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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   29309 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11.

I'll grant that this fairly sums up Divine Command Theory and once again want to reiterate my disagreement with it. Morality does exist separate from God, and he cannot simply redefine it at a whim. He's not a simple force of nature forced into making only one choice at every possible juncture; he has agency and always chooses to be good.

He is bound by his promises more than we are.

I think that what you are describing is what the vast majority of Christians actually believe. It's not so good for Christian intellectuals trying to use morality in various ways to support their claim that God exists (because you're not an ethical deviant or impotent, are you?!).

Let me know if I've gotten this wrong, but here's my understanding of what you're trying to say:

  1. Christian intellectuals say morality can't exist without God
  2. They also say that morality does exist, therefore God does exist
  3. So claiming that morality exists apart from God bodes poorly for their position

I do have a couple disagreements with this.

  1. "Morality" refers both to abstract morality and to morality-in-practice i.e. the belief that the universe is fundamentally moral and good things happen to good people. These should not be conflated. God did not define Good, but the fact that we can look around and see a fundamentally Good universe is still evidence of God.
  2. This is similar to a cat coupling, because there's an implication that you're talking about all Christian intellectuals. They do not all rely on DCT for proofs of God's existence, and most of those who do still do not solely rely on DCT.

"Morality" refers both to abstract morality and to morality-in-practice i.e. the belief that the universe is fundamentally moral and good things happen to good people. These should not be conflated. God did not define Good, but the fact that we can look around and see a fundamentally Good universe is still evidence of God.

Right, but then the inference is hypothetico-deductive ("If God exists, then good things to good people; good things happen to good people; which is some evidence that God exists") which is different from a deductive argument ("If morality exists, God exists; morality exists; therefore, God exists"). These are very different arguments both in logic and content.

Of course, different Christian intellectuals have different arguments.

Sure, it's not a Proof.

Sorry, to clarify, I hope that I have throughout distinguished Christian intellectuals and DCT fans, e.g.

"from a Christian perspective, God is not morally obliged to save anyone. In fact, from a Divine Command Theory perspective, the very notion of moral obligations for God is a category mistake, like a moral obligation for the number 11."

The idea that grace is a gift of God, not an obligation of God, is more or less unanimous among Christians, AFAIK. The DCT is not.

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