Thought Experiment

[Whatsisface]

Read the November 2007 issue of Natural History magazine. Dr. Donald Goldsmith has a short article stating that fact.

See the BBC Horizon documentary in which top physicists were discussing what might have occurred before the big bang, and why it might not be an absolute beginning.

 

[5wize]

No, orthodox Islam allows you to beat your wife, does not believe that women are equal to men, and converts people by force.
And in fact it is ok to kill unbelievers. Christianity teaches none of these things.

Many Christian cults adhered to and practiced all of those things and backed them scripturally. It would be trivial to show this both historically and contemporarily.

Hinduism's problem is pantheism, ie everything is god. So that means Hitler was god, and therefore he did nothing wrong. In fact that may be why the evidence points to Hitler being a pantheist.

That is upheld in the Christian view that all events glorify God.

 

[5wize]

No, God loves us and wanted us to be able to survive in a physical world, without eyes and ears we would have gone extinct.

God banished man at the fall and cursed them to hard toil and childbirth. Your concept of God's love providing us the means to survive contains too many biblical headwinds to be an accurate view of our relationship to the God of Genesis.

No, this was rabbinic hyperbole (first century jewish rabbis used exaggeration to make a point). Jesus was explaining the extreme seriousness of sin, if anything leads you astray, you should try to avoid it as much as possible. But He did not mean to literally remove your eye. For one thing, even blind people sin, so it would do no good. And second, the Jewish Torah plainly teaches that self mutilation is frowned upon by God.

No it wasn't. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was law, not hyperbole.

No, according to logic the origin of the universe cannot be natural.

There is no logic available to you that can deduce this.

 

[stiggy wiggy]

There is no logic available to you that can deduce this.

Of course there is. Watch:

"No, according to logic the origin of the universe cannot be natural."

For nature to originate itself, it would have to have existed prior to its origin which is absurdly illogical. That is easily deduced.

 

[El Cid]

Also, the majority of cosmologists don't think God responsible.

True.

 

[El Cid]

You are arguing that we can deduce the identity of the creator the same way we generally deduce the identity of an artist: by examining their creations. But the only way we deduce "this piece is by Chopin, not Liszt or Mendelssohn," if there's no external evidence about the composer, is by comparing that piece to others which we know to have been made by Chopin, and to pieces or passages we know to have been made by Liszt or Mendelssohn, and saying "this piece has many critical points of commonality with these other pieces which we know were made by Chopin, and many critical points of difference with those composed by Liszt and Mendelssohn." Obviously we can do nothing of the sort for universes; we don't have a bunch of universes known to have been made by YHVH and another bunch made by Vishnu from which we can deduce "ours is a YHVH-type universe, not a Vishnu-type universe." So the principles aren't at all similar.

Yes they are similar at the most fundamental level, they are both artistic creations.

You aren't disputing a single thing I said about when it is possible to deduce who composed or created something, and when it is not possible, and why. If you just refuse to address responses to your claims, it becomes pointless to respond to your claims.

I agree that we dont have as much information about the universe than if we had multiple examples of other universes, but we do know that the universe is an effect and we can deduce what probably caused that effect. When the first black hole was discovered we had no other examples of black holes to compare to, but we were able to deduce what caused the black hole. So it is with the universe.

El Cid said:
I think most music experts would strongly disagree with you. If the music is dark and moody, I think that they would say that reflects the personality of the composer. Or light and airy, the composer may be an optimist and etc.

I am quite confident that zero music experts would agree with what you just said, because it is demonstrably false. Chopin wrote music that was dark and moody, and music that was light and airy, sometimes within the same composition, and so did virtually every composer we know.

I was just using a simplistic example, I am sure that a real music expert could probably study much more subtle characteristics of the music to determine the personality of the composer.

El Cid said:
Otherwise they are irrelevant. Generally a god that creates a universe would be relevant to His creation. If he isnt, then there is not much point in believing in him.

Then you aren't deducing that the creator of the universe was the Christian god, you are deducing that the creator was either the Christian god or some other being who has not founded a religion, and you feel it would be safe to ignore such a being. And that's assuming that your deductive argument is a good one.

If a creator doesnt care to interact with its creation, then it is irrelevant. Wouldnt you agree? Theoretically then it cares nothing about its creation or it doesnt exist.

