Morality as a fluid concept for a supreme being; justification for an amoral God

[Overswarm]

I'm bored and need to kill time while video encodes at work, so here we go:


First, the ground rules:

Morality - synonymous with "good" or "right"; positive.

Immorality - antonym to "good" or "right; negative. Presumably the opposite of Morality but not necessarily so in the case of specific action but rather intent in regards to a circumstantial position

Amorality - Indifferent towards Morality

God - Christian God, for all intents and purposes of this discussion

Supreme Being - a being that can be considered "above" in every aspect in that he is the creator of the objects questioning his morality; we cannot be considered on an equal plane as a Supreme Being as we are, nor can we biologically or technologically reach this level for the intents of this discussion. He is the creator of our existence and as such will always have this above us.

Nothing above is particularly extraordinary.

The title can be translated as:

Good as an ever-changing concept for a supreme being; justification for an indifferent God


I've seen many people come into an argument about the existence of God and say things like:

A righteous God couldn't possibly kill every first born in Egypt!

How could God be good and let evil into the world?

Why would God summon freaking BEARS to kill a bunch of teenagers?!

The basic gist being that if God is benevolent at all times, but allows or directly DOES bad things, this is an inherent contradiction in his presentation and as such God cannot exist as a being that is benevolent at all times.

Simple enough.

There are a bunch of ways to attack that argument. My particular argument for today is:

For a Supreme Being that has created existence morality is by default an exercise in meta-ethical relativism which naturally extends a normative morality to our own existence. However, our normative morality does not effect the meta-ethical relative morality for the Supreme Being in any direct context.

As such, morality can change for the Supreme Being regardless of actions regarding us or our opinions as such and our normative morality can only be changed by his decree. In a word, his morality is by definition liquid since he is the defining aspect of morality if he is the creator, while ours is rigid as we are the created.

Because of this, any attempt at discrediting God's acts (referenced earlier) as immoral are simply judging him from the perspective of our normative morality. In actuality, due to his being a Supreme Being, his actions are moral by definition regardless of any discrepancies with our OWN moral code; at worst God is amoral from our perspective.


An analogy would be someone playing a video game and creating their own rules. Imagine playing a game in which you decide killing is wrong. The characters in the game know this. You see one of the characters kill and, to punish him, you kill him. Have you committed an immoral act?

I don't see how anyone could possibly attribute your rules that you've given to characters in the game to yourself. One could make that argument but it's pretty damning and implies some heavy stuff.

A potential except to the meta-ethical morality of a Supreme Being would be if the Supreme Being actually had a creator himself, but for the purposes of this exercise I'd like to use the concept of God, meaning he'd be the only Supreme Being in question.

 

[Budget Player Cadet_]

Oh of course. This, however, understandably cannot apply to any commands the supreme being himself gives. I.e. if the supreme being makes something moral and this is delivered to us accurately, then the supreme being can be immoral by not following that command.

 

[Overswarm]

Oh of course. This, however, understandably cannot apply to any commands the supreme being himself gives. I.e. if the supreme being makes something moral and this is delivered to us accurately, then the supreme being can be immoral by not following that command.

This would only be true if he gave the command to himself. What is necessarily right does not have to apply to all ends of the spectrum.

As an example, if you have a child and you say "don't touch that gun", and punish the child if they did so, you would not be committing an immoral act by touching the gun yourself. The fact that touching the gun is "bad" to a kid doesn't make it "bad" to an adult... and this is a very LIGHT example. Comparing God to humanity, there's no comparison whatsoever. Meta-ethical moral relativism dictates that a command from God to us would not necessarily be a command to us and himself.

This is alluded to in the Bible itself; it says "judge not, lest ye be judged", meaning that if you were are the kind of person that judges other people God himself will be judging you. This does not imply that God himself will be judged by a different being, nor that any such judgement would matter. It's a command from a Supreme Being that is merely dictating what our morality is, and not his.

 

[Nicholas1024]

I didn't know you were in the proving grounds, OS.

Anyway, I'd have to say I agree, there are definitely examples of things that would be wrong for us that aren't wrong for God. For a basic example, it'd be ludicrous for a human to go around sentencing others to Heaven or Hell or forgiving sins, simply because we can't know 100% the state of someone else's soul and what they've done. However, God being Omniscient, He has that kind of authority (especially considering He made us and the rules in question in the first place).

The earth parallel would basically be a judge sentencing someone to death in court versus murder. Even if the victim is deserving of death, an ordinary citizen doesn't have the authority to kill them for what they've done, while the courts do.

 

[Dre89]

Sorry Nic but I doubt any human, no matter what they've done, deserves eternal suffering.

Suffering for a billion years seems a bit much even for the Hitlers out there, yet alone eternal suffering.

OS- What you said was all well and good except for a few things.

Firstly, Christian theology says we are made in God's image. This contradicts your idea of liquid morality, because humans don't have liquid morality.

If I wrote a book with a character that did some of the stuff God did, the reader would instantly indentify him as the villain.

Secondly, sceptics aren't saying that for God to exist He has to be moral. What they're saying is that his behaviour contradicts his own claims that he is good and loving. Whether he actually is good or loving, the stuff he does is not considered good or loving to humans. Letting loved ones suffer and die is not considered good. Punishing people with eternal suffering for rejecting you is not considered personal, loving or merciful.

The point is his claims of virtues clearly conflict with the human interpretation of the virtues, meaning it is pointless to call himself good, if he will then go and kill a bunch of people, an act humans consider evil.

So it's not that God becomes evil, it's that for an omniscient being, he becomes rather irrational when he expects to consider us him good when he does acts which clearly conflict with the way he made us to interpret good.

Not only has he made it hard for us to accept him as good, but he then threatens us with eternal suffering if we don't. Sorry but that's totally irrational.

Also, the idea of liquid morality on God makes no sense, it makes more sense to say he's amoral. Liquid morality only applies when something ontologically superior to you (like God, for example) is ascribing the changes in morality to you.

It's not as if God changes his morality, and then becomes immoral if he doesn't act according to it. He can act however we wants without consequences of any kind, because he is God.

Also, you have big metaphysical issues when you start saying that God's moral form is subject to change, because most sophisticated notions of theism argue that God cannot change.

In fact, part of one argument for the necessity of his existence is that the first cause must be changeless. So by saying his moral form can change you are undermining this argument for him.

 

[Overswarm]

Sorry Nic but I doubt any human, no matter what they've done, deserves eternal suffering.

