Posted: Apr 27, 2012 1:57 pm
JHendrix wrote:We know from the moral argument that Christians, especially apologists, will explicitly state that they define “good” as literally “God's Nature”, such that there is no “goodness” that exists that doesn’t directly reflect “God’s Nature”, and as such all evil comes from going against “God’s Nature”.
What do you mean by define? Neither Swinburne, Plantinga, Feser nor Craig make a semantic point here. Craig, who comes the closest, only that's that moral wrongs and rights are constituted by His commands, which, in turn, are expressions of His nature. God is goodess itself, though this is not to make a semantic point. It's ontologistic, though we can sometimes speak about defining things themselves rather than words, which is why I asked you what you meant by define.
Now as atheists, we’d reject that definition;
There's no necessary reason for atheists to reject this definition unless they think that goodness exists.
Further, if the apologist did not define “good” in this way, then this causes significant problems from the moral argument, since otherwise “goodness” could exist as an entity apart from God, and as such he becomes unnecessary to obtain an objective morality.
Your modalities are confusing me. That objective morality could (in the broadly logical sense) exist apart from God does not entail that God's existence is not an actual condition for objective morality. Perhaps if this latter necessity is understood in a broadly logical sense, then it'd follow, but then it wouldn't be half as interesting, since not every such moral argument depends on there being a logical dependence, or whatever.