 

[Komodo]

I agree that we dont have as much information about the universe than if we had multiple examples of other universes, but we do know that the universe is an effect and we can deduce what probably caused that effect. When the first black hole was discovered we had no other examples of black holes to compare to, but we were able to deduce what caused the black hole. So it is with the universe.

You were not just claiming "it is sometimes possible to deduce the cause of an effect"; you were claiming "we can reliably deduce the identity of the creator of the universe based on the qualities of his creation, the same way we can reliably deduce the identity of the creator of a musical piece based on the qualities of that piece, using a sample of one." But you can't deduce the identity, or even the general personality, of the creator of a musical piece, based on a sample of one composition.

I was just using a simplistic example, I am sure that a real music expert could probably study much more subtle characteristics of the music to determine the personality of the composer.

Nobody does this sort of thing, at least not for the last century and a half or so. Musicologists have almost entirely given up on trying to link particular pieces to the mood of the composer at the time of their creation, and for good reason. Mozart composed The Magic Flute and the Requiem at almost the same time. Give a listen to both, and tell me "the personality of the composer." Or listen to the 20th and 21st piano concerti, composed within a week or so of each other.

If a creator doesnt care to interact with its creation, then it is irrelevant. Wouldn't you agree?

It would be mostly irrelevant to my life, but it wouldn't be irrelevant to the question "what is the source of the universe?"

Theoretically then it cares nothing about its creation or it doesnt exist.

First, it is possible that God exists and interacts with & cares about his creation, but has not founded a religion. Maybe she has no intention of doing so, because that just doesn't fit in with her plans; maybe she's just taking her time getting around to it. (There was a long period of human history before YHVH supposedly founded the Jewish religion, let alone the Christian one, after all.)

But even if those are the alternatives, "I have proven that either Christian god created the universe, or that some god who is indifferent to us did" does not give me a good reason to think that the former is more likely to be true than the latter. And of course this is -- again -- just assuming for the sake of argument that you have offered a good reason to believe that it is either the Christian god or some indifferent deity, which I don't actually think is the case.

 

[El Cid]

How are they forced?

Because "he stretches out the heavens like a tent" does not suggest continual expansion. Tents don't keep expanding. Again, there were no Christian astronomers who interpreted these verses to imply that the universe was expanding until it became the scientific consensus that this was the case. And creationists even now feel comfortable denying that the universe is expanding, despite those verses.

No, the hebrew term used DOES suggest continual expansion. Yes, because tents dont keep expanding, that shows the writer is referring to the universe.

El Cid said:
The hebrew word used for stretching the heavens means an ongoing stretching, just as the BB teaches.

I don't know enough Hebrew to comment.

See above.

El Cid said:
Also, it is the only religious book that teaches that the universe came from nothing detectable, just as the BB has found. And there are other examples.

I don't know what you mean by "came from nothing detectable." The description of creation in Genesis is brief and poetic and has been subject to dozens of different readings.

Hebrews 11:3 provides more information.

El Cid said:
There is linguistic evidence that all 66 books are consistent with each other and therefore a unified whole.

How can linguistics establish that any two texts -- let alone 66 texts -- are in substantive agreement on anything, let alone everything?

Careful analysis can show common threads and a unified message running throughout and no contradictions.

El Cid said:
And that is how both the jews and Christians have always believed.

Not so. At different times there were different subsets of Judaism which did not accept all of the current Hebrew Bible as inspired and authoritative (and of course they never accepted the Christian Bible). Even if they had, "devout believers say that all the books they revere as Scripture are a unified whole" is not good evidence that they are in fact a unified whole.

What I should have said that is how both the majority of Christians and Jews have always believed.

El Cid said:
Komodo said:

Your argument is, basically, "We can know that God exists through logical deduction, and I know he is good through personal experience (as do other Christians)." But why should I accept what you supposedly know through personal experience? I haven't had any such experience. My experience is that God, if he exists, is entirely silent.

Well given your hatred of how you think He handles unbelievers in the afterlife, I would say you probably dont want a relationship with Him. So He has given you your wish.

"If your subjective experience matches my own, that's confirmation; if it does not, that shows you're doing it wrong" is not convincing reasoning. Besides, do you really believe that God only enters relationships with those who already want one with him?

He only enters into relationships with those who are open to a relationship with Him.

El Cid said:
A better analogy is that you believe the moon is not made of cheese, but the only way you know that is the experiences of the astronauts on the moon and they came back and said that it is made of rock and moon dust.

