God and Morality: Separate Issues

[Ryft]

It may be internally consistent but [it is] all totally meaningless.

The fact that you understand what I am saying and form objections that are logically relevant proves that it is actually not meaningless. (If it really were meaningless you could not respond intelligently. But you are.) So I suspect that you must have meant something other than meaningless here, since you are clearly engaging me relevantly and coherently on the matter.

So once again: (1) in order for something ethical to inform us about God we have to know what is ethical; (2) in order to know what is ethical we have to have a meta-ethic; (3) when meta-ethics is grounded in God it follows that moral statements do not tell us about God, but rather that God tells us about moral statements (i.e., understanding morality rightly requires understanding God rightly). This is why I said that the proposition "morality is grounded in the very nature and will of God" tells us something about morality and nothing about God.

I am sure [a person can summarize] objective morality and the mode that God would use to transmit goodness into the universe. I would have thought it would be an easy request and wholly realistic. I did just ask for a rough sketch, not a book. So can you do it?

Generally speaking? Of course I can. With you? I have rather grave doubts; I suspect a book-length treatment is required to preclude such hand-waving dismissals as you have shown a willingness to do (see above), expanding and extrapolating with details that provide the meaning which you actually already grasp. Shall we test this? Here then is a rough sketch:

Insofar as meta-ethics is grounded in the very nature and will of God, morality is objective by definition (such that 'objective' means independent of any human mind). The mode by which God transmits goodness into the universe is divine immanence on one hand and creating human beings as 'imago Dei' on the other.

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?

God is good tautologically, insofar as meta-ethics is grounded in the very nature and will of God. If something is morally good such that it conforms to the nature and will of God (thus moral terms express a relational property, not an ontological one), then to say that God is good is to say that the nature and will of God conforms to the nature and will of God—a tautology. Again, "Under Christian meta-ethics, moral terms do not indicate ontological properties but relational properties," such that the moral value of X is a function of its relation to the nature and will of God. Thus, by the same token, something is a moral evil insofar as it fails to conform to the nature and will of God, which is why God being evil is a meaningless contradiction; it is saying that the nature and will of God fails to conform to the nature and will of God—that is, A is not-A. And we know he is not lying on the same basis; namely, since God is truth, the idea of him lying is a meaningless contradiction (i.e., A is not-A).

If morality exists, then why does it need God?

Because "morality neither obtains nor is intelligible under anything other than biblical presuppositions," which your question had to ignore to even be asked.

Morality is an abstract concept and, as such, is not instantiated in the universe. ... [It is] created by the human mind.

That is false under the Christian view of meta-ethics and therefore irrelevant to a critical analysis thereof. To presuppose the truth of that meta-ethic in a critical analysis of the Christian meta-ethic is to beg the very question, by which such analysis invalidates itself. You might presuppose the truth of that meta-ethic in preference to the Christian meta-ethic, but that just leaves the Christian one unchallenged—which leaves me with nothing to address.

Really? I think the Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Animists, Scientologists, etc. may disagree with you ...

Sure, and they are allowed to. But I hope you realize that disagreeing with view X has no bearing on view X.

... and they all could make their own claim with equal validity.

Unless they are begging the question, which is bereft of validity. (Or perhaps they simply presuppose the truth of their view in preference to the Christian view, which leaves the latter unchallenged and me with nothing to address. To prefer view Y over view X has no bearing on view X.)

There is no evidence that this is anything other than speculation and special pleading for the Christian view.

It might be mere speculation given the criteria of your view, but that criteria is neither a given nor relevant in a critical analysis of the Christian view. And there is no special pleading for the Christian view here, if special pleading "occurs when someone argues that a case is an exception to a rule based upon an irrelevant characteristic that does not define an exception."