Another Christian Being Offered On The PC Alter?

[The Thinker]

No Thinker I do not have to do any such thing. Let's say that I'm agnostic about objective moral values, and you claim that such values exist - it is on you to demonstrate how such values actually could exist. Unless that you want to withdraw the claim that objective moral facts, the ball is firmly in your court.

No no no. You've been loudly proclaiming on this site and probably many others that objective moral values depend on god. I've thoroughly refuted that idea. So you must either refute me or admit that god has nothing to do with objective morality.

We are speaking generically, so you agree that if God had an immutable moral character then His law would not be arbitrary. So the theist is not impaled on the arbitrary horn.

Well you are the one who claimed "God" must be the biblical god. I said no such thing. But set that aside. If god's morality was not arbitrary somehow, you'd still face another dilemma. You'd still have to be faced with option (2) - Objective morality doesn't depend on god. Any attempt by you to try and refute this will force you to make an argument that would fall in (3), which is making a circular argument. So you can either give up and admit defeat, or try and entertain me with more arguments like Joel is doing.

[The Thinker]

No, my premise P1 is that "Morality is internal to God" such that morality does not exist independently of god.
You keep arbitrarily shifting back and forth between "morality does not exist independently of god" and "morality cannot exist independently of god." Is that because you don't understand the difference between the two?

So you are saying that morality does not exist independently of god. You seemed to be avoiding that earlier. You are doing a really bad job at arguing for that. You seem to be de facto arguing that morality cannot exist independently of god. But I don't care whether it is "does not" or "cannot", the point is I've refuted any claim that morality is dependent on god and you have made nothing but either a circular argument, or just claimed that "Morality is internal to God" means that morality does not exist independently of god with no justification.

I have not shown that because I don't need to. Instead, I have assumed it as premise P1. Your "dilemma" is that I can't hold P1 without running into one of your 3 options. I've disproven that by counterexample, by giving an argument that assumes P1, is internally consistent, and is not circular.

Your P1 does not in any way demonstrate that morality cannot or does not exist independently of god.

Whether I can prove P1 is a different question.

You can't. And you cannot show anything argument that avoids getting horned on 1,2 or 3. You P1 does not show or indicate morality is dependent on god. It just simply hasn't shown that to be true.

Indeed, you do not understand the difference between the two? Well that is the problem we are running into in our discussion.

.....

The two are not equivalent. Do you understand the difference now?

Yeah, I've known all along. My point is that you haven't even made a successful argument that either the moral standard cannot or does not exist independently of god. Neither.

[seer]

No no no. You've been loudly proclaiming on this site and probably many others that objective moral values depend on god. I've thoroughly refuted that idea. So you must either refute me or admit that god has nothing to do with objective morality.

Thinker, that is not exactly right. I can logically understand how moral values can exist in the mind of God. I do not understand how moral values can be objective apart from God. If you are claiming that they can it is on you to show how.

Well you are the one who claimed "God" must be the biblical god. I said no such thing. But set that aside. If god's morality was not arbitrary somehow, you'd still face another dilemma. You'd still have to be faced with option (2) - Objective morality doesn't depend on god. Any attempt by you to try and refute this will force you to make an argument that would fall in (3), which is making a circular argument. So you can either give up and admit defeat, or try and entertain me with more arguments like Joel is doing.

No Thinker, you already agree that if God's law was based on this immutable character then it would not be arbitrary. And I already asked and you have failed to answer - how do you avoid a circular argument for your objective moral values? Is something right/wrong because the standard says it is right/wrong?

[Joel]

So you are saying that morality does not exist independently of god. You seemed to be avoiding that earlier. You are doing a really bad job at arguing for that.

I'm not arguing for it at all. I'm assuming it as a premise.
(And I wasn't avoiding it earlier. I was avoiding making a comment on the different proposition: "Morality cannot exist independently of god.")

You seem to be de facto arguing that morality cannot exist independently of god.

No, because, as I explained, "X is not actual" does not imply "X is impossible".

the point is I've refuted any claim that morality is dependent on god

I must have missed that. But that isn't the point. Regardless of whether the premise is true, I have shown that it is possible to hold the premise that morality is dependent on God, without any of your 3 options being true.

and you have made nothing but either a circular argument,

Where is the circularity in the argument?

Here it is again for your convenience:

P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God.
P2) "God is loving" is a property of God.
C1) "Loving is good" is true.
C1.1) Loving is good.
C2) God is loving.
C3) God is good.

or just claimed that "Morality is internal to God" means that morality does not exist independently of god with no justification.

No, I intend my premise P1 to say that the objective moral standard is internal to God in the sense that it exists in God's being, rather than existing outside God's being.
And I'm not attempting to justify my premise. I'm attempting to show that assuming the premise to be true does not run me into any logical problem. The only thing I'm arguing is against your claim that assuming that premise runs me into circular logic or other logical problems. It does not.