Firstly, no, that's not at all the only way we can know the moon is not made of cheese. More broadly, if the only way I can know something to be true is by the testimony of somebody else, then obviously I am going to expect that witness to meet a very high standard of reliability. We have very good reasons for thinking that astronauts really did go to the moon and encountered a rocky landscape. I don't see any good reason for thinking that everybody who says they've talked with God has indeed talked with God. (Or for thinking that "not everybody who says that is telling the truth, but Christians are.")

It goes beyond that, I was just referring to the experiential evidence, there is also scientific, philosophical and historical evidence for God.

El Cid said:
The foundational principle is objective and is like a chair you are getting ready to sit on, but you are not certain that it will hold you but it appears it will hold your weight, so you decide to have faith and sit on it and it does hold your weight. So your belief is objectively confirmed by the experience of the chair holding you.

I don't know which "foundational principle" you're referring to here, and in what sense it is objective

The objective evidence for the existence of God.

 

[Komodo]

No, the hebrew term used DOES suggest continual expansion. Yes, because tents dont keep expanding, that shows the writer is referring to the universe.

“The universe keeps expanding; tents do not keep expanding; therefore, when the writer says ‘He stretches it like a tent,’ he is referring to the universe.”

Makes no sense.

(I’ll get to the rest some other time.)

 

[El Cid]

So it is with God your experience with Him confirms objectively your subjective experience.

No, because you explicitly agreed that "people can feel they are communicating with God, and that God is good, for psychological reasons which have little or nothing to do with objective reality." That being the case, your subjective experience that you are communicating with a good god can never demonstrate itself to be objectively real.

I dont remember saying that they have little or nothing to do with objective reality. If I did, I was wrong. Our subjective experience is based on objective events, just as it is with experiences with other persons.

(It is not equally true that people can feel they are sitting in a chair for reasons which have little or nothing to do with objective reality. If it were equally true, then sitting in the chair would not objectively confirm that the chair was solid and weight-bearing.)

This example had to do with the existence of God, not our experience with God. This had to do with our trust in the objective evidence for His existence.

El Cid said:
Because all humans want to live according to what they believe is real, ie reality.

And of course you don't need to be a theist to live according to what you believe is real.

Correct.

El Cid said:
If morality and value is subjective then that means people will believe they are not real. This leads to the slippery slope of moral relativism and devaluing of human life which leads to moral anarchy, which then leads to government intervention and tyranny.

This is an argument from consequences, which is in itself suspect.

One of the main purposes of morality is to produce good consequences, such as justice and prevention of suffering. Do you deny this?

Moreover, as I said in our exchange about Stalinism, I don't at all believe that the consequences proceed as you claim.

Nevertheless this has happened many times in different societies down thru history.

And I don't see how your definition of "objective basis for morality" can provide any confidence that morality is "real" in the sense that most people would want. Again, "people are objectively valuable because they share the image of God" is not at all self-evident.

That value exists outside of human thinking and desire so therefore it objectively exists.

Certainly it's no more self-evident than "people are objectively valuable because they possess unique capacities for thinking and feeling."

Bats possess unique capacities as well, such as sonar navigation. On what objective basis are those capacities less valuable than the capacities you state humans possess?

El Cid said:
Where do the oughts come from?

I don't think they "come from" previous causes, the way that mountains or molecules come from previous causes. I think they're an irreducible aspect of things. Whether or not I can make a case for this which convinces you, it is still the case that in saying this I am not being inconsistent with atheism, and therefore your claim that "if atheism is true, there are no oughts" is false.

How would you convince a fellow atheist that he ought not to rape a woman in a coma as long as no one finds out?

El Cid said:
See my posts to Eightcrackers and Whatsisface about how the BB theory and the law of sufficient cause strongly point to Gods existence.

I don't think you've made a good case that these strongly point to God's existence, and -- more to the point -- your claim was not just that God exists, but that "the Christian god" exists and is the source of all good, and I've given my objections to that claim and to your reasons for it.

I have only just begun to provide the evidence that the Creator is the Christian God.

El Cid said:
Do you have any evidence that such ideas and forms exist?

Plato offered arguments that they must exist and that they are the source of the Good, the True and the Beautiful. I don't find those arguments convincing, but then I don't find your arguments that the Christian God must exist and must be the source of those things convincing either. My point was that you are not correct to claim that God is the only possible source for morality (even assuming that morality is something which requires a "source").

