The Big Lie: Morality given its force and validity by God? No - you mean Faith!
 
Where is the explanation for morality really coming from?
 
Believers glibly say it is God. They say that is their explanation.
 
But there is a difference between the explanation or explanations and their explanation. The real explanation is the right one but their explanation is just their explanation. Even if it is right it is based on their say-so so it might as well be wrong. It is only through luck if it is right.
 
Believers say we have to believe in a good God to explain how moral values are real objective existing things. Read that carefully. It is really belief in God they base the morals on. But basing them on belief in God is not the same as basing them on God himself. It is basing them on human observation and interpretation. Belief is caused by evidence and what we perceive the evidence to be indicating. Despite saying morality basically comes from God, the believers end up saying we are the judges of morality after all. Yet that is the very attitude they condemn in the atheist and agnostic. At least there is an excuse for us for we don't believe! What excuse will they have if they have to face God?
 
To base morality on God involves a huge and fundamental lie. And a morality based on telling lies is not a morality.
 
If we sense that morality is objective does that mean that we need to believe in God to see it as objective? Why not settle for saying the matter is unexplained? It is better to do that than to be dogmatic and say you need God to have belief in an objective morality. To bring God in may seem to help one way but in the bigger picture it's a failure.
 
Also if morality needs something to be objectively true we can say that it is objectively true but we don't know why. The possibility that it is God is not equal to the possibility that it is something else because it is better to favour some natural possibility than a magical one if you are going to favour any. Better to say you don't know than to favour any possibility. There is no law that says we have to be able to explain everything. Emphasising God as a possibility is dishonest and manipulative in itself for no one possibility should matter more than the rest.
 
What do we say to, "We believers have a point. We are right to say that morality can only be grounded in belief in God." We can reply that it does not matter what we think about God's role as long as we do not do harm. They after all say that God has put moral tendencies in us. They will be there even if we decide there is no God. So if the argument is right it still does not necessarily make faith in God a good or necessary thing. But it does matter what we think of faith's role.
 
It is terrible if there is a God who makes something good merely by commanding it. But faith in such a God's existence is far worse. Faith in God is one thing and God is another. It is too much for believing in. It is as immoral as believing that God wants babies murdered in order that they may pay for the sins of others so that they can go to heaven. It is not about if God is bad or not but the badness of many forms of faith.
 
Does God as creator create morality? Where do moral values come from? Does the question even make sense? Creation of moral values by God? Is it a theory we can accept? It is not a theory for we don't really know what it means to say that something can come from nothing by God's agency. Though it is clear that the idea makes no sense, it is possible to imagine that it does. It is your imagination that gets you fooled. The witch turning to stone makes no sense if you make the effort to see that you cannot understand it. Then the imagination is kept at bay. Creation is all faith. It cannot even be called a theory.

A rule such as "Don't steal somebody's lunch" or "Don't fiddle your tax return" is not a moral value but expresses a moral value. The rules value honesty. The honesty is the moral value.

It is not really belief in God the believers get their sense of moral values from. It is from the assumption that he has not made them by chance. Moral values being based on an assumption means they are assumptions themselves.
 
It is better to value honesty and kindness and mercy etc because you simply experience them as somehow totally valuable than to depend on an assumption. Assuming them is insulting them and opening the door to those who wish to assume that hating enemies or whatever is totally valuable.
 
If you tie God and morality together, you end up saying one has a moral obligation to believe in God and whatever God teaches. In fact, you cannot have an obligation to believe anything for you either believe it or you don't. You end up saying that dogma should be enforced by moral law. Disagreements about dogma are really petty. Disagreements about morality may cause harm and confusion that results in people mistakenly doing wrong or putting people off the idea of worrying about moral instruction. Bringing God or dogma in only results in the credibility of morality being reduced and seems to want to justify the pettiness of disagreements about dogma. There is so much disagreement about morality that to say your moral ideas come from God really translates as, "I know what God wants and therefore who is as wonderful as me? My moral beliefs are fantastic so I'd expect God to agree with me." It is blasphemy.
 
Many believers in the argument, “You cannot believe in morality without believing in God” think the argument is probably true. And they admit they think it.  That is to say it is at least 51% probable. Nobody cares how probable you think it is as long as you think it is probable. That is very odd. Surely you want belief in morality to be as strong as possible!  And there is no such thing as thinking something is a fact being enough.  It is not.  A fact doesn't care what you think and is not about what you think.  A fact is a fact no matter what you think.  If morality and each item in its complex code of accepted behaviours is a fact then it needs to be recognisable as a fact.  Calling something a fact because you think it is a fact is to lie and to endanger truth.  It is dangerous to put out things as fact when you are not sure.

Thinking each rule of morality and morality itself is a fact is dangerous and counter-productive and arrogant.  It contradicts the very morality it pretends to protect.

Adding in the thought that God makes the rules and that makes them fact is only worse.  It is a new manifestation of the arrogance.
 
God is not faith. Faith comes from you. To base morality on faith in God and then say that you believe morality comes from God is to lie. You are trying to decree morality for yourself and others as if you are God. You are playing God. If you are charitable that will not last!