Some theologies hold that if you're good enough you get your own planet. Should my theology therefore have additional heuristics to answer questions about how I would potentially rule my own planet and take care of the spirit babies?

Works for me. Odds are we will be on the same side.

In the other thread i said if God wouldn't order you to kill then there is not much to say. Was just pointing out its fair to ask the question to some theology's and the question isn't meaningless with respect to actual theology.

2 + 2 = 6, I'd imagine. Though I think it's absurd to compare that question to 'Should I obey the will of god?'

There's nothing said about belief being 'automatically disjoint from the processes that lead one to believe something'. It's just that both the process that led you to believe it (direct instruction from god) and the belief (god wants me to kill my family) are both stipulated.

You say this like it hasn't been obvious from the start that that's what it would require.

Yeah, we did this before. The question is should you obey, and wouldn't you be sinning by failing to obey?

YES.

Reminder: It is by direct instruction from god.

Dude, I already explained that I'm not interested in your beliefs.

Then why do you keep asking me when I've told you that I don't have an answer?

Do you think Good means 'as God wishes'? Or do you think it has some God-independent definition?

I think there are both God-dependent and God-independent definitions of good. If God does not exist, I think that there is still a sensible interpretation of "good" (at least a proximate meaning as part of social construction). If the Christian God exists, then goodness is defined by God's character (which is constant). If there is some other god that is a moral-bearing God, then it may make sense to describe that god's sense of good as good. And in both theistic cases, it's possible to reject the God/god definition of good and simply revert back to the proximate meaning of good.

Why can't it be that good is inexplicably linked to gods nature? That it is not an arbitrary command from god or something independent from god.

It can be - that would be 'As God wishes' wouldn't it?
If he has no choice as to what he deems good then it isn't arbitrary, no. If he has a choice, then the choice he made is arbitrary isn't it?

As it happens, my view is precisely that he has no choice - he is good, therefore he doesn't want people to torture babies for fun. As such, I don't struggle with All-In Flynn's questions - if God decided to declare that baby-torturing was the right course of action I don't think that would constitute a change in the definition of good, I think it would be a change in the nature of God (and as such he would no longer be worthy of following).

I don't see the value in using the word good if it's defined by God's character. That seems to me to result in a whole bunch of vaccuous theological positions (like "God wants what God wants" or "It is as God wants for us to do as God wants").

I think God is 'bound' by logic and I think he's 'bound' by morality. When I say God is good/loving/benevolent I mean something more than that he acts in accordance with his own nature (which doesn't seem worth saying, to be frank).

It's as mindless as it gets. "If there is a moral-giving God, then *BY DEFINITION* his morality is moral." Any command of His is moral. What more should you require in your decision?

In your OP you state: "God understands his intentions in a way that makes no sense to us, but that's because we don't necessarily have full access to the information he does about the situation, particularly what he wants to accomplish with a certain activity."

I'm not sure how these two statements mesh together consistently. God's intentions that you deem theologically inconsistent could be God's intentions that cannot make sense to you as a mere human.

You're theology doesn't recognize a God that could command you to kill? If the "Christian theist holds that morality is a reflection of God's nature, and that God's nature is constant" then how can you rule out God commanding you to kill? It's in His repertoire.

It doesn't matter that it's constant. What matters is that it (hypothetically) differs from your impression of it hitherto.

Your impression of god is that it would never instruct you to kill. That's fine, and I'm not trying to persuade you otherwise. I'm asking you to acknowledge what to me seems self-evident - that, since goodness is defined by god's character, if its character was such that it did instruct you to kill, the morally correct response would be to obey - regardless of whether or not you feel you would obey.

There's nothing up my sleeves here. The point is that theistic 'grounding' of morality in the ultimate primacy of god is effectively nothing more than a label.

The value is the same value that you get in mathematics when you define a "set" as "a collection of objects" and never define what an "object" is. It essentially stands as a primitive concept upon which other concepts can be articulated. For example, it would be impossible to articulate a complex value such as "grace" (unmerited favor) without having that underlying concept of God's goodness.

