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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
For me, I'm still waiting for someone to explain how there can be an absolute standard for human behavior without God.[/quote]

Well, maybe there is no absolute standard for human behavior. [/quote]

Do you truly believe that?  Do you know the enormity of what you are saying?  "Without God, everything is permissible.". In order to be able to do whatever you feel like, without an ultimate Authority to answer to, you are willing to extend the same courtesy to any other human being?  Sandusky, perhaps?[/quote]

Do you really believe that?  If hypothetically I could prove to you that there is no "God" then you would think it's perfectly fine to kill someone?  I find that mindboggling.

Of course, I also find it mindboggling when people want to impose rules on me FOR NO OTHER REASON than "God" says so-- whether those are rules about women riding in the back of the bus, or about not using condoms, or whatever.

Are you really incapable of independent moral reasoning?[/quote]

Heaven grant me patience.

It is not that some human beings need to be afraid of the Big Bad God in order to do what is right, while other stronger, smarter people can figure things out on their own.  It is that the very idea of right and wrong itself leads to an acknowledgement of an authority greater than any human being, or group of human beings.  [b]Without an Absolute Authority, nothing is ACTUALLY wrong.[/b]

"Independent" moral reasoning--that is, independent of any absolute standard--can justify any crime against humanity.  So there are no crimes against humanity without absolute standards for human behavior.  Those absolute standards are found in natural law, which is authored by God.

If there is no God, no ultimate authority, then it does not matter if I think it is perfectly fine to kill someone, or if I am conflicted about it, or what you feel about my feelings.  Because we are all just worm food.  There is just existence and non-existence, not right and wrong.[/quote]

We have been going over and over this.  You can no longer just say it and claim it is true.  You will continue to ignore the posts to the contrary.  Fine.

So what makes you certain that God's law is morally good?  Clearly power alone does not define morality.  So how do you know our God is not malevolent?

If you actually try to answer this question, you will see that you are in the same boat as the atheist.  Namely, we have decided that our God is good because what he asks of us seems to be morally good, independent of his command to us to obey it.[/quote]

I think this philosophical argument is passing posters by.  Perhaps we are all too comfortable in our positions to erase certain assumptions and begin at the beginning.  My argument does not simply state "God is good.". That would be a true tautology.  The argument from morality is more like:  "Every human knows, deep down, that s/he is absolutely obligated to do good and avoid evil.  Absolute obligation can only come from an Absolute Authority.  The Absolute Authority is God.  Therefore, every human being can know God."

What I am asking for is an alternative to the Absolute Authority, because I think everyone here would agree that humans sense an obligation to follow the dictates of their consciences.  This obligation is acknowledged and expressed everywhere, from Disney ("follow your heart") to anti-war protestors (conscientious objection) to the Arlington 5 (their consciences forbid them from signing a fidelity oath to the Church).

Four different options to God are often presented:  an idea (abstract and impersonal), an instinct (concrete but less than human), A society (concrete and human), something higher than humans that is not God (concrete, more than human).

An idea?  Some sort of abstract ideal, a complete and coherent pattern?  Where does this ideal exist?  How can it be real, if no one has ever seen it, examined it, touched it? Any one person's idea can have no will behind it besides its own.  But conscience binds us all, individually and absolutely.  An idea is not enough.  Not enough for an absolute, infallible, no-exceptions Authority.

An instinct?  Again, not sufficient.  Because the authority of conscience is absolute.  Instincts can be ignored or overcome--indeed, sometimes, they SHOULD be overcome.  Note the word "should.". That "ought to" is the authority again. Instinct is like the keys on the piano, while authority is like the sheet music. Still looking...

A society's decision?  This position, while popular (such as PP's ideas of an evolutionary trait that is necessary for humans to live together in groups, or certain political theorists, like Rawls), has never been espoused by residents of concentration camps, slaves on plantations, and prisoners of Chinese political prisons.  Think French Revolution, Stalinist Russia, Mexico in the 1920s, etc. etc.  Again, not sufficient for an absolute, binding authority common to all human beings.

Something higher than animal instinct, something greater than any group of human beings...but what?  Back to an idea?  Not enough.

That leaves God, and no other.  Of all the ancient humans, one group took the two most simple human understandings--the absolute authority heard through conscience, and the origin of all--and realized they are One.  Origin of conscience and origin of nature means God.  
Christians and Muslims inherited that understanding.

But at its essence, the argument from morality states that conscience wields an absolute, exceptionless, binding moral authority over us.  But only a an absolute, perfect, divine will could deserve such obedience.  So conscience is the voice of the will of God.

Now, consciences may err.  It is our obligation to form our consciences with the truth.  Truth is a combination of revelation and reason.  And it can be found everywhere, in all things, in some form or another, and wherever it is found, it comes from God.

God is not malevolent, or schizophrenic.  Right reason leads to the realization that God is the Absolute Authority.[/quote]

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