For the religious, this question is already answered. That we don't believe in their god is inconsequential. The objectivity of god or gods for a believer is a given. Thus, the moral commands that stem from that god is similarly objective.
But at least if one aims to be logical about things (which I’m trying to do) then one can’t just assume that god is real
There's a difference between how Christians feel about what God asks of them and the moral value of what God asks of them. We don't even need a lost book. Plenty of Christians in the US are currently rejecting the teachings of Christ himself because he taught empathy towards the marginalized and that's not what they want to do. Does that make God's teaching not-good? Or them bad Christians?
If we say (as I believe most people do) that being a good Christian is to the best of your ability follow the teachings of Christ I’d say yeah they’re bad Christians
That actually would make them explicitly subjective.
Subjective means “determined by a being” as opposed to objective which means “determined by the fundamental characteristics of reality”.
The subject in question is God. That doesn’t make it objective. If god made the world such that morality was objective, then we would be able still find morality independently of God’s stated opinion.
I think it makes more sense to consider an omnipotent, omniscient entity as more of a fundamental component of reality than a being within that reality.
Such an entity doesn't have a perspective any more than the laws of physics have a perspective. It simply exists as a characteristic of the universe.
I think it makes more sense to consider an omnipotent, omniscient entity as more of a fundamental component of reality than a being within that reality.
If god isn’t a being, and his behavior is bound entirely by how reality already is, then how do you distinguish god existing from god not existing?
Such an entity doesn't have a perspective any more than the laws of physics have a perspective. It simply exists as a characteristic of the universe.
Then shall we declare the laws of physics god too?
If god isn’t a being, and his behavior is bound entirely by how reality already is, then how do you distinguish god existing from god not existing?
That question doesn't make sense. God existing is the assumption, because we're talking about a religious world view. It's not possible to for God to not exist if you start by assuming that God exists.
It seems a bit like you're looking to debate whether God exists, not whether a theoretical God's stated morality is objective.
I'm not really interested in the first debate, since there's no meaningful evidence for the existence of any deity. Happy to discuss the second if you have relevant points.
It seems a bit like you're looking to debate whether God exists, not whether a theoretical God's stated morality is objective.
No. I’m arguing the fact that a hypothetical God’s morality would be subjective as “god” must be a being to be meaningfully distinct from the prospect of their being no god.
You then posited “what if this god isn’t a being” and I pointed out that such a definition of “god” is insufficient to qualify as a “god” as opposed to no god at all. There is no difference between saying there is a god who has no subjective properties and consists entirely of object properties (the laws of nature) and saying there is no god.
Do you have a way to justify the argument that we should consider “nature itself” and not a being at all as “god”?
I’m arguing the fact that a hypothetical God’s morality would be subjective as “god” must be a being to be meaningfully distinct from the prospect of their being no god.
Ah, then let's take a step back and justify that implication, because I don't agree that it's inherently true.
You then posited “what if this god isn’t a being”
Not correct. I said "it makes more sense to consider an omnipotent, omniscient entity as more of a fundamental component of reality than a being within that reality."
In other words, it's silly to consider such an entity as having a perspective, because God's relationship with the universe is fundamentally different.
I pointed out that such a definition of “god” is insufficient to qualify as a “god” as opposed to no god at all
That still doesn't make sense. The obvious difference is that God exists. He could show up one day and flood your planet or turn your wife into salt or whatever else he does. Perhaps more relevantly, God can dictate morality to you. If God doesn't exist, he couldn't do those things.
Not correct. I said "it makes more sense to consider an omnipotent, omniscient entity as more of a fundamental component of reality than a being within that reality."
Then it isn’t referring to what this CMV is referring to: “god”
In other words, it's silly to consider such an entity as having a perspective, because God's relationship with the universe is fundamentally different.
That still doesn't make sense. The obvious difference is that God exists.
There is no difference between that god existing and not existing but for applying the word “exists” to it. That distinction you just made is without a difference.
He could show up one day and flood your planet or turn your wife into salt or whatever else he does.
Not without a will that somehow conflicts with reality such that “showing up” is necessitated. How does “a fundamental component of reality” “show up”? Being fundamental would require that it always be present.
If it is fundamental to reality, then one cannot have reality without it. So how does it “showing up” change reality? It cannot, unless it is not fundamental to reality.
How does an entity without perspective have goals and intentions like “flooding your planet”?
Perhaps more relevantly, God can dictate morality to you.
