Why "mysterious ways" don't matter.

[Esquilax]

Some of you were right to criticize my formation of the moral argument. If should have been formed like this:

1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist.
2. Objective moral values do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.

Hey, remember how you haven't demonstrated premise two yet? Yeah...

1. If naturalism is true and God does not exist, then our morals are a product of evolution. Evolution cannot provide for us a set of values that are true for all times. With naturalism, at some point in the past, basic survival would be at odds with many of our morals today (killing, harming others, personal freedoms, equality, taking care of the elderly, etc.). So, naturalism gives us relative values.

Yes, values relative to the context in which we find ourselves. Otherwise known as "learning." See, it's the kind of thing that allows us to weigh our morality by the scenario in which we have to apply it, which, to be clear, is exactly what you believe in too. Example! A woman rushes past you in the street and hides around a corner, hissing to you that she's being chased by a man trying to kill her. Moments later that man happens upon you and asks whether you've seen a woman pass by, giving you an exact description of the woman hiding just feet away from you. Under your supposed "objective" moral code, Steve, lying is wrong: would you tell the man the truth and reveal the woman, knowing that it will result in her death? Or would you lie- and why wouldn't you?- and preserve her life?

Those are the two options, don't try to dodge by including a third, let's just hypothetically imagine that those are the two paths you envision at the time; this isn't about getting out of things, this is about me demonstrating a point. Would you tell a lie, knowing that the truth would lead to someone getting hurt or killed?

Chances are, you'll say yes, and hence, context matters. Objective morality? No brother, you're dealing with situational ethics, same as everyone else. You're just pretending you've got something objective.

2. Most of us believe that objective values do exist. It is right/good to take care of one's parents into their old age and realize even 100,000 years ago it would still have been the right thing to do and 100,000 years in the future, it will still be the right thing to do. Killing young children has been and will forever be morally wrong. We all intrinsically know when something is just plain wrong--even if a million people are doing it.

So, you begin with an argument from popularity fallacy, and then end this paragraph by stating why that fallacy is wrong. Just thought I'd throw that out there.

Incidentally, there's a reason killing children is wrong. It's not just wrong because god says so, it's not wrong because of some abstract moral thing, it's wrong because it causes demonstrable harm with no benefit to be found. See, that's the thing: you keep going on about how poor our morals must be, but I'm the only one of us who can furnish a reason why killing children is wrong beyond a vague appeal to an abstract force.

Additionally, I can provide situations in which it'd be wrong to take care of your parents into old age, too: what if they're serial killers, and keeping them alive would cause more deaths? What if they're in pain and no longer want to live with it? What if they're bad people who attack you?

3. Since naturalism cannot provide for objective moral values, some other source must exist. God is the most plausible source.

You are assuming objective morals, where you haven't even bothered arguing for them, let alone demonstrated them. That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.

I guess the question is: does the word "anything" included logical impossibilities. Is a four-sided triangle a thing that can be actualized? I would argue that a four-sided triangle is not a thing and does not fall into the category of "anything".

So, god can do anything, so long as you define "anything" to mean "not anything." Wow.

Any other words you want to redefine to mean the exact opposite of what they mean, in order to keep your god safe from his own inherent contradictions, borne of the poorly thought out writing in the bible?