My post was a response to this.



If God is good that means Abraham attempting to kill Isaac is moral. Attempting to kill can be moral or not moral depending on God so i cant judge someone wrong on attempting to kill unless i know if God ordered it or not.

Or God ordered the the Amilick to be wiped from the face of the earth. A small amount of Jewish people think the Palestinians are the Amilick and want them all killed. I cant judge if that is right or wrong. If they are the Amilick and God is good genocide would be morally right. If not it would be morally wrong.

I have no strong opinions on the matter. I am just familiar with different groups of Christians who do have strong opinions on the matter that differ from your strong opinion on the matter.


Opinions vary on why I stopped believing. A Christian would believe (depending on their particular brand of Christianity) that I wasn't chosen to receive grace.

From my perspective, reading the Bible was the most important factor in me becoming a non-believer. To me, it is simply not a believable story. I certainly don't feel like I had a choice in the matter, much the same as I don't really choose to whether or not to believe in astrology or that sandwiches are yummy.

I did not participate in the study. My non-belief predates the modern internet.

I understood you the first time. I'll paraphrase my original answer.

If Objective Moral values were based on God's arbitrary edicts then yes they would be Subjective Moral values, but they are not. Objective Moral values are based on God's inherent nature not His decisions.

Is it your claim that it is self-evident that morality can't be based on God's arbitrary edicts?

Redefining subjective to mean objective is a meaningless exercise. Hume was confused. Subjective moral thought can be spun up in either rational or irrational thoughts.

An argument to numbers is a fallacy. If they claim something about an equivalence of features then they need to defend such a claim.

I never said Subjective Morality was not a kind or morality. Clearly it is.

Subjective moral values are by definition relative values. They are, by definition, a fabrication of one's mind and each of us has thoughts relative to our own situations. I'm not claiming subjective moral values are wrong. Some may be coincidentally in line with God's values. So what. I'm claiming a collection of human groups with differing subjective moral values leads to an incoherent moral state in total. Congruency of values is not relevant.

Yes, of course, obviously the scientific method can't be applied.

They are strong enough not to believe, which on face value would be equivalently as strong in a person who believes. So I see no reason not to believe your confirmation bias is as strong as any of us.

This is very true, I can tell you do have familiarity with internal Christian debates. Personally, I'm not a Calvinist.

For me reading the Bible strengthens my belief.

Your position on choosing to believe does not make much sense to be honest. Obviously you chose to disbelieve. Maybe you mean it seemed, in your mind, easy for you to choose disbelief?

Actually, Abraham did not attempt to kill Isaac. He was stopped before attempting.

Your claim that the Bible disallows us to make a moral judgment about choices here and now because of situations thousands of years ago does not make a lot of sense. Your, and my knowledge, about why God did what he did thousands of years ago is very incomplete.

Anyone who wants populations killed is acting immorally and contrary to the teachings of Christ.

God is omniscient. I trust His historical choices.

You are playing games with words here. But ok i cant judge that wrong or someone who is acting similar to Abraham.

The order to kill all the Amilick was never ending which is why some Jewish people think its sill in effect with the Palestinians today.


Even if not it still shows if i lived back then as an observer i would not be able to judge genocide as wrong. It can be right or wrong depending.

You claimed that:

This is the claim I've been disputing. It's possible that I understand "subjective values" differently than you do, which is why I asked for your definition. You've claimed that subjective values are necessarily relative, which doesn't match my own understanding of subjective values. If this is just a matter of definition for you, fine, then I don't care, I just use a different definition. But if this is supposed to be substantive philosophical claim about the nature of subjective morality, then I want to know the reasoning behind it.

For instance, you claim that subjective moral values are necessarily relative to each person. But this assumes an account of subjective moral values based in emotion rather than reason. For instance, Kantian morality is based on subjective wills, but also claims that moral rules are universal because morality is based on the necessary requirements for rationally willing anything.

"Incoherent" generally means that something doesn't make sense, and in a philosophical context usually means that a position is contradicting itself. There is nothing self-contradictory or nonsensical about people having differing subjective moral values unless you also assume that moral values have to all be congruent.