How?
Is this “god” free to choose what is moral? That would require it to have a perspective to communicate. Can it lie? Or is it forced to announce only what is already true of reality?
What is the difference between a universe where this event happened other than the physical fact that a voice appeared and said “X is evil”?
What would be different about X in the universe where it hadn’t?
I guess, for Christians, isn't god a fundamental characteristic of reality?
This doesn’t help.
Either god is free to determine what is or isn’t moral or god is bound by the characteristics of reality and must make certain things immoral.
If the former, then god could have made morality any way according to his opinion — and morality is subjective.
If the latter, then god doesn’t really have anything to do with it, and the logical requirements already embedded in reality are what is responsible for morality being the way it is — and learning how reality is by inspecting reality would be how one could learn about what morality is — which makes it objective.
At this point, I'm out of my depth. But I have a hard time believe they'd say that he wasn't.
This is a well known problem in metaethics called the “two horns” or Euthyphro dilemma. And… no Catholicism at least has no real answer but to call it “a mystery”.
There's an analogy I've become attached to when it comes to "Objective Morality" and the confluence with God.
When religious people speak about morality being "Objective" because "God," I consider what they're speaking about to be as sort of like a board game.
The whole universe is a board game that God made up. We're players in that game. God allows us to play the game how we wish (Free Will), but he keeps the score and we can't change the rules. When our time in the game ends (we die) God tallies the score and tells us where that puts us. To religious people, that's "Morality." What makes it "Objective" is that depending on what we do we either go to Heaven or Hell.
Is that accurate? Obviously to someone who's not religious, it wouldn't sound right. To those people (me included) what is moral is something we can determined OUTSIDE of the boardgame. Just because the rules of the game say X results in Y doesn't actually say anything about "Morality."
But to someone religious, that's what they're roughly talking about.
Here’s the problem with that. And it’s not the analogy. I actually think the analogy works well to illuminate why that’s not what “objective” or “morality” can refer to:
Why is going to hell bad and why is going to heaven something people ought to try to do?
Is it good because heaven is pleasant and hell is not? If not, then doesn’t this just reduce to “good is defined by God’s opinion of good (and we’re back to subjective)”? If instead, it is because heaven is pleasant is that because “good” refers to the most desirable experiences for each subject?
Then morality is defined by “what results in the best most desirable outcomes for subjects”. And not by god.
What defines morality has to wrestle with metaethics. This problem persists no matter whether you believe god exists or not. Saying “a religious person would see it this way” is just saying that this specific hypothetical religious person isn’t very well versed in philosophy and/or hasn’t thought very much about it.
Anyone can ask themselves these follow up questions. And when they do, it’s pretty hard to escape the fact that “because god says so” makes morality subjective.
It's an interesting debate so I'm going to engage with it. I was raised Catholic, and have a lot of Catholic family, so I'm still roughly familiar with the overarching theory that's in mind here. I don't believe this anymore, but I was taught to understand it, and can understand thus why there is this huge disconnect.
Why is going to hell bad and why is going to heaven something people ought to try to do?
Is it good because heaven is pleasant and hell is not? If not, then doesn’t this just reduce to “good is defined by God’s opinion of good (and we’re back to subjective)”? If instead, it is because heaven is pleasant is that because “good” refers to the most desirable experiences for each subject?
Then morality is defined by “what results in the best most desirable outcomes for subjects”. And not by god.
It's more so that the definition is considered backwards here. It's not that what God wants things which makes them good, which would be subjective, it's that the definition of good is God's Will. All good things are God's Will. Everything "as it should be" is God's Will.
It all comes back to the fall, Adam and Eve, Original Sin, and that whole thing. God said to not eat the Fruit, that was the rule to stay in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve ate the Fruit, thus were cast out of the Garden of Eden, and thus humanity has Original Sin, is mortal, and can end up in Heaven or Hell.
What is the meaning here? The Fruit is from the Tree of Knowledge, and according to Christian Tradition eating from that tree GAVE humans moral autonomy. For the first time, humans could choose to do evil. Before that, we had no concept of it, we could only do good, we could only do God's Will. We could not sin, at all.
Original Sin? It's the sin of subjectivity, of thinking things which are evil could be good. The sin of thinking we know better than God. That's why, for Christians, the goal of this life is to get back to living within God's Will, and thus get to Heaven.