Suffering for a billion years seems a bit much even for the Hitlers out there, yet alone eternal suffering.

None of this is logical, and is simply emotion talking. Who decides who deserves eternal suffering? If we're assuming God exists, he literally decides. What you think doesn't matter.

Firstly, Christian theology says we are made in God's image. This contradicts your idea of liquid morality, because humans don't have liquid morality.

Define God's image.

Then explain how being made in God's image means that any or all rules that God gives us applies to God.

If I wrote a book with a character that did some of the stuff God did, the reader would instantly indentify him as the villain.

This hasn't been proven. It is also already proven untrue; someone did write a book with God in it doing exactly what he did, and history has shown he hasn't exactly been considered a villain.

Secondly, sceptics aren't saying that for God to exist He has to be moral. What they're saying is that his behaviour contradicts his own claims that he is good and loving. Whether he actually is good or loving, the stuff he does is not considered good or loving to humans. Letting loved ones suffer and die is not considered good. Punishing people with eternal suffering for rejecting you is not considered personal, loving or merciful.

Again, what you, or any other human thinks, is completely irrelevant. If God exists, he literally defines morality for us, and whatever he does is moral by definition. God is literally incapable of wrong-doing unless he deliberately gives himself a rule (for example, promising to never flood the earth again with a rainbow; breaking that promise and flooding the entire earth again could be considered immoral)

The point is his claims of virtues clearly conflict with the human interpretation of the virtues, meaning it is pointless to call himself good, if he will then go and kill a bunch of people, an act humans consider evil.

Again, human opinion on the matter is irrelevant. It is just as valid as what your cat, dog, or the ants in your yard think of your actions... except less so.

So it's not that God becomes evil, it's that for an omniscient being, he becomes rather irrational when he expects to consider us him good when he does acts which clearly conflict with the way he made us to interpret good.

Here's something. Now you just have to prove to me that our rules are meant to be obeyed by God as well.

Not only has he made it hard for us to accept him as good, but he then threatens us with eternal suffering if we don't. Sorry but that's totally irrational.

To whom? Again, human opinion doesn't matter in this at all.

Also, the idea of liquid morality on God makes no sense, it makes more sense to say he's amoral. Liquid morality only applies when something ontologically superior to you (like God, for example) is ascribing the changes in morality to you.

Proof?

It's not as if God changes his morality, and then becomes immoral if he doesn't act according to it. He can act however we wants without consequences of any kind, because he is God.

Also, you have big metaphysical issues when you start saying that God's moral form is subject to change, because most sophisticated notions of theism argue that God cannot change.

What most sophistocated notions of theism? Are you saying that God can't have a preference or prefer one thing at one time and another at another? What proof of this do you have? God being perfect doesn't mean he can't change; it could equally mean he's always changing.

In fact, part of one argument for the necessity of his existence is that the first cause must be changeless. So by saying his moral form can change you are undermining this argument for him.

I didn't make this argument, nor does it play into this one; this argument is already assuming God exists. If you'd like to make a separate thread on this topic feel free.

 

[Theftz22]

For a Supreme Being that has created existence morality is by default an exercise in meta-ethical relativism which naturally extends a normative morality to our own existence. However, our normative morality does not effect the meta-ethical relative morality for the Supreme Being in any direct context.

Note that this here is the conclusion of your argument, the rest of your critique merely draws out the implications of your conclusion here. What's striking then is that you state your conclusion without any supporting premises to show how you arrived at your conclusion. Here then you have a baldly asserted presupposition (P):

(P) If god creates the universe, then god creates morality

Of course one could define descriptive ethical terms in terms of god, but where the non-sequitur occurs is in saying that this somehow makes a normative conclusion.

As such, morality can change for the Supreme Being regardless of actions regarding us or our opinions as such and our normative morality can only be changed by his decree. In a word, his morality is by definition liquid since he is the defining aspect of morality if he is the creator, while ours is rigid as we are the created.

Here again you affirm (P) but what is wanting on your view is any justification for (P). One more paragraph in which you do the same:

Because of this, any attempt at discrediting God's acts (referenced earlier) as immoral are simply judging him from the perspective of our normative morality. In actuality, due to his being a Supreme Being, his actions are moral by definition regardless of any discrepancies with our OWN moral code; at worst God is amoral from our perspective.

An analogy would be someone playing a video game and creating their own rules. Imagine playing a game in which you decide killing is wrong. The characters in the game know this. You see one of the characters kill and, to punish him, you kill him. Have you committed an immoral act?

I don't see how anyone could possibly attribute your rules that you've given to characters in the game to yourself. One could make that argument but it's pretty damning and implies some heavy stuff.

This is the only attempt you make to justify (P), and by a flimsy analogy. But of course you don't actually justify (P) because the point of contention just is whether or not god can "decide that killing is wrong". So once again you assume (P) without proving it. Another issue is that you make a false analogy and possibly beg the question by comparing the rules of a video game to moral laws. The advocate of naturalistic ethics is obviously going to deny that the rules of morality are analogous to the rules of a video game because the advocate of naturalistic ethics believes that morality is not the sort of thing that can be created. And so you beg the question by comparing the rules of video games, which can obviously be created, to the rules of morality.

Finally note that (sadly) moral intuition is the most prominent defense of moral realism. But then its very plausible that a moral realist should believe that, for instance, murdering babies is necessarily wrong. Your position would therefore contradict the most prominent defense of moral realism because on your view god simply creates morality, and so murdering babies is not wrong in some possible world where god creates alternate rules of morality. Of course you could deny moral realism, but then what's the point of your argument?

 

[Dre89]

OS you're missing the point.

If you believe God exists then yes you can't question him, but the point is when all the factors make it illogical to believe in that type of god in the first place.

Saying "who are you to question God?" is a classic confusion of categories that preachers have been employing for centuries to trick unaware victims.

It's a logical fallacy, because you're turning an epistemic question into whether this god exists or nor, into a moral one where the person believes in God, but rejects Him.

You can use "who are you to question him?" logic for any religion. I believe in a God who thinks I'm the most superior form of existence, there's a book that says so. Who are you to question my God?

And the villain in the book point was flawed. Firstly, many atheist do consider the Bible's God evil. Secondly, the reason so many consider him good is because he's a god who calls himself good, and they're taught that they can't question him.

 

[Suntan Luigi]

Quick question: Could the God in question be more broadly defined as the Abrahamic God?

