The Moral Argument for God

[athrock]

Using your own analogy, the basis can be a guy sitting in the room, surrounded by artists painting his portrait.  The portrait of a good man, as it were.  He doesn't need to be a god, and the moral values produced do not need to be objective.

Right, but the reality is that there is an objective standard which is outside the individual, personal interpretation of the artists themselves. Their works are measured against that standard.

If the things that we do are good or bad, right or wrong, how do we know this? Is there a standard which we "all" (and I have that word in quotes for a reason) know that we use to evaluate what we "ought" or "ought not" do?

None of us, absolutely none of us...base our moral values on a god.  

Are you speaking of this forum or all of humankind? And how could you possibly know that there is not one single exception in either sample?

Ironically, even the hardest core believers base their moral values on a work of art.....produced by human beings.  So, obviously, it doesn't take anything other than the painters in the room, or a guy sitting on a chair being painted, to produce moral values..regardless of whether they are subjective or objective....and regardless of whether or not a god exists.  You're presenting a complete non-issue, and it's still just a matter of agreed upon standards of beauty, as in your analogy.  

Are you saying that these believers are basing their moral values on a book (the Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita)? Then where did the authors of these works get THEIR ideas of morality from? Were they handed down orally from their forefathers before them? Then where did THEY get them from?

Since you mentioned the man was sitting in a chair, let me explore this for a moment. What I'm about to attempt may fail completely, but let's see where it goes.

Close your eyes and picture a chair.

Go ahead.

Got it?

Okay, open your eyes. (You were cheating...how could you read my instruction to open your eyes?   )

Now, what did your chair look like? This:



Or this:



They don't look very similar...are they both chairs? Sure. So, there's something...call it "chairness" that we can agree upon. And "chairness" is not dependent upon the individual chairs or our opinions of what a chair is. It is not subjective, it is objective, and we know "chairness" when we see it - maybe not every single person...maybe not every single time...but generally, we get it.

Similarly, there is something that has the quality of "goodness" that does not depend on my opinion or yours. But we know it when we see it. Again, maybe not every single person every single time, but generally, we get it.

What do you think of this analogy?