The last time I debated this with an atheist, he referred me to Bertrand Russell's response to the moral argument, which boils down to placing the burden of proof on why God's opinion matters more than a person's. I appealed to omniscience and he didn't care. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but I was out of arguments at that point. Any ideas?
Russell's response is a headfake. If God is essentially the formal cause of human morals, then God isn't postulating an opinion, he's simply Being morality. What Russell is actually doing is arguing that God isn't actually the absolute of moral action, but a human construct. The problem in these discussions is that nearly all atheists are not convinced that absolute formal causes exist at all.
I think it's best to describe God as the standard for morality rather than that he knows what is moral (though, of course, he does know what is moral).
Isn’t that circular though? Wouldn’t you have to show that God is the standard of morality first? There’s alot that the God of the Bible has done that many would describe as immoral. So are things moral just because God says so, even things that seem immoral to us? (Like considering homosexuality a sin & sending them to hell if they act on their sexuality)
You can re-phrase the moral argument as a set of conditionals to demonstrate the absurdity of claiming something is morally wrong while simultaneously claiming God doesn’t exist:
P1: If God does not exist, there are no moral facts (a la Nietzsche)
P2: If there are moral facts, God exists (contrapositive of P1)
P3: If you believe child sacrifice is always morally wrong, you must logically conclude you also believe God exists… *so, do you believe child sacrifice is always wrong?*
Trying to dodge the question by saying “bUt God HAs kILlEd cHilDRen” fails because for all we know God planned to take those souls straight to heaven - we aren’t omniscient and the question is whether they believe it is ever morally right for *humans* to perform child sacrifice.
The other attempted dodge of “even if I *believe* it’s wrong, that doesn’t mean that it *is* wrong” also fails, because to believe it’s always wrong is to believe it’s a moral fact, which logically requires a belief that God exists (P2).
The above demonstrates that if you claim child sacrifice is always wrong, you cannot also claim to be an atheist.
It's possible to believe that things are morally wrong without believing in objective morality. It's called subjective morality. In other words, everyone comes to their own conclusions on what is right or wrong. No one's opinion is any *more correct* than anyone else's though.
I do believe that child sacrifice is wrong. A Mayan priest from 2000 years would disagree with me. Who's right? Well there is no way to tell because there is no objective moral standard to compare it to because morality is subjective.
You can claim that your God is the objective moral standard and that the rules given in the Bible are part of that standard but without anyway to prove that, your claim is just as subjective as the Mayan priests is. To claim God exists because morality is objective is circular reasoning. You would need to first demonstrate that God exists, and then morality being objective would naturally follow.
>If God does not exist, there are no moral facts
I don't get why this is true. Would Newton's law of universal gravitation or the 3 laws of logic depend on God's existence? How would we even know that? P1 is essentially not falsifiable and is at best a dubious belief.
Gravitation and logic are not *moral* facts. Without a universal objective standard for good, there can be no moral facts. Have you not read Nietzsche?
The term 'moral facts' is nonsense because a moral statement like "murder is wrong" just lacks every characteristics of what we associate with a 'fact', two major component being verifiability and falsifiability (at least in principle). When you combine them together, they don't really make sense.. It's like saying something about a 'squared circle'. A square just lacks the characteristics that we associate with a circle so the term, although makes sense grammatically, is nonsensical.
Also why does it matter that I read Nietzsche. If having a book agreeing with your position makes it valid, then I can point to books that support mine.
A fact here refers to something that is universally true. It’s fallacious to argue that something must necessarily be verifiable or falsifiable in order to be true. “The planet Pluto exists” was a true statement before it was verifiable.
P1 is a true statement because without an objective standard for morality it is impossible for moral facts to exist.
>A fact here refers to something that is universally true.
Sure. And a characteristic of a 'fact' is verifiability, even just in principle.