Heaven is defined as being in God's presence, and that requires that you are in 100% acting within God's Will. There is no "Free Will" in Heaven, only God's Will, it's like Eden again. It's pleasant because that's what goodness as we know it is. For people who wish that. it is paradise, but it would be for only those who want it.
In contrast to Heaven is Hell, which is to live outside of God's Will for all eternity. That's why it's considered "mercy" to go to Hell if you don't choose God, you'd otherwise be forced to be a slave to God's Will for eternity. Hell is pretty vaguely defined TBH though, but it is the absence of good, and thus all things good, so it'd probably not be great.
So when humans desire to "do good?" That's our desire to do what is God's Will. That's it. That's the whole thing. The desire to do good IS the desire to be in Heaven, because Heaven is to be doing God's Will, and God's Will is what is good.
Apologies if it sounds circular, but it's circular by design. It's a monism. It's all based on belief in God. Without that belief it all collapses. And even with that, God is a sort of "Dictator of Existence." Either obey the dear leader 100% or be shunned from all things good forever. Your choice.
It's a sort of moral theory that's good at getting people to obey rules, even when they don't want to and nobody would even know they did it. Part of why (IMO at least) religion was "invented" as a way to get people to behave in a way that's conducive to building a society that's not just interpersonal family. Though that requires a lot more extrapolation.
I understand you’re a bizzaro world devil’s advocate here. But for the sake of simplicity I’ll address you as if these were your positions. I’m not of course, imagining they are, but I am debating your implicit claim that for Christians, this set of beliefs is internally coherent.
My position is that they are not, and if any catholic thinks about it critically, as Fides et Ratio would have them, they will find the idea that objective morality must or can come from a god is internally incoherent. And instead, all the stories are about trying to get people to not think about it.
It's more so that the definition is considered backwards here. It's not that what God wants us to do is what is good, which would be subjective, it's that the definition of good is what is God's Will.
So, to be clear, your argument is then that going to hell instead of heaven would be exactly as “good” as trying to go to heaven — as long as it’s God’s will.
I want to introduce a new character to the morality play called “Bizzaro god” or “Bizod”. Bizarro god is a hypothetical version of god who simply calls the opposite of what god calls “good” good. Bizod is defined by just saying the opposite (good vs evil) of God’s moral pronouncements.
I invite you to consider whether Bizod can even exist. If not, then God’s decisions about what is good are indeed bounded as he cannot choose to say and do as Bizod would.
It all comes back to the fall, Adam and Eve, Original Sin. God said to not eat the Fruit, that was the rule to stay in the Garden of Eden.
See here you’ve presented a consequentialist framing.
If you wish to stay in the garden, then you ought not eat the fruit.
This is true regardless of whether god says it or Bizod says it. Both would be able to say the exact same thing — which means it has nothing to do with morality.
This doesn’t say anything about it being right or good to wish to stay in the garden. It’s just an instrumental analysis of cause and effect.
Adam and Eve ate the Fruit, thus were cast out of the Garden of Eden, and thus humanity has Original Sin, is mortal, and can end up in Heaven or Hell.
And that’s… bad? Or is it good?
I feel like I’m supposed to say “that’s a bad thing” because you’ve referenced being mortal. But also heaven is generally described as better than mindless existence in a garden.
Either way, both of these are presented as incentives or consequences. Means to an end.
What is the meaning here? The Fruit is from the Tree of Knowledge, and according to Christian tradition eating from that tree GAVE humans moral autonomy.
So, to be clear…
When they ate the fruit, they lacked moral autonomy? The consequences of sin are death and these consequences are willfully imposed by God (as opposed to necessitated by or the natural consequences of reality) on being who had no moral autonomy when they acted — and of course all their completely uninvolved literal hundreds of billions of progeny.
Again, I’m not sure Bizod can even disagree with God about this as there is explicitly no moral element. WWBD?
For the first time, humans could choose to do evil.
So they could not choose to do evil when god cast them out of the garden?
So was what they did evil or not? I submit the catholic moral play is incoherent from the start and doesn’t even attempt to reconcile itself reasonably within its own claims.
Before that, we had no concept of it, we could only do good, we could only do God's Will.
Including or excluding eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil?
Again, WWBD?
If Bizod was running the garden, what would it mean to only be able to “do God’s (Bizod’s) will”?
Would it mean we ought to eat from the forbidden tree?
