God & Objective Morals

[FallentoReason]

I conceded that I cannot yet show "Good" with the Necessary Being necessarily, but I am not saying "Good" is not with the Necessary Being necessarily. I'm saying there is an external that we receive (specifically the "Good" in this argument), so we know there is God.

So there is something external to God? Game over. God isn't the only eternal thing.

No need to google! I think I thought something decent that I'd like you to cross examine (Thanks to Chad for inspiration).

I appreciate the effort, but I can't quite understand what it is you're trying to establish here... all I can really respond to is the definitions you're using and my problems with them. Perhaps through clarifying these definitions, together we can better establish what you're trying to say.

The "Good" is the same term I've been using. "Aim of moral action" is about as good of a definition as I can give it.

By "aim" do you mean the end that the action is trying to achieve through the means?

Reason is objective because, regardless of the individual, including God, the individual cannot change what is reasonable and unreasonable.

Reason is subject to the individual i.e. subjective. Someone could think that buying a private island at a given price is reasonable but to me it would most likely be unreasonable. Therefore, contrary to what you said, I can change what is reasonable and unreasonable; in this case if I won one of those crazy lotteries that are in the couple of hundreds of millions of dollars, I might then think buying an island at a given price is reasonable.

So, when acting morally, actions are reasonable. If a guy under you is slacking at work, it might be more reasonable to just bring the guy into your office and scold him for a bit than to fire him right out. Then again, if this isn't the first time, firing might be reasonable as well.

If your kids are being good, its reasonable to praise them. However, it's no longer so reasonable after they colored the entire wall with marker while you were cooking them dinner.

To self, health and safety. Eating too much, drinking too much, or dependency on anything unnecessary/harmful is against what is proper to one's self.

To God would be much like a friend in one sense and much like a King in another. Friends you are considerate towards, listen to advice, trust, etc. Kings you obey, revere, and contemplate. All these apply.

So we have:

An action x is morally good if, and only if, it is reasonable given circumstance y.

A few objections I have:

1. Like I pointed out, something "reasonable" is very much subject to the person. Therefore, this isn't a model of objective morality (i.e. from God) but instead another secular philosophy on subjective morality.

2. This model is dependent on past events in order to determine what is a "morally good action". If we were all to spontaneously start basing our lives on this model, we actually wouldn't be justified in doing any action against someone else, because we wouldn't be able to say it was good/bad since there is no previous history to justify our action as being "reasonable".

3. A variation of (2): we wouldn't be able to say a criminal who robbed a bank did something morally bad. The robbing of the bank is simply the thing that now allows us to apply our model: given the circumstance that they robbed a bank, what is a reasonable action? Can you see how this model lags behind the present reality and requires an input based on the past? It doesn't allow for a decision to be made in the future -- not as a response to a past event -- but rather as an independent action.

4. A solution to (3) (i.e. being able to act morally good independent of the past) requires some sort of context, something external, much like the whole "necessity problem" that God seems to have. Such a solution would still make this model a subjective model of morality. An example of a possible solution to the criminal robbing a bank could be a modern day Robin Hood: the circumstance is that he lives in the slums and he doesn't want his neighbourhood to suffer from poverty, therefore it would be morally good (reasonable) to provide for them by robbing "the rich".