Posted: Apr 29, 2012 4:47 am
Mick wrote:
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.
By define I mean what Craig and Plantinga call their moral ontology, ie. what it's based on. This means that things are "good" because they part of god's nature. I've not read Swinburne or Feser, but based on the paper I linked, it appears at least Swinburne makes the same move.
If you read Craig, you'll see that he makes it very clear that his commands make up our moral epistemology (ie. how we know what is good and bad). Reference.
It appears you're well aware of the difference, and I'm failing to see how my points above still do not stand.
Mick wrote:
There's no necessary reason for atheists to reject this definition unless they think that goodness exists.
I'm sorry, but huh? Atheists would reject the morality's ontology being rooted in god's nature, because we don't believe in a god. We can very much believe that goodness exists, we just don't believe that "goodness" is derived from god's nature.
Mick wrote:
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.
Ironically, I'm not sure I'm following you here.
To make sure I understand what you're saying, you're saying that there could be some objective standard for morality that exists apart from god, but that for it to actually exist, it requires that god exists? Kind of like how theists will argue that everything depends on god's existence.
I'm sure that could be argued, but it wouldn't really support the moral argument for god that's used by at least Craig. Further, it would undermine a lot of Christian theology, as well as contradict what the other apologists say about the basis of morality.
The paper I linked earlier by Morrison did go into this in detail. I rally would like to see if there was a reply to that.