Formally Disproving Divine Command Theory

[Statler Waldorf]

No worries, I'll run with it. You would shelter that nazi that worked the gas lever when he went on the lamb from allied troops, right?

Of course not, but I would shelter Israelite spies in Jericho, if you can’t see the distinction maybe you should re-read the OP to get a better grasp on what this thread is about.

Meh, I've been pretty well served by just being myself Stat. Vulgar, irreverent - quick to snap at any joke opportunity - no matter how childish or silly.

It’s unfortunate you feel that way.

My criticism is in no way absurd, and you've been unable or unwilling to address it.

Sure I have, your criticism is completely missing the entire point of this thread, refuting Divine Command Theory, so if Rahab was harboring God’s spies she was helping fulfill God’s commandment to take Jericho which is completely consistent with Divine Command Theory. I am surprised you missed that and wasted your time bringing up fugitives in other countries that have nothing to do with the Divine Command Theory.

Standard chanting. Your verse -explicitly- shows that collaborating with the spies of a given organization would win you favor with that organization - nothing more.

That “organization” was God’s chosen people who had direct commandments from God to take Jericho, so if someone lied in order to protect the lives of those spies and help them carry out God’s decree they were doing something morally acceptable in accordance with Divine Command Theory because they were preserving the higher moral commandment. The point of this thread was to deal with alleged difficulties with the Divine Command Theory, but as I have pointed out the Bible already addresses this issue and makes it clear that a person is morally justified in not telling the truth as long as the desired ends are in accordance with God’s direct commandments or the higher moral law. This is why Christians will smuggle Bibles into countries that do not allow the preaching of the gospel and so forth.

it doesn't even have anything to do with hiding people from those who would do them harm.

I never said it directly did. However, it does give us an example of how a person is justified in violating a lesser moral law in order to obey a higher moral law.

What you invested that verse with would be what you would hope to -imply-, that somehow sheltering -good- people from -bad- people can make deception or lying justifiable when it is otherwise not kosher.

No, I never said that’s what the verse was dealing with; the verse is dealing with why lying can be morally acceptable in relation to Divine Command Theory if it is done to follow a higher moral law.

The trouble is that even in the verse, they were spies - whether or not they were good people is entirely subjective. Those they were spying on probably wouldn't have shared the unspoken bit of nonsense you apparently hoped to slip by.

There is nothing necessarily morally wrong with being a spy from a Biblical standpoint, since this entire thread is dealing with Biblical morality that’s what you’re going to have to stick with. Appealing to some other form of morality to argue against the internal consistency or objectivity of Biblical morality is fallacious. Whether the King of Jericho felt the spies deserved death is irrelevant from the Divine Command Theory perspective, he’s not the transcendent moral law giver.

I, like you, would shelter those I felt were good from those who I felt were bad, but I'm not ignorant enough to point to this verse or proclaim that it's somehow part of some objective morality.

I didn’t point to the verse to justify hiding “good” people from “bad” people, I pointed to the verse to answer the question whether or not Divine Command Theory allows for lying in certain circumstances and it obviously does.
No, you’re not philosophically sophisticated enough to believe in objective morality, that’s not my problem though.

Fail, welcome back.

You got destroyed yet again, the sooner you realize that the better off you’ll be. You’re such a contrarian that you jump into these debates just to argue about trivial points while not even having an adequate understanding of the OP.

edit - Oh, and I almost forgot, you do realize that none of that shit actually happened, right? What would one of my posts to you be without mentioning that...eh?

Do you have anything to back that assertion up? I’d love to see you try and prove that something historically didn’t happen. This ought to be entertaining.

logical fallacy.

we would first have to start with proving the bible "true" literally. That can't be the case, so using the bible to disprove the bible is as dumb as proving the bible with the bible.

Huh? What logical justification is there for your assertion that the Bible cannot be true?

Sounds like you're only defending the structure of the argument. Fair enough. An argument has both a structure and content. The argument is invalid if 1) its structure is not truth-preserving and 2) if any of the premises are not true.

If by this you mean the conclusion doesn’t logically follow from the premise(s) then you are correct. I do not believe the OP’s conclusion logically follows from his premise though, an objective moral code can still exist and lying can still be permitted in certain circumstances. I think that’s where his biggest misstep occurs.