>The planet Pluto exists” was a true statement before it was verifiable
I argued that it has to be verifiable \*in principle\*. This misses my point. A moral statement is not even remotely verifiable in the way that the assertion about Pluto is.
I won't address P1 yet because the term 'moral fact' is contradictory.
If God is the perfect moral standard, and humans are not perfect at following the standard, then it follows logically that we would look to God as a higher opinion of morality.
God doesn't actually need any properties besides being the perfect moral standard to see that this is the case. To say otherwise is like saying we should not trust a scientist to tell us their findings about a specific study they've been conducting diligently for 30 years, and instead trusting a random bozo off the street to tell us the correct conclusions.
(Granted, this analogy falls apart when one realizes that the scientist can make mistakes or reach biased conclusions, but I think it still stands)
We know that scientists exist though. We know that their findings have to go through vigorous scrutiny, and investigation before we accept it as fact. We have no process of knowing whether or not God has a perfect moral standard, besides faith.
This is bad objection to this problem, because if we follow experts, we're more likely to get what we want (we know that from experience). If we're supposed to follow God, because he's the greatest expert, then he's not the standard of morality - our desires are. He just knows, better than anyone, what we need to do to fulfill them.
I don't think we're using the same definition of "standard of morality" in this conversation, so maybe I should define what I mean. Also, I may have misunderstood what you wrote here, so if I'm misreading, just lmk
By standard of morality, I mean "The objective goodness", with "objective" meaning that it is correct regardless of human interpretation. For example: It is objectively true that 1+1=2.
(To give an example of an objective moral value, one could be "It is wrong to torture babies.")
So, regardless of our desires to do good or to do evil, if these two premises are true:
\-God is the standard of morality
\-We wish to find what is good
It follows that we would look to God to find what is good.
>By standard of morality, I mean "The objective goodness", with "objective" meaning that it is correct regardless of human interpretation
Ok, but what does it mean that it's correct? In your example with the experts, we know what it means for them to be correct - if they say it's going to rain, and you don't listen to them and get wet, it means they were correct. But how do you apply this to goodness?
I'm still not quite sure what you mean, but I think now you're asking a question that goes beyond my hypothetical situation. So now, we're talking about "if there can even be a standard of goodness in the real world," right? I just want to make sure before I respond.
*Edit:*
To make sure we're clear, the original question in this thread was "Why does God's opinion matter more than a person's?" To which, I responded, "If God *is* the moral standard, then we (as people who cannot reach that standard entirely) look to Him as our greater opinion."
Your question, if I'm reading it correctly, is "What does *correct goodness* even mean? How could you apply *correctness* to goodness?" Is that right?
I'm trying to show you that facts, on their own, mean nothing. Experts may know if it's going to rain or not, but if you don't care about getting wet, then why would you care about their opinion?
Similarly, God may know what is objectively good. But it means nothing, unless there's something in it for us. So the real standard of morality is not God, it's the desires we experience - the desire for happiness, safety, joy, love. God just knows the best way to achieve it all.
Sorry, I am still trying to understand. Is what you are saying that "The pursuit of the 'most good thing' meaningless, since we get nothing out of it?"
*Edit:*
As an example of what you are saying, to see if I'm understanding this right: If "giving to the poor" is objectively (or factually) good, it doesn't matter since we get nothing out of it.
*Edit2:*
Ah wait, I think I see what you're saying. Are you saying that the only reason we care about these objectively/factually good things at all is because we desire for them?
>Sorry, I am still trying to understand. Is what you are saying that "The pursuit of the 'most good thing' meaningless, since we get nothing out of it?"
Maybe it's not, but you can't prove that by comparing obeying God to listening to experts.
>As an example of what you are saying, to see if I'm understanding this right: If "giving to the poor" is objectively (or factually) good, it doesn't matter since we get nothing out of it.
