Don Grundmann, thank you for fleeing from my challenge to debate Christianity -- even as you sputter about how nobody will debate you. If you ever stop running away, just type "arguments against Christianity" into any search engine -- my arguments will be the first result.
Thank you for also not daring to answer my point that humanists don't say "because I said so", but instead say that an argument for an ethical proposition should not be considered valid by you if you cannot see the force of the argument by the light of your own reason.
It's laughable to claim that evolutionists never debate creationists. http://pandasthumb.org/links.html#kw-Answering-Creationists lists over 20 extensive sites devoted to debunking the claims of creationism. Since you're Vice-Chair of the California AIP and I'm on the LPCA ExCom, I'll gladly make an exception to my general rule and debate evolution with you, just for the fun of watching you flee from that debate too.
It's ridiculous for you to claim you "can refute the entire site [TalkOrigins.org] quite easily", when you can't even correctly identify the thesis you're supposed to be arguing against. Evolution does not claim that "the entire human body was constructed by total chance". Evolution is accumulated change in a lineage of entities through inheritance of new variation. No individual or species is "constructed by total chance"; read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convergent_evolution to correct your ignorance on this topic.
Your quote about Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is a hilarious example of leading with your chin. If you hadn't fled from my arguments against Christianity, you'd have seen this retort coming: "Your god Yahweh promotes or demands extravagant worship, dietary taboos, animal sacrifice, repressive sexual codes, human mutilation, monarchy, subjugation of women, slavery, human sacrifice [Lev 27:29, Jud 11:30-39, cf. Heb 11:17, Jam 2:21], and mass murder even of infants [Gen 6:7, 7:21, Ex 11:5, 12:29, 1 Sam 15:3, cf. Heb 11:7,28]." Unlike your god Yahweh, the theory of evolution has never commanded any person to commit mass murder.
Your suggestion that morality can only come from god(s) is philosophically illiterate. Please read http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/natural-law-ethics/ to correct your ignorance.
Your claim that science involves religious belief is a common mistake among those untutored in philosophy. Science does indeed involve assumptions about metaphysics and epistemology, but it makes no assumptions about the the third branch of philosophy: axiology, the study of values i.e. normative propositions. Metaphysics and epistemology are entirely non-normative -- they by definition make absolutely no assertions about what is right or wrong, good or bad, virtuous or vicious. Just because all of your ethics come from a bearded man in the sky, that doesn't mean that such a person is the only possible source of ethics. Indeed, where do you think your sky-man got his ethics?
Imagine your god(s) "saw how great man's wickedness on earth had become" [Gen 6:5] and decided to be rid of us. But instead of drowning us all in a Flood, imagine that your god(s) simply abandoned us to the uncaring universe. Imagine that your god(s) decided to leave us alone and unmolested, the way all the wicked atheists thought we were anyway. Imagine too that your god(s) had firmly decided and announced that the few not-quite-so-wicked people like you had zero hope of salvation, and that your souls would be painlessly uncreated upon your natural bodily death. What would you do? What would be your goals and values if you lost your bearded parent in the sky? Would you steal, rape, and murder? Why or why not?
I've got plenty more questions where these came from: http://humanknowledge.net/Philosophy/Metaphysics/Theology/TheistQuestions.htm
Game on, Don.
