The moral argument for God is sound.

In philosophical topics one can debate without the need for encyclopedic knowledge, like one would in a creation - evolution debate. I have also not adopted a moral philosophy that I read about and then liked, but developed my own. So I can't reference you lots of information and quotes about the merits of my favourite moral philosophy.Argument from contradictionThe moral argument is a god-of-the-gaps argument. People don't understand morality and God is so smart and powerful he must be able to do it. My main goal is to provide understanding, making the gap left for God as small as possible. I will also address some of argumentation I have seen presented in support of the moral argument , among others by my opponent.The moral argument uses the principle that based on a contradiction one can prove almost anything.Suppose that the statement S is both true and false. So we can use the following assumptions :A1) SA2) not SLet us now 'prove' the earth is flat.P1) If the earth is not flat, then not S. (from A2)P2) SC) The earth is flat.C follows from P1 and P2 if S and not S are mutually exclusive, which they must be. The argument is thus valid, but one of the assumptions is false.In the moral argument S is 'Objective morality exists.' and the conclusion has been replaced by 'God exists.'Rather than assuming A1 and A2, theists try to prove them.A1, that objective morality does not exist, is 'proven' by appeal to ignorance : No one really understands how objective morality can exist, hence, unless we invoke magic, it doesn't.A2, that objective morality exists, is 'proven' by appeal to intuition and popularity : Deep down we all know some things are really wrong. Those who don't know that are usually insignificant enough to be ignored, the goal not being to prove A1, but to convince as many people as possible.Having established A1 and A2, theists resolve the contradiction by invoking God as creator of objective morality, without getting into the details as to how that is supposed to work, as that would open their argument to attack.Before trying to establish whether objective morality is, let us first decide what objective morality is.Language is conventionalYou can find an explanation on this topic by a professor who had more space in [1] and a course on how to understand arguments by that same professor in [2], where this is also treated. A new course starts September 25th.Language is a set of agreements used to facilitate communication. That has the uncanny consequence , one my opponent refuses to accept, that whether claims are true or false depends on what people decide.How does that work ?Consider a math teacher drawing what resembles a circle on a blackboard before an audience. Consider further that person pointing to the blackboard and making the claim : “That is a circle.”Is that true ?In order to establish that, the claim needs to be assigned meaning. It is the meaning behind the claim that is true or false, not the words. Different people may interpret it differently and consequently reach a different answer. There are probably good reasons to believe that the language used is English and that 'that' is referring to the just drawn shape, and thus everyone in the audience should interpret the claim using those conventions.Nonetheless, 'circle' is ambiguous. It could be a mathematically perfect circle (a set of points in a plane equidistant to a single point), or something that is a good enough approximation.So there will be two camps : Those who agree that is a circle and those who disagree. There is no way to prove either side right or wrong without clarifying the convention, i.e. decide based on personal opinion what circle means in that sentence.If the agreed convention is that 'circle' means mathematically perfect circle, then the claim is false.If the shape just needs to be close enough ('close enough' needing to be explicated), then the claim is probably true.Things can hardly be more objective than mathematical concepts and yet a mathematical claim depends for its truth on opinion and is therefore subjective.Consider the claim 'Raping children for fun is wrong.' Almost everyone will agree that is true. However, if we were to switch the meaning of the words right and wrong, would raping children for fun still be wrong ?Here people will disagree. The reason is that I have sown confustion : In my question, did I use 'wrong' with the normal meaning or the new, switched meaning ?Conclusion : before judging moral claims, we should first ascertain that everyone agrees on the meaning behind the claim. Thus we will next investigate what people mean when making moral claims.What is morality ?For this debate we need a definition of objective morality that allows us to evaluate the truth of both premises of the moral argument as presented in the opening post.Let us first try the definition provided by my opponent :the idea that a certain system of ethics or set of moral judgments is not just true according to a person's subjective opinion, but factually true. Obviously that idea exists. It may be completely false, but that doesn't prevent people from fostering it.That idea clearly does not depend on God as people can believe things without God's help and this belief is not special in that respect. (That the existence of people themselves – and as a consequence their ideas – may depend on God is a completely different argument and thus off topic.)Let us try a more useful definition, that I explained more elaborately in [3]. Morality is a method of classification of behaviour and agents.In other words, morality is a standard that applies to behaviour and agents. The claims that my opponent relies on to be factually true to support that morality is objective are moral judgements. Judgements are made according to a standard (a method of classification), even if that standard is one's own personal opinion. Hence the meaning of the moral values attributed to behaviour (or the agents exhibiting the behaviour), like bad, wrong, evil, nice are defined by the standard that is used in making the moral claim.So, the claim 'Raping children for fun is wrong' means 'Raping children for fun is wrong according to <some standard>'. It is that standard that defines the term 'wrong'. It is therefore easy to cause confusion by omitting that standard. I complained about that in our forum debate 'Objective morality argument', post 733 [4] :PGA 477"Your mind is your highest authority on goodness, right? Why is what you believe actually good since your mind determines it?"Amoranemix 733 :"Notice how again you made your question ambiguous by failing to mention the moral standard you are implicitly referring to."PGA 802 :"That is not true. I refer to God as the objective measure. The Ten Commandments relate to both our relationship with God and our relationship with our fellow man. Jesus summed them up in the two commands."My opponent seemed to claim that he relied on God's moral