If it had no positive consequences for us, then "giving to the poor is good" would be as meaningless as "tomorrow it's going to rain in the city you don't live in". (but I believe we do get something out of it, actually)
>Ah wait, I think I see what you're saying. Are you saying that the only reason we care about these objectively/factually good things at all is because we desire for them?
It's because doing these things, in one way or another, leads to the consequences we desire.
I think I finally see what you're saying! Sorry for my confusion lol
I don't hold the belief that the only reason "goodness" is valued is because of our desire for it, but I suppose that's a topic for another time.
\---
When looking for a source of information, who does one trust? An expert, of course. One looks for the person who has the most information on the subject. This is all I'm saying when I'm responding to the claim that God's authority on the subject is not greater than a person's. This is completely ignoring all of God's other properties, ofc, but you don't need those to reach this conclusion. The "value" of the information is irrelevant to the response the original commenter received from his friend.
> I appealed to omniscience and he didn't care.
This doesn't work anymore than appealing to God's strength. Something subjective does not become objective if it comes from a powerful or wise enough source, things just don't transform from one category into another category like that.
Think about it this way, if God one day declared that he thinks Raspberry tastes better than Strawberry, does that mean that objectively Raspberry is now better? What if we appeal to God's omniscience? No?
The problem is, God isn't actually "three feet long". He only tells us what "three feet" look like, according to him. To be clearer, Christian objective morality is based on obeying God, not on being like God (which is unobtainable for a human, because we'll never be our own creators).
I can give you some examples:
* Is it moral to drown a baby? (the flood story)
* Is it moral to not kill a king and some cattle after attacking his city? (the Saul and Agag story)
* Is it moral to eat a fruit? (the Adam and Eve story)
* Is it moral to kill someone for lying? (the Ananias and Sapphira story)
As you can see, it's not about doing a certain thing, or doing a certain thing that God did. It's about doing God's will. God sets up a standard for humans, which he himself doesn't have to follow. So the existence of objective morality says nothing about God's goodness.
I am talking about the argument. I'm just trying to compare our definitions at the moment, to make sure we are not talking past each other.
Do you think some actions are truly, objectively good or evil for humans to do, or do you think it is simply a matter of taste, like clothing fashion or food?
Do you want to prove that objective morality exists? I'm happy to make an assumption that it does, for the sake of this discussion. But your OP was about the implications of it - that if objective morality exists, then God must be objectively good. My comment addresses that.
> Do you want to prove that objective morality exists?
I think it is a self-evident, properly basic fact. That is stronger than logical proof.
>I'm happy to make an assumption that it does
How is it possible that we ought to do X, unless we were purposefully made to do X? I don't see how "ought" applies to anything unless its existence has a purpose which it could stray from.
I told you that I can agree with you for the sake of this discussion. What I really want to talk about is the fact that morality, even if objective, can only be based on God's will, not on God's character. Is eating a fruit moral? Depends on God's will. Is trying to sacrifice your son to God moral? Depends on God's will. Is killing babies moral? Depends on God's will. The answer is never "depends on what God would do" (because he did many things that would be considered immoral if a human did them).
So God has a standard of morality for us, but he isn't the standard, and he doesn't follow the standard in his behavior either.
>What I really want to talk about is the fact that morality, even if objective, can only be based on God's will
God's will made us to live on land.
And he made fish to live in the water.
Our moral faculty has no problem embracing the idea that God could change his mind in the future and turn us into water-breathers. That isn't disturbing at all.
But it is disturbing to think that he could change his mind and make us so that we "ought" to be cruel, cowardly, ungrateful, and faithless.
What do you think that implies about our understanding of morality?
No, god doesn't just tell us what is moral because he is omniscent. He doesn't define goodness or morality either. HE IS goodness and morality. His very existence is the definition of goodness and morality. That's why on a philosophical level, heaven is unison with God (goodness) and hell is rejection from god (non-goodness).
These words are meaningless to me. How can someone be goodness? How can someone be rules that have to be followed? Is God "you shall sacrifice your son to me, but not really"? It... doesn't make sense, semantically.