Why do you believe in something for which you dont find the evidence convincing? There is much more evidence for the existence of the Christian God than there is for Platonic ideas and forms. And His existence and moral character provides an objective moral standard upon which His written moral laws are based. There is no evidence Platonic ideas and forms objectively exist.

 

[Komodo]

I dont remember saying that they have little or nothing to do with objective reality.

In post #967 (by the way, post numbers seem inconsistent depending on how you're looking at them) you responded to my quote, "People can feel they are communicating with God, and that God is good, for psychological reasons which have little or nothing to do with objective reality" by saying "True."

If I did, I was wrong. Our subjective experience is based on objective events, just as it is with experiences with other persons.

The existence of wishful thinking, motivated reasoning, confabulations and outright hallucinations is too well known to need arguing for.

[. . .] One of the main purposes of morality is to produce good consequences, such as justice and prevention of suffering. Do you deny this?

Not at all. But an "argument from consequences" means, more specifically, an argument in the form "you should believe that this is true, because if you don't, the consequences would be bad." For example: "as an American you should believe that Washington and Jefferson were great and moral men, because if you don't, it will diminish your attachment to your country." An argument from consequences is intrinsically problematic because it asks you to believe something, not because it is true, but for some other reason. You were offering an argument that we should believe morality is objective, not because you could offer a good (objective?) reason for considering it true, but because disbelieving it had bad social consequences.

Nevertheless this [nations declining into anarchy and then tyranny because relativistic morality was taught] has happened many times in different societies down thru history.

Citation needed. I don't know of a single case in which this happened as you describe.

That value exists outside of human thinking and desire so therefore it objectively exists. . . . Bats possess unique capacities as well, such as sonar navigation. On what objective basis are those capacities less valuable than the capacities you state humans possess?

Again, I'll defer responding until you've caught up with my earlier comments about what it means to call something "objective."

How would you convince a fellow atheist that he ought not to rape a woman in a coma as long as no one finds out?

First, this has nothing to do with the quote you are supposedly responding to, which was "I don't think [oughts] 'come from' previous causes, the way that mountains or molecules come from previous causes. I think they're an irreducible aspect of things. Whether or not I can make a case for this which convinces you, it is still the case that in saying this I am not being inconsistent with atheism, and therefore your claim that 'if atheism is true, there are no oughts' is false."

So, first, you are essentially abandoning your claim that "if atheism is true, there are no oughts."

Second, "how would you convince a psychopath, who felt no empathy or moral obligations to others, that he shouldn't rape others?" is an entirely pointless question with no bearing on the issue of "objective morality." The whole point of objective morality is that some things are wrong even if you can't convince a majority (let alone a unanimous one) that they're wrong.

It's also a pointless question because the answer to it basically is, "you can't, duh, and theists can't do it either." You can only convince somebody that some particular action is wrong if they already agree with you that there is such a thing as a wrong action. An atheist may be able to convince other atheists not to do something if those other atheists already believe in, say, the golden rule, and the atheist can present a convincing case that the golden rule implies they should not do that thing. And a theist may be able to convince other theists not to do something if those theists already believe in the golden rule, but he would also not be able to convince other theists not to rape if they believed that God smiled upon rape as retaliation against His enemies.

[. . .] Why do you believe in something for which you dont find the evidence convincing?

I don't. I didn't say that I believed in the Platonic Forms, I said that it would be possible for an atheist to believe in it, and thus to have basis for morality which was "outside of human thought." I'm pretty sure there actually are atheist Platonists.

There is much more evidence for the existence of the Christian God than there is for Platonic ideas and forms.

Not that I can tell.

And His existence and moral character provides an objective moral standard upon which His written moral laws are based.

That is, if God exists, and if his moral character could be objectively determined to be perfect (which again seems quite impossible, even hypothetically), and if it could be determined that he had written certain moral laws, it would follow that those moral laws were objectively true. I'm happy to stipulate to that.

 

[El Cid]

If a Creator has the power to create such a being as a human it is rational to assume that He can "program" them to use logic to think. How He did it, no one knows.

He hasn't done a very good job then, all too many don't think logically and to truly master the art takes time and education. Us humans are all to prone to be biased in our thinking, particularly when something is in our own self interest.

Well because we are free will beings and also because we are emotional beings as well, our reasoning can easily go off track.

