Christian morality delusions

[Angrboda]

That nature is by definition not arbitrary. His nature is defined in scripture and through experience. His nature constrains his actions no more than your do you. You could never not be you even though who you are changes. It has nothing to do with free will. Volition and choice are free and how we were made in his image.

You don't have to tell me. I agree morals of a determined automaton are not moral nor are arbitrary morals. I agree Morality requires a free agent. You can act morally. God can act morally to. It's not arbitrary, it may not be fully understood (I believe you're heading into the PoE, which would be for another thread) but not arbitrary.

It is asserted by theologians that it is not arbitrary, but by the definition of arbitrary it is. You can't just define a fact into existence. If God's morals do not depend upon anything but himself, that, by very definition, makes them arbitrary. Theologians are simply wrong. If Gods morals are not arbitrary then they would necessarily have to be based on something which would establish that they have an orientation, instead of being random. But since God's morals aren't based upon anything but himself, they are random, and that is the definition of arbitrary. I've had theists repeatedly tell me that God is by definition good, but describing anything as good solely because it has that character is arbitrary, and therefore 'good' in the theist system is a free floating and unconstrained fact. It is simply incoherent to assert that God is good because he is arbitrary, so the theist assertion is simply meaningless posturing.

And no, I'm not headed into POE territory. As an example above, let's suppose that according to God's nature, rape is moral. All the typical arguments you hear then follow. God is still good, by definition. God's morals depend upon his nature, so there is an objective foundation for his morals. And so on. There is no difference whatsoever between a world in which rape is moral because it is consistent with God's nature, and a world in which rape is not moral because of God's nature. There is essentially no way to determine which of those two hypothetical world's we inhabited if in fact we inhabited them, and in both worlds the theists would assert that God is good by definition and so on. If there is an inconsistency between those worlds it has to be accounted for, or else the inconsistency points out that the theist logic doesn't yield a definite conclusion and any and all morals one might imagine would be consistent with the theist's assertions if we inhabited that world. But only one of those world's can be moral or else we have a logical explosion because of the inconsistency, yielding the assertion that all things are true. Such an absurdity, and the inability of the theist logic of asserting that God is good by definition to pick out the actual moral world demonstrates conclusively that defining morals that way is arbitrary. That's something of an our-world-centrism in that, whatever world you happen to be in, that world is the right world, and the morals in that world are the right ones. The existence of two mutually inconsistent worlds, embracing opposite conclusions, using the same logical forms, is an absurdity, and points to an error in the logical forms. I think the error is in assuming that you can make God's nature be good by simply defining that as an axiom of your system. Doing so simply yields a contradiction, so something is amiss in your axioms. (Unless you want to embrace dialetheism, or engage in a similar maneuver. I have no idea off the top of my head what happens then.)

So, in a nutshell, I understand you are sincere when you assert that God is good by definition, but that simply leads to absurdities, so that assertion, or something in its orbit, must necessarily be abandoned. To do otherwise is simply to embrace unreason. Theologians have asserted it since time immemorial and I'm sure its been a part of your standard worldview as a theist but it simply doesn't pass muster.