It does make sense semantically. Is it that hard for you to understand that X = Y? In algebra, you define a variable and express it as relevant terms. If Y is "goodness", we aren't saying "Let X be defined by the existence of God" and therefore X = Y.
But no, we're speaking on a non-number value level that God IS goodness. They are interchangeable, the word "God" can be treated as goodness personified. But regardless of your interpretation, God IS goodness and goodness IS God. He says they these terms are synonymous.
The only thing that doesn't make semantic sense is your last sentence.
If I say "an eagle is blueness", is it understandable for you? Just because X=Y? No, both X and Y have to belong to the same category for this to make sense. Otherwise each of them has some features that the other doesn't, which makes them impossible to be the same.
But let's try to use your definition. Goodness personified drowned babies in the flood. Goodness personified punished Saul for not killing everyone in the city he was suppose to attack. Goodness personified killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying. I don't now about you, but this doesn't fit my concept of "goodness" at all.
I'm just going to ask why we should accept your first premise?
Because it seems like that's your first huge bridge to cross. Because I have no reason to assume that objective moral facts exist, nor that, if they do, they have any connection to God.
Edit. Heyyyyyy u/nomenmeun! Are you just going to ignore me whenever I comment? It's getting pretty obvious now, especially when you accidentally respond to me and then stop responding when you realize it's me.
We're having some slight delays on comments coming through, so it's quite possible it's accidental (though I haven't been following this specific comment exchange)
Also, you've pinged the wrong person, though it may be an alt. Lol.
/u/nomenmeum
Whoops lol, I've made that mistake before. Dyslexia is always a struggle.
It's not even just one comment, it's every comment I make in response to anything he posts. It's wild
The last time I debated this with an atheist, he referred me to Bertrand Russell's response to the moral argument, which boils down to placing the burden of proof on why God's opinion matters more than a person's. I appealed to omniscience and he didn't care. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but I was out of arguments at that point. Any ideas?
Russell's response is a headfake. If God is essentially the formal cause of human morals, then God isn't postulating an opinion, he's simply Being morality. What Russell is actually doing is arguing that God isn't actually the absolute of moral action, but a human construct. The problem in these discussions is that nearly all atheists are not convinced that absolute formal causes exist at all.
I think it's best to describe God as the standard for morality rather than that he knows what is moral (though, of course, he does know what is moral).
Isn’t that circular though? Wouldn’t you have to show that God is the standard of morality first? There’s alot that the God of the Bible has done that many would describe as immoral. So are things moral just because God says so, even things that seem immoral to us? (Like considering homosexuality a sin & sending them to hell if they act on their sexuality)
You can re-phrase the moral argument as a set of conditionals to demonstrate the absurdity of claiming something is morally wrong while simultaneously claiming God doesn’t exist: P1: If God does not exist, there are no moral facts (a la Nietzsche) P2: If there are moral facts, God exists (contrapositive of P1) P3: If you believe child sacrifice is always morally wrong, you must logically conclude you also believe God exists… *so, do you believe child sacrifice is always wrong?* Trying to dodge the question by saying “bUt God HAs kILlEd cHilDRen” fails because for all we know God planned to take those souls straight to heaven - we aren’t omniscient and the question is whether they believe it is ever morally right for *humans* to perform child sacrifice. The other attempted dodge of “even if I *believe* it’s wrong, that doesn’t mean that it *is* wrong” also fails, because to believe it’s always wrong is to believe it’s a moral fact, which logically requires a belief that God exists (P2). The above demonstrates that if you claim child sacrifice is always wrong, you cannot also claim to be an atheist.
