My views on objective morality

[Kiekeben]

From what I understand it's not that goodness exists independent of God neither does it exist on the whims of God, but rather God himself is that morality, that standard, and God is not arbitrary nor does he will on whim but rather wills according to ultimate greatness which is not abitrary.

Yes, (in spite of the rest of your message, which didn't really make sense) the above is the best way to interpret the claim that Catholic Lady made, since she is saying not merely that morality depends on God, but that it depends on a loving God. Or as you put it, God "is that morality, that standard." So now let me see if I can make the problem clear:

If one says that God (whatever his characteristics) is necessary for morality - that what is good is whatever this God says it is no matter what - then one has to admit that if God were to say "torture babies," we should torture babies.

If, OTOH, as you and CL are saying, morality depends on a God who has a certain moral character - on a God who is good - then you have to admit that there are moral principles that you judge as good independently of God. It is because God is already good that his commands are good.

To put it another way, what you are saying is not merely "morality depends on a creator being", but "morality depends on a loving, caring creator being". And it is because you regard being loving and caring as good that you judge what this being supposedly commands to be good.

---

CL, let me talk about the morality of free will.  A rapist has the free will to rape a child.  You console yourself, perhaps, with the knowledge that he will eventually be held account by God for his actions.  But what of the child?  The child, you may say, will be rewarded with an eternity in heaven-- though he/she hasn't done anything particularly worth of reward.

It seems to me that God's version of free will shows a willingness on his part to let innocents suffer in order to give sinners enough rope to hang themselves.  And they do so by their own nature, which was anyway established by God.  It seems to me that if such a God is real, only a bad person would do anything but openly rebel against him.

You shouldn't be preaching the gospel.  You should be burning it.  Because YOU seem to me like a good person.

I've never heard an answer to this. Time and again, "free will" is brought up as a get-out-of-jail-free card for God's negligence. Examples like this are brought up to show the gaping holes in the idea, and then it just drifts off into the sunset after getting no reply, waiting for the process to repeat.

Any christian like to have a stab at this? (Anyone who is interested in defending God to some higher standard than "everything he does is great".)

Having the free will to choose to "follow" God, or not, is one thing. Why do you additionally need the option of raping children? Isn't just ignoring God enough for him? I mean, I ignore God, but I don't need to rape kids or bang nails into kittens in order to make the choice clear. So what is the point of allowing such actions to be possible? If he's so set on objective morality, he could make these things into an actual law, so that we literally can't do them (and wouldn't even think about wanting to do them). Why include this "feature"?

Cue "mysterious ways", which basically means I should ignore anything else the person has said on the subject up to this point, as they admit they have no understanding of God.

Exactly. Human free will is supposed to account for the existence of evil, or at least a lot of the evil in the world. God doesn't want there to be evil, but he gave us free will, and it is because we are free that some of us commit evil acts. But now suppose you could see that someone was about to rape and murder a child, and you could easily stop them without even putting yourself at risk. If you didn't do so, wouldn't that itself be evil? Obviously. Why, then, is it okay for God to allow the murderer-rapist to carry out his action?