Why "mysterious ways" don't matter.

[Esquilax]

So you believe "morality exists only where there are moral agents capable of dealing in moral acts" and "Our morality is derived from well being because what else is there?". Doesn't this pose a problem when deciding between moral choices? Which perspective will be right? Sometimes the greater good is bad for a few. Can one civilization's set of values be better than another's?

Of course one civilization's set of values can be superior to another's, however, the way to demonstrate that is through argument and evidence, not merely trading opinions. Regardless of where one is, both sides of a moral argument exist within the same universe, and are subject to the same physical laws; the objective facts are the same, no matter where you are. Hence, there exists, for any possible scenario, a moral pinnacle of sorts, a set of actions that results in the best possible outcome for all involved, and that is where we should be aiming. Now, we don't always get there, but that's not a mark against this position, it's simply reality; we aren't perfect, and we have to learn to improve.

The short answer is that morality isn't a matter of perspective, it's a matter of reality. Moral goods favor the well being of conscious beings, not specific groups of conscious beings over others. Any moral action that you might propose that causes harm to a minority to the advantage of the majority ignores that principle by applying an inconsistent standard: one set of behavioral rules for the majority, and another for the minority, with no justification for this besides special pleading. Positions based on logical fallacies simply aren't valid.

Regarding compatibilism, perhaps you can explain why these sentences describing the view somehow handles the ought/can problem: From Wikipedia...Hume adds that the Compatibilist's free will should not be understood as some kind of ability to have actually chosen differently in an identical situation. The Compatibilist believes that a person always makes the only truly possible decision that they could have. Any talk of alternatives is strictly hypothetical.

The simple answer is that it doesn't matter. Whether I possess free will or not, it feels just the same to me experiencing it live, so why should I care?

Regarding proving there are objective moral standards, I think you would have to decide philosophically if such a set of standards exist (or at least is more plausible than the negation). Of course, if you proved the existence of God, that would be an easy task.

Why would proving the existence of god make the existence of objective morals easier to prove? They're two different things: if objective morals did exist they would do so completely independent of god, and if they depended on god to exist then they aren't objective, they're just subjective according to god's will.

"The greatest conceivable being" definition is not nonsensical. St. Anselm, a philosopher, called the founder of scholasticism, and the Archbishop of Canterbury came up with that definition in the 11th century and it has been discussed by philosophers ever since. You don't think it is objectively better to be morally perfect than morally flawed? I believe it is good argument and serves to at least further the case that God is good.

My point about it being nonsensical is that you need to keep god vague and ill-defined to keep it working: the moment you propose an attribute of god beyond "greatest conceivable being," one can easily top that with the claim that god has a slightly better version of that attribute, leading to a new height of "greatest conceivable X" in an infinite regress.

For example, as to your question about whether it's better to be morally perfect than flawed, my immediate answer is that the greatest conceivable being could make a contradiction true, and so could therefore be both. That's why I don't think it's a very useful definition, as "greatest" is subjective, and by necessity must encompass a number of mutually contradictory attributes just due to having to be the greatest possible, and being untethered from logic.

Unless, I misunderstand and you want concrete examples of good that God does. This however would do nothing to prove or disprove that God's nature is good--because even I do some good things once in a while.

What I'm saying is that without some form of evidence all you're really doing is talking in hypotheticals. It's all well and good to say that god's nature is good, but what observation of reality are you using to come to that conclusion? And if you aren't using an observation then what separates your conclusion from a fantasy?

Your point regarding that if God were the greatest...he could shed his nature, is a poor line of reasoning. By definition, one cannot shed one's nature and therefore logically impossible.

Who says god is bound to logic? Wouldn't the greatest conceivable being be able to suspend the laws of logic?