The low hangin' fruits are godless utilitarianism (hedonic) and also godless Kantian ethics (consistency).

What about the famous Euthyphro's dilemma? Is it good because God commands it or does God command because it's good?

The first horn of the dilemma, if you do give it the stamp of approval, there's no need for consistency (whatever God fancies is :snicker: good, from rape to genocide). Refer to the Old Testament to find out what that entails.

Secondly, the latter option implies simply that God isn't an authority on morality; in other words there's another source for morality which God consults and mulls over perhaps before he gives orders. Can we reason our way to thid source? Is it deducible?

What were you trying to say? What is your off the peg criticism of divine command theory?
Do you think genocides used to be right, or were they always wrong? Clarify that first — Bartricks

No, I was just pointing out that genocides are fine for God in some circumstances, as are rapes and ethnic cleansings. So, that kind of God based morality is rather contingent, depending on God's current will - now for example, many people argue, abortions are wrong, but at the time it was completely fine to slaughter pregnant Canaanites and Jerichoans, sort of instant abortions of not only tribes and nations but of unborn babies. So, this sort of God based morality seems to be pretty pragmatic and relative as regards concrete actions by humans in this world. Surely you don't disagree?

Why don't you answer my question? Do you think genocides have always been wrong or that they were right sometimes even though they are wrong now?
Clarify that first. Then we'll clarify what criticism you are trying to make of divine command theory. (Bet you won't answer)

As you only have two options and you'll probably not answer my question but just try and change the topic, I will explain why, whatever answer you give, no problem arises for the divine command theorist.

So, let's say you think genocides have always been wrong. Okay. Then this argument is sound:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocide has always been immoral
3. Therefore, God has always disapproved of genocides

Let's say instead that you think genocides have sometimes been wrong, sometimes right. Okay. Now this argument is sound:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocide has sometimes been wrong, sometimes right
3. Therefore God has sometimes disapproved of genocides and sometimes approved of them.

Do you see? Regardless of how you think the morality of genocides has varied ir remained the same, you do not raise a problem for divine command theory. This is because divine command theory is a theory about what morality is, not a theory about how it behaves.

A more sophisticated challenge involves arguing that if divine command theory is true then the morality of an act would be contingent, whereas in fact the morality of an act is necessary and thus fixed.

But that doesn't work for the same reason. If moral truths are necessary truths (and they're not), all this shows is that the God's attitudes are necessary. That's hard to make sense of,but necessary truths are hard to make sense of in any context, so there's no need to single this one out. And if they are not necessary truths - and most people think they're not and that right and wrong varies a little over time - then the fact divine command theory predicts precisely this is a mark in its favour, not against it.

Why don't you answer my question? Do you think genocides have always been wrong or that they were right sometimes even though they are wrong now? — Bartricks

Why woud that matter - isn't this thread about God's morality? Obviously I think that genocides are never justifiable, even if the Canaanites or Ukrainians or Jews are really sketchy (and they are not anyway). But for God, sometimes, genocides are fine. And maybe sometimes then not? Who could tell. It will be up to him - or rather up to those people who make up these wild, inconsistent stories about him.

But the religious don't even base morality on religion. Rather, they use religious text as a very motivated Rorschach test, and then stamp the resulting interpretation with the authority of that same text.

Do you think genocides have always been wrong or that they were right sometimes even though they are wrong now?

I'm one of those people (along with Augustine, Aquinas) who thinks the Euthyphro dilemma is a false one. Some atheists (like Alexander Rosenberg) seem to think it poses a problem for objective morality as a whole, even without theism (See The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions).

If God exists and is a utilitarian (or at least in part a utilitarian), then to me it seems fine for him to order killing a group of people. After all, he can see the consequences of this and perhaps it brings a greater good to the world. In fact, this same line of reasoning is used by non-omniscient utilitarians all the time:

Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them... This is what the United States attempted in Afghanistan, and it is what we and other Western powers are bound to attempt, at an even greater cost to ourselves and to innocents abroad, elsewhere in the Muslim world. We will continue to spill blood in what is, at bottom, a war of ideas.

-Sam Harris

I find it odd that people often use this argument against theism, and then adopt an ethical position that seems to condones killing or genocide more than the theistic-based morality they abandoned.
Personally, I think Harris's argument is sound under pure utilitarianism (although I don't like it). Maybe that's why I'm not a utilitarian.

It matters because it's not a criticism of divine command theory.
So, you think they are never right. Okay, so this argument is the sound one then:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocides have never been right
3. Therefore God has always had the same attitude towards genocides.

See?

"Yeah, but some people think God wants genocides. So there!"

And what does that show? Nothing.

Yes, it isn't a problem. And if it was, it'd be a problem for all metaethical theories, not just divine command theory.

For instance, many stupidly believe that morality is individually subjective. Clearly we can change our own attitudes towards an act, and so the morality of an act would be contingent on that view. The same applies into those who stupidly think morality is collectively subjective, for group attitudes are no less contingent.

The same applies if one thinks that moral properties are natural properties, for then linguistic convention will determine what has rightness and linguistic convention is contingent.

And if one thinks that moral norms somehow emanate from a platonic form of the good or some such, then once more there is nothing in that account that would explain why such emanations would be necessary rather than contingent.

So those who think dicine command theory is refuted by the problem should, if they are impartial inquires, conclude that all the alternatives are false too.

Can we reason our way to th[is] source? Is it deducible? — Agent Smith

"God" is a fiction, so such reasoning / deduction is necessarily unsound.

"God" is a fiction, so such reasoning / deduction is necessarily unsound. — 180 Proof

Whaddaya mean? Can we not figure out (reason to) a system of morality à la Bentham-Mill, Aristotle, Kant?

