That Penn interview was great. I want to take on one of his arguments though. Here's what Penn Jillette said: "Penn Jillette: It’s amazing, and I always bring this up, that religion is for people who kind of at some level don’t like people. And I love people. And I think if you take the 7 billion people on the planet and you round it off, about 7 billion of them are good. To find bad people is really difficult. Not people doing bad things, but really bad people who get up in the morning and say, How can I fuck people up? That’s a really rare thing. Misguided, you know, mistaken, but I just can’t understand how this view of humanity that all we want to do is horrible things to each other and it’s just this belief in something else that stops us. And that that is what you see over and over again through the Bible. There’s reward and punishment but there’s no – I mean, nothing feels better than helping someone out. I mean, there’s nothing better, nothing better in the world than someone whose life was fucked up and you do a little something and now their life isn’t. I mean, you can talk about the joy of sex, hedonistic joys of food, and you can talk about the joy with your children, but man, someone is going through a hard time and you help them out, man you feel good for months."

Really? What if you were the one to discover the Unified Field Theory? The MRI, or even the WWW? You'd rather help someone down on their luck, or be the painter of the Sistine Chapel or Rodin than to concentrate on these other things, if you have the talent? That gives you more value? We do have to order importance. It is essential to morality.
The rest of the interview I LOVED. I have also enjoyed Penn and Teller shows and own all seasons of" Bullshit!"

You are all over the map here. I agree with many of your points, but I want to stick with absolutes. A is A. God is not an answer, God is a question. Religions throughout history have proven to be extremely poor guides for Morality. Faith has been the chain leading people throughout time to slaughter. Consistent, useful code of morality requires the application of Reason every bit as much as physics, chemistry or engineering. Belief in God or having faith in a Deity does not ensure someone will not mass murder.

Please note the preceding comment was Jorellyoung, not KHalling and responding to Flanap who put forth that Morality can only be derived from God.

"Your bottom line poses a very intriguing philosophical argument, and is very thought provoking! Although it only seems applicable if you ignore a wide array of influences on a persons development of thought and belief throughout their lifetime. How many influences are brought to bear on us as we learn and grow that effect our sense of right and wrong - and lead us to ascribe a schema of standards and morals beyond our primal chemistry.

Thinking of godless people as being no more than bags of chemicals driven too and fro 'with every wind of doctrine' is really a disservice to religious people. To suggest that their belief in God is the only thing keeping every religious person from being a potential thief, molester, murderer [insert anything], I find that very belittling to the religious community! That is the ONLY absolute that guides and motivates religious people to develop and live by a code of morals?! I don't think you would! You should give yourself more credit as an apparently religious person - surely you have some restraint and find value in your beliefs that make them worthwhile aside from your belief that they are of divine origin!

http://theinterrobang.com/2012/04/penn-j......

You use the word 'absolute' a lot when talking about the standards of religious origin, but even within religious communities the supposed 'absolutes' of god-defined standards are debated extensively, and the interpretations there-in have resulted in thousands of religions based on the same core texts.

You ended this conversation by giving us a very unsatisfying 'to be continued'! Maybe there is an emotional / spiritual component that is beyond rational explanation that validates the absoluteness of a certain set of religious standards, a component that a non-believer simply will never experience because they lack this experience - (???)

That reminds me of the holistic naturopathic medicine man, after prescribing a remedy they will always be right when reviewing the results. If you experience the desired result, they will say "See! It worked!", if nothing happens, they will say "These things take time - be patient..." if the results are negative they will say "Your body is so unhealthy, it will get worse before it gets better." Like the holistic, they are always operating in a spiritual realm where any one who questions these absolutes will always be wrong.

As for "one is left only to ones self to develop one's morality", isn't a religious person subject to the same influences of society, genetic disposition and exposure as an atheist? Where does the foundation of religious belief begin - is it truly innate, or did it have some help from parents, family, friends, community, society, preachers and reading scriptural texts? Are atheists exempt from having their morals influenced by these sources simply because they don't agree on the source of morality?

Is it possible that people can find and appreciate moral absolutes without a deity, that maybe there is perceived value in adhering to a moral construct - perhaps an atheist might think "Hmm... I can do a lot better in life if I treat people right the first time." ...because they don't believe in an all-forgiving deity? Aren't religious people just people who have been raised with a certain set of ideals and then convinced that they originated some place divine? What if religious standards weren't inspired, but came from a collection of good-principled human beings who simply scribed a book two thousand years ago; do these standards then have any less potential for being valued and good?

Plus look at the evolution of society over the last two thousand years - is there a pattern in the way human beings are developing their morals? Is any one religion or belief system responsible, or is it bigger than that? Are human beings becoming more intelligent, more driven to cooperate and deal with their problems rationally, or less?"

(Jorellyoung)