God and Morality: Separate Issues

[Captain Scarlet]

Certainly. But that is not analogous. We are not grounding this or that moral good in God so much as morality in and of itself, the very thing by which we understand moral terms in the first place. In order to say that this or that moral good tells us something about God we have to know what a 'moral good' is and means—which is meta-ethical information. Is compassion a moral good? According to what or who? If not God, then we are not dealing with the Christian meta-ethic and cannot reliably ascertain anything about God. In order for something ethical to inform us about God, we have to know what is ethical. In order to know what is ethical we have to have a meta-ethic. So then what happens when meta-ethics is grounded in God?

What happens is that moral statements don't tell us about God, but rather that God tells us about moral statements. That means to understand morality rightly we must first understand God rightly. Ergo, the statement "morality is grounded in the very nature and will of God" says something about morality, and nothing about God. This is internal logical consistency at work.

As for Christmas cheer or Roman war like spirit, I could fire back the same argument you gave above. We need a meta ethic to understand it in the first place etc etc. It may be internally consistent but they are all totally meaningless.

You want me to write an entire book, here on Atheist Forums? How about scaling things back just a tad and being more realistic. Look at how people, yourself included, select this and that statement of mine to respond or object to it (which is simply how forums operate). Now multiply that by a book-length factor and imagine what we would end up with. If you want a book-length treatment like that, then I will be happy to recommend some to you. If you want to discuss this issue with me, then take more realistic bite sizes.

If folks can summarise quantum physics succinctly, I am sure the human mind can do the same for objective morality and the mode that a god would use to transmit goodness into the universe. I would have thought it would be an easy request and whoilly realistic. I did just asked for a rough sketch, not a book. So can you do it?

What I claim is that God is eternally and immutably consistent in his nature, whose attributes include holiness, justice, mercy, patience, etc. In Christian theology, to say that God is omnibenevolent is to say that he does not possess any malevolence. That is not something we conclude morally about God—that would be viciously circular reasoning—that is something God tells us about himself, who is the ground of moral order. Under Christian meta-ethics, moral terms do not indicate ontological properties but relational properties; something is a moral good insofar as it conforms to the nature and will of God, and something is a moral evil insofar as it fails to do so. (This is why it is impossible for God to be evil; it is a meaningless contradiction to suggest that the nature or will of God could fail to conform to the nature and will of God—that is, A cannot be ~A at the same time and in the same respect.)

I am not sure I've understood you correctly. God is only good because he told us and not ontologically? How do we know he is not lying?

(1) If God does not exist, then morality does not exist.
(2) Morality exists.
(3) Therefore, God exists.

The argument itself is a valid modus tollens. The soundness of the first premise is defended logically using a TAG form of reasoning; namely, that morality neither obtains nor is intelligible under anything other than biblical presuppositions (as necessary for any conclusion to be reached whatsoever).

Thank you for this. Logically valid but hardly sound. One point of clarifcation is around whther you mean some form of objective morality. P1 if morality exists then why does it need a god? DP has covered this in more detail. P2 is a fallacy of a floating abstraction. Morality is an abstract concept and as such is not instantiated in the universe. Like Logic and maths only exist within their own frameworks, created by the human mind.

The latter half of your comment answered the first half; God as revealed in Scripture is the axiomatic presupposition upon which everything else is built, and he is argued as the necessary precondition for the intelligibility of anything, including morality (e.g., metaphysics, epistemology, etc.).

Really? I think the Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Animists, Scientologists etc may disagree with you and they all could make their own claim with equal validity. There is no evidence that this is anything other than speculation and special pleading for the christian view.