(November 18, 2011 at 3:56 pm)MysticKnight Wrote:(November 18, 2011 at 10:51 am)Norfolk And Chance Wrote: Why must morality have an eternal basis to be real?
Why can't humans make up morality as we go along - as we have done.
When I mean morality is real, I don't mean whether it exists, but if there is really a "should" or "better" way to act, and it's not merely just an opinion.
I showed by thought experiment, if a Creator existed and didn't have knowledge of everything, would it be able to create morality and make it up? I think making it up would make it arbitrary and it would cease to be morality as we know it.
Also, your assuming God doesn't exist in your question really. Because if you believe God exists, and is the source of morality, then the reason morality must have eternal basis, can be very well explained because it is that way by it's nature of having God as it's basis.
Suppose God is the Source of morality, and gives out his morality to others, in degrees, creating with a link to his own reality, with eternal basis, would not the nature of that morality be such that it's based on eternal reality? Whom says it wouldn't display that...
Suppose free-will doesn't exist, there is no free-will, everything is determined by laws of nature and free-will is an illusion. I would say that would make morality unreal, because if there is no free-will, then morality as we know it is unreal, it's a delusion as well.
The same I can say is true of it needing eternal basis, and we can see that, because that is simply how it is and it's in nature and it's displayed in it's nature.
Of course to really argue against this, you would have to show God isn't the source of morality.
Other wise if he is, then it's not odd that morality would display having eternal higher source as it's basis. If it's a light from God, and linked to God, and divine instinct linked to his essence, why wouldn't it display properties of being sourced in eternal higher reality?
It's like the same case of God being properly basic knowledge. If God exists, why wouldn't he give us properly basis knowledge of his existence and attributes?
If morality has a eternal basis, why wouldn't morality display that as property?
But morality has not got an eternal basis because some things in the bible laid down as moral guidelines (for example, kill gays) we would say are immoral today.
Therefore morality is NOT eternal - if it was it would be everlasting and CONSTANT, not ever changing depending on the humans that view it.
All the evidence points to us instilling our own moral code (which is a good thing) and if this is true, it is not a reason to believe in god, you'll need to find another one.
PS I find deists infinitely more annoying that even theists - at least theists have a book to base their belief in a deity on, as silly as it is.
You are currently experiencing a lucky and very brief window of awareness, sandwiched in between two periods of timeless and utter nothingness. So why not make the most of it, and stop wasting your life away trying to convince other people that there is something else? The reality is obvious.
