RE: Objective morality as a proper basic belief
June 30, 2017 at 8:45 am
(This post was last modified: June 30, 2017 at 8:47 am by Angrboda.)
@Little Henry:
You make the same mistake that creationists do, assuming that by attacking an alternative explanation of the facts they will thereby be validating their own. It doesn't work that way as that presents a false dichotomy between your views and the alternative. You still have to defend your own view of objective morality if you want to claim that it exists.
"Is God's nature good because it is God's, or is God's nature good because it is morally good (i.e. it conforms to an independent standard of good)?" You see, playing the ontology card has gained you nothing. Just as the Euthyphro dilemma applies to Divine Command Theory, it also applies to the argument that morality is derived from God's nature. Either God's nature is arbitrarily good simply because it is God's, which results in an arbitrary set of morals which by definition is not moral. Or God's nature is good in that it conforms to a standard of goodness that is independent of God, making God's nature superfluous to the question of morals. You have accomplished nothing by your detour into ontology except to confuse the issue. God is still an unsatisfactory source of morality, and you're left empty handed, claiming the existence of objective morals that you can't explain.
You make the same mistake that creationists do, assuming that by attacking an alternative explanation of the facts they will thereby be validating their own. It doesn't work that way as that presents a false dichotomy between your views and the alternative. You still have to defend your own view of objective morality if you want to claim that it exists.
"Is God's nature good because it is God's, or is God's nature good because it is morally good (i.e. it conforms to an independent standard of good)?" You see, playing the ontology card has gained you nothing. Just as the Euthyphro dilemma applies to Divine Command Theory, it also applies to the argument that morality is derived from God's nature. Either God's nature is arbitrarily good simply because it is God's, which results in an arbitrary set of morals which by definition is not moral. Or God's nature is good in that it conforms to a standard of goodness that is independent of God, making God's nature superfluous to the question of morals. You have accomplished nothing by your detour into ontology except to confuse the issue. God is still an unsatisfactory source of morality, and you're left empty handed, claiming the existence of objective morals that you can't explain.