El Cid said:
God values humans out of His love for us and that we are created in His image. That value exists outside of human thoughts and desires. Therefore, it exists objectively.

But that value exists within God's thoughts and desires therefore it exists subjectively.

If something exists outside human thoughts and desires then it is exists objectively from the perspective of humans.

El Cid said:
Probably a better way to say that it has value is that it contains beauty, and beauty has been shown to exist objectively, see my post to Eightcrackers where I show that beauty has been demonstrated to exist mathmatically and therefore objectively.

How do you know that the mathematics aren't just measures of our subjective experience of beauty?

Because if it was just subjective, it could not be explained by mathmatics.

 

[Whatsisface]

Well because we are free will beings and also because we are emotional beings as well, our reasoning can easily go off track.

Here's what you said … "If a Creator has the power to create such a being as a human it is rational to assume that He can "program" them to use logic to think".

Then how can you judge we have been programmed to think logically?

If something exists outside human thoughts and desires then it is exists objectively from the perspective of humans.

Not really. How does an alien's thoughts and desires achieve objectivity just because they are outside a humans?

Because if it was just subjective, it could not be explained by mathmatics.

But that the rule of thirds is pleasing isn't explained by mathematics, it's just described by mathematics.

 

[El Cid]

Again, this exchange started with your claim that if naturalism is true, our thoughts can't be trusted, because physical activity (like the firing of neurons) can't be the right kind of substance to cause logical thinking. And you end up saying that minds are the right kind of substance: if you have a mind (at least, a mind with the capacities of a human's mind) you can think logically.

But this does nothing at all to support your claim, because naturalistic philosophers also say that the reason humans can think logically is because of the capacities of the human mind. They say we get that capacity from the physical activities of the brain, but that is irrelevant when it comes to your argument. Again, if your argument starts "IF naturalism is true," then you have to assume naturalism is true. And:

If naturalism is true, then physical activities of the brain give us certain mental capacities.
If we have those mental capacities, we can reason logically. (This is what you are saying, is it not, when you say "the mind uses logic to come to certain conclusions"?)
Therefore, if naturalism is true, we can reason logically.

Do you dispute either premise? Do you dispute the validity of the logic? If not, you have to accept the conclusion.

Look at it this way: if you are in New York, you can get a train to Allentown. It doesn't matter whether you live in New York, you flew to New York, or you swam to New York: once you are in New York, you can get to Allentown. If somebody says he swam to New York from London, you have good reason to doubt that claim. But you cannot doubt the claim that if he is in New York, he can get to Allentown.

What you are doing, in effect, is insisting that if somebody swam to New York, he can't get to Allentown, because you can't swim from New York to Allentown.

(Responses to other points in separate messages.)

I dont deny that naturalistic philosophers BELIEVE that naturalism can produce minds that think logically. But the evidence says otherwise. And I provided that evidence earlier in this thread. Using your analogy, the problem with naturalism is that it is a train without a track. So you cant get to Allentown.

 

[Komodo]

The statement you are replying to:

If your argument starts "IF naturalism is true," then you have to assume naturalism is true. And:

If naturalism is true, then physical activities of the brain give us certain mental capacities.
If we have those mental capacities, we can reason logically. (This is what you are saying, is it not, when you say "the mind uses logic to come to certain conclusions"?)
Therefore, if naturalism is true, we can reason logically.

Do you dispute either premise? Do you dispute the validity of the logic? If not, you have to accept the conclusion.

I dont deny that naturalistic philosophers BELIEVE that naturalism can produce minds that think logically. But the evidence says otherwise. And I provided that evidence earlier in this thread. Using your analogy, the problem with naturalism is that it is a train without a track. So you cant get to Allentown.

So, again, you don't dispute either premise, and you don't dispute the validity of the logic, but you still deny the conclusion. That isn't how reasoning works.

Even if you were right that "evidence says physical activities can't give us mental capacities" -- and I've seen nothing convincing to that effect -- that still would not undermine the conclusion that if naturalism is true, we can reason logically. It would only undermine the claim that naturalism was true. I must have made the point at least a half-dozen times by now that these are two different claims, and yet here you are for the sixth or seventh time, responding to a criticism of one claim by defending the other claim.

Plainly, you are either unable or unwilling to defend the claim that "if naturalism is true, we cannot reason logically." At this point I consider the matter closed.