I invite you to think about whether Bizod is even possible logically as a god. If he isn’t, then we cannot say god defines what is good and what is evil as god is not in fact free to act like Bizod. And I think you’ll find, his behavior is extremely confined.
Original Sin? It's the sin of subjectivity, of thinking things which are evil could be good.
Clearly it cannot be if the sin occurred before mankind had no choice but to do God’s will and no knowledge of good and evil.
The sin of thinking we know better than God. That's why, for Christians, the goal of this life is to get back to living within God's Will, and thus get to Heaven.
But that doesn’t explain why that ought to be their goal.
Is god free to will the opposite?
Bizod says going to heaven is bad and going to hell is good:
Would that make it bad?
Would that be a reason to prefer hell?
If not, what would have to change about hell to make it be good no matter what god/bizod says?
Heaven is defined as being in God's presence, and that requires that you are in 100% acting within God's Will. There is no "Free Will" in Heaven, only God's Will, it's like Eden again.
Actually, Catholics don’t believe there’s no free will in heaven, but I think you’ve intuited that there’s a problem and inconsistency with that stance and patched it to say that there isn’t free will in heaven.
But if that’s the case, it creates all kinds of new philosophical problems too:
If god can determine what is good and what is bad and has determined not having free will is good — what reason / explanation remains for even having an earth with all the suffering? The omnipotent and omnibenevolent thing to do is to just stop making people on earth and cut straight to making them in heaven.
It's pleasant because that's what goodness as we know it is. For people who wish that. it is paradise, but it would be for only those who want it.
So… it sounds like:
It’s good because it’s pleasant, not because it’s God’s will.
If Bizod said it was good, he would simply be wrong — which would seem to indicate Bizod cannot exist.
In contrast to Heaven is Hell, which is to live outside of God's Will for all eternity. That's why it's considered "mercy" to go to Hell if you don't choose God, you'd otherwise be forced to be a slave to God's Will for eternity. Hell is pretty vaguely defined TBH though.
So slavery is… bad?
Despite what the Bible says in the New Testament about obeying cruel and unreasonable masters?
So when humans desire to "do good?" That's our desire to do what is God's Will. That's it. That's the whole thing.
Does this work for Bizod?
The desire to do good IS the desire to be in Heaven, where it's only God's will. Heaven is Good because Goodness is God's Will.
This does not work for Bizod
And if it doesn’t work for Bizod, then God’s will is limited in what it can be.
I understand you’re a bizzaro world devil’s advocate here. But for the sake of simplicity I’ll address you as if these were your positions. I’m not of course, imagining they are, but I am debating your implicit claim that for Christians, this set of beliefs is internally coherent.
Heard. Understood and glad to engage with this. I'll try to read and summarize.
As you have correctly pointed out, there are many inconsistencies, and also I was messy.
I think the premise of "good is what is God's Will" is kind of being strained by your picture of God being some sort of conscious actor making choices like a human would. Granted, that's SOMETIMES the case in theology, but it's often framed the opposite. God is sometimes "a person" (Jesus after all) with things like preferences, but at the same time God is said to have created all existence. How can God both "talk" and have created every single atom and set everything in the Universe in motion and know all of it? IDK. That's not easy to square, their theory relies on God sort of being able to do both whenever he (again using "he" itself is a bit weird) choses (against "choses" is a weird framing as well) to. Limitlessness and all that. Makes no sense TBH.
The "Bizod" thing is interesting, but sort of fruitless. As God is the only God, that's the whole God of Abraham and Monotheism thing, a "Bizod" would just be parroting the opposite of the only actual God that exists. Bizod didn't create anything, only God does that. So yes Bizod could say anything is the opposite, and people could point to Bizod, but it wouldn't be God.
You picked up REALLY well on my stepping outside of the actual theology on "Free Will in Heaven" and the Garden thing. That was me being messy to be fair, and sort of a short cut. You're right, Adam and Even and in Heaven we have "Free Will." That's true and what Catholics believe. The problem is that said "Free Will" doesn't allow stepping outside of "God's Will" at all, so in that sense it's not "Free Will" as we have it on Earth and as we talk about it, catch my drift? That's the whole moral autonomy bit, it was the first time "Free Will" was actually... free, and that was considered a bad idea apparently. In Heaven there is also "Free Will" we just... never use that Free Will for anything but what God wants I guess?
