How to beat a presupp at their own game

[Angrboda]

You apparently didn't heed my warning.  If God is just and moral because he meets his own standard, then Hitler by the same logic was just and moral as he met his own standard.  As a general matter, people's ideas about what is right and wrong align with the things that they want to do or not do, and there's no reason to think that Allah is any different.  As you correctly note, he's accountable to no one.  And that's the problem.  

Let me run a hypothetical past you.  Let's suppose that in an alternate reality which only exists in our minds, all that is true about our reality is true about that reality, including Allah.  There's just one difference.  In that reality, raping babies is moral and just.  Now I'm sure you're tempted to say that that would be different, that the Allah in that reality isn't truly Allah, but look at the surrounding facts.  In that reality, just as in this one, those who believe in him do not doubt the morality or justness of any of his proclamations.  They too would argue that anything their god proclaims, even baby raping, must be moral because all morality and laws descend from him.  In short, the Muslims in bizarro world would say all the same things that you say about Allah and they would likewise be true.  As far as a believer is concerned, both you as a Muslim in this world would be justified by Allah in thinking that baby raping is wrong, while they, using all the same justifications as you do, conclude that baby raping is fine and dandy.  If the justification you use can lead you to diametrically opposed conclusions, regardless of what the god in question advocates, then how can you be sure that the Allah in this world isn't giving a pass to something as awful as baby raping?  You can't.  And the reason you can't is because regardless of what your god pronounces, it is judged moral.  This is because the standard you have adopted, and Allah's choice of moral truths, is wholly arbitrary.  If Allah is the standard of morality, he can do no wrong, not because what he does isn't problematic, but because you as a Muslim have given him carte blanche to do whatever he pleases.  If Allah's morals are arbitrary as I suggest, then there is nothing moral about them because if anything, morality isn't arbitrary.  

Chew on this for a minute.  Let's presume that something that you've accepted as moral actually isn't moral, that like baby raping, it's horribly wrong.  Given that you rubber stamp anything Allah says, how would you ever discover that this is the case, that Allah has okay'ed something that is immoral?  If you can't determine that your god is immoral, you can't determine that he is moral either.  This is a variant of the principle of falsification.  If you can't detect when you're wrong, saying that you're right is hollow and without meaning or substance.  Note also the similarities to Divine Command Theory.  If what's good is whatever Allah says is good, there are no checks on what Allah proclaims to be good.  And the Euthyphro Dilemma is just a stone's throw away.

You are making a strawman here. It's clear that a maximally great deity won't sanction raping babies. You say : " Let's presume that something that you've accepted as moral actually isn't moral" , isn't moral according to whom, again? what's more probable, that your own moral assessment is wrong, or that an all knowing deity made a moral mistake...........?

It's better to think of it in a bottom-up fashion. We establish God's existence first, as a maximally great being, then we follow God's moral recommendations. What you're doing here is the exact opposite : you think moral recommendations are arbitrary because you're not convinced that any maximally great being exists in the first place, and I don't blame you, actually, you cannot accept the conclusion (God is absolute morality) because you don't accept the simplest premise of it (God exists as a maximally great being).... well, duh..

No, that's not correct and it's not a strawman. You say it's clear that any maximally great deity wouldn't sanction baby-raping, yet you don't actually show how you would determine that your god was sanctioning something similarly immoral. You skipped the question which asked that very thing. Until you can show how you would determine that your god's morals are wrong, you can't conclude that they are right. The question of who it's immoral to is irrelevant as long as there is objective morality. If morals are an objective real feature of reality, it doesn't need a who. And no, my conclusions about your god's morality have nothing to do with my not thinking he exists. They are based upon what your religion tells us about Allah, namely that he answers to no one and anything he says goes. If that's your justification, that same justification can be used to declare ANY god moral, including the baby-raping god. The people in that alternate reality are saying all the same things about their god that you are saying about your god, so obviously the things you are saying don't in any sense pick out a moral god from a pantheon of possible other gods with different morals. Here, let's make it plain. Let's say that I am a traveler from that alternate universe, and I've told you how shameful I think it is that your god forbids baby raping. How would you go about convincing me that I was the one who was worshipping an immoral god? You've already said that it's clear that he is, to which, as a believer in the baby raping god I reply, "Nonsense. It's clear that baby-raping is moral and that your god is immoral for not allowing it. It's obvious! All laws and morality come from my god and my god has a morally perfect nature and so he couldn't sanction baby-raping if it were immoral. So, obviously, baby-raping is moral!" What's your response?

Btw, there's a serious problem with your counter-argument. You can't determine that something is maximally great without examining all its properties for maximal greatness. Since maximal greatness morally isn't a product of any other property or attribute, you can't determine it from some other characteristic, so you have to evaluate Allah's morality on its own terms just as we have been doing regardless of anything else you can determine. You can't conclude that Allah is maximally great without first concluding that he is maximally moral. You've got the cart before the horse. This is probably because you've never actually determined that Allah is maximally great, you've just swallowed the assertion whole as just another piece of dogma that you accept uncritically. But feel free to show that Allah is maximally great without showing that he is maximally moral.


"There has certainly been for you in the Messenger of Allah an excellent pattern for anyone whose hope is in Allah and the Last Day and remembers Allah often."
Surah 33:21

Mohammed says, "Grab 'em by the pussy while they're still young!"