—I ask again, how can you judge the effects of god’s existence without assuming any particular state of god?—
We can assume almost ANY state of god, that’s the point. The point is whether or not, if we suddenly came to have knowledge that god existed, this would or could have any alteration on what we know is and is not moral.
—You are saying that god may not exist, so what are his contributions? Well, then there are going to be two views of his contributions, one for if he exists, one for if he does not.—
The question is: can he HAVE any contributions, once a particular state of the world is a given?
—But look at what you are saying… you agree with me that morals come from the state of reality. Then you say it doesn’t matter where they come from, that the state of reality is unimportant.—
This is simply not what I said.
You and I seem to agree that the state of reality is the foundation of morals. This seems, to me, to be the end of the discussion. Whether or not there is a god or not, we still face the same situation with regards to morals. And the question of whether there is a god or not does not impact this (whether there are morals or not, and what they are) in the least.
If there is a god, it could well help us with our moral knowledge, at the very least because a greater capacity for more moral acts upon greater capacity of empirical knowledge.
But the question of “is there a god or not” is not relevant to the question of “are there moral rights and wrongs, and what are they.” The second question can be answered entirely in isolation from the first: the first not only does not require an answer to answer the second, but it’s answer cannot affect the outcome of the second.
—So where did the morals come from?—
Arg: you and I already seem to agree that they don’t “come from” period, in the sense that they are not mandated. Rather, they are a function of the sorts of moral interests that beings in this particular reality have.
—Are you saying that it is enough that there are morals, and it doesn’t matter that we have no knowledge of reality in order to determine what they are? —
No. I am, however, saying that this is a different question. I have said, over and over and over, that if there is a god, it could provide special insight into this reality that would aid our moral understanding. But that is an entirely different question from the one asking whether the discovery that a god created this reality would have any impact on the question of IF there are morals, and WHAT is moral.
—I am arguing that the existence of god would be one way of finding out enough about reality to judge morality.—
So, as hopefully you have now learned, your insult was premised on the idea that I was disagreeing with this point. If you read my posts, you’ll see that I never disagreed with it at all. But I have pointed out that it is not relevant to the outcomes of those two key questions about morality.
Discovering that there was a god could provide an avenue for aiding our moral knowledge (provided that this being shares our moral concerns and wishes to tell us empirical answers!). But then, so could any avenue for increased knowledge about ourselves and this reality.
—I said that, if our world was created by god, then any world that was not created by god would be different than ours.—
Sorry, but that’s just back to the tautology. To actually examine the question, you need two comparable worlds, not two different worlds. The comparable world to your one with an active god is simply one in which all the substantive “acts” of god upon reality are simply aspects of that reality.
—In every one of your posts you accuse me of saying things are right or wrong because god says so, and in every one of my posts I tell you that I never said that and never believed it—
For goodness sake, no I didn’t. Are you just skimming over my posts? I was recaping the discussion to give you a better sense of where you came into it, the questions I was responding to before, and the different sorts of questions that we are dealing with now.
—I am discussing two hypothetical realities, because I do not know which one is true, and I do not want to act as though I do. Apparently you do know.—
No, that is the whole point. But you cannot argue two different realities if you agree that morality arises from the particular character of the moral beings in it. It is an entirely empty comparision, because its comparing apples to oranges: it does not tell you WHAT made the difference.
—Just because you get your morals from the state of reality, does not mean you can discount the contribution of the creator of that reality.—
Why not? If a god created THIS reality, or if THIS reality is naturalistic, in both cases what is and is not moral is a question whos answer comes straight out of the particular state of reality. The whole point is that the questions “are things moral” and “what things are moral” would have the SAME ANSWERS either way.
The question is not whether our beliefs require god… I have already said that I believe to mandate morals what you need is some religion or some assumption that tells you about the state of reality. (note that this is only to mandate morals, you can of course have morals without any opinion on the state of reality)