A Levite and his concubine

[Esquilax]

First of all God's authority comes from the fact that he created everything

This does not automatically confer authority. How do you justify asserting that this is how god gained his supposed authority?

and has set the standards of morality that he expects from his creation.

Since when was an order, made potentially without authority, a means by which authority can be derived? And what thought process did god use to "set the standards" there?

My morality comes from the bible. That's why I'm repulsed by the actions of the individuals in the bible passages we've been discussing, as was God. Why are you saying that I support the actions of these individuals? The bible never claims that they were morally justified and God didn't condone them. I keep saying this, but it seems to go over your heads.

But when we get to atrocities that are condoned- or indeed, performed- by god, you just shrug them off and say it's different because god's doing them. So how can your morality be at all consistent if there are such unjustified exceptions?

Western civilization's morality is based upon standards which have been set for us in the bible.

No, they're not. We don't have slavery, for one. For another, it's illegal to kill someone of another religion, or no religion at all. To the extent that western morality has taken anything from the bible- and one could easily remind you that the bible took all of its morality from earlier, secular texts- it has improved it.

What I've been trying to get someone to tell me is why God or me or anybody should be forced to abide by your standards of morality.

Which is, as I've said, the wrong question to ask, because morality is not derived from the authority of the person speaking on it. If it was, then you believe n relativistic morality that can change on a dime; all your high minded talk about being repulsed by actions in the bible is all a matter of coincidence and has nothing to do with the act itself.

Stop asking the wrong question, and start asking the right one: nobody can be forced to abide by any standard of morality. If I so choose I can reject your god's moral commandments with ease; does that mean that god's morality is flawed too? That it carries no weight and should be discarded? That's what you're trying to intimate about our morality, right? But it equally applies to yours; your accusations cut both ways.

But then, morality isn't about authority, is it? You can't force one hundred percent of any group to obey a moral system, in fact the whole reason to have a moral system is to delineate acceptable and unacceptable actions. What you can do, is justify your moral system, and the pronouncements within, in accordance with logic and rationality, based on simple objective tenets. They'd need to be consistently applied- after all, morality isn't about you any more than it's about god- and not subject to special pleading or any other logical fallacies... someone might choose not to obey those moral tenets, but if they're truly justifiable and reasonably argued then that person would not have a rational reason for breaking away, meaning they're doing so for ultimately flawed or selfish reasons, that have nothing to do with actual morality.

Or you could just stand there and say "stop it! God says stop it!" whenever someone breaks away from society's morals, see how convincing that will be.

If someone can help himself by killing someone else, why shouldn't he?

Because he wouldn't be able to rationally justify his killing in a way that wouldn't also apply to him. Social morality isn't concerned with the whims of the individual, it needs to be consistently applied to everyone regardless of who they are, or else it's just a preferential series of rules, not a moral system.

Many say it's necessary for a well-functioning society. Well, the European settlers killed countless native Americans and ran them off their land and corralled them on reservations, and our society has functioned quite well over the years. Bad for them, but good for us. Of course I thing it was wrong, but not because society told me it was.

Of course, the settlers at the time believed they were perfectly morally justified in killing... and many of them were christians deriving their morality from the bible... which is entirely okay with killing those of other races or religions... so you aren't thinking it was wrong because of your religion, either.

Society tells me that abortion, fornication, divorce are okay, but I don't agree. I think they are immoral.

Can you justify those beliefs in a non-question begging or special pleading manner, without recourse to unproven assertions?