God and Morality: Separate Issues

[Captain Scarlet]

There were three statements, not two. I will assume it was the epistemic one you ditched, so that the comparison is between statement X ("God is morality") and statement Y ("Moral order is grounded in the very nature of God"). And somehow you think both state the same thing? The difference between them is so obvious; that is, X states something about the nature of God, whereas Y states something about the nature of morality. They are two very different contexts and difficult to miss. It is because statement X identifies God as morality that I said that no capable Christian apologist would ever make such a claim, as it directly contradicts Christian theology. Statement Y does not identify God as morality; in fact, it says nothing about God at all. (Refering to the nature of God does not say anything about the nature of God.)

Quite so but what does either statement really mean? Christian aplogosists also point to the existence of objective moral values, without ever having proven their existence. This would seem a necessary pre-condition to the argument.

What it means is that God is a necessary pre-condition of morality;

Nope, it specifically says something about the nature of god. Nature is not defined above, but assuming you mean qualities, there is a powerful inductive argument to state that all such qualities of beings are emergent and contingent not necessary, unless you can demonstrate otherwise it becomes circular ie god by his very nature is good, goodness comes from gods very nature, becuase god is necessarily good, becuase god by his very nature is good....

what I base it on is Scripture; and how I defend it is through logic (modus tollens).

Oh dear how did you get to the Abrhamic god? That is just mere speculation.