Ready to wrap this up? (Introduction)

by shanoxilt , Wednesday, February 23, 2011, 13:14 (5020 days ago) @ Cary Cook

If you don't acknowledge a personal Supreme Being, you can't say your moral code has an objective foundation, or that a conflicting moral code is wrong. You can only say you don't like a conflicting code, or that the majority or society doesn't like it. But the majority couldn't objectify a moral code even if that majority was 99%. Even survival doesn't objectify a moral code, because there's nothing to say survival is good.-This brings us back to the Euthyphro dilemma. Is something good because the gods favor it or do they favor it because it is something good?-Even if some variety of deity were proven to exist, this does not prove the existence of an objective morality. They are two completely separate issues. To be unfashionably post-modern for a moment, the Author's intent is not the only interpretation of a text. Perhaps the same is true of morality.- 
>In fact, an atheist may accidentally have the objectively correct moral code, but he would have no way to know it, and he would be wrong about atheism if he had it.-Not necessarily. If moral truths have a different ontological and metaphysical status than deities, then it is possible to have both atheism and objective morality.-> Conclusion: If you want to claim an objective moral code that makes any kind of sense, your only option is a just God.-Or Plato's conception of Agathos (the Good).->That means you trash all Scripture inconsistent with a just God, and make whatever sense you can of the rest.-This is what some deists and freethinkers have done in the past.