What you're saying is, without someone around to tell us what to do, we can't know what to do. To me, that is an amoral system, because morality isn't actually being exercised.
That is the absolute fact of the matter. Unless a transcendent standard exists then everyone's opinion is equally valid. What I am not saying is that in the absence of God would there be any other choice. It is a terribly inconsistent, self contradictory, and arbitrary system but the only option left without God. Without a moral law giver there is no moral law, without a moral law there is no known moral truth, without any known moral truth there is only equally valid arbitrary opinions that almost always coincide with self interest.
1. I never said we cannot come to some semi-consensus that murder is wrong.
2. I said we can never know if that statement was true, without God. No molecule, combination of atoms, natural law, person, or natural being of any kind would ever know or could ever make murder actually wrong without God. Morality simply becomes an arbitrary contrivance or illusion as Ruse said so well. You side may not but my side wishes to know the moral truth about something before we take a life or make a law.
There are few issues as self evident as this one.
Our ultimate moral judgment comes from ourselves, and from others. I don't see how it doesn't.
It certainly would with out God. Your side has a peculiar tendency that renders a debate problematic. You think what is true of your experience binds reality. You are right about the only pathetically inferior methodology left to create moral rules without God. I can grant that because I can understand your views because I have held them. Your side thinks that because you have not experienced God or discovered moral facts they can't be included in any model and do not exist. It is exactly what I would expect from the doctrine of spiritual blindness. I can clearly see both sides. You literally can't see mine.
1. With God moral truths are grounded in moral reality (or potentially can be).
2. Without God man can reason out some illusory rules about morals that have no corroboration with actual truths. It is a self contradictory, unjust, arbitrary, and dysfunctional methodology that cannot find justification of any kind within for what is thought to be morally right and wrong within it. Yet that is the best that can be done without God.
When you talk about transcendence, you're talking about something that you think exists beyond physical human experience, which doesn't make much sense to me because morality itself is the sum of all human experience. Hence the reason morality hasn't remained static throughout human history. When we learn new things, we adjust our morality accordingly. Wait a minute, there are no such things as witches? Maybe we should stop taking peoples lives for practicing witchcraft then. Whereas, if we stuck with Biblical morality, we'd still be carrying out such nonsense because god clearly thinks it's moral to kill witches.
Actually I am talking about what is a virtually necessity for any explanation of reality. I however did not attempt to prove it. WE are discussing what is morally true with God and what is left without him. I must assume God to make the experiment. You know very well I can supply many arguments for his existence but to do so in combination with a moral argument is impractical. Witches are a concept. We can certainly discuss may be true if witches existed and if they do not without having to at the same time prove the existence of witches. As always the real question is whether God exists. What that means is pretty obvious? Since you wish to (and I would as well) get away from morality without God into God's existence I will add a point about that at the bottom.
I can see, hear, touch, etc. other human beings. I know they are here. I know to some extent, how they feel, what they value, etc. From that, I can draw some conclusions. I can't do this with a being I can't see, hear, touch, or even know exists at all.
Prove anything you have seen felt or touched is reliable. Prove you are not a brain in a vat being given sensory inputs that did not actually occur. Prove that your sensory inputs are reliable. Prove the mechanism that interprets those signals is interpreting them truthfully. Actually do not waste your time. You can't. Almost all beliefs of all types are faith based to some extant. I think the only conclusions possibly are most likely or best fits. Sciences running around acting like the arbiter of al truth is simply self contradictory.
On God's existence and best fits let me restate what I have no seen answered yet.
1. The world has around 6 billion people in it.
2. Currently 1 - 2 billion people claim to have met a risen Christ (God) and most exhibit evidence the experience changed their lives.
3. 2 - maybe 3 billion claim to have never met him but to have enough evidence to justify believing a form of God exists.
4. Less than one billon claim that both they have not met God nor is there any reason to conclude he exists.
Which group is in the best position to know?
What conclusion (God probably exists or probably does not) is the best fit for the data?
