Thank you for the more explicit post, putin.
"Theist Statement: Murder - unjustifiable deliberate killing of humans by other humans - is wrong.
"Respons: Nothing is inherently wrong about the action of murder if unjustifiable deliberate killing of humans can be done by another entity - namely god - while retaining moral perfection."
As you correctly anticipate in your next exchange, God's killing is not unjustified.
"Response: How do you know it's justified? When a state metes out capital punishment, there is a way to verify if the punishment is justified and carried out fairly that is independent of the people making the judgment."
That is necessary because people are corrupt and flawed. God by His very nature -- and, indeed, by the nature of "justified" -- never does anything unjustified.
I can get that you might dislike this moral standard, but it's not as though it's inconsistent. To recap: An aspect of God's nature is morality, and part of that nature is not to violate His moral standards or to leave unpunished others that do. Something is justified if it does not violate a moral principle of God's nature, and all of God's actions, but not all of ours, are such. Therefore, it is possible for us to commit murder, and impossible for God.
Now, you have several times drawn the conclusion that, because morality is defined by God and His nature, we somehow can't know it. I continue not to understand this point at all. God is perfectly capable of revealing aspects of His moral nature to us, and so we learn, for example, that it is wrong for a human to kill another human for profit. (For example). And so on. The actual content of Christian morality is an interesting discussion that we could (I suppose) get into, but certainly it's not an impossible quest.
But to conflate God with man right at the outset would be an enormous mistake. There are certainly things it would be wrong for God to do, which He won't do (such as breaking a covenant), but not everything that is wrong for man is wrong for God. To take a trivial example, it would be wrong for man to demand worship.
"How do you do that with god if you have no concept of justification that is independent of the nature of the judge?"
It's not necessary. God is morally perfect. But since He has revealed some aspects of the morality that binds Him, it would be possible to note if He broke it in some cases. For example, if He broke a covenant, He would be violating His own standard.
"Theist: I can't get into the epistemological details. It'll take up too much time.
"If you're going to make such an extreme statement that an entity can wipe out populations of human beings and is always entirely justified in doing so, then one would hope you can come up with a straight forward explanation for how you can sure such a thing (which would otherwise be described as horrific) could always be justified that isn't just circular reasoning. It shouldn't be that difficult unless you have no real definition of justification or justice. "
I suppose I'm happy for you that you find philosophy so easy that you can't even imagine an important argument that couldn't be typed up for a forum in half an hour. But I confess I don't. As I said, I do hope to discuss this on the forum soon, but webdip discussions are a hobby for me, and I'm very busy right now in real life. Moreover, for a variety of reasons, you're a more than usually time consuming person to discuss something with in depth. I'm simply not going to be browbeat into having a lengthy discussion with you that I don't have time for right now.
"The whole point was to ascertain how you could demonstrate that murder is inherently wrong."
I don't think that was the point. I think the point was whether Mujus was being inconsistent in caring about this crime. But continuing,...
"Your response was that it's against god's nature to tolerate murder. That tells us precisely nothing. Who cares if it's against god's nature? Why is this important? "
Because God's nature and mind define inherent moral truth. Murder is inherently wrong -- that is, wrong in itself, and not just consequentially -- because it is forbidden by God.
"As I said, lots of things are against god's nature and they are not held to be moral evils. So why does reciting this mean anything worthwhile? Where is it held that anything that is against god's nature is morally evil? "
Oh, it's not. Did I say so? I don't think so. I looked briefly back at our interaction, and I don't see where I said this, but I can see where perhaps I was unclear enough that it might have been inferred.
Not everything against God's nature is wrong -- as you say, He has other attributes, such as omniscience, but it is not wrong for us to be finite in our knowledge. Rather, *one aspect* of His nature is moral truth -- that is, the categories of right and wrong, which apply to actions in a systematized way -- and *this aspect* defines moral truth.
So while something is always immoral because it opposes God's nature, something inconsistent with God's nature is not necessarily immoral. Something inconsistent with His moral nature is, though. Those things are immoral which it is God's nature to hold as wrong. Examples would include murder, theft, adultery, worshipping false gods, disobedience, etc.
SoW, Fall 2013 - Professors' Commentary
)
)
)
)
)