Your P1 does not in any way demonstrate that morality cannot or does not exist independently of god.

If you like, I'll reword P1 to read:
P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God, such that the moral standard exists in God's being, and does not exist independently of God.

There. So now we have:

P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God, such that the objective moral Standard exists in God's being, and does not exist independently of God.
P2) "God is loving" is a property of God.
C1) "Loving is good" is true.
C1.1) Loving is good.
C2) God is loving.
C3) God is good.

Not one of your 3 options is true about this argument.

[Joel]

The point I think is that if morals are objective then morals cannot be dependent upon a mind period. If morals are dependent upon a mind, then morals are not objective. Why? Because if they are dependent upon a mind, then they are not objective facts which exists in their own right, and if they are objective facts that exist in their own right then their existence is not dependent upon anything else. If your argument is that they are both, i.e. that morals are objective facts that exist in the mind of God, well then, the only reason that morals exist as objective facts in the mind of God is because they are objective facts first in themselves.

A) I didn't say anything about God's mind. You are reading that into my post. So what you say here is irrelevant.

B) What you are saying here isn't exactly correct. If JimL feels that "Bananas are yummy," that statement is subjective to JimL (depends on JimL's mind). But it would be the case that "JimL feels that bananas are yummy," is an objective truth. Even though its truth depends on JimL's mind. The two senses in which those two are said to "depend on JimL's mind" are different. We have to be careful not to equivocate. The one sense makes the difference between subjective and objective. And the other sense does not.

Then you say, "if they are objective facts that exist in their own right then their existence is not dependent upon anything else." That's not true. The color of JimL's eyes may be an objective fact, but it still depends on JimL's existence. (If JimL had never existed, then there would never have been JimL's eyes or their color.) If what you've claimed here were true, it would imply that there is no such thing as a contingent fact, which is clearly not true. (Not that I'm saying that moral truths are contingent. A Christian can agree that the truth of the doctrine of the Trinity depends on God's being, but we would say it's a necessary truth, rather than a contingent one.)

[Tassman]

This is nonsense Tass, we still see this very behavior in both Muslim and Communists countries,

Totalitarianism by definition means the imposition of rigid conformity whether by Muslims, Communists or Christians.

and I might add from liberals like you who attempt to force others to live and think like you by force of law.

Men have not changed that much Tass,

Men have not changed biologically, but they have changed a great deal in how they govern themselves. Modern man has devised a system of governance, i.e. democracy, with checks and balances to keep his selfish instincts in check. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that - Winston Churchill, 1947.

we still try and control and dominate our fellow man in various ways. To make everyone conform.

What we do in modern democracies is give full and equal rights to all citizens provided these rights don't impinge of the equal rights of others.

[Tassman]

Well free will is key -

if not we are all predetermined to do what we do, and we don't assign responsibility, moral or otherwise, to creatures who have no choice.

My dog is not morally bad for peeing on the rug

Your dog is bad if he's been trained not to pee on the rug. Just as we are bad if we don't act in accordance with evolved instincts and social acculturation to comply with the rules of the group.

[seer]

But a man is logically no more morally responsible for killing his fellow man than a rock would be if it rolled down a hill and killed said man. And the fact that you "assign" responsibility in a deterministic world just shows how irrational your position is.

To quote one of your High Priests, Richard Dawkins

http://edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins

Concepts like blame and responsibility are bandied about freely where human wrongdoers are concerned. When a child robs an old lady, should we blame the child himself or his parents? Or his school? Negligent social workers? In a court of law, feeble-mindedness is an accepted defence, as is insanity. Diminished responsibility is argued by the defence lawyer, who may also try to absolve his client of blame by pointing to his unhappy childhood, abuse by his father, or even unpropitious genes (not, so far as I am aware, unpropitious planetary conjunctions, though it wouldn't surprise me).

But doesn't a truly scientific, mechanistic view of the nervous system make nonsense of the very idea of responsibility, whether diminished or not? Any crime, however heinous, is in principle to be blamed on antecedent conditions acting through the accused's physiology, heredity and environment.

[Joel]

There's lots of good reasons: e.g. freedom of association, property rights, freedom of thought, equality before the law.

What we do in modern democracies is give full and equal rights to all citizens provided these rights don't impinge of the equal rights of others.

That would be great if that were true. But it's not (There in Australia the details may vary somewhat from the U.S.)
You yourself seem to oppose the equal right to freedom of association. Other examples include the vast array of victimless 'crimes' (i.e. against acts that don't impinge of the equal rights of others), such as drug prohibition, legal controls on peoples' health and safety, education, thoughts and speech, voluntary exchanges, etc. In many ways modern democracies have been growing increasingly totalitarian.

[The Thinker]

Thinker, that is not exactly right. I can logically understand how moral values can exist in the mind of God. I do not understand how moral values can be objective apart from God. If you are claiming that they can it is on you to show how.