 

[El Cid]

God values humans out of His love for us and that we are created in His image. That value exists outside of human thoughts and desires. Therefore, it exists objectively.

So humans have objective value if, and only if, they are valued by somebody who is not himself human? This seems an entirely arbitrary rule.

First, it doesn't bring us to "human value is an objective fact," it only brings us to "from the subjective perspective of a non-human, humans have value." A definition which would seem much more in line with the typical use of "objective" would be "humans have objective value if that value exists whether or not anybody believes that value exists."

Second, if somebody's subjective perspective is enough to give "objective" value to somebody else, there seems no reason not to grant that any individual human has objective value if she is valued by other humans. Again, "that's not good enough, it has to be a non-human" just seems to be an arbitrary standard.

Third, this rule must proceed from the more general rule, "any object belonging to Set S has objective value if, and only if, it is valued by somebody who is not a member of Set S." In that case dogs have objective value because humans love them for their loyalty and cuteness; it's a value which exists outside of canine thoughts and desires, therefore it exists objectively. Are you OK with that?

Fourth -- again -- by this definition humans also have objective value if they are valued as an energy source by the machines which run the matrix, in which case our "objective value" is hardly something which is necessary for morality, or even relevant to it. You can have an "objective source of value" which doesn't help you in the slightest to make decisions about morality.

Now if you say "but the aliens are selfish while God is loving," then you're rewriting the definition. Now the definition says "humans have objective value if, and only if, they are valued by somebody who is not himself human and who does not have self-centered motives." But at that point your definition is even more ad hoc and arbitrary, and -- maybe more crucially -- in that case it isn't clear that God meets that definition. To say that God loves humans because they are made in his image simply makes God a lover of himself, and you've been insisting over and over that you can't base morality on the "sentimental" liking of yourself and those like you. If, on the other hand, "you are valuable because you are like me" is a good enough reason to assign value to something, then "humans are valuable because they are like me (a human)" is a good enough reason also.

I think that will do for a start.

No, anything that exists outside the human mind is objective from the perspective of humans. God as the standard of good and His value of us exists outside the human mind, therefore they objectively exist from our perspective. The reason He values us as created in His image because only through us can God destroy evil forever.

El Cid said:
Probably a better way to say that it has value is that it contains beauty, and beauty has been shown to exist objectively

Are you withdrawing your previous statement, then, that paintings possess value because the great majority of humans value them? If you want to do so, that's fine.

Yes, see my corrected statement above.

El Cid said:
...see my post to Eightcrackers where I show that beauty has been demonstrated to exist mathematically and therefore objectively.

I'll try to get to that.

Ok

 

[Eightcrackers]

No, anything that exists outside the human mind is objective from the perspective of humans.

If an alien held the opinion that Avengers Endgame is the greatest film ever made, does that count as an objective fact?

 

[Komodo]

I made a number of points in my previous post, about the problems with your definition of "objective" (anybody who's interested can see them by looking at the quote in your last post, #1,116), and so far as I can tell you didn't directly address any of them.

Now as for the points you did make...

No, anything that exists outside the human mind is objective from the perspective of humans.

It sounds like you're offering a relativist theory of objectivity: that there's no such thing as "objectivity" in itself, only objectivity from the perspective of some subject. Not only is this paradoxical, It's not at all clear why having ideas that are "objective" in that sense would help us obtain truth or clarity on moral issues.

God as the standard of good and His value of us exists outside the human mind, therefore they objectively exist from our perspective. The reason He values us as created in His image because only through us can God destroy evil forever.

Then something exists objectively, from the perspective of members of Set S, if that thing exists outside the minds of members of Set S. Correct?

Also, if members of Set S are valuable to someone who is not a member of Set S, because they serve the purposes of that someone, then members of Set S have objective value. Correct?

Feel free to modify or qualify these statements to be in line with your position, obviously.

 

[El Cid]

How you discover whether something objectively exists does not make the discovery any less objective. Gods goodness exists outside of human thought and desire, therefore it objectively exists.

If that's your definition, then I can easily declare that the truth of the golden rule exists outside of human thought and desire, therefore it objectively exists, and so God is not needed to provide an objective basis for morality.

Evidence that the truth of the Golden Rule exists outside of human thought and desire?

 

[Eightcrackers]

Evidence that the truth of the Golden Rule exists outside of human thought and desire?

That would be nice - prove that it is objectively morally correct.