Prove it. State the page or footnote number in that chapter where I already answered the questions you asked in this thread.

Then show you understood those answers by re-asking your questions in a way that reflects your knowledge of what my answers already are.

Indeed, even your new question about deliberate alteration of brains is answered in a whole paragraph (where I discuss AI). You are of course confusing empirical facts with logical possibilities. A mistake you wouldn’t be making had you actually read my chapter. Particularly that paragraph. But also the entire section on “Cave Man Says Science Scary” which is entirely devoted to answering your query.

So cite the page number of that paragraph and paraphrase here what it says.

Then cite the page numbers in the Cave Man section of that chapter that answers you, and paraphrase what that answer is.

Demonstrate you are not ignorant of what I’ve said.

That is not an equivocation. It’s an empirical fact: no human who reasons from true facts concludes anything else is worth doing but what will leave them satisfied with who they are and what they’ve done. Therefore any claim that they should act differently is literally, empirically false.

The answer to “raping a baby” is the fact that it is psychologically impossible, as a matter of empirical facts of human psychology, to maximize one’s self-satisfaction with such an act, apart from adopting false beliefs to rationalize it. But true imperatives cannot follow from false beliefs. Only true beliefs.

And it is not true that this entails “every human more or less needs the same thing.” They do (air, water, food, love, security, etc.), but most things are derivative of core needs, and thus can vary. For instance, “you ought to find meaningful work” is true of all human beings; but in no way entails everyone ought to pursue one and the same job. Everyone differs as to what kind of work will be meaningful and fulfilling and suitable to them. That is itself a universally true fact of human beings. Empirically demonstrated. By science.

You are now revealing you have not read any of my work on this. You don’t even know basic things.

Please read that work before commenting ignorantly further. I fully cover these questions, in technical and peer reviewed detail, in my chapter on moral facts in The End of Christianity. Get that. Read it. And only ask questions from now on that show you know what I’ve already said about these things.

You equivocate between what’s right and what maximizes your own happiness. What if a human mutant whose brain wiring can objectively shown to achieve peak happiness only by raping a baby. Would that be the right thing to do for that person? Your theory only holds water if every human more or less needs the same thing to be happy. If there are significant differences, how do you define the right thing then?

“It is only your OPINION that right and wrong are what’s conductive to human happiness.”

No. It is not an opinion. It’s an empirical fact about people.

No statement of the form “you ought to make yourself miserable” is true, in any relevant sense of “true” (as in, actually compelling anyone to act thus). Whereas all statements of the form “you ought to do what will lead to the greatest available satisfaction with yourself and your life” is true for all human beings (as no human being exists who can disagree with it on the basis of any true belief about themselves and the world). This is an empirical fact of the science of psychology. Not an opinion.

Indeed, as I’ve demonstrated, even Christians agree with this, they simply postpone the end goal to a place that doesn’t exist, the afterlife (see The End of Christianity, pp. 335-38).

Says who? You? It is only your OPINION that right and wrong are what’s conductive to human happiness. There is no objective argument that human happiness is in any way good. Good for who? Right and wrong are subjective value statements. You merely assert as a premise, an axiom, that the right thing to do is maximize human happiness. Sure, once you assume that to be the case, then it’s empirical science all the way down. But your argument lacks any basis for asserting this assumption as correct.

“Except the super scary ones who actually want to execute gay people and apostates and outlaw pork and shellfish consumption.”

Never heard of any of that other than executing gays. Who wants to do all that? Nevertheless, I do look forward to the day pork and all meat is outlawed. Hopefully sooner than latter.

See my comment upthread about evolution. That can’t generate any moral argument here. As I think I noted in the debate: evolution is in no way a moral guide.

The utilitarian argument also makes no sense, since it disregards the total utility function. “More babies in exchange for misery” is by definition a negative utility, not positive. Life has no point, if it is only going to be miserable, and thus does not allow the possibility of satisfying existence. And satisfying existence, in empirical practice, entails reasonable autonomy, which alone entails a negative utility for forced pregnancies. But even just avoiding needless pain and misery is more important than increasing the population, especially now, when any sound utility function entails decreasing the population, not increasing it, as we are suffering under tremendous costs due to overpopulation.

And that’s even if we assumed we didn’t live in an advanced society capable of technologically preventing and even terminating unwanted pregnancies safely and efficiently. So there is no discernible positive utility for rape even if we disregarded every other thing that already negates its utility.

By contrast, see my remarks on this point from The Christian Delusion, quoted deep in my article on Divine Command Theory (search for “As I commented for Loftus” on that page).

Meanwhile, making the best out of disasters can never justify the disasters. It is simply reducing their cost. It is not granting them positive utility. This is fundamental to the Argument from Evil: God doesn’t need to burn people alive with volcanoes to “recycle minerals” (so citing that positive benefit in no way makes burning people alive a positive good) and by the same reasoning we don’t need to rape people to make babies (ditto). Or indeed to produce anything worth having (unless you are a kinkster engaging responsibly in consensual nonconsent play, but that’s not what McDurmon was talking about).

I get that you wanted to get past it since it had nothing to do with the topic of the debate. But I’d like to hear some more detailed reasoning behind why McDurmon’s argument there is faulty.

That’s the fallacy of ignoring counterfactual outcomes. If Christianity didn’t exist (nor anything like it), I’d have developed my career differently and be employed in another capacity by now. Such as philosopher, novelist, journalist, historian, physicist, skeptical investigator, or critical thinking educator, etc., writing on what urgent and fascinating matters remain, of which there’d be plenty.