God and Morality: Separate Issues

[Ryft]

Oh dear Ryft, perhaps you should climb down from that pedestal of intellectual hubris you've erected for yourself.

Insults to my character have zero bearing on the merits of my argument.

To say good is grounded in the very nature of a being ...

"Good" is a term expressing what is moral. "What is moral" is a matter of ethics. "Ethics" is not the subject of this argument. Gross misrepresentations such as this leave me nothing to address. I should think that someone who has heard an argument a thousand times before would find it trivially easy to keep in mind what that argument is.

Of course, you have to argue this to avoid the meta-ethical argument for atheism.

My argument is not about avoiding some meta-ethical argument for atheism (should such a thing even exist). My argument is about defending meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity, for what it is and against what it is not. The original post of this thread gave three views of meta-ethics purportedly advanced by Christians—which turned out to be nothing more than some unknown Catholic vidiot on YouTube. So the only thing I am doing here is defending what Christian meta-ethics is and exposing what it is not. I have never even heard of a meta-ethical argument for atheism, much less am I trying to avoid one.

As a rough sketch goes, a little more detail would be nice (not too much). Specifically, I am looking for how God transmits goodness (or whatever term you wish to use) into the universe. All you have provided is "divine immanence", which just replaces the word transmit without defining what you mean.

I find myself wondering from whom you have heard this argument a thousand times, such that you could so misunderstand divine immanence like this. In addition to you being unable to keep in mind what this argument is, it might be fitting to question whether or not you really have heard this argument before. That is to say, your posts are consistent with someone for whom this argument is foreign, not familiar (unless you are mispresenting the argument on purpose, which I am not prepared to believe yet—notwithstanding the character insult you opened with above).

At any rate, divine immanence is simply the creative and sustaining presence of a sovereign God actively unfolding his purpose for creation. Therefore, morality being grounded in the very nature and will of God, his active immanence in creation, and human beings created as imago Dei are how goodness is "transmitted into the universe." Simply none of the four ways you listed correspond to meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity, since all four treat goodness like an ontological property; whatever arguments you have heard a thousand times before, this does not seem to be one of them.

Using Scripture we can determine that God lied to Abraham ... Jesus also lied to his followers ... a little 'economical with the truth' to Jepthah ... Seems like this God is a distance away from the one you're trying to sketch for us.

Only if you are correct, and you are not. (And since this is a separate issue from the one being discussed in this thread, I will not be pursuing it here. The issue being discussed here is complex enough as it is without tossing additional issues into it. Feel free to start a different thread on it.)

You don't feel the need to justify that morality exists, as its axiomatic to your case.

No, the existence of morality is not axiomatic in my case—which ought to be self-evident in the proposition "morality is grounded in the very nature and will of God"; i.e., morality (B) is accounted for by the existence of the triune God of Scripture (A). Think about it: if B is justified by A, then B is not axiomatic.

I was pointing out that in my view it cannot be axiomatic to any case, as it is an abstract concept. The view that morality exists would be false under the views that I hold.

Irrelevant to a critical analysis of meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity (unless you wish to beg the very question).

You seem to be narrowing this debate to an argument just of the Christian meta-ethic. This is just one view of morality (one to which I'm sure you subscribe). The title of the thread did not specify this.

It is possible for thread titles to inaccurately express the subject of the thread, which provides good reason for paying more attention to the opening post than the title to apprehend what the thread is about. And the opening post of this thread made it rather clear that the subject is the arguments for meta-ethics that Christians continue making and why they fail. So I am not "narrowing" this debate; I am sticking to what the debate has always been about, primarily by exposing that all three options in the original post are not what Christians argue after all (but rather some unknown Catholic vidiot on YouTube) and showing what meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity actually is (which either replaces the third option or constitutes a fourth option).

I feel justfied in pointing out that others have equally valid and differing views to yours (including natural explanations for morality), and that this is an argument for an atheistic perspective, in much the same as religious confusion is.

If meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity stands, then no atheistic perspective can; it is impossible for X and not-X to both be true. So the original subject of this thread must continue—attempting to show that meta-ethics as held by biblical Christianity does not stand up under critical scrutiny.