So I would replace the word "vacuous" with "tautological." It's not as if the word is devoid of inherent meaning. Rather, it is a grounding notion that is used to define the understanding of God and various aspects of his character.

Because there's a gap between "my decision" and "God's morality." The question is not whether the command is moral, but whether I would obey it.

It's definitely possible. I've never claimed that it wasn't.

If you are simply discussing the command to kill in isolation, then you're missing the entire point of this thread. Not all killings are immoral and not all killings are moral.

This is not my impression at all. My impression that the specific commands "kill all Palestinians" and "kill your family" completely devoid of any context or meaning whatsoever are not commands that will ever be taken to be from God.

Have I disagreed with this anywhere?

As it is with most definitions of anything.

Generally speaking, a consequentialist would say that the blameworthiness or praiseworthiness of an action depends on its actual EV, not its perceived EV.

Can you explain that a bit more?

You've hemmed and hawwed and moaned about the question over two separate threads. Technically you have not yet actually disagreed, I'll give you that.

God is a source for morality until you see fit?

You've suggested that God can know more about certain situations and because of this His intentions are something we are incapable of understanding. But you are very certain that God would never ask you to commit genocide? This doesn't seem consistent.

Killing 1 to 1 billion. We've been over this before. If God commands it, it is moral but you may not obey this command.

I'll pose the same question I posed earlier to AIF: Whose model should be used?

Taking poker, for example, you can use a model to compute the EV of calling an all-in with one card to come. This would be a perceived EV. However, in reality there is a particular card that is next in the deck (well, two cards in because of the burn), and so the actual EV is not the same as the perceived EV.

Now going to the drunk woman example, in reality the woman's roommate is at home and this is a sufficient barrier for the man to take advantage of the woman, so even though it may be perceived that his behavior is immoral, the actual situation is that there would never end up being immoral behavior because of the positioning of the roommate.

Is this a fair challenge to consequentialist morality? Or is there something about this that inappropriately mischaracterizes an aspect of the view?

I don't think it's immoral to pull the plug on an elderly person who is physically suffering a great deal, is only being sustained by machines, and wants to die. If I received a message from God to do this to someone for whom I had the appropriate relationship to do it, I'd do it.

You're clearly not paying attention if this is still a question in your mind.

It seems perfectly consistent to me. I don't know where the confusion lies.

See I agree with this, but the way I read what you just said is "Good is taken as a primitive concept and we then apply it to God meaningfully to describe the properties he is supposed to have". This isn't defining Good as 'what God wills' it's taking good as primitive and then claiming that God has this property.

The gap between your decision and God's morality seems to be a moral one. Why else would you disobey God's command?

According to you, we can be completely incapable of understanding God's intentions. This would mean that you cannot rule out God possibly commanding you to commit genocide.

Yes, I'm quite confident that if you believed god was telling you to do something you wouldn't otherwise consider immoral, you'd do it. The trouble is, wouldn't you do it even if you didn't believe god was telling you to do it? It misses the point.

Maybe if I sharpen one aspect and tone another down a bit... An apparition which you genuinely believe to be god appears, and explains that due to your imperfect nature, your perception of its character has been flawed. It has decided that it wants you to demonstrate your faith, and instructs you to do so by finding a small child and cheating him out of his pocket money somehow. After successfully swindling the child, you must mock him to his face and do your best to make him cry.

Disregarding your personal feelings on the matter, it would be correct for you to obey, wouldn't it?

Exactly. To stress the point of this further, I'd like an opinion from Aaron on the following:

God commands genocide in the OT. Someone follows his orders and kills everyone with a target on their back.

This person was in fact facing the same dilemma now in front of you. They were 100% sure it's God. They knew God is loving and merciful. They didn't understand the command, yet they executed it anyway. Was the executioner a good person in your mind?