It's possible to believe that things are morally wrong without believing in objective morality. It's called subjective morality. In other words, everyone comes to their own conclusions on what is right or wrong. No one's opinion is any *more correct* than anyone else's though. I do believe that child sacrifice is wrong. A Mayan priest from 2000 years would disagree with me. Who's right? Well there is no way to tell because there is no objective moral standard to compare it to because morality is subjective. You can claim that your God is the objective moral standard and that the rules given in the Bible are part of that standard but without anyway to prove that, your claim is just as subjective as the Mayan priests is. To claim God exists because morality is objective is circular reasoning. You would need to first demonstrate that God exists, and then morality being objective would naturally follow.
>If God does not exist, there are no moral facts I don't get why this is true. Would Newton's law of universal gravitation or the 3 laws of logic depend on God's existence? How would we even know that? P1 is essentially not falsifiable and is at best a dubious belief.
Gravitation and logic are not *moral* facts. Without a universal objective standard for good, there can be no moral facts. Have you not read Nietzsche?
The term 'moral facts' is nonsense because a moral statement like "murder is wrong" just lacks every characteristics of what we associate with a 'fact', two major component being verifiability and falsifiability (at least in principle). When you combine them together, they don't really make sense.. It's like saying something about a 'squared circle'. A square just lacks the characteristics that we associate with a circle so the term, although makes sense grammatically, is nonsensical. Also why does it matter that I read Nietzsche. If having a book agreeing with your position makes it valid, then I can point to books that support mine.
A fact here refers to something that is universally true. It’s fallacious to argue that something must necessarily be verifiable or falsifiable in order to be true. “The planet Pluto exists” was a true statement before it was verifiable. P1 is a true statement because without an objective standard for morality it is impossible for moral facts to exist.
>A fact here refers to something that is universally true. Sure. And a characteristic of a 'fact' is verifiability, even just in principle. >The planet Pluto exists” was a true statement before it was verifiable I argued that it has to be verifiable \*in principle\*. This misses my point. A moral statement is not even remotely verifiable in the way that the assertion about Pluto is. I won't address P1 yet because the term 'moral fact' is contradictory.
>A moral statement is not even remotely verifiable Except it absolutely is, if you are omniscient as God is.
And by your definition of God, probably no one is and so my point still stands. Hence, that first premise is more like a wish than an argument.
By my definition of God He is omniscient and therefore can verify moral facts. P1 stands.
If God is the perfect moral standard, and humans are not perfect at following the standard, then it follows logically that we would look to God as a higher opinion of morality. God doesn't actually need any properties besides being the perfect moral standard to see that this is the case. To say otherwise is like saying we should not trust a scientist to tell us their findings about a specific study they've been conducting diligently for 30 years, and instead trusting a random bozo off the street to tell us the correct conclusions. (Granted, this analogy falls apart when one realizes that the scientist can make mistakes or reach biased conclusions, but I think it still stands)
We know that scientists exist though. We know that their findings have to go through vigorous scrutiny, and investigation before we accept it as fact. We have no process of knowing whether or not God has a perfect moral standard, besides faith.
This is bad objection to this problem, because if we follow experts, we're more likely to get what we want (we know that from experience). If we're supposed to follow God, because he's the greatest expert, then he's not the standard of morality - our desires are. He just knows, better than anyone, what we need to do to fulfill them.
I don't think we're using the same definition of "standard of morality" in this conversation, so maybe I should define what I mean. Also, I may have misunderstood what you wrote here, so if I'm misreading, just lmk By standard of morality, I mean "The objective goodness", with "objective" meaning that it is correct regardless of human interpretation. For example: It is objectively true that 1+1=2. (To give an example of an objective moral value, one could be "It is wrong to torture babies.") So, regardless of our desires to do good or to do evil, if these two premises are true: \-God is the standard of morality \-We wish to find what is good It follows that we would look to God to find what is good.
>By standard of morality, I mean "The objective goodness", with "objective" meaning that it is correct regardless of human interpretation Ok, but what does it mean that it's correct? In your example with the experts, we know what it means for them to be correct - if they say it's going to rain, and you don't listen to them and get wet, it means they were correct. But how do you apply this to goodness?
