(July 12, 2012 at 8:33 pm)whateverist Wrote:(July 12, 2012 at 7:36 pm)MysticKnight Wrote: 1. Morality to be objective, cannot be arbitrary.
2. Objective morality exists (assumption).
3. If a Creator can decide/create what is moral, then morality would be arbitrary. (For example, if it can decide rape is moral, then it would be arbitrary)
4. Therefore a Creator cannot create objective morality.
5. If a Creator cannot create objective morality, then nothing can, including evolution, as a Creator can create evolution, and anything that would be able to create morality.
6. Therefore objective morality is eternal.
7. Morality is not separate from consciousness.
8. Therefore consciousness is eternal.
9. Ultimate morality is included in definition of objective morality.
10. Therefore Ultimate morality exists eternally.
You can substitute "objective greatness" for "objective morality" and you will reach conclusion of "Ultimate greatness".
This is my best argument.
What exactly do you mean when you say "for morality to be objective". This seems to be what motivates your entire argument. In what sense do you feel morality must be objective?
What is moral actually seems quite contingent to me. We are the only sapient species we know so it is pretty hard to know whether what we deem to be moral must apply to all such creatures. (Apparently we don't think it applies to non-sapient creatures since we harvest these for food without batting an eye.)
If we were not a gregarious/pack sort of animal, what counts as moral might be very different. If we lived an orangutan like existence only meeting our own kind very rarely to mate, our moral concerns would be different.
If we were the only creature on a planet we would have no choice but to be cannibals and it would never occur to us that there was any option but to eat one another. If such creatures were sapient, it is doubtful that our sense of morality would fit their circumstances very well at all ... and yet they may well have their own moral sense.
I suggest that what is moral is contingent on the nature and circumstances of the creatures involved. If there was no life in the universe morality would have no existence either. It wouldn't float around as a disembodied potential. In a universe full of life, the form morality takes might well vary.
You mention rape as a universally, morally repugnant act. But for snails it is the only way they mate. There is no courtship or consent. As hermaphrodites when any ready to mate snail meets any other snail, it's on. Each impregnates the other as well as shooting rather nasty (and sometimes fatal) barbs into each other. Now, did God create an abomination in the snail, or do moral considerations vary with the creature involved? Do you think we are the only creature on this planet for which morality is in play?
This is a very well thought out post that deserves a good reply. However, before I do that, I want to be clear...which premise do you dispute (1) or (2)?