On Moral Authorities

[theologian]

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Just a notice: I'll be away from the forums for the next few days. I'll come back to your response sometime next week hopefully.

That's noted, my friend, and I'll be looking forward to your responses which I strongly hope that will unite us all in Truth and Good which are One.

1. No, for God is Simple Being. So, in God, His Intellect and Will are one. So, sexual abuse will be always morally wrong with God.

So what you;re telling me is that sexual abuse being wrong has nothing to do with god making it wrong, or even it being....well, wrong, just an inability of god to have made it right?  [1]

2. Well, if you may, please let me know how I have been inconsistent in the usage of the terms negation.

NP, you used the term subjective to refer to a particular entities moral opinions or proclamations, specifically in reference to human beings.  This too, if you remain consistent to that sense, would refer to god's moral opinions or proclamations as a particular entity, specifically in juxtaposition with other entities and differing opinions...say, those human beings from before.  

You used the term "objective" -what you clearly see as the opposite of subjective, it's negation.... instead, to refer to gods opinions being, essentially..the right opinions, because he made them, and made them as such..and apparently, had no power or ability to have made them otherwise.

Just to follow up...to my mind, whatever made it such that god could not have made a moral position other than as it is, would be the moral authority that I appealed to, not god.  Gods just a mouthpeice for whatever that is, if he has no control over what is and is not good or evil. [2]

1. First, right and wrong are not made, for right and wrong are based in being with God or being against God, and God obviously is not made, instead He is the maker. Second, to change what is right and wrong is not an ability, but an imperfection, for unchanging is more perfect than what is changing. So, sexual abuse being wrong is due to being against God Whom is Love, for what His Will and Himself are just one, and He wills what is good, and willing the good is love (and so we know that God wills Himself), and sexual abuse is obviously not love, for sexual abuse is not willing the good, for sexual abuse is against freedom of the abused, and being free is the nature of man, and the nature of man is from God.

2. Thank you for your explanation. Let's see. I'll show here what I have understood from your explanation and please let me know if I have understood it correctly.

What you are trying to say here is that there's already objective moral standard and God's opinion is just that, and so God's opinion is not really objective but also subjective.

However, how do we know that there's already moral standard apart from God? It seems to me that that is the starting point of your objection that I am not consistent regarding my subjective and objective labeling of terms here.

On the other hand, I know that what is right is one with God, for God is the end of man whom can know and love the truth and the good respectively, and the true end is what is right, just as the end of the eye is seeing, so what is right for the eye is to see. Now, God is objective, and if God and what is right are one, then moral standard is indeed objective and so apart from God, there cannot be a moral standard. Hence, the problem for atheist asking for just and moral action which is due to ending up imposing their own opinion, for again, if there is no God, then there is no objective morality, and hence only subjective morality and therefore just an opinion.

Therefore, it seems to me that your objection to my arguments here stems from the proposition that what is right and what is God are separate which in turn begs the question how to we know that there is an objective moral standards apart from God.

Well, do you have an answer for that which will end the question begging which we know a kind of fallacy?

There are no objective moral values. Hence my existential nihilism. There is no meaning to life.

And no we don't make our own meaning in life either. Our 'own meaning' is just code for "projecting our own desires and goals onto the world and calling it 'our meaning' when really it's just our desires and goals."

Well, we can deny all we want, however denying will not extinguish what is there, such as good eyesight is good, for eyes is perfected in seeing, and good tends to perfection. Thus, if a good man is he who strives to know the truth and love the good, because his nature is rational being, then it follows that there is objective morality, for morality is about good actions.

3. That can't be. I presume that misunderstanding of the general rule is the source of apparent contradiction.

Allow me to explain.  Your first two answers make the case that good or bad is dependent on God's commands.

For example, there was a time when stoning a man to death for working on the Sabbath was moral.  Working on the Sabbath was bad, and killing the person who broke this rule was good.  God made it a capital crime-- there is no question as to the good/bad of the action or the expected response.

I am taking a guess here that today you do not consider it bad or immoral to work on the Sabbath or that killing a person who works on the Sabbath is a bad or immoral act.  Instead of the moral application of justice to a lawbreaker, it is murder.

Therefore, working on the Sabbath is not intrinsically a good or bad thing.  Nor is killing a person who works on the Sabbath.  As the moral value of these actions is subject to God's command, they are an example of subjective morality.  What is objective is not the morality of the acts, but the absolute power of God to enforce his designation of them as good or bad.  God praised Abraham for his willingness to follow the command to kill his son and offer him as a sacrifice.  Had he not been stopped by a new command, his action would have been good/moral.  Had he ignored the new command and killed his child, he would have committed a bad/immoral act.

The thing is, if you ask religious people about the morality of various acts, actions, or attitudes, they are likely to try to reason out an explanation.  What they should ALWAYS say is "this action is moral/immoral because God says it is moral/immoral."  Applying any kind of reasoning to the morality of the action is blasphemy because the only morality is that which is based on God's explicit commands.  If you apply reasoning to arrive at a way of determining morality, you may find yourself at odds with God's command and that would be an immoral act.  Anytime a believer uses reason to determine why an action is right or wrong he is undermining God's authority.

Thanks for the explanation of your point. Let me refute it by re-stating it first:

Objection: It seems that objective morality stems only from God's command. For, by the use of reason, God's law and punishment regarding Sabbath; and the acts of Abraham commanded by God regarding his sacrificing of his son are unreasonable, for thou shall not kill. Either morality is based from God's command or from reason or from both. But, God's command must be good, even if it is against reason like the two cases mentioned above. Therefore, God's command is the sole basis of objective morality.

On the contrary: Morality is based on laws, which are Divine Positive Law, Natural Law and Human Positive Law. But, Natural Law is based from human reason seeing God's will in nature. Therefore, morality is based on human reason too. 

I answer that: The case with Abraham and the Mosaic Law regarding Sabbath are not basis of morality. For, the purpose of those instances are to proclaim the truth to be revealed. As, just as the father of faith, Abraham shall sacrifice his only son, the Eternal Father shall sacrifice His Only-Begotten Son for the love of the world; and that the punishment for making the Sabbath day holy stresses the evil of having no time with God Whom is Goodness Himself. Not all revealed truths are moral truths. Thus, the two case you have appealed to are not moral truths, and thus doesn't destroy my point that the natural law which can be known by reason alone and the truly Divine Law like the Ten Commandments and Commandment of Love of Jesus Christ are not contradictory.

Further, the complete meaning of the Old Testament passage are in Christ. But, the two cases you have mentioned are from the Old Testament and was not interpreted in Christ. Thus, what you have shown are not the complete meaning. But, every incomplete meaning from a non-authority breeds many error.