So explain to me how moral values exist in the mind of god, and how that makes it objective, such that you avoid any pitfalls of the 3 options I laid out for you. Once you have refuted my argument, or admitted that you cannot, we can move on.

[The Thinker]

I'm not arguing for it at all. I'm assuming it as a premise.

Assuming it? Why should I assume this?

I must have missed that. But that isn't the point. Regardless of whether the premise is true, I have shown that it is possible to hold the premise that morality is dependent on God, without any of your 3 options being true.

No you haven't! You've just admitted that your argument is based on an assumption - an unjustified assumption because you still have not avoided the dilemma. In other words, what you're doing is asking me to just assume there's no dilemma, in order for you to be able to claim coherence in your argument. It's absurd.

Where is the circularity in the argument?

Here it is again for your convenience:

P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God.
P2) "God is loving" is a property of God.
C1) "Loving is good" is true.
C1.1) Loving is good.
C2) God is loving.
C3) God is good.

You know what the word "or" means right? Your P1 does not show that loving does not exist independently of god or that it isn't good independently of god. You must show that in order for your argument to even get off the ground.

No, I intend my premise P1 to say that the objective moral standard is internal to God in the sense that it exists in God's being, rather than existing outside God's being.
And I'm not attempting to justify my premise. I'm attempting to show that assuming the premise to be true does not run me into any logical problem. The only thing I'm arguing is against your claim that assuming that premise runs me into circular logic or other logical problems. It does not.

If you intend your P1 to say that, you need to demonstrate that it's true. For starters, you can try answering the question why loving is good. And you must do so that it avoids the dilemma. I don't think you can. In fact, I think it's logically impossible. So you are asking me to assume something logically impossible in order for me to claim your argument isn't incoherent.

If you like, I'll reword P1 to read:
P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God, such that the moral standard exists in God's being, and does not exist independently of God.

You can reword it all you want, but unless you can show that your assumption isn't incoherent, as I argue it is, then you're asking me to assume something incoherent, in order to make your argument coherent. This is what I'm dealing with. Do you get it now?

[Joel]

Assuming it? Why should I assume this?

You don't have to assume P1.
The only thing I'm trying to show is that you are incorrect in claiming that if I assume it, then that must run me into logical inconsistency or circular logic.
To discuss that particular claim of yours, we don't need to consider whether P1 is actually true or false.

For starters, you can try answering the question why loving is good. And you must do so that it avoids the dilemma. I don't think you can. In fact, I think it's logically impossible. So you are asking me to assume something logically impossible in order for me to claim your argument isn't incoherent.

You can reword it all you want, but unless you can show that your assumption isn't incoherent, as I argue it is, then you're asking me to assume something incoherent, in order to make your argument coherent. This is what I'm dealing with. Do you get it now?

You are making a new claim here. You are now claiming that my P1 is incoherent. As a reminder, my P1 is now:

P1) "Loving is good" is a property of God, such that the moral standard exists in God's being, and does not exist independently of God.

Note that this is different from the original claim of yours that I started out debating, which is that if I assume P1, that Euthyphro somehow runs me into logical difficulty. (And I've shown that P1 does not run me into any difficulty that you've suggested.)
But now here you are not just claiming that P1 runs me into circular logic. You are now claiming that P1 itself is incoherent. That is, you are unable to grasp what meaning I'm trying to convey by P1. I'm not sure how to help you. What part of it don't you understand?

Have you made any positive argument that P1 is incoherent? Or that it is self-contradictory? The most I can see there is that you go from saying "I think it's logically impossible [to answer] the question why loving is good" to "you are asking me to assume something logically impossible", as if you are suggesting that "P1 is logically impossible" follows from the former? That doesn't seem to follow. I'm not seeing any reason to think that P1 is self-contradictory or otherwise logically impossible.

[Tassman]

You don't have to assume P1.

The only thing I'm trying to show is that you are incorrect in claiming that if I assume it, then that must run me into logical inconsistency or circular logic.
To discuss that particular claim of yours, we don't need to consider whether P1 is actually true or false.

[Tassman]

But a man is logically no more morally responsible for killing his fellow man than a rock would be if it rolled down a hill and killed said man. And the fact that you "assign" responsibility in a deterministic world just shows how irrational your position is.

To quote one of your High Priests, Richard Dawkins

http://edge.org/q2006/q06_9.html#dawkins

[seer]

So explain to me how moral values exist in the mind of god, and how that makes it objective, such that you avoid any pitfalls of the 3 options I laid out for you. Once you have refuted my argument, or admitted that you cannot, we can move on.

No Thinker, first you already agreed that if God's law was grounded in in His immutable character then it would not be arbitrary. Second, Joel has already dealt with the rest. My question is how does your "objective" moral law avoid the same "pitfalls?" How is your moral law not arbitrary? How do you reason to it apart from begging the question?