- A Facebook response to the question of where morality comes from;
- Franklin Graham admits that God is a God of War;
- Trump thinks he can order nuclear fusion into existence, and order a Moon landing in 2028.
There are groups on Facebook that I don’t actually follow, but whose posts I keep seeing because I tend to click on those kinds of posts, and of course Facebook notices. Here’s such a post today, that I think worth quoting.
It goes to the question, where do your morals come from if not from God? Or Bible? Or Ten Commandments? I’ve commented on this idea many times, noting especially that people do not, in fact, have to look up their list of rules to know whether something is bad or not (they know it intuitively), and that people in nations that do not follow the Bible or Christianity are not, in fact, immoral or amoral. And furthermore, that politicians are obsessed with posting the Ten Commandments in schools while completely ignoring the many things Jesus actually said.
In fact, there is an evolved human nature that exists precisely because it enabled larger and larger groups humans to get along with each other and form cooperative tribes. And those tribes survived while others without this cooperative behavior did not. That’s how it works. And that’s how our global civilization, including Christians but also many others, has come about.
The post is here but I’m going to condense and clean it up a bit. Again, the question is, where do values come from? The response:
So let me get this straight: you think humanity sat around drooling for 200,000 years, staring at each other like goldfish, utterly incapable of figuring out “don’t murder the tribe” or “maybe stealing food gets you punched,” until ¡poof! a deity parachuted in with a rulebook?
How dumb do you think people are?
You keep asking “where” like it is a magic word that forces the answer to be “God.” Where do values come from? Where does society get them? Where does family get them? And then what, where does God get them? Oh right, that is where the questions must stop.
Values come from consequences. Full stop. Social animals that cooperate survive better than ones that do not. Empathy is not a commandment; it is hardware [[ Well no, it’s built-in software ]]. If you lie, cheat, steal, or murder, you get expelled, punished, or killed by the group. Groups that learnt this outcompeted the ones that did not. This is not mysterious. This is not metaphysical. This is kindergarten anthropology.
And notice something important: cultures disagreed wildly about which values mattered. Slavery? Sometimes fine. Women as property? Often fine. Genocide? Biblically endorsed. If values were handed down from a perfect source, you would expect consistency. What we actually see is trial, error, revision, and improvement, exactly what you get when humans figure things out the hard way. … The fact that we are still refining it is not evidence of God, it is evidence that we are doing the thinking ourselves!
And frankly, if the only thing keeping you moral is an infinite supervisor, that is not a point in your favor.
Comment: Of course the OT God was only concerned about the ancient Hebrews. All other tribes deserved extermination. (Those other tribes had their own gods, but since they were exterminated, we don’t know about them.) Essential, basic, tribal morality, which remains among conservative Republicans to this day.
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And some of them acknowledge it.
JMG, 19 Dec 2025: Franklin Graham At Pentagon Xmas Worship Service: “God Hates And God Is Also A God Of War”
“You know, we think about, God is a God of love. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that he whoever believeth in him shouldn’t perish, but have everlasting life. We know that God loves, but did you know that God also hates? Do you know that God also is a God of war?
“Many people don’t want to think about that, or forget that. ‘Utterly destroy all that they have. Don’t spare them, but kill them, both men, women, infant, nursing child, oxen, sheep, camel, and donkey.’”
Well, this is obvious to anyone who’s actually read the Biblical OT.
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Two items on a theme.
NY Times, 19 Dec 2025: Another Trump Financial Conflict, This Time With Nuclear Power
Subtitled: “Trump Media plans to merge with a company developing nuclear fusion technology, putting the president’s financial interests in competition with other energy companies over which his administration holds sway.”
The Trump administration has sought to accelerate nuclear power technology — including fusion, which remains unproven — in its drive to meet America’s quickly growing demand for energy, particularly as tech companies build power-hungry data centers in the race for artificial intelligence.
Nuclear fusion has been a goal of physicists for *decades*. It still hasn’t worked. Trump thinks he can order it into existence.
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Similarly:
Jalopnik, 19 Dec 2025: Trump Pens Executive Order Setting 2028 Moon Landing Like It Means Anything
The executive order, titled “Ensuring American Space Superiority,” outlined the Trump administration’s space policy for the rest of his term. If you’ve been following NASA’s Artemis program in the slightest, this will sound extremely familiar. Americans will return to the Moon by 2028 “through the Artemis Program.” A permanent lunar outpost will be established by 2030, and a lunar surface nuclear reactor will be ready for launch that same year. The administration will also encourage $50 billion of additional investment into the private space sector by 2028 and pave the way for a commercial replacement for the International Space Station by 2030.
The executive order is just words on a page.
Jalopnik understands.
