A MORALITY THAT CANNOT BE REAL OR EXIST UNTIL IT IS VALIDATED BY SOMEONE IS NOT A REAL MORALITY

Ethics or morality would be strongest if they did not need validation from anybody not even an all-knowing almighty God or anything. They would stand on their own. Ethics or morality would be strongest if they were independent of God and everybody else.  Truth is not affected by what you think or don't think but if you defy it you will end up in trouble.  It is bigger than you and you cannot change even an iota of it.  If morality is truth then that is how it gets its forceful side.  There is a sense in which I "must" not steal the poor man's dinner.  Whether this comes from morality being true is a matter for discussion but there is a mustness there.

Suppose the religious claim that God is needed to ground morality and make it true were correct. That does not stop us from knowing that hypothetically it is a pity this has to be this way. We still put morality above God by saying it is a shame it cannot just command itself and make itself binding. We can still put morality above God by saying it is just true and that is all there is to it no matter what God thinks or if God is right or wrong. We can say that we would forget God if morality needed us to. This shows that the idea of God as your ultimate love and concern is out. If there is something it counts to you the same as Diana or Odin did to the idolaters of old. It is a god that you don’t worry about as long as your life is good. God being God does not mean he cannot be a god to you not a God. It depends on you.  You make him your god like the holy statue in the house that you throw incense at but he is not your God.

This shows that ultimate moral meaning does not come from God. Binding God to morality means that you demean morality. This incoherence shows that whatever morality is, it is independent of God.

God commanding something because it is good means its goodness is nothing to do with him. To say God is goodness, or that goodness is his nature, is an odd argument. It is how people try to avoid having to choose one of these, "Good is only good because God commands it" or "The truth of moral statements has nothing to do with what he is and he is only good for he lines up to the moral standards."  With the latter he becomes redundant for he does not create or validate the standards and is subject to them. To say God and good are the same thing to get away from this dilemma is sophistry. It is a dodge. If God’s nature is good we end up asking if it is good for God says so, or perhaps because it is God’s? If God’s nature is good just because it is good then we are back to God being good because an objective standard of goodness that he has no say in says so.

Attempts to fuse God and morality fail and lead to lies. They do not serve real morality but a cosmetic version.

And God can be real but the one you have, can be your version and be about what you want to think of him. You can never know if the person saying their morals come from God mean any more than their subjective God. As it is your authority and perception that leads you to say God deserves moral obedience for he is good and loving faith in God is just a way of pretending the moral authority is his not yours.  Even if God did ground morality faith in him does not.  The messiness suggests something is badly wrong with turning morality into a part of God to validate it.

Notice that if God and morality are one because God is all-powerful that only turns him into a bully. Why should power determine what love and justice are? If God and morality are one for he is all-knowing that makes no sense. Knowing you said? He would need to know what morality is by looking at it from the outside. He is looking at an independent standard.

The religionists go too far in saying God and morality definitely go together. If they had a softer view, “It is our opinion or we think that-“ that would be better. But it would mean that they would have to take a very lenient view towards those who disparage the Bible in their ranks. They would need to be as broad and inclusive as possible and definitely not be trying to indoctrinate children. It is a form of bigotry to treat a mere opinion as something more. So instead of God grounding morality they will have, “It is merely our opinion. We are not sure.” Morality based on God is not solid if opinion is all it is based on.  It is not grounded on him as far as we can tell.  We can only hope for proof that it is grounded.  It may never come.

In philosophy it is very hard to find arguments that settle an issue once and for all. The argument that God does not ground morality and cannot is the main exception. To resist this is to make a dog’s dinner of philosophy. It shows how far from true wisdom the idea of God actually is. And even if it were not emphasising God the way too many people is clearly unwise.

Incidentally, the laws of nature and physics there are no moral should or oughts we are told. But think about this. If God has a plan that is very complicated then a comet in the next galaxy is part of it and should happen for it creates a butterfly effect that allows his love to be maximised and shown. So there is an ought – God’s.

Our desire to make things equal and fair, avoid pain, be healthy, be educated, protect the vulnerable, all these things point to morality. They do not add up to an objective morality. Objective facts about us such as that we don’t want pain don’t add up to an objective morality. They inform morality but don’t make it.  These questions are very deep but one thing is for sure, don't let religion muddy the truth.  God theory not only fails to validate morality but invalidates it.  The servants of God then fail to validate morality or make a good case for validating.  They invalidate it.