 

[Sucumbio]

it seems as if OS's ducked out from this debate.

so OP, basically summarizes as "God works in mysterious ways."

I agree. I've often felt that humans' conception of morality is, well... human. It's not for us to judge God's works and decide if they're evil or good or anything. They just are... we can perceive them as good or evil, but that's applying a human concept of morality which God obviously trumps on all levels.

I'd also argue that indeed we are made in God's image, and as a result, our own morality IS fluid. Through the ages, what's "right" and "wrong" has changed, shifted, etc. Remember it used to be cool to have fifty 10-year-old brides, but nowadays, you'd be in jail so fast, lol.

The fact that our own morality seems to be mostly frivolous, is a testament to the imperfection of humanity when compared to God.

 

[Overswarm]

Note that this here is the conclusion of your argument, the rest of your critique merely draws out the implications of your conclusion here. What's striking then is that you state your conclusion without any supporting premises to show how you arrived at your conclusion. Here then you have a baldly asserted presupposition (P):

(P) If god creates the universe, then god creates morality

Of course one could define descriptive ethical terms in terms of god, but where the non-sequitur occurs is in saying that this somehow makes a normative conclusion.

There's no non-sequitur. This argument is coming from the premise that God exists; his actions are good by definition because he defines what that is.

An equivalent would be describing the taste of an apple. While two apples can taste entirely different and a rotting apple will taste much different than a fresh apple, all apples taste like apples by definition. Our own notions of what an Apple 'should' or 'does' taste like is arbitrary.

For a Supreme Being that has created existence morality is by default an exercise in meta-ethical relativism which naturally extends a normative morality to our own existence. However, our normative morality does not effect the meta-ethical relative morality for the Supreme Being in any direct context.

Can you find a flaw in this? Because currently all you're saying is "I don't buy it", which is hardly a rebuttal. You might take a bite of an apple and proclaim it doesn't taste like an apple should, but your opinion on that matter is irrelevant because it is an apple. The apple's existence is the determining factor in what an apple tastes like, just as God's existence is the determining factor in what "good" is. What God does is good because he is the definition of good.

This is the only attempt you make to justify (P), and by a flimsy analogy. But of course you don't actually justify (P) because the point of contention just is whether or not god can "decide that killing is wrong". So once again you assume (P) without proving it. Another issue is that you make a false analogy and possibly beg the question by comparing the rules of a video game to moral laws. The advocate of naturalistic ethics is obviously going to deny that the rules of morality are analogous to the rules of a video game because the advocate of naturalistic ethics believes that morality is not the sort of thing that can be created. And so you beg the question by comparing the rules of video games, which can obviously be created, to the rules of morality.

The analogy uses the rules of a video game as a static set of rules. The argument I'm going against has already made the conclusion that God can't do X or Y because it is immoral as per his own rules, which implies they are a static set of rules that also apply to God. None of your paragraph has anything to do with my argument.

Finally note that (sadly) moral intuition is the most prominent defense of moral realism. But then its very plausible that a moral realist should believe that, for instance, murdering babies is necessarily wrong. Your position would therefore contradict the most prominent defense of moral realism because on your view god simply creates morality, and so murdering babies is not wrong in some possible world where god creates alternate rules of morality. Of course you could deny moral realism, but then what's the point of your argument?

...none of this has anything to do with anything either.

I don't think you're aware of what I'm arguing. This isn't an argument as to whether God creates morality; this argument is coming from the idea that God exists, and as such DOES create morality. This is assumed. Human opinion on the origin or interpretation or reality is really irrelevant for the most part. What is important is the human opinion on God's actions and whether they are moral; my argument is a justification for an amoral God, which can basically be summed up with "God exists, God is good by definition, and God's morality can change regardless of our opinions since our morality can only be changed by his decree. He's the defining aspect of morality. As with the example of a video game before, if you're playing a game and say "I'm going to kill all the civilians" and the game tells you that you lost because you didn't protect them, your opinion on the matter is irrelevant. You lost because you were supposed to protect the civilians. However, if you're protecting the civilians and then the game says you're supposed to kill them, you'd lose if you didn't do that. Neither of those things would be contradictory to the game's rules because the game itself dictates the rules. Ditto with God and morality.

OS you're missing the point.

If you believe God exists then yes you can't question him, but the point is when all the factors make it illogical to believe in that type of god in the first place.

Incorrect. This argument comes from the idea that God exists, so the rest of your post is completely irrelevant. If you'd like to make another thread feel free, but please refrain from just spouting off words to try to disprove God in a thread that has nothing to do with that.

it seems as if OS's ducked out from this debate.

so OP, basically summarizes as "God works in mysterious ways."

That wasn't my summary at all.


I'm starting to notice a theme in this place.

 

[Dre89]

OS and Suc- the problem with 'we can't understand God's morality because He is so far beyond us' doesn't work with the Christian God because the theology says that God is good in a book written for humans, meaning that it's the human interpretation of good. It's also said that we are made in God's image.


Saying 'we can't understand God's morality because he is infinitely beyond us' doesn't work if you're a Christian.

 

[Overswarm]

OS and Suc- the problem with 'we can't understand God's morality because He is so far beyond us' doesn't work with the Christian God because the theology says that God is good in a book written for humans, meaning that it's the human interpretation of good. It's also said that we are made in God's image.


Saying 'we can't understand God's morality because he is infinitely beyond us' doesn't work if you're a Christian.

1. I didn't say that

2. It doesn't mean that it's the human interpretation of good

3. If God defines good, by definition what he does is good regardless of our own rules or view of morality

4. We're discussing this from the perspective that God exists, so the point is moot

 

[asianaussie]

Seems like you just want everyone to affirm you're correct since you're bored.

The only real counter-arguments I can think of:

Morality, as it stands in human comprehension, is a creation of humans and not of God, and therefore cannot be applied as a concept concerning Him in any way. The only reason you can say God is amoral is because we are unable to think otherwise, that morality is an integral part of every human and therefore of any sentient being. You may argue that he, in creating us, programmed morality or whatever, but how are we to say that this subcode is even applicable to anyone other than humans themselves, and that this limitation was not intentional?

Morality is not absolute in any way, as humans hold different values of morality. You may argue that each person has a different definition of good, but that requires each person to either have an individual God (disregarded) or for God to have an absolute moral standard somehow ingrained in every human, which I doubt. On the other hand, you may consider humans knowing of this standard (we'll ignore cultural and religious biases here) and purposely straying from or deviating from it for personal reasons. I don't know what conclusions you can draw from this though.

