Which Comes First?

[Ryft]

I'm disappointed in you, Arcanus. I thought you knew me better than that. My position is that there cannot possibly be evidence for these beings, given that they supposedly exist non-temporally and, thus, if they could affect our temporal universe they could do it in such a way as to cover their tracks.

Well that supposes God in fact covers his tracks, which the question did not suppose (as Rhizo had framed it). And no, I did not know you took such a position. But now I find myself wondering how one gets from a premise that "God could" to a conclusion that "God did." Is there anything in the Bible that gives us warrant to think God in fact covers his tracks? Or does such a position require us to take from the Bible that God acts upon reality, and from somewhere else that he covers his tracks?

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I've heard many Christians argue that he is omni-benevolent and all-loving. Most Christians I've experienced, in fact.

Unless you've heard Solarwave himself posit that God is "a truly 100% benevolent all-loving" being, you are still asking him to answer for a foreign belief. While it is true that such a being as your description would never allow "so much immorality," what reason do you have for supposing that Solarwave believes in that sort of being in the first place? In other words, why are you asking Jones to answer for a belief that Smith asserted? Because that belief is something Christianity itself teaches? But how do you know that? Because you talked to Smith who self-identified as a Christian and he asserted that belief? But it is very faulty reasoning to base the conclusion that Christianity teaches X simply on the fact that Smith asserted X (i.e., the belief may have come from somewhere else). When I hear Smith asserting some belief about God, I ask him where that belief comes from. If he says the Bible, I ask him to show me. If he cannot, or if he says the belief came from somewhere else, or he says it's his own idea, then what "Smith believes" has not been shown to be what "Christianity teaches." The belief may be Smithian, but it is Christian only if Christianity teaches it, which is proven from sources that are universally recognized and affirmed across Christianity, among which the Bible is foundational.

If you want to ask Solarwave about his beliefs, make sure your question involves beliefs that Solarwave himself asserts. That means doing the intellectually honest work of finding out what his beliefs are, instead of imposing on him beliefs other people asserted. If you want to ask him about his Christian beliefs, it means doing the intellectually honest work of finding out if those beliefs are what Christianity actually teaches, instead of making naïve assumptions. Just because some people you talked to who professed to be Christians asserted a particular belief, that does not by itself mean the belief is Christian. A belief is Christian only when it is something Christianity teaches.

Good and evil don't actually exist in reality ... Where's the contradiction?

Nowhere. You avoided the contradiction by your horrifically indefensible delusion that normative ethics do not even exist.

Objectively speaking, they are neither moral nor immoral. From my perspective, subjectively speaking, they are only moral or immoral according to those who view them.

Can you explain to me how "subjectively speaking" can manage to say anything "objectively speaking"?

Morality ... only exists as an idea in the minds of people. What one person believes to be good is not the same as what another views it to be.

The second sentence does not evidentially support the first sentence; i.e., competing views about X do not prove that X has no objective reality. Trying to use an epistemological argument to reach an ontological conclusion is horribly flawed reasoning by several orders of magnitude. Moreover, pointing out that two people have competing views about X has no relevance to evaluating the truth value of either. Remember, "morality has no objective reality" is a conclusion to be proved, not assumed. Such a conclusion is true under your view but it is false under my view. So which view is true? Does assuming the truth of your view serve as a valid refutation of mine?

Generally speaking, mankind intuitively experiences and expresses an objectively real morality (e.g., we say things like "rape is wrong"). We have your view, which explains the existence of competing views but cannot explain objective morality and therefore denies it; and we have my view, which likewise explains the existence of competing views but also explains objective morality. Which one better accounts for the intuitive experiences and expressions of general mankind?

What is generally considered moral is due to what society on the whole tends to believe is.

So you would have to think that reformers such as William Wilberforce and Susan Anthony were immoral people because, for example, society on the whole upheld the slave trade and believed women were inferior, which were actually moral positions. If majority means right, then they were wrong. Nicely done.

They are absolutely meaningless statements, other than the fact that some person believes a thing is wrong or right.

In other words, you think rape is not wrong. And if most people disagree with you, then you think this position of yours is immoral.