God is not Just another Guy

This was a post on CARM about meta ethics.It's saying that if the basis of Christian ethics is divine command (God said it that makes it true) then it's just as subjective as any other ethical basis because it's just God's opinion.

Originally Posted by Willem DeChrist

The thread on the is/ought divide brought up one issue with moral realism that I never understood. Namely, almost everyone who is a moral anti-realist is also an atheist. But there really isn't any logical relationship that makes moral realism more likely in a theistic universe than an atheistic universe.

If moral judgments are just a function of subjective preferences/emotions, then God's desires remain equally subjective and thus do not constitute a theory of moral realism. If moral judgments reflect some objective feature of the universe, then that feature can exist whether or not a divine being exists.

Can anyone give me some view of meta-ethics that would make moral judgments subjective in an atheistic universe and objective in a theistic universe? I don't really see anyway this could be, so it seems like there should be at least a few Christians who also see morality as subjective.

I will never understand what it is in the atheist brain will not let them get the concept of transcendental signified. God is not just another guy. he's not another drunk in a bar on Saturday night. He's the basis of the all that is thus his view point is the thing that creates the ought. there can't be ought without him because there's no one in nature. there's nothing there but "is." Therefore, God cannot be subjective any sense. He can be experienced subtly but his view are the essence of objectivity they are only object view point there is. its what makes things true. God = truth!

it's really not hard to understand. "Should" Is predicated upon the top of the metaphysical hierarchy, which is God.


Originally Posted by Willem DeChrist

If morality is an expression of his necessary nature, this seems to suggest that moral laws bound God (rather than are created by God) and exist antecedent to God. If you are defining God as a perfectly good being, this presupposes some notion of goodness which he must conform to.

that doesn't make much sense. God authorizes what is good or right, that's what is being said. How do you get out of that that what God authors is a boundary for him and not for others?

Granted it wouldn't be "created" so much as based upon God's character and it would be boundary for God. that's not the issue I have. the issue is it would not be only a boundary it would still be the basis of "ought." It would be equally a boundary for all others.

DeChrist

However, if you are admitting moral laws exists independent from God, then morality does not require God to exist in the first place.

just a rehash of the Euthaphro dilemma. Doesn't apply to Christian God and it's beaten by the realization that moral stand is derived by God from his own character. The reason it doesn't apply to the Christian God is becuase the Dilemma was made under a metaphsyical system where the metaphysical hierarchy was split between the gods and the fates. The real question was which was more powerful, Zeus or the fates? Christian theology assumes no fates. What would have been the fates is part of God, that is foreordained aspects of universe. In a Weselyan theology for exampel, or any Armenian view, there is no deterministic pre ordination that subsumes human free will. In the Greek world there was.

DeChrist:

No, not really. 'Subjective' refers to the contents of a mind rather than of objective reality. God's preferences are therefore subjective. It doesn't matter what he did or how powerful he is, that doesn't change the definitions of words.

Meta

no, you are doing bait and switch. when you speak of subject/object dichotomy you speak of mind when you speak of God's "preferences' then you jump over to deontolgocial matters rather than merely matters of perception.

It shouldn't matter that God's preferences are the result of his perceptions. that doesn't make them "subjective" anymore than scientist's discoveries are subjective becuase they are discovered with the aid of his/her mind. Mind can discover objective reality and minds can think objectively (less subjectively). Atheists use the term "subjective" to mean flawed, defective, mistaken. This is the assumption they are making about God, that God can make mistakes. That's a assign assumption. It's born totally out of the God hater club's obstinate refusal to consider the nature of the divine.

When I say it doesn't make God's perceptions subjective I mean in the sense that atheists use the term. Actually what I really bleieve is that there is no objectivity. Everything is subjective. Saying that God's view is subjective is no more a limitation upon its veracity than saying that it's real or that it's right. Objectivity is a pretense. There are only varying degrees of subjectivity.

That has nothing to with the prescribing of morals. thus declaring an act "right"or "wrong" is not invalidated by it's prescription by mind.

DeChrist:

I think most theories about moral realism claim that it applies to rational agents generally, not human agents in particular. The notion of rationality seems a bit more significant than the human species in particular.

Are you equating rationality with objectivity? How can you do that without accepting the potential of mind for discovery of objective truth? That view is basically a means of unseating scinece as the umpire of the real.

Really I don't understand this tendency to try and make like this all knowing perspective is just subjective. Especially given that when an atheist says "subjective" he really means flawed, mistaken, error. Subjectivity means not just that it's mind but that it's a limited perspective."that is just your subjective view point." It's a view point from the subject and not the object. God's perspective is not limited to anything. God knows each one of us better than we know ourselves. God is truth so God knows us all from a perspective we can't know ourselves. God can't be considered "subjective" in that sense. God's view is the basis of meaning.