Intelligence is the reason we have regard for human beings, and it is neither unknown, nor empirically unverifiable.

It is not because it is commanded by any sort of god. You claim that morality is dependent on the existence of a god. Very well. So if there were no god, you would feel free to murder innocents? Surely not. Hence, you acknowledge the existence of morals independent of the existence of any god.

However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn’t do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it’s rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It’s usually a bad move.

Note words like “shouldn’t” and “bad”. They are value judgments. They prescribe ‘oughts’. They are not part of the ‘rules’ of chess. From where do they come?

From the combination of two things – first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player’s desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.

We have physical laws, and we have human desires. “Oughts” – strategic rules – morals – arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila – cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food. That’s not ‘smuggling’ at all.

Click on my name above for an expansion of this idea. Or see here.

You are cherry picking. The Torah permitted slavery. when the religious finally got around to arguing against they used humanist arguments in defiance of their ‘sacred’ texts whether they knew it or not.

On the contrary, Biblical literalists tended to point out that the Bible condoned slavery – while the people you claim as evangelicals said that it was inconsistent with loving your neighbor as yourself. And you’ll also notice that the Constitution of the Confederacy mentioned God, unlike one other prominent Constitution. Jerry Falwell, who spurred fundamentalists to become politically active, started out his political career by opposing integration and promoting racism – and for not allowing blacks to attend his church until, astonishingly, 1968. Neither moral nor a majority, as they said.

I give Christians credit for the good that they have done. Brown and Garrison are great men. But you shouldn’t only look at what you find praiseworthy. Nor fail to acknowledge that even Brown and Garrison weren’t exactly modern-day evangelicals.

You forgot to mention how Christian the suffragettes were, and how they used Christian arguments..

I did, and guess what, religion, particularly Protestant Evangelicalism played an enormous role in the abolitionist movement both in Europe and in the United States. The most effective civil rights campaign in our history was founded by the _Reverend_ Martin Luther King, who often used religious arguments to support his cause (_you_ might Google “Letter from Birmingham Jail”). We would disagree about gay rights because we would disagree about the nature of “gayness” and it’s morality, so frankly I don’t see the “gay rights” movement as progress, nonetheless, greater tolerance toward and compassion for those with homosexual tendencies (though not necessarily homosexual behavior) is now a part of the Catholic Catechism, and the Episcopal Church now ordains gay ministers and bishops. So yes Yesspam, the moral progress you cite, to the degree that it is progress has been a progressive fulfillment of the morality inherent in Christianity, and to the degree that it has been aided by non-believers, they have been acting according to Christian morality whether they acknowledge it or not.

Very much so, for they spend little time defending their own religion, and mostly condemning “offenses” to other religion. See the Salman Rushdie controversy.

I can’t understand how people can fail to see that Rabbi Sacks, in criticizing Dawkins, was taking a shot at Christianity itself:

. . . . you read the Bible in a Christian way. Christianity has an adversarial way of reading what it calls the Old Testament – it has to because it says ‘we’ve gone one better, we have a New Testament’.

Rabbi Sacks didn’t say that some Christians have an adversarial way of reading the “Old Testament.” He said Christianity has an adversarial way of reading the “Old Testament.” He says Christianity has to read the “Old Testament” that way. And it seems to me the conclusion is unavoidable that he considers the Christian way of reading the “Old Testament” to be “anti-Semitic.”

In any other context than criticizing Richard Dawkins, it seem to me Christians would take offense at what Rabbi Sacks is saying. But apparently the contempt of theists for Dawkins is so great that Christian theists are willing to overlook the charge by a Jewish theist that their reading the “Old Testament” is “anti-Semitic” because they share a common enemy.

How in the world someone ought to be Archbishop of Canterbury when he thinks the Christian reading of Hebrew Scripture is anti-Semitic is way beyond me.

Of course, there is a great deal of truth to what Rabbi Sacks says about the Christian approach to Hebrew Scripture, but I don’t think many Christians are ready to acknowledge that.

difficult parts of their scripture?

In your opinion what percentage would that represent? Do you believe in Torah from Moses? Do you accept the overwhelming evidence of multiple authorship and redaction of the written Torah?