you’ll stick around.

That said, it’s a bit distressing to see everyone here (you obviously excepted) bending over backwards to defend what is obviously a question-begging exercise from Hitchens. I mean, why is everyone so eager to die on this hill? Admitting that it’s a meaningless challenge doesn’t have ANY implications for the existence of God. At all.

I’m withholding my comments on the last paragraph of your second-to-last post because it seems we’re in agreement now. But if I’m mistaken, please let me know. Thanks again for the discussion!

Drew: Sorry about the “thanks for playing” comment. Unproductive and snide, I apologize unreservedly.

Amy:

I studied mathematics and have a tendency to boil everything down to a purely logical matter; you needn’t have suggested it. The fact that I’ve studied mathematical logic (which encompasses Aristotelian logic) is what leads me to conclude that questions without answers can indeed be valid. If it can’t be answered, one is still left with your approach, i.e. trying to explain why it can’t be answered.

Your assumption that my response was based on partiality concerning the content of the argument was unwarranted. I actually kinda know what I’m talking about.

“The question is answerable; it just has no correct answers.”

That was her point to begin with; congratulations you agree!

That wasn’t her point. Here is her point:

“I solved the challenge not by giving an answer, but by pointing out that it is logically impossible to answer the question to the satisfaction of the atheist, therefore the question is invalid.”

A question isn’t invalidated by having no answer. “What color was the first unicorn?” is a perfectly valid question with no answer. How about “Is ‘This sentence is false’ true or false?” It’s a valid (and very important) question with no answer. That is my point. And that is the opposite of Amy’s point. Thanks for playing.

“Ah, 2 can play at this game. Dismissal based on psychological assertions. Okay, atheists reject Christianity because they have daddy issues, or is that “sky daddy” issues.”

It’s a psychological assertion that I back up with the rest of my post — and you seemed to agree with the rest of my post. Moral behavior is typical of human beings in a society because otherwise there wouldn’t be a society. Therefor religion is not the source of moral behavior. I guess you could interpret it as something other than a “post hoc rationalization” as I characterized it, but ultimately all I’m saying is it’s epiphenomenal, not causative.

Kidding… sorry about the slip-up.

And I’m sure if you think about it for a minute, you’ll see also why your response to my inverted Hitchens challenge falls flat. The answer, “A believer could kill people because they think God told them to” speaks to the motivation of the believer–not any actual immoral act that only a believer could do. If we admit your answer, then of course we would need to admit, in response to Hitchens’s challenge, any religiously-motivated moral actions. Get it?

In other words, if your response is valid (let’s assume it is), then a response to Hitchens along the lines of, “A believer could build a hospital because he thinks God told him to” would also be valid. An unbeliever can’t build a hospital because God told him to. What’s good for the goose here is good for the gander, yes?

“Tell me something atheists consider moral that theists consider moral.”

And I’m reasonably sure you didn’t mean to ask that–there are far too many answers.

The original question is: “Name one moral action performed by a believer that could not have been done by a nonbeliever.”

Your answer, in essence “Worship the One, True, God” is a non-sequitur because in order for your answer to be logically valid, both parties have to assume that a god exists, which atheists categorically deny. Thus your answer is invalid.

From an atheist standpoint, worshipping a non-existent entity is either utterly amoral, that is, it has no weight nor bearing in terms of whether it’s moral or not, or otherwise, it’s a waste of time, which could be held to be immoral.

(In its influence, worship can certainly be immoral, as the people of Jonestown and Bagdhad would probably agree. And that’s without even getting into whether worshipping the wrong god is simply useless or actively immoral)

There is, of course, a logical answer: “none.”

The point of the question is to argue that ideas of moral and immoral have nothing to do with any gods, but that some ideas of what constitutes moral action can in fact be agreed upon by people on opposite sides of the god idea.

But I submit that this is not necessarily correct.

Consider the proposition that immoral action is sin, and that “Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily.” A concept I’ve stolen from Heinlein.

I’m reasonably sure that adults could agree on such a definition.

Alas, the problem arises when we start looking at the specifics.

How do we define “harm”? Is there such a thing as “moral hazard”? Is it harmful to educate people’s children to the truth their parents cannot abide?

How to circumscribe “unnecessary” harm such that freedom of action is not unreasonably foreshortened? Would the Iraq war constitute an immoral act? How about the Second World War? What about the death penalty?

Etc, etc.

In any case, “worship” is not the answer.

I actually think there might be an answer to your inverted challenge: a believer could kill people because they think God told them to. There are believers who think God told them to kill someone, and they obey. Maybe they’re just mentally unbalanced — or maybe they really are hearing God, like perhaps you think Moses or Joshua or David did when God told them to go out and kill armies.

But an unbeliever couldn’t kill someone because God told them to, because they don’t believe in God. If they heard voices they’d get medical treatment, not attribute it to a deity.

I’m not sure if I agree with your final point or not. I think we have to use agreed terms of morality, and that’s what we’re doing. You know what Hitchens means by morality, and I think you’d agree with it in general — nobody goes to jail (anymore) for not worshiping God. We’re talking secular morality.