what are we supposed to say again when christians ask us where we get our morality?

[GrandizerII]

The evidence? You were claiming that I do not have access to God’s revealed word but the Bible is readily available to anyone who is interested in reading it so obviously that claim is easily refuted.

The Bible is also a fixed book (for exclusively modern moral matters, you cannot rely on such a source) and with several passages open to more than one interpretation (which is evidenced by all these various sects and creeds that purport to be Christian). Pretty much an impossible gateway to objective morality.

So it's absolutely objectively right to kill babies?

Killing is only immoral when it violates God’s decreed will. The example you gave did not violate God’s decreed will.

So killing babies is objectively right, right? Or does it depend on whether or not God decrees it? If the latter, where did you get that rule?

And how do you know it should only be the case when God decrees it?

Because morality as a normative system derives from God’s character, therefore it’d be impossible for something to be morally good and yet contrary to God’s decree because God’s decrees derive from His character.

I meant: How do you know it should only be the case when God [explicitly] decrees it? What if God didn't explicitly say to kill babies, but it wasn't against his will to do so? Who decides the matter then?

Seems to me you are relying on your interpretation of these passages in coming up with these moral standards.

Not at all, the passage explicitly said that the Israelites were commanded to perform the acts by God.

You are still relying on one of infinite interpretations, though. I wasn't questioning, by the way, the interpretation that the Israelites were commanded by Yahweh to do so. I was questioning why the interpretation that it's only right when God decrees it should be the one true interpretation?

Are you saying that it was morally wrong for the Israelites to do what they did? The other atheists on here are claiming that morals are determined at the societal level which would mean that what the Israelites did was not morally wrong even in the view of atheism because they were doing it to another society. Are the other atheists in this thread wrong?

You're asking for an absolute answer when the question is about personal and societal standards. I believe it was morally wrong, but as I said before, moral standards are just a standard, not a set of facts.

If another Christian slaughtered some babies as punishment for the wrongdoings of their parents, and he justified this by saying that it's objectively right to do so, then on what objective basis can you argue that he's wrong? From your subjective interpretation of the Bible?

The exact same way I would correct someone who claimed that their math textbook really taught that “2+2=5”, simply show them the passages in question and use proper exegesis to demonstrate that their understanding of the text is in error.

What's the proper exegesis exactly? How do you know the proper exegesis isn't that it's absolutely ok to kill babies at any time and however you want?

You’re committing a non-sequitur by trying to argue that the fact that human knowledge gained through sensory perceptions is fallible somehow means that objective truths cannot exist or be known.

If it cannot be known whether something is objectively right or wrong, then it's fair to say that morality is rather subjective. You can't give an objective basis that killing babies is wrong. So your moral standards are subjectively based.

We can know what is morally wrong just as well as we can know that 2+2=4. This sort of hyper-skepticism can be raised about any aspect of knowledge and is therefore not a legitimate objection to my position.

2 and 2 are obviously 4. Provided one understands and accepts the basics of what 2 refers to, and what 4 refers to, along with all the other numbers and mathematical operators and such, one can only deduce that 2 + 2 = 4.

With morals, on the other hand, this is not the case. That's why we are much, much more likely to agree that that 2 + 2 =4 but not agree on whether abortion, for example, or smoking, or pornography, is right or wrong.

We also have the matter that a deed may be right at one time but wrong t another time (according to some set of standards). With 2 + 2, it is always going to be 4 (at least within the reality we see ourselves in).

That’s a red herring, God’s existence and direct revelation are presupposed within the Christian conceptual scheme and your claim was that the Christian conceptual scheme does not have an objective definition of morality. This means you need to accurately represent that conceptual scheme and wage an internal criticism against it. Anything else is guilty of begging the question. Show me how Christianity cannot have an objective definition of morality even when granted the truth of its premises for the sake of argument.

Not at all a red herring. You just don't want to see the point I'm making. Even when granted the truth of the biblical premises, you still have Christians disagreeing on what is morally right and wrong. That is why I'm arguing that your standards are not objectively based. You have to rely on one of infinite interpretations regarding each moral matter in the Bible. And this is ignoring all the moral matters that the Bible does not even touch on.

We're both in the same boat with regards to morality, Stantler. That is why we both have to resort to our own personal standards and understanding of what should constitute right or wrong (whether based on past experience, prior knowledge, or even on what an ancient book says about a select range of moral matters).