Do humans naturally yearn to do good? Are we conscious of any actual moral standards? Until we can understand other humans, we won't be able to comprehend what God himself sees and won't be able to judge any attribute of Him.

overly wordy religion-slanted debates, how droll

 

[Dre89]

Let's please not turn this into 'morality is different for any individual'. The only people who say are people who don't really know what meta ethics is.

OS- But then saying 'I am good, to humans serves absolutelty no purpose when He knows humans interpret moral actions to consist of certain fixed virtues. He knows that if he kills innocent people (which he has) then that conflicts with the human interpretation of good.

He also claims to have specifc traits of goodness, such as being personal, loving, just and merciful. Now certain acts he has done clearly conflict with these notions, unless you're going to say that he can change what merciful, loving, personal, and just mean whenever he wants, meaning those words have no meaning whatsoever.

 

[Overswarm]

Seems like you just want everyone to affirm you're correct since you're bored.

The only real counter-arguments I can think of:

Morality, as it stands in human comprehension, is a creation of humans and not of God, and therefore cannot be applied as a concept concerning Him in any way. The only reason you can say God is amoral is because we are unable to think otherwise, that morality is an integral part of every human and therefore of any sentient being. You may argue that he, in creating us, programmed morality or whatever, but how are we to say that this subcode is even applicable to anyone other than humans themselves, and that this limitation was not intentional?

Morality is not absolute in any way, as humans hold different values of morality. You may argue that each person has a different definition of good, but that requires each person to either have an individual God (disregarded) or for God to have an absolute moral standard somehow ingrained in every human, which I doubt. On the other hand, you may consider humans knowing of this standard (we'll ignore cultural and religious biases here) and purposely straying from or deviating from it for personal reasons. I don't know what conclusions you can draw from this though.

Do humans naturally yearn to do good? Are we conscious of any actual moral standards? Until we can understand other humans, we won't be able to comprehend what God himself sees and won't be able to judge any attribute of Him.

overly wordy religion-slanted debates, how droll

What?

For the last time, this argument is assuming God exists. The God defined earlier. God is a Supreme Being and literally created the rules; what he does is, by definition, good, because God is good. Because of this there IS absolute morality in the form of God himself but that doesn't necessarily mean that a specific action is always moral or not.

None of what you said really addressed the argument itself. Why does everyone here keep trying to zoom out?

Let's please not turn this into 'morality is different for any individual'. The only people who say are people who don't really know what meta ethics is.

OS- But then saying 'I am good, to humans serves absolutelty no purpose when He knows humans interpret moral actions to consist of certain fixed virtues. He knows that if he kills innocent people (which he has) then that conflicts with the human interpretation of good.

He also claims to have specifc traits of goodness, such as being personal, loving, just and merciful. Now certain acts he has done clearly conflict with these notions, unless you're going to say that he can change what merciful, loving, personal, and just mean whenever he wants, meaning those words have no meaning whatsoever.

Is there a reason he can't? What God does is by definition good, and because of this his actions are moral inherently. The only exception being if God says that something is immoral for him to do, then does it immediately after, and hasn't changed his mind about the former. The rules of humanity do not apply.

 

[asianaussie]

your argument:

god exists, this is assumed
god = good in principle
we can't argue against this because our morals are dictated by him to begin with
if our morals go against him (since he's morality), we are the ones in the wrong
if we judge an action as immoral whereas it is moral according to god, we are the immoral ones

where does objectivity come into this? where is the norm? im not even going to bother debating because a) i can't decipher what points you expect us to address and b) you're not helping, just restating your fundamental assumptions repeatedly, which we can't attack due to the nature of the debate

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

This thread made me laugh a lot.

OS is correct under the conditions he proposed. Dre is trying to attack something that OS has said, "For the purpose of this thread, assume the following."

Seeing as I agree completely with OS's conclusion under the terms he set forth, I'll use this post to advise.




Dre, your target, if you insist to play devil's advocate with what I consider sound logic, is that God is defined into our interpretation to morality because X. Saying that God does not line up with the rules of morality that we uphold has about as much to do with the argument as me saying that OS's hair smells like peaches (nice peaches) as the entire point of this thread was OS saying that it doesn't matter how God lines up with our normative morality.

Define X for me.





God, I can't sleep. My laptop is dead. I'm browsing Proving Grounds again and I finally decided to post. I'm glad my iPod has a good keyboard.

 

[Dre89]

No, my point is that the Christian God is trying to pass himself off as moral by our standards, which is highly contentious seeing as he has done many acts that we would not associate with love, justice, mercy, or being personal.

My point is that even assuming the God in the OP exists, OS's argument doesn't validate the C God, infact it does the opposite. OS is trying to portray God with a liquid morality (which is really just amorality, but that's irrelevant) when the C God portrays himself as having static morality, and that human morality is derived from God's morality, hence us being created in his image.

You have a two horn dilemma, even assuming that the contradiction doesn't make the C God logically impossible, God is either immoral or communicates fallaciously.

The C God markets himself as good, loving, just, merciful and personal (which I shall now refer to as 'the virtues'). Being omniscient, he would know how humans unviersally interpret these concepts, and he would know that many acts he does conflict with the human interpretation of these concepts.

However, at no point does he mention that his morality is liquid, or that these terms mean different things to him. In fact, he states we're made in his image, and seeing as he hasn't specified this liquid morality, or that the terms mean different things for him, that suggests he means the human interpretation. Even the mere fact he identifies himself with static moral concepts shows he's meant to have a static morality, why else would he continuously only mention specific virtues, if he could be anything he wanted if he decides to, and they're only considred virtues if he decides to make them so?

So either he has a static morality, by which he is immoral due to many of his actions, or he has a liquid morality, and has either deliberately miscommunicated to us, or unintentionally miscommunicated due to limited understanding of the human form. Either way, it leaves the C God with traits it specifies it does not have.

The reason why I mention Christianity is because arguments like OS's are formulated specifically to validate the C God.

Note that all that argumentation assumed God existed. So despite the fact that's an incredibly generous condition to give yourself when making an argument, the reasoning was still fallacious.

 

[Overswarm]

I just can't help but feel Dre is a high school atheist. Technically an Ad Homnem, but seriously. Dre, get off your high horse. This discussion isn't about proving God's existence. It's assumed for the stakes of an argument.

