RE: Objective morality as a proper basic belief
July 7, 2017 at 1:50 pm
(This post was last modified: July 7, 2017 at 1:55 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(July 7, 2017 at 1:42 pm)SteveII Wrote:Objective enough to say anything objective about it, for starters..but I digress.(June 30, 2017 at 8:45 am)Jörmungandr Wrote: "Is God's nature good because it is God's, or is God's nature good because it is morally good (i.e. it conforms to an independent standard of good)?" You see, playing the ontology card has gained you nothing. Just as the Euthyphro dilemma applies to Divine Command Theory, it also applies to the argument that morality is derived from God's nature. Either God's nature is arbitrarily good simply because it is God's, which results in an arbitrary set of morals which by definition is not moral. Or God's nature is good in that it conforms to a standard of goodness that is independent of God, making God's nature superfluous to the question of morals. You have accomplished nothing by your detour into ontology except to confuse the issue. God is still an unsatisfactory source of morality, and you're left empty handed, claiming the existence of objective morals that you can't explain.
See bold.
You have just gutted the dilemma. The unwanted conclusion of the original dilemma was that God could change his mind and good could be redefined. The bold above simply points out in so many words that morality is based on God's nature. Natures don't change. No unwanted conclusion.
Regarding the arbitrary characterization, how much more objective could the nature of an eternal God be?
If god can't do this or that, being constrained by it's nature...that nature being good...then one wonders how another squares that away with calls to genocide. They must have been good, I guess? I mean, either that or the writers of magic book were bullshitting us. In any case, if god can;t do bad because gods nature is good it;s still "the good" to which we are referring. A standard wholly external to and immutable -by- a god...as you've just told us. God being some other thing, which he can't be, wouldn't make those things good - would it?
Suppose god really did do and say all the shit in magic book..which obviously he couldn't have, would they then, by virtue of being in gods nature, be good? This is what Jorg is referring to when noting the arbitrary pointlessness of grounding morality in "god's nature". I doubt that you think so, but it's important to understand.
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