From atheism to tentative agnosticism

[Inigo]

Where this line of reasoning loses me is that I don't understand how a deity somehow provides a better explanation for morality. Deity=morals can hardly be true since morality has varied so substantially throughout cultures. Some things that we consider basic morals (say pedophilia) has been perfectly acceptable in some societies (to pick a not random example, Muhammad in early Islam) It seems the morals vary too much to come from a deity. Even if morals were universal I don't see how that means they came from the supernatural. To say that you lack an understanding of where your morals come from so they must come from God (or in your case, it's possible they come from God) seems to be just a variation on the God of the gaps arguments.

I never made that argument though. I never argued that 'I don't understand where morals come from, therefore they come from god'. Someone has attributed that to me out of convenience to their criticism. But it is not at all what I argued. I started by noting that morality has certain features. First, it is instructional. Second, those instructions are ones that we have reason to comply with whatever our interests. It seems to me that there is only one kind of thing that can issue instructions - real instructions, that is - and that's an agent. I do not know of how anything other than an agent can issue an instruction. I cannot think of anything. But an agent undoubtedly can. Given that morality certainly instructs, I infer that morality must be an agent of some kind.
But the agent cannot be one of us, or our community etc, for the instructions of ourselves or our community would not have the kind of rational authority possessed by moral instructions. I think only the instructions of an agent who has control over our fate in an afterlife would have that feature. So I infer that morality must be composed of the instructions of such an agency.