Deduced from "God"? Not soundly.

Deduced from "God"? Not soundly. — 180 Proof

No, not deduced from God!

Okay, then I misread you. Yes, nature-based moral systems (e.g. disutilitarianism / epicureanism, (modern) virtue ethics, (modern) stoicism, deep ecology, etc) can be derived by sound reasoning.

Okay, then I misread you. Yes, nature-based moral systems (e.g. disutilitarianism / epicureanism, (modern) virtue ethics, (modern) stoicism, deep ecology, etc) can be derived by sound reasoning. — 180 Proof

Have you heard of Punctum Archimedis aka God's-Eye-View? God, on this reading, is the perfect rational being (free from all biases, known and unknown).

Are we talking about god-based morality or nature-based morality or not nature-based morality?

"Yeah, but some people think God wants genocides. So there!" — Bartricks

Yeah, but that's what happens when you use God as your ventriloquist puppet - it adds nothing to the argument but makes any system of morality unstable. And I was speaking about the God of Christianity as the guy is the best known fiction of the kind for me. God based moralities are especially shifty and relative. They are flighty buggers.

Are we talking about god-based morality or nature-based morality or not nature-based morality? — 180 Proof

A perfect rational being (unbiased) aka God is going to be an authority on everything, including ethics, oui? Divine Command Theory? I'm referring to the intuition implicit in the Punctum Archimedis (God's-Eye-View).

Again, if morality is made of God's attitudes and - as you think is the case - genocides have never been right, then the conclusion is that God has never approved of them.

Yeah, circular. And anyway, God could start approving genocides any moment - he can do what he pleases, change systems of morality like underwear etc. Or are you saying he is constrained by nature, by some natural morality? What does God add to any moral argument, apart from often a lack of argument, of rational explanation?

It's not a circular argument. You clearly don't know what that means. A circular argument is an argument one of the premises of which asserts the conclusion.

This was the argument I just made:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocides have never been right
3. Therefore genocides have never been approved of by God

That's not circular, for the conclusion 'extracts' the implications of the premises.

What you mean is that you disagree with premise 1. Yes?

Well, ok. What's your case against premise 1? It can't be 2, for 2 does not contradict 1.

This was the argument I just made:

1. Morality is made of God's attitudes
2. Genocides have never been right
3. Therefore genocides have never been approved of by God — Bartricks

1. Morality may be made of God's never communicated attitudes
2. We liberal humanists see that genocides are wrong
3. Maybe God agrees, who knows - he remains stubbornly mute, stubbornly non-existent, not here, nor there

I don't really see that you have an argument there, just a non-proven premise.

Er, what you presented wasn't an argument. It was just a numbered list of arbitrary propositions!

What I presented was an argument. It was valid, you just think it is unsound because you think premise 1 is false. You said it was circular. It isn't circular. You were just expressing your disagreement with premise 1.

What I've asked you to do is present an argument against premise 1. You haven't. You just keep saying things about genocides that don't bear on the credibility of premise 1.

So you seem very confused to me. On what basis do you reject premise 1 of the argument I gave?

I can give you an argument for it - I can prove it is true. But you think it is false - so what's your case against it?

What I presented was an argument. — Bartricks

You know, it's actually a pretty well known position, has been for quite a while actually... And it will remain essentially meaningless, empty of any power of logic or empirism. It's profoundly uninteresting and doesn't add anything of real value to any debate about morality and ethics. You can shout (and you really do shout, one has to add) and plenty of religious people do shout, but all the noise and emotion in the world will simply not change any of this.

That was just noise

You've lost me. Sound arguments require demonstrably truthful premises.

You've lost me. — 180 Proof

The fault is entirely mine. I'm not known for my penmanship!

Sound arguments require demonstrably truthful premises. — 180 Proof

Yep!

There's the idea that one doesn't need religion in order to be moral. — baker

I had a similar thoughts about morals being tied to religion/spirituality.
I made these concept to explain their relation:
Dogmatic intuition: The extension of an intuition that becomes a reference principle.
Reference principle (value): Intuitive categories that serve as guideline for an individual.

So basically, morals, faith and believes are all dogmatic intuitions: they are intuitions that emerged in our life and that we somehow decided to "strongly believe in", that became part of us and that are hard to change. And in my opinion, spirituality and religions build stories around it and reinforce them.
If you strongly feel that something is bad, it's easy to be attracted to spiritual or religious thoughts that reinforce that you're "right" to feel this way, and that people who don't agree will go to hell or whatever.

So I'd say religions and spirituality are a way to maintain strong morals, but that it's not the only way. Some people just don't need to think about why they want to be loyal for example, they just are, because that's what they've been told they should do. I know some people who have strong morals but aren't spiritual or religious at all.

However, if you don't have strong dogmatic intuitions, I don't think you'll be likely to be religious or spiritual. It's my case, I don't have strong moral principles and I've never been attracted to spirituality or religion.

What do you think?

So I'd say religions and spirituality are a way to maintain strong morals, but that it's not the only way. Some people just don't need to think about why they want to be loyal for example, they just are, because that's what they've been told they should do. I know some people who have strong morals but aren't spiritual or religious at all. — Skalidris

My working assumption here is that morality is a complex system that a single person cannot invent and enforce on their own, and it's a complex system that requires a metaphysical, transcendental component, hence the need to tie morality to religion/spirituality.

However, if you don't have strong dogmatic intuitions, I don't think you'll be likely to be religious or spiritual. It's my case, I don't have strong moral principles and I've never been attracted to spirituality or religion.

This seems self-explanatory.