That's how debates in the real world work. Every single debate I've ever been in begins with assumptions that can't be challenged, and then you work your way backwards. If you're having a conversation about lowering the speed limit to protect the citizens, you start off with "Assuming that lowering the speed limit to 35 mph reduces crashes and has no negative impact other than public outrage, should we lower the speed limit?" and even opponents of the idea say "Yes" because they're focusing in on the argument presented. It doesn't mean that they should lower the speed limit to 35 or that they agree with it. It means they agree with it under those circumstances. From that point on you have a "base" in which to stand on and work from, and you've already remove "public outrage" as a talking point and confirmed that everyone cares about the safety of the citizens more than public outrage (meaning the decision doesn't have to be popular).

Na mean?

You're the guy in that meeting saying "I'm going to be late for work you *******s!". No one cares because it doesn't have anything to do with the discussion at hand.

Never zoom out in an argument, you get nothing done. Start small. You want to argue against something? Don't argue against the assumptions.

If you want to argue against these assumptions, make another thread. It could be that one day in the future knowledge will exist that directly contradicts the assumptions set forth in this thread; that would render this argument moot, although the decision would remain, but the place for that argument isn't here.

where does objectivity come into this? where is the norm? im not even going to bother debating because a) i can't decipher what points you expect us to address and b) you're not helping, just restating your fundamental assumptions repeatedly, which we can't attack due to the nature of the debate

That's the point. There is no objectivity and the norm comes from God's actions themselves. There is no way to argue against this from what I can see, which is why I posted this. I still haven't seen any argument that holds water given these assumptions and I personally don't believe one can exist without attacking one of the assumptions.

The importance in this argument lies in the fact that we're assuming God exists, meaning that every person that believes in God will have to come to terms with the fact that God's actions are inherently moral and can be contradictory without being immoral; at most God is amoral in regards to our own normative concept of morality that is given to us by God or human-based morality.

This means saying things like "God wouldn't kill every first born in Egypt if he was good" and "If God is good, how can he let evil into the world?!" are irrelevant questions assuming God exists. Someone could say "I can't believe in a God that does that is good!" but it'd be an illogical standpoint. My argument is justification for that kind of God, which is a pretty big deal in discussions about religion.

If you'd like me to simplify the points, avenues of attack would be being able to judge God from a human perspective (impossible given the assumptions), find Biblical evidence (since God is assumed to exist, Biblical evidence could be considered acceptable) that contradicts the idea that God's concept of morality is liquid or finding evidence that God feels remorse for his actions alone (as this implies shame). This would undercut the idea that God's morality is liquid and, if this is the case, God is capable of doing "bad" things. The assumption is that God exists and this implies that God is good (because he exists and is described as such) and the creator of good (by being a supreme being) and because of this all his actions are moral by definition. If you can deny the implications, this will create a void in the argument that would imply one of the assumptions are flawed or the implications deny the justification of an amoral God.

 

[Overswarm]

Note that all that argumentation assumed God existed. So despite the fact that's an incredibly generous condition to give yourself when making an argument, the reasoning was still fallacious.

Every debate dealing with such large concepts makes such assumptions. Hell, even in the scientific community they make such assumptions prior to doing their research. That's how you get answers instead of standing still; lots of assumptions with little answers and then you move backwards. As you get more answers you start to get a clearer picture of what those assumptions should be and can tackle larger arguments.

In this case, if we all looked at this argument and said "I've got nothin'", that'd mean in any future debate statements regarding God's morality from a human perspective would be irrelevant. Do this enough and you can undercut lots of common arguments and keep them from making other debates sloppy.

 

[Dre89]

I'm not in high school and I'm
not an atheist.

I don't get what you wanted out of this thread. I didn't challenge any of your assumptions, I showed that if your assumptions were true, they result in God being either immoral or poor at communicating.

If you're not going to let anyone challenge your conclusion then you shouldn't post this on a debate forum.

And sorry, assuming a conclusion before attaining the premises is backwards reasoning and epistemically fallacious. Pretty much any belief could be justified by that type of thinking. What you're simply trying to do is oversimplify epistemology to the point where your conclusions become reasonable, like how uneducated religious people say 'you can't rationalise faith' yet object when you call it irrational.

 

[Overswarm]

You should ALWAYS go into a debate with assumptions. Always, bar none. If the over-arching question is whether or not over-hunting or an abundance of natural predators are drastically lowering deer population in your area, you don't come at the debate saying "is it hunters or natural predators". You say "assuming natural predators haven't killed any more or less deer than in previous years, do we have evidence showing that over-hunting is causing the deer population to drop drastically". Then you look at the data and get your answer, and then you go do the same thing for natural predators. Otherwise it becomes a matter of picking sides and arguing for what you want to be correct.

To find the truth, you simply make certain things true for the argument at hand. If no one can find a hole in the argument I've given, anyone in the future saying "God isn't good because he did X" could be ignored or shut down; they'd have to take a different approach. Do this enough and you end up at the broader questions with a better knowledge base.

 

[Dre89]

Sorry but that doesn't work, and you would have to believe multiple conflicting things if that were the case.

Suppose I make my own religion and write a book on the doctrine, which says I'm the most superior form of being. I can't say 'just assume the book is divinely inspired, and then everything will make sense when you read it'. The book then says not to question it and accept it blindly, and that I'm superior to everyone else.

By your logic you would have to accept that if you assume the initial premise that it's divinely inspired is correct, because everything else following that is not logically contradictory.

This is where backwards reasoning goes wrong. Backwards reasoning (ie. assuming the conclusion then finding premises for it) simply shows that the conclusion is not logically contradictory, but it doesn't provide any positive reasons to believe the thing actually exists or is true, just merely that it is conceivable. But even then, you can do that with anything that isn't logically contradictory.

This why arguments that require the least amount of assumed conditions are considered the strongest.

What you're proposing is an epistemic fallacy. You can't just change the way knowledge is acquired.

 

[Overswarm]

I'm not assuming a conclusion; I'm assuming God exists and that God is defined as he is in the Bible and this leads to the conclusion I've given.

Your example is accurate; I'd agree that if the book was divinely inspired and said to accept it blindly and that you were superior to everyone else that you'd be superior to everyone else given those conditions. That's a no brainer.

What you're suggesting is that we halt any and all discussion in every facet of humanity unless we have every piece of knowledge to the puzzle which is a hell of a extrapolation. Even the most rigorous of scientists don't do that. We still don't know how gravity works but we work under certain assumptions about gravity that remain true when tested. The same can be said for philosophical arguments. You can make the assumption that a human life has worth for an argument about anything involving death, but that doesn't mean everyone else should come in and say "prove that human life is worth something". That means the argument in question is "Is X true or false assuming that a human life has value".

