Ok, lets go back to kindergarten because until you understand the basics we can go no further.
Point of clarification -- my disdain of specious arguments is not the same as not understanding the basics. Yes, I understand "if" arguments," but they have nothing to say about reality unless the "if" actually has a value that resolves to "true." "If it is raining the streets are wet" tells me that if it is truly raining, then the streets will indeed be wet. But it tells me ABSOLUTELY NOTHING if it is not raining. As it happens, the fire department just turned on the hydrant for the kiddies under a hot summer sun, and the streets are indeed wet. It has nothing to do with the rain (or lack thereof).
My two conditional arguments are.
1. If God exists (especially my God) then moral values and duties can be objective.
2. If God does not exist then no objective moral value or duty can possibly exist.
Which one do you deny and why?
Why, are those the only two possibilities in the universe? I don't deny the first, but so what? It tells that if -- in the very unlikely event -- your very special God exist then moral values and duties can be objective. It does not say whether they are or not. It does not clarify why you omnipotent God has never, ever in all the long history of mankind managed to make a clear statement about which of His putative objective moral duties and values He is concerned about -- nor what they are. A little look around the history of humanity, its cultures and religions, will tell you that there have been all sorts of answers to those questions -- including cutting the living hearts of youths, and boffing pretty girls and boys in the temple to guarantee fertility of both tribe and harvest.
On your second, however, I do very much disagree. And I disagree because I am going to use the term "objective" a little differently than you do. You are using the world "objective" to mean that there is some duty or evil that exists, whether or not there's actually any entity to perform that duty or to commit that evil. Kind of Plato's "forms" really, and frankly, I'm not much of a Platonist.
However, I will tell you something that I know -- though I do not know that God exists or doesn't (suspect the latter) -- and that is that humans exist. And that humans have evolved to have a "nature" -- there is something that it is like to be human, and that with enough time and words, we might well be able to describe it. Hume, Wilson and Needleman (and many others) have certainly tried. Even, actually, the United States Declaration of Independence tried to do something like that: all humans have the right to try and live, to be free to choose how to do that for themselves, and to seek their own happiness in their own way. "We hold these truths to be self-evident...." And I know that humans are also a social species (it is impossible to live a complete human life without the involvement of others of our kind), and also an intelligent one capable of making choices that fly in the face of those other parts of our "nature" that I just described. In other words, we have a very complex nature -- but we do have a human nature.
And there, I have just defined for you something that is "objective." Us. I can point to "us," as you cannot point to God. I can demonstrate -- using nothing more than the definitions in the previous paragraph -- why murder and theft are generally wrong and sometimes justifiable. I can demonstrate using nothing more than those same definitions to say why I may have a duty of care towards my fellow humans, but why I may also sometimes be justified in withholding that care.
And I can show you -- using nothing more than those same definitions -- why there are an endless number of things (like homosexuality, for example, or foot fetishism) that are not "moral questions" at all, and therefor of no concern to anyone but the poofter or the fetishist.
I do not care if you agree that God exists or not. I do not care if you think objective morality does exist or not. It only matters that you understand what morality would be if God doesn't or if he does exist. See the two arguments above and tell me which one you reject and why. It does not matter whether you believe God exists at this point.
I have just done all that you asked. Now, I ask you to do the same. Give me your description of the nature of God, and show me, as I just showed you, how that nature makes for "objective moral values." You have relied for too long on asking only those two questions, and never -- not once in this thread, anyway -- providing clarity on what those "objective duties and morals" are, and how they would still be "objective duties and morals" even if there were no humans -- only God.
I have said I would be happy to if all of those who asked me to would meet their earlier burdens that their earlier claims to knowledge require. They haven't so I haven't. As it seems I will grow old and die before those on your side provide what their earlier claims required. So I will go ahead and post me own response. I will however go no farther until you all meet your own burdens.
1. If God exist then murder is objectively wrong.
2. If God does not exist then all the murders ever committed or that ever will be are not objectively wrong. At best they were merely against subjective moral fashions and there for were not actually wrong.
And I find this to be perfect rubbish. If a human -- with a right to life -- exists, then that human is both object and subject when murdered. It is wrong NOT because any God said "thou shalt not" but because a real, objective human being was deprived of that which was his by right. That is not "fashion," and what a specious thing to say!
I have made it as easy as possible by asking for anyone to prove that anyone's act, of any kind, at any time, or at any place was actually wrong. I have done this for over a decade. I only had a single person so far that even tried, but he utterly failed.
And I am willing to bet dollars to donuts that you have never succeeded in demonstrating any act that would be wrong ONLY because of the existence of God, and nothing else. Because, whether you like it or not, and whether you understand it or not, that is exactly what you are saying. The murder of a human being is wrong because God says it is, even if there is no human being to die and none to kill him.
It does not matter. You could not possibly know God doesn't exist even if he doesn't. So you are can not know objective morality does not exist. You actually live as if it does as everyone does but that is irrelevant as well. You limit the nature of all reality based on the unimaginably miniscule of it you have access to. I will not allow you to assume reality is what you wish it was. I will not grant anything you say unless you can possibly know it is true or your argument for that which does not exist is better than my argument as to what does exist. I even gave you an opportunity for us to assume your right about what you can not possibly know, but you didn't choose to and so my offer is withdrawn.
Read that paragraph again because what you say I "could not possibly know" applies equally well to you. And if you don't know something, then there is actually nothing that you can factually and reasonably say about it, except "I don't know.
I know very well your condemnation of God's moral commands is meaningless. The only question is why you made them anyway. To make them you absolutely must have an ever more objective moral standard than God himself. Yet that is what you deny even exist. Calling your own arguments meaningless is not a defense of anything.