If you are making a Biblical claim then you need to quote scripture. Can you please give me the chapter and verse you believe substantiates your claim.


God's omniscience goes beyond what you and I observe, then or now. God gave commandments in specific situations. He had total knowledge in each case. He never made a global declaration that genocide is okay.

If you are trying to make a logical argument then put it in some logical form or something, because right now you don't make any sense. What you are saying does not follow.

I'm using the English language definition for subjective. The same definition all of English speakers are supposed to use. Subjective moral values are relative to the mind (by definition) of the person conceiving them. They may also, coincidentally, be in line with objective values, but this is just a coincidence. Moral values people come up with in their head do not have to be based purely on emotion. They can be based on rational thought, for example, utilitarianism. Utilitarianism can be completely relative to how one comes up the criteria.

Subjective yes, but universality certainly does not follow from rational thought..

There is nothing non-nonsensical about each person having their own belief about what is moral or not. What is non-nonsensical is for a person to decide someone else is immoral when they hold relative moral views.

The argument is if i lived back then as an outside observer i could not know if the genocide was moral or immoral. Gods objective morals means there is no way for me to judge those actions as right or wrong.

First it is very important not to conflate general moral values with specific events. Specific events have circumstances surrounding them. Your examples have been specific events, not general moral values. We cannot judge God in specific cases because of our lack of knowledge. God is good. He is just. He is omniscient.

That is not the same as saying we have no way of knowing what some objective moral value may be. We can apprehend moral values. I know as self evident that genocide is immoral. Even if every person in the world told me genocide was okay I would know that to be false.

Here's the problem with your view. Plausibly one way of understanding logic is that it describes the laws of thought. That is, moden ponens is a valid argument because it describes facts about the nature of thoughts and how they connect to other thoughts. In this sense, logic arises because people are thinking thoughts and so is subjective in this sense. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that logic is relative, because these laws of thoughts are (or at least can be claimed to be) universal to any thinking. It isn't possible to validly think that if A then B, A, therefore not B. Thus, if there are limits on the possibility of thinking some kinds of thoughts, a subjective basis to x does not necessarily mean that x is relative.

This is basically the kind of argument that Kant used to argue for a universal morality on the basis of subjectivity. He claimed that in order to rationally will to do anything, you must act on the formulation of a maxim of action (to achieve x, do p) and that all such maxims have certain characteristic features of universality, publicity, etc, and that these features are the basis for moral claims. For example, there is no maxim of action that would justify lying (he claimed) because any such maxim would be self-defeating.

Now, it is fine of course to disagree with Kant. I do. But you'll have to do more than just say that it is self-evident that he is wrong. It doesn't even follow from him being wrong that his view is incoherent.

Okay. Why not?
You are simply repeating your original claim here. John claim that it is immoral to kill innocent people without a reason. Jack says that it is fine to kill innocent people without a reason. These claims are not congruent. A moral objectivist would claim that this shows that one of these claims is false, because what makes a moral claim true is that it somehow matches with some external standard of morality. Thus, it is incoherent on these grounds to claim that both John and Jack's claims are true.

However, a moral subjectivist needn't make this claim, since what makes a moral claim true on their account is if it matches with the subjective standards of a particular person or group of people - and it is possible that different persons or groups can have different and even conflicting standards. Thus, it is coherent to say that both John and Jack's claims are true if moral relativism is correct.

If God told you the Amilick were the Palestinians and to kill them it would not be false. I know he wont do that even though some think they should.

I'm quite certain that I suffer from confirmation bias, but in this case I can find support for both sides because I've no horse in the race. Obviously, I think that both sides are equally incorrect.

I "chose" to not believe in the same way that a calculator "chooses" what to put on the screen. I don't consider that a choice.

I do understand that some people claim to choose what to believe exists. I don't have that ability. This is entirely separate from the other conception of "faith" which entails that God has your back and is a pretty nice being. Given that I cannot believe it exists, this conception is impossible.