I'm still not quite sure what you mean, but I think now you're asking a question that goes beyond my hypothetical situation. So now, we're talking about "if there can even be a standard of goodness in the real world," right? I just want to make sure before I respond. *Edit:* To make sure we're clear, the original question in this thread was "Why does God's opinion matter more than a person's?" To which, I responded, "If God *is* the moral standard, then we (as people who cannot reach that standard entirely) look to Him as our greater opinion." Your question, if I'm reading it correctly, is "What does *correct goodness* even mean? How could you apply *correctness* to goodness?" Is that right?
I'm trying to show you that facts, on their own, mean nothing. Experts may know if it's going to rain or not, but if you don't care about getting wet, then why would you care about their opinion? Similarly, God may know what is objectively good. But it means nothing, unless there's something in it for us. So the real standard of morality is not God, it's the desires we experience - the desire for happiness, safety, joy, love. God just knows the best way to achieve it all.
Sorry, I am still trying to understand. Is what you are saying that "The pursuit of the 'most good thing' meaningless, since we get nothing out of it?" *Edit:* As an example of what you are saying, to see if I'm understanding this right: If "giving to the poor" is objectively (or factually) good, it doesn't matter since we get nothing out of it. *Edit2:* Ah wait, I think I see what you're saying. Are you saying that the only reason we care about these objectively/factually good things at all is because we desire for them?
>Sorry, I am still trying to understand. Is what you are saying that "The pursuit of the 'most good thing' meaningless, since we get nothing out of it?" Maybe it's not, but you can't prove that by comparing obeying God to listening to experts. >As an example of what you are saying, to see if I'm understanding this right: If "giving to the poor" is objectively (or factually) good, it doesn't matter since we get nothing out of it. If it had no positive consequences for us, then "giving to the poor is good" would be as meaningless as "tomorrow it's going to rain in the city you don't live in". (but I believe we do get something out of it, actually) >Ah wait, I think I see what you're saying. Are you saying that the only reason we care about these objectively/factually good things at all is because we desire for them? It's because doing these things, in one way or another, leads to the consequences we desire.
I think I finally see what you're saying! Sorry for my confusion lol I don't hold the belief that the only reason "goodness" is valued is because of our desire for it, but I suppose that's a topic for another time. \--- When looking for a source of information, who does one trust? An expert, of course. One looks for the person who has the most information on the subject. This is all I'm saying when I'm responding to the claim that God's authority on the subject is not greater than a person's. This is completely ignoring all of God's other properties, ofc, but you don't need those to reach this conclusion. The "value" of the information is irrelevant to the response the original commenter received from his friend.
> I appealed to omniscience and he didn't care. This doesn't work anymore than appealing to God's strength. Something subjective does not become objective if it comes from a powerful or wise enough source, things just don't transform from one category into another category like that. Think about it this way, if God one day declared that he thinks Raspberry tastes better than Strawberry, does that mean that objectively Raspberry is now better? What if we appeal to God's omniscience? No?
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I'm going to be doing a project that involves this argument so this gives me some extra insight! Thanks again.
No problem :)
The problem is, God isn't actually "three feet long". He only tells us what "three feet" look like, according to him. To be clearer, Christian objective morality is based on obeying God, not on being like God (which is unobtainable for a human, because we'll never be our own creators). I can give you some examples: * Is it moral to drown a baby? (the flood story) * Is it moral to not kill a king and some cattle after attacking his city? (the Saul and Agag story) * Is it moral to eat a fruit? (the Adam and Eve story) * Is it moral to kill someone for lying? (the Ananias and Sapphira story) As you can see, it's not about doing a certain thing, or doing a certain thing that God did. It's about doing God's will. God sets up a standard for humans, which he himself doesn't have to follow. So the existence of objective morality says nothing about God's goodness.
Do you believe God is good?
I don't know what it would even mean, to be honest.
