(March 11, 2013 at 1:33 pm)mo66 Wrote: Well, I don't know the exact criteria of what constitutes as objective morality, but for me God is always correct in His decisions because of His attributes.
This is, not surprisingly, sounding identical to the Christian apologetic response to this dilemma, known as Euthyphro's Dilemma. The dilemma is as follows:
1. Are good things good because God wills them?
-OR-
2. Does God will good things because they are good?
If we say things are good because God wills them, then morality is the subjective whim of a deity. The theist has no high ground on moral issues because their morality is nothing more than an appeal to might-makes-right. Big guy in the sky says it and that's that. To take this view is to reject objective or absolute morality and is, in fact, a morally bankrupt position to take.
If we say things are willed by God because they are good, then morality exists outside of God. That which is evil would still be evil regardless of whether or not God changed his/her/its mind or went away or turned out never to have existed at all. Again, the theist has no superior ground on moral issues.
Faced with this no-win situation but still desiring to stand on some moral high ground over the non-believer, the savvy apologist babbles about how it's both and yet neither one (the kind of both-yet-neither thinking that probably was the root of the "Trinity"). The babble usually goes something along the lines of "the essence of goodness is grounded in the very nature of God such that judgment of God will always be good and goodness comes from God."
Beyond the problem that this babbling nonsense treats morality as if it were some sort of substance that can make up a being of any kind ( what are the chemical properties of goodness again? ) there are a number of logical fallacies here:
1. Bare assertion
2. Contrived definition
3. Circular reasoning
The argument asserts that God is good and does so because it defines goodness as God. Thus we know that God is good because God is good and all decisions of God must be good because God is good and because God's decisions are good that proves that God is good and that God's will is good so all that God wills must be good because God's will is good and...
Atheist Forums Hall of Shame:
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
"The trinity can be equated to having your cake and eating it too."
... -Lucent, trying to defend the Trinity concept
"(Yahweh's) actions are good because (Yahweh) is the ultimate standard of goodness. That’s not begging the question"
... -Statler Waldorf, Christian apologist
