A few thoughts on the Euthyphro dilemma

[DeistPaladin]

One objection to the first possibility is that this opens up the possibility of abhorrent commands. In one possible world, God would command that we should love our neighbor,

Mark 12:31 ...Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself...

but what is to prevent him from commanding that we should torture innocent babies for our pleasure?

Psalms 137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.

The typical apologetic response to this is that neither of these options are accurate. Instead, something is moral because it is in God's nature.

This logic is fallacious on many levels. First, it is begging the question. You know that God is good because God is good and that's how you know that God's commands are good because God is good and since God's commands are good that means God is good.

Second, making a bare assertion without evidence and presenting that unfounded assumption as "evidence" for something else is called the bare assertion fallacy. In this case, you've defined God's nature as "good" but have nothing aside from your bare assertion that this is the case.

Third, you're using this contrived definition to work toward a preconceived conclusion, which is also faulty logic. Before this contrived definition was created, you desired to reach the conclusion that goodness comes from God and to that end you created the definition that God is good.

Fourth, WTF does this even mean? Are there goodness molecules grafted into God's skin? Are they flowing through his blood like Mitichlorians? It's a vapid statement.

Fifth, since you believe that Yahweh (the god of the Bible) is God, how do you reconcile the very avatar of goodness in the universe being incapable of successfully resolving moral no-brainer issues like slavery? Or has your musings taken you to examine the morality of the god you proclaim to be the essence of goodness in the universe?

Any objective moral standard must be arbitrary, actually.

Actually, the opposite is true by definition. The word "objective" means that which exists free of any bias or judgment.

Any moral standards that must be decided by any being, however wise, powerful or inherently benevolent, is inherently subjective by definition.

Without objective morality, the standard is whatever the person decides it to be (least amount of suffering, for example).

This is a false dilemma. Morality is a function of how we treat our fellow sentient beings and how our actions impact their rights or well-being. Such things can lead to complex questions (moral dilemmas) that require our judgment (hence the term, "moral judgment") but that is not to say we throw our hands in the air and say, "well, anything goes I guess".