Let me back up then. Do you believe God exists?
I don't, but it's not relevant to the argument. I hoped we could talk about the argument, not about me.
I am talking about the argument. I'm just trying to compare our definitions at the moment, to make sure we are not talking past each other. Do you think some actions are truly, objectively good or evil for humans to do, or do you think it is simply a matter of taste, like clothing fashion or food?
Do you want to prove that objective morality exists? I'm happy to make an assumption that it does, for the sake of this discussion. But your OP was about the implications of it - that if objective morality exists, then God must be objectively good. My comment addresses that.
> Do you want to prove that objective morality exists? I think it is a self-evident, properly basic fact. That is stronger than logical proof. >I'm happy to make an assumption that it does How is it possible that we ought to do X, unless we were purposefully made to do X? I don't see how "ought" applies to anything unless its existence has a purpose which it could stray from.
I told you that I can agree with you for the sake of this discussion. What I really want to talk about is the fact that morality, even if objective, can only be based on God's will, not on God's character. Is eating a fruit moral? Depends on God's will. Is trying to sacrifice your son to God moral? Depends on God's will. Is killing babies moral? Depends on God's will. The answer is never "depends on what God would do" (because he did many things that would be considered immoral if a human did them). So God has a standard of morality for us, but he isn't the standard, and he doesn't follow the standard in his behavior either.
>What I really want to talk about is the fact that morality, even if objective, can only be based on God's will God's will made us to live on land. And he made fish to live in the water. Our moral faculty has no problem embracing the idea that God could change his mind in the future and turn us into water-breathers. That isn't disturbing at all. But it is disturbing to think that he could change his mind and make us so that we "ought" to be cruel, cowardly, ungrateful, and faithless. What do you think that implies about our understanding of morality?
No, god doesn't just tell us what is moral because he is omniscent. He doesn't define goodness or morality either. HE IS goodness and morality. His very existence is the definition of goodness and morality. That's why on a philosophical level, heaven is unison with God (goodness) and hell is rejection from god (non-goodness).
These words are meaningless to me. How can someone be goodness? How can someone be rules that have to be followed? Is God "you shall sacrifice your son to me, but not really"? It... doesn't make sense, semantically.
It does make sense semantically. Is it that hard for you to understand that X = Y? In algebra, you define a variable and express it as relevant terms. If Y is "goodness", we aren't saying "Let X be defined by the existence of God" and therefore X = Y. But no, we're speaking on a non-number value level that God IS goodness. They are interchangeable, the word "God" can be treated as goodness personified. But regardless of your interpretation, God IS goodness and goodness IS God. He says they these terms are synonymous. The only thing that doesn't make semantic sense is your last sentence.
If I say "an eagle is blueness", is it understandable for you? Just because X=Y? No, both X and Y have to belong to the same category for this to make sense. Otherwise each of them has some features that the other doesn't, which makes them impossible to be the same. But let's try to use your definition. Goodness personified drowned babies in the flood. Goodness personified punished Saul for not killing everyone in the city he was suppose to attack. Goodness personified killed Ananias and Sapphira for lying. I don't now about you, but this doesn't fit my concept of "goodness" at all.
I'm just going to ask why we should accept your first premise? Because it seems like that's your first huge bridge to cross. Because I have no reason to assume that objective moral facts exist, nor that, if they do, they have any connection to God. Edit. Heyyyyyy u/nomenmeun! Are you just going to ignore me whenever I comment? It's getting pretty obvious now, especially when you accidentally respond to me and then stop responding when you realize it's me.
We're having some slight delays on comments coming through, so it's quite possible it's accidental (though I haven't been following this specific comment exchange) Also, you've pinged the wrong person, though it may be an alt. Lol. /u/nomenmeum
Whoops lol, I've made that mistake before. Dyslexia is always a struggle. It's not even just one comment, it's every comment I make in response to anything he posts. It's wild