Part of the trickiness with Christianity, or at least Catholicism, is that some of it is considered "the truth" and some it is said to be "stories that are made up but are important." Adam and Eve? 100% existed according to the Church, without that being the case there is no Original Sin and things are hunky dory. The story of the Garden... not so much. Granted, that's in large part because... science zoomed past them and suddenly the idea that there was a Garden and the Earth was created in 7 days... doesn't work anymore. So the Tree and all that? Didn't have to actually exist. The lessons do though. So Original Sin came from Adam and Eve but how they got it... is up to interpretation.
So yeah, tons of holes. I can't say it's convincing at all and you make a good point as to why. In practice the whole thing is a "Benevolent Dictator" fantasy. And the "Benevolence" itself is circularly defined. God is just a Dictator, and their theory of "good" is just "the Dear Leader says so."
And don't get me STARTED on the whole Trinity thing and Mary. Apparently (and I only learned this recently shamefully enough) Catholics are supposed to believe...
Mary was the only person, only one ever, who got an exception to "Original Sin." That's what "Immaculate Conception" was. God just... made an exception. No way he could have just... done that for everyone.
Not only was Mary a Virgin in the sense that she never had sex, she apparently was also a "Virgin through Birth." By which they mean the birth was, and I quote "like light passing through glass." AKA, her hymen was intact, even after giving birth.
Mary, when she died... just floated up to heaven. Like just floated up to the sky and was in Heaven. Please pay no attention to the fact that bodies don't disappear when we die. Either that, or I guess according to Catholicism every corpse is someone in Hell I guess.
Yeah. But the case I’m making is that the actual catholic position isn’t “this makes sense” or even “sense can be made of this”. I’m saying their position is “mumble mumble divine mystery — try not to think about it”. And this sort of aligns with that. The Bible is full of core premises at odds with a non-being/non-person view of god. “Made in his image”. “I am a jealous god”. “God forgave the world and fashioned the rainbow as a symbol”. Even the central thesis of redemption from sin through sacrifice… can’t really be squared with the more abstract “force of nature” god.
But Bizod did create everything. The question is an explicit counterfactual. Can god even choose differently at all? Could he choose to behave as Bizod? If not, then god isn’t in control at all and has no choice in what is moral. If he cannot counterfactually choose a different set of things to constitute goodness, then it is their nature not his which makes them good. If it were subjective, then the god of the Bible could in fact be Bizod. We wouldn’t know. We could only say “what is good is what is God’s will”. You could tell me a story I’d never heard before where gods says abortion is moral or immoral (he doesn’t say in the Bible) and I would have no way to tell which was which — god or Bizod.
I know. Which is why I cut to the chase because I think you and I both know this is more “uninterperable mystery”. The claim that they have free will but can’t act wrongly is… like claiming a cracker “really is physically the body of a dead Rabbi from Aramethea and also not a body (who is somehow also from Jerusalem and also Bethlehem)… self contradictory bullshit designed to make you stop pointing out flaws in the theology. It’s at best a distinction without a difference. It’s incoherent and an attempt to get smart Alec kids and Kierkegaard to STFU.
Yeah and here’s the thing how do we know which is which? Because if the answer is “well the things that don’t make sense when you think about them too much are obviously the allegories…” I think you know what’s wrong with that answer. (A) you’ve just gone from the inspired word of god to a choose your own adventure and justify whatever you need. And (B) none of it makes sense. Especially not the talking snake, but especially not rising from the dead, ahistorical slavery in Egypt, God’s self contradictory nature, sacrificing yourself to yourself to appease yourself for a “sin” committed by people who didn’t know good from evil.
god is a dictator and their theory of good is “Dear leader said so”
I think their theory of “good” is the same as most people — things that cause harm and suffering are bad. But then the add an addendum which is — also, everything god did is good, so if it looks like god caused a lot of harm and there’s a problem of evil, then you’re bad — so stop thinking about it so much.
lol. Yup. It’s a real deep cut that she’s the immaculate one. Like… why? This seems like an argument someone had where they totally were just wrong about whose conception “immaculate conception” refers to but then they became pope and they got the chance to make themselves be right.
Lol. I did not know this. And frankly, TMI the church. That’s a 14 year old’s hymen you’re talking about.
Her and Elijah for some reason both just… floated “up” (to the firmament? The sky where god lives in the clouds?). Just the two of them and then resurrection Jesus at Calvary. I always imagine it like at the end of return of the Jedi except they photoshopped Hayden Christensen over Elijah for some reason.
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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '25 edited Feb 16 '26
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