God is a Sound Moral Basis

Our argument will largely revolve around the Craig vs Harris debate: *R1 for acceptance, argument presentation, definitions only. DefinitionsSound Moral Ontology: the more plausible and least arbitrary foundation of objective morals. Morals which can be gradually discovered rather than invented. Ontology is the study of what is the case, as opposed to the study of how we know what is the case (epistemology).Objective: Valid and binding apart from human opinion.Moral Value: Concerns what"s good and evil, things like justice, faithfulness, love, compassion, etc. Moral Duty: Concerns what"s right and wrong and what obligation or what you ought to do in certain circumstances. God: God is a being worthy of worship. Any being that is not worthy of worship is not God. And therefore God must be perfectly good and essentially good. Also God is the greatest conceivable being, and therefore the very paradigm of goodness itself. He is the greatest good. So once you understand the concept of God, you can see that asking, "Well, why is God good?" is sort of like asking, "Why are all bachelors unmarried?" It"s the very concept of the greatest conceivable being, of being worthy of worship, that entails the essential goodness of God. Law of Identity: an object is the same as itself: A → A (if you have A, then you have A), a tautology: a necessary relation. There is no possible world in which some entity A is not identical to A. So if there’s any possible world in which A is not identical to B, then it follows that A is not in fact identical to B.http://en.wikipedia.org...PreliminariesCon and I both agree that there are objective moral values and duties. The question before us, then, is, "what is the most plausible and least arbitrary ontological foundation for the existence of objective moral values and duties?" In bearing my BoP in answering this, I"m going to defend 2 contentions:1) Theism provides a more plausible and less arbitrary objective moral ontology2) Atheism provides a less plausible and more arbitrary objective moral ontologyNow these are conditional claims. I won"t argue that God exists. Maybe Con is right that atheism is true. That wouldn"t affect the truth of my 2 contentions.Also, we"re not debating moral semantics, which asks, "What is the meaning of moral terms?" But rather moral ontology, which asks, "What is the foundation of objective moral values and duties?" The issue before us isn"t whether we must believe in God to have moral lives, or if we can we formulate an ethics system without reference to God, and nor is the question can we recognize the existence of moral reality without reference to God? Moral ontology shouldn't be confused with our moral epistemology. I"m concerned with the former of these. See here for a logical distinction, http://www.debate.org...Lastly, the supposed atrocities in the Hebrew Bible are irrelevant to this debate, Divine Command Morality places no stock whatsoever in the Bible. But for those interested in biblical ethics, I refer Copan"s "Is God a Moral Monster?" Burden of ProofPro: defend my two contentionsCon: to give a more plausible and less arbitrary explanation of what bestows moral dignity, worth, and imperatives on humans apart from GodMuch thanks Con for debating this with me, I hope we learn much from eachother! :-)http://www.youtube.com...