It's not backwards reasoning nor a fallacy, and I'm still not sure why this is such a difficult concept to understand.

 

[Dre89]

But the only reason why we assume gravity is because we have reasons to believe it is true, even if we don't know everything about it.

This the distinction between gravity and my Dreology- there is no reason to believe the book of Dreology is divinely inspired. Also, a text telling you how to acquire knowledge that then meets this new criteria (eg. A text telling you to have blind faith in it) is an epistemic fallacy of circularity and a confusion of categories.

We assume certain propositions, such as no macro organism can exist at not exist at the same time, because they are axiomatic or self evident. We also assume certain propositions, such as the belief that minds apart from our own exist, because the answer is indemonstratable, and it is astronomically impractical to assume the reverse.

What you're asking us to assume meets neither of these criteria.

 

[Overswarm]

You're missing the point. Gravity is an example. Focus on the meat of the conversation and stop nitpicking in an attempt to "be right" in a hypothetical exercise.

Replace gravity with "dark matter" and "higgs boson" which are, scientifically, almost exactly in the same realm as God. They're just empty concepts that SHOULD fit the gap in knowledge we have, and we're spending billions of dollars and have made the world's largest machine to look for them. We have started with an assumption based off of what we've seen elsewhere and gone from there; we are aware that the truth is likely to be radically different than the current hypothesis but it's the best we've got right now.

They said "given that the higgs boson exists, the Standard Model is correct" and found that that was true. Now they're looking to see if the higgs boson exists.

Likewise, I'm saying "given that God exists, (rest of post)".

You want to go to the engineers and scientists that made the Large Hadron Collider and say "that's not how knowledge works"?

Every debate and philsophical journey comes from a seirs of assumptions

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Once again, I agree. You start by figuring out "If X, then Y must be true." OS, is asking is Y true and you're saying that he cannot prove that X is true. Get there after you've reached a consensus on Y.

 

[Theftz22]

There's no non-sequitur. This argument is coming from the premise that God exists; his actions are good by definition because he defines what that is.

Firstly I certainly disagree that god defines the term "good". In the context of using language, we determine what our definition of the word good means. Of course, god could appear before us and declare that he has a new definition of the term "good", but then there's no particular significance in that since there's no such thing as a normative definition; we're all free to use terms how we like. Perhaps what you really mean to say is that what you mean by "good" is something like "whatever god commands". Which as I've said is all perfectly fine and well, you can have that term mean that if you'd like, but the point is that that in no way entails a normative conclusion about what we ought or ought not do. Which is the only issue of particular relevance, to me at least, with regards to morality.

An equivalent would be describing the taste of an apple. While two apples can taste entirely different and a rotting apple will taste much different than a fresh apple, all apples taste like apples by definition. Our own notions of what an Apple 'should' or 'does' taste like is arbitrary.

I'm not entirely sure how you're proposing that this is in some way analogous to your argument, but allow to me show simply that this example doesn't work out in your favor. We may distinguish between two different uses of the word "taste". One would be the physical property of taste that is determined by the chemical composition of an object. The other use of the taste would be the experience one has when one eats something, sometimes called flavor. We can show that these two things are not identical because one could learn everything there is to know about the physical property of taste without knowing the experience of flavor, thus they cannot be identical. For imagine a chemist learns everything there is to know about the chemical composition of broccoli in the lab, still, he would not know until he brought the specimen home and consumed it for dinner what it is like to taste broccoli. So we may distinguish between these two uses of the term "taste".

Now in applying this to your passage above, when you say "all apples taste like apples by definition", that's false on the second use of the term tastes. Sure, all apples have the chemical composition of apples by definition, but not all apples I eat will have the flavor of apples. If I pickle an apple, deep fry it, and smother it with pig lard, you can be sure when I eat that apple I won't be tasting much apple flavor. And again when you say "Our own notions of what an Apple 'should' or 'does' taste like is arbitrary," this is false on the second use of the term tastes. For how we experience the flavor of an apple does determine how the apple tastes at least to us. On an emotivist theory of ethics, moral terms are more like the second use of term "taste".

Can you find a flaw in this? Because currently all you're saying is "I don't buy it", which is hardly a rebuttal. You might take a bite of an apple and proclaim it doesn't taste like an apple should, but your opinion on that matter is irrelevant because it is an apple. The apple's existence is the determining factor in what an apple tastes like, just as God's existence is the determining factor in what "good" is. What God does is good because he is the definition of good.

Yes I sure can, and my claim is not that "I don't buy it", but rather that "I've been given no reason to buy it". Now let's examine this:

For a Supreme Being that has created existence morality is by default an exercise in meta-ethical relativism which naturally extends a normative morality to our own existence. However, our normative morality does not effect the meta-ethical relative morality for the Supreme Being in any direct context.

Again, why? What's your argument? I understand that you define good as something like "god-like" but this move from descriptive statements to normative conclusions about what we ought do just lacks justification. In addition you certainly have to do a more to address already developed systems of naturalistic moral realism which you dismiss without argument.

The analogy uses the rules of a video game as a static set of rules. The argument I'm going against has already made the conclusion that God can't do X or Y because it is immoral as per his own rules, which implies they are a static set of rules that also apply to God. None of your paragraph has anything to do with my argument.

The arguer of naturalistic ethics (at least a sophisticated one) isn't claiming that he creates moral laws and that they apply, rather the naturalist is arguing against the whole presupposition that moral laws can be created. The naturalist identifies ethical facts with some natural phenomenon like the suffering of sentient creatures, platonic abstract objects, or categorical imperatives. Sure, such positions can be argued against, but that's what you still have yet to do, you merely presume them to be false.

...none of this has anything to do with anything either.

I think it does, the point is that most moral intuitions go against your view here, so if you take intuition seriously, your position is dubious. If you don't take intuition seriously, it's hard to see how to justify moral realism. But then what's all the bluster about god creating morality about?

@Dre: He's arguing for a conditional:

If god exists, then god creates morality.

The truth of the antecedent has no bearing on the truth of the conditional.

 

[Dre89]

Ryker- No that's not what I'm doing. I accepted all the assumptions he made, and showed even when we do this, it still entails God has undesirable traits.

