Where does morality come from? I don’t know. You don’t know anything, it seems like.
I don’t know.
This is a very interesting debate and a case study in presuppositional apologetics/debate.
What this means is that, for example, Erik Dickerson condemns the God of the Bible for committing and allowing immorality yet, when challenged to provide a premise for his condemnation he simply has nothing to offer but further baseless condemnations. This alone discredits about 5 cubit tons of atheist literature.
Now, be on the lookout for a favorite atheist debater’s tactic: peppered through Erik Dickerson’s statement is a very, very powerful lesson: since his statements are so very, very unfounded—by his own admission—he constantly seeks to prop them up by making emotive statements: rape, the Holocaust, murder, you name it. That is to say; a debater will do this when they seek to get the audience on their side by bypassing their reasoning faculties and appealing directly to their emotions. Since emotions are actually felt and ideas are abstract, a debater can get the feelers in the audience on their side merely by pushing their buttons. If you are not sidetracked by this tactic you will see that there is nothing upon which he bases his statements.
Kerrigan Skelly actually notes, “I wonder why Erik keeps give up time, because he really has nothing else to say…”
It is particularly at t=52:58 that Erik Dickerson falls apart when his assertions are challenged and he is forced to admit that there is nothing supporting his claims.
On the issue of morality he ultimately states —when back into a corner by his own statements—that it is all about survival of the fittest. Yet, for example, he referred to that which is moral being based on whatever causes the longevity of society. But this is problematic since we know what was thought by Nazi society to provide for its longevity. Also, why is the longevity of society the standard? Well, because it is all about survival of the fittest. Fine but what if my society can survive as the fittest by exterminating other societies? See the problem?
Based on his baseless moral condemnations and survival of the fittest assertion he is asked about a particularly case in which a society is in dire shortage of women and whether it would be moral for (the majority) men to commit rape in such a case: at t=1:21:33 he affirms that in such a case he does not know if rape would be immoral thus, making rape only relatively immoral and also devastating his arguments about the God of the Bible allowing rape (even though the penalty for rape in the Bible is capital punishment Deuteronomy 22:25-27). The point is that he knows that he can imagine a circumstance in which an immoral act could be moral. Now, if God is allowed the same standards the “problem of evil” is not problematic and shown to be an illogical assertion—see:
Was “the Problem of Evil” Solved Before it was Ever Proposed?
Does God Command You to Beat Your Slaves
Does the Bible and its God Condone Slavery?
Erik Dickerson made various references to supposed atrocities in the Bible. These mount to well-within-the-box-atheist-group-think-talking-points which I have responded to variously in essays such as Positive Atheism – Cliff Walker : Relative Ethics and Absolute Condemnations and within the section on rape and evilbible.com
As a side note: somehow Erik Dickerson concludes that in the Bible God causes 2.5 million deaths. The Bible covers a span of time reaching into the millennia (various millennia) and so it is interesting to think what a lightweight God is when we consider the fact that within the most secular and bloodiest century in human history atheists murdered millions upon millions and millions more people in a couple of years—see Adolf Hitler / Nazism / Communism.
For another atheist vs. Christian debate see Atheist vs. Christian debate – Morality: Natural or Supernatural?