God is the Source of Morality

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There are many different issues that come up with how people can discover what is good and what is evil.

I find that arguments regarding this topic circle around some fairly... unproductive lines of argument from both the theistic and atheistic sides.

I will eventually write up a few arguments that I've found to be useful; but I just posted an argument that I've had some success with here: Response to: God is the Source of Morality.

Essentially, it directly tackles the epistemic question of how a person gains knowledge of what is right and what is wrong. Either there are good reasons to think that certain actions are wrong, or there are not. A theist who thinks that humans cannot discover this on their own will have a hard time in justifying how he came to believe that God Himself is good. Specifically, how does he choose to follow God and reject Lucifer? He read God's book first? What if he had read Satan's book first? What would that say?

If you do not think that he would have a hard time, and you think you could make the case for him, I'd love to hear someone give the defense a try.

Any other feedback is welcome, as always!

- Conversational Atheist

Tagged as: atheism, Evil, Morality

{ 2 comments }

Paul March 10, 2009 at 2:49 am: I believe that the reformed (calvinist) theologian would say you are right. You did not choose God. You did not decide that God was good. He chose you in the midst of your "total depravity" and He was the one who put the knowledge of His goodness into you. Why did He do this? Because you were among the "elect of God". You were pre-ordained from "before creation" to be His chosen. Bottom line…it's all God. You cannot chose that which is good apart from His imparting the faith and knowledge to recognize Him as good. Now, having somehow believed that for 25 years as an evangelical christian, I now think it is absurd. But, there you go.
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Paul March 10, 2009 at 2:54 am: p.s. I appreciate your site and the civil conversational tone I see so far. Keep up the good work. twitter.com/relig_anon
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