Because if you have a kindergartener’s definition of God, then I will refute that.
You have given no reason to suggest that i don’t know what i am talking about. This is just another assertion.
Thats fine. But i want to know why PR thinks that being made in gods image gives a person objective moral value. I want him or her to give a rational explanation and not just an assertion of faith.
**How can something be “valuable” except to a being capable of “valuing?” **There is no such thing as “objective” moral value except in reference to the Being, the transcendent and eternal Subject who can bestow such enduring qualities of value in anything like an objective sense.
I think it best that we end this discussion.
Saying that beings have true moral value simply because God decided that they do is fallacious. It is no more a reasonable argument than saying that atheists have an objective universal standard for moral truth.
I’ll take the OECD study findings any time over a newspaper journalist’s opinion.They are miserable. Walk down any street in Stockholm and study their faces.
They won’t even hold open a door for anyone; and if you hold one open for them, they won’t thank you!
You are on the right path, but I would add that Gods will eternally reflects his intrinsic nature, rather than a transcendent being that is above God. God is the ultimate act of reality in which potential and contingent essences participate. All evil by definition is a form of selfishness. The only way that a personal act can be truly selfish is if the reality (God), in which we move and have our being, is literally and objectively love itself. Hence it is possible to be morally selfish insofar as our actions contradict love which is the being in which our essences have being. In that respect people truly have objective universal moral value and their actions are truly measured by an objective standard because their very being is contingent on love itself. Thus we can say that this or that behaviour is right or wrong because the act of reality itself is the standard; the ultimate reality is love by definition.
This no more changes the reality of the thing than arguing we are at the whim of God for the laws of physics. If God is the First Cause of all reality, we are, indeed, totally dependent upon his will for the order of the cosmos as well as the moral order. If he is the absolute cause of all, then he is responsible for right moral order and for any right moral thinking that you may have, along with the order of the universe that allows you to exist in the first place.
I am not clear how this argues against the points I made in the last post. Apparently you have a rather limited view of the concept of “subject” as being identical to “ego” instead of something more extensive such as “Person.”
The concept of being dependent on something by itself is not legitimate grounds for saying that it expresses moral truth.
Apparently you don’t read very well but instead you have made great strides at making assumptions about peoples intentions.
Again, that depends upon the nature of what is the ultimate ground of reality. If truth, ultimately is Subjective and Personal that “fact” requires a change in the concept of dependency from ultimately objective and impersonal to ultimately Subjective and Personal. I see no reason to think the ultimate ground of reality requires “impersonal” or “objective” as essential or necessary aspects of the definition, which, I take it, is the difficulty you are having with my posts.
I never made any such assumption, but am going by what you posted. Why can’t Truth be ultimately Subjective without entailing caprice or willfulness on its part?
No, I am saying things are wrong because they are contrary to the absolute Being and Goodness of God which is not capricious or arbitrary but imbues reality with the qualities of meaning, goodness and love which could not possibly come from an impersonal, or merely objective reality, since, in that case, there would then be no “Person” to endow anything that could even vaguely constitute value, goodness or any other transcendent qualities onto reality.