OS- Sorry but God isn't just filling in gaps in scientific knowledge. That's oversimplifying and straw manning. Suggesting all God belief is a result of science or lack thereof is a very misinformed statement. I suggest you read some academic theistic literature before you make sweeping statements like that.

The only people who believe in God for reasons like that are those uneducated in the relevant literature who believe in God based on their upbringing, or derive happiness and security from it, and those people shouldn't be engaging in rational discussions about God.

 

[Sucumbio]

The importance in this argument lies in the fact that we're assuming God exists, meaning that every person that believes in God will have to come to terms with the fact that God's actions are inherently moral and can be contradictory without being immoral; at most God is amoral in regards to our own normative concept of morality that is given to us by God or human-based morality.

Precisely. Which makes no sense. Which is why one has to justify it with "God works in mysterious ways." There's no other explanation for how [any] God could behave in this fashion.

Why?

1.) Consistency. If God changed the rules of right and wrong (think of the 10 Commandments, those are as objective as you'll get) every 100 years or so, the whole planet would be filled with morally confused people. This is why the 10 Commandments have not changed, and are still universally accepted as correct by Jews and Christians alike.

2.) Easy to follow. Rules of right and wrong are best left simple. People are idiots, and the people of 2000 years ago were dumber than rocks compared to your average present day American. Therefore morality cannot be "tricky" or too "thick" with details.

3.) Real-world examples. God laid down the rules eons ago, and for each rule, there is a real-world example in the Bible, taking various forms (example-stories, actual accounts of incidents, etc.) Each example may run the risk of contradicting another rule laid out somewhere else. This leads us to question the ultimate morality of God.

Well Job of the Old Testament is a good example. How could a kind and loving God demand that Job, after being basically tortured by God day in and day out for weeks, then demand he sacrifice his child? How is this in concert with the strong theme of Love that so inspires the New Testament?

Easy answer. The lesson that Job had to learn far outweighed the importance of Job's own moral and ethical worldviews. It may seem to cheapen his suffering by saying "well, God works in mysterious ways." But that really is the point... one cannot know the reason for a tragedy occurring, or God the Loving vs God the ***-kicker. It's not for us to question, either, but that's a philosophical point I'd rather not justify because it's a personal choice.

Here's some interesting reading: http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/bible.htm#INDEX

For all those out there who hate Bible contradictions, there's several listed that have good explanations.

But anyway, yes God's actions are automatically moral, because he defines what is moral. Our interpretations of his actions are like trying to look at fine print through a foggy magnifying glass. We can see it, read it even, but it's not entirely clear. The test of faith is whether or not you accept what happens to you and those on Earth at the hands of God as good, regardless of how those people react.

 

[Dre89]

Anyone who says 'God is beyond us, we can't understand him, we just have to have faith and trust him' really should not be in this debate.

Thinking that you can just say that and not needing to defend is like believing 'the Bible says to have faith' isn't logically circular.

I'm getting really tired of people not being able to articulate sophisticated points and using theology to make philosophical points. I thought this was the kind of stuff the DH was supposed to omit.

 

[Sucumbio]

What's to defend? It's obvious isn't it? I mean, can you think of a God that -isn't- beyond understanding? If you can, I'd hesitate to call them God.

 

[Dre89]

What's to defend is that his unintelligibility all of a sudden removes all the problems with the Christian God.

That's pretty much what you and OS are saying.

Notice how OS didn't address my arguments, which actually accepted all of his assumptions and still showed that his god had logical problems. All he did was play the card you did, and accuse me of not accepting all of his assumptions, because it's apparently impossible to come to a different conclusion to him if you accept all of the assumptions in the OP.

 

[Overswarm]

Dre, I don't think you're really following the discussion very closely.

Anyone who says 'God is beyond us, we can't understand him, we just have to have faith and trust him' really should not be in this debate.

You think I'm straw manning?

 

[Overswarm]

Firstly I certainly disagree that god defines the term "good". In the context of using language, we determine what our definition of the word good means. Of course, god could appear before us and declare that he has a new definition of the term "good", but then there's no particular significance in that since there's no such thing as a normative definition; we're all free to use terms how we like. Perhaps what you really mean to say is that what you mean by "good" is something like "whatever god commands". Which as I've said is all perfectly fine and well, you can have that term mean that if you'd like, but the point is that that in no way entails a normative conclusion about what we ought or ought not do. Which is the only issue of particular relevance, to me at least, with regards to morality.

Assuming God exists, he literally does define "good"; there's not really an argument against that, as God is a Supreme Being that creates the very concept of morality. Our concept of morality is either wrong or irrelevant in comparison to that which dictates what morality is. I refer again to the video game example. If you "win" a level by reaching the end in under five minutes but you instead play the level to get the most points, the game doesn't care what you consider a "win". You still lost because the rules don't care what you want to do.

You could attack it from a linguistic standpoint, but that'd be largely arbitrary and be avoiding the actual concept of morality.

I'm not entirely sure how you're proposing that this is in some way analogous to your argument, but allow to me show simply that this example doesn't work out in your favor. We may distinguish between two different uses of the word "taste". One would be the physical property of taste that is determined by the chemical composition of an object. The other use of the taste would be the experience one has when one eats something, sometimes called flavor. We can show that these two things are not identical because one could learn everything there is to know about the physical property of taste without knowing the experience of flavor, thus they cannot be identical. For imagine a chemist learns everything there is to know about the chemical composition of broccoli in the lab, still, he would not know until he brought the specimen home and consumed it for dinner what it is like to taste broccoli. So we may distinguish between these two uses of the term "taste".

Now in applying this to your passage above, when you say "all apples taste like apples by definition", that's false on the second use of the term tastes. Sure, all apples have the chemical composition of apples by definition, but not all apples I eat will have the flavor of apples. If I pickle an apple, deep fry it, and smother it with pig lard, you can be sure when I eat that apple I won't be tasting much apple flavor. And again when you say "Our own notions of what an Apple 'should' or 'does' taste like is arbitrary," this is false on the second use of the term tastes. For how we experience the flavor of an apple does determine how the apple tastes at least to us. On an emotivist theory of ethics, moral terms are more like the second use of term "taste".

If you deep fried an apple and covered it in pig lard, you'd be tasting apples, pig lard, and oils. The combination would be different than a solitary apple, so of course it would taste different.

An apple tastes like an apple. The chemical composition is irrelevant, as is the flavor; this is just a descriptor of how we determine what "apple" tastes like. At the end of the day, an apple tastes like an apple. Our own personal experiences with apples are irrelevant, as are our own preferences. The apple flavored snowcone tastes differently than an apple, but if you eat an apple flavored snowcone first and then eat an apple for the first time after, saying "this doesn't taste like an apple" would be incorrect. Because it's an apple, and it tastes like what it tastes like. Our perception of what an apple SHOULD taste like is irrelevant.

It's not something that can really be argued against, since the defining aspect of what an apple tastes like is what an apple tastes like. It's self-referential. If you cover the apple with pig lard and deep fry it, it tastes like a deep fried apple covered in pig lard. What does that taste like? It tastes like a deep fried apple covered in pig lard.

To differentiate between flavors we can descriptors to describe the range of potential flavors, but they all still taste like an apple. What we feel it should taste like is arbitrary.

Yes I sure can, and my claim is not that "I don't buy it", but rather that "I've been given no reason to buy it". Now let's examine this:

Again, why? What's your argument? I understand that you define good as something like "god-like" but this move from descriptive statements to normative conclusions about what we ought do just lacks justification. In addition you certainly have to do a more to address already developed systems of naturalistic moral realism which you dismiss without argument.

That if God creates morality, it is by definition an exercise in meta-ethical morality. That means there is no universal "good" or "bad" that is necessarily inherent for God, but rather personal preference. The 'person' in question being God.

A normative morality is the natural progression for us in that we should ascribe to the meta-ethical morality of God. However, unlike the case with humans, the normative morality we practice does not actually dictate changes in God's morality.

Do you have an argument as to why that which creates morality would not be able to change what is moral? Because otherwise the only explanation would be a meta-ethical approach.

The arguer of naturalistic ethics (at least a sophisticated one) isn't claiming that he creates moral laws and that they apply, rather the naturalist is arguing against the whole presupposition that moral laws can be created. The naturalist identifies ethical facts with some natural phenomenon like the suffering of sentient creatures, platonic abstract objects, or categorical imperatives. Sure, such positions can be argued against, but that's what you still have yet to do, you merely presume them to be false.

They're automatically false given the assumptions in the beginning of the thread, the biggest one being that God exists.

If God exists, he's already been defined as "good" and the creator of morality simply by existing. That's kind of his thing. If he's creating morality, no amount of hypothesizing trumps God saying "No, that's not right". That's even the case if prior God said "sure, that's right".

Naturalistic ethics have no place in a world ruled by God; while it could seem logical to us to go against a rule like "don't mix fibers together", if God came down and said "Hey! I exist and I said don't mix fibers together!" it doesn't matter your reasoning because God literally defines the correct moral path.

I think it does, the point is that most moral intuitions go against your view here, so if you take intuition seriously, your position is dubious. If you don't take intuition seriously, it's hard to see how to justify moral realism. But then what's all the bluster about god creating morality about?

Assuming he exists, God is already defined as "good" and creates morality. The whole "right and wrong" thing is a really big theme in the Bible, it's pretty explicit about where it came from too. God literally gave the commands on stone tablets twice.


The argument that God doesn't create morality can't really come into play given the assumptions here. The Bible was already pretty clear on that one. What CAN be argued is whether or not God can change his mind, or whether that matters.

 

[#HBC | Ryker]

Ryker- No that's not what I'm doing. I accepted all the assumptions he made, and showed even when we do this, it still entails God has undesirable traits.

Oh okay.

OS- Sorry but God isn't just filling in gaps in scientific knowledge. That's oversimplifying and straw manning. Suggesting all God belief is a result of science or lack thereof is a very misinformed statement. I suggest you read some academic theistic literature before you make sweeping statements like that.

The only people who believe in God for reasons like that are those uneducated in the relevant literature who believe in God based on their upbringing, or derive happiness and security from it, and those people shouldn't be engaging in rational discussions about God.

What does this have to do at all with, "If God exists and is defined as He is in the Christian Bible, then He created morality and, as such, cannot, by definition do wrong unless under the one example that has already been outlined."?

 

[Dre89]

Ryker it's relevant because the reason why he assumes God's existence is because he thinks it's an assumption that's a result of filling in the gaps in science, which isn't true of sophisticated theists.

OS- I am following the debate, I've heard this argument a million times before. I've shown that even if the Christian God exists, and even is hevhas liquid morality,that entails he is a poor communicator despite being omniscient, so you still have a problem. You never addressed this point.

Also your argument has little relevance because it assumes conditions which many people think are contradictory. Many people believe the Christian God is contradictory, but his existence is assumed in your argument. So even if they momentarily assume his existence and hear you out, after that they'll just go back to showing you why they think the C God is contradictory.

 

[Overswarm]

Ryker it's relevant because the reason why he assumes God's existence is because he thinks it's an assumption that's a result of filling in the gaps in science, which isn't true of sophisticated theists.

WTF are you talking about? When did I say this?

OS- I am following the debate, I've heard this argument a million times before. I've shown that even if the Christian God exists, and even is hevhas liquid morality,that entails he is a poor communicator despite being omniscient, so you still have a problem. You never addressed this point.

It's not a point and isn't a part of the discussion at all. Why does it matter if he's a poor communicator? What does that have to do with this discussion?

Also your argument has little relevance because it assumes conditions which many people think are contradictory. Many people believe the Christian God is contradictory, but his existence is assumed in your argument. So even if they momentarily assume his existence and hear you out, after that they'll just go back to showing you why they think the C God is contradictory.

What does this have to do with ANYTHING?


I'm just going to stop responding to your posts. This is really like PHI 101 stuff, it's not that complicated. It is the mark of an educated mind that can entertain an idea without accepting it. The fact that you're coming into this with your guns loaded is pretty unhelpful. I wish you luck in the future, but you're never going to find answers to anything like this unless they were what you wanted to hear.

 

[Dre89]

Ok let me explain it to you. I didn't think I'd need to to do this.

The liquid morality argument is used to justify the fact the Christian God can allow all the evil and suffering in the world. It's essentially a defence of the Christian God against the argument from evil. These defences are called theodicies.

Your argument is a niche theodicy in that it assumes God's existence, but then then attempts to refute the argument from evil.

The problem is that even if we accept all the conditions you have proposed, it entails that God is a poor communicator, which makes him potentially irrational and certainly contradicts his omniscience.

The reason why this is relevant is because it dismantles the Christian God, because the Christian God is meant to be rational and omniscient, and the Christian God is what liquid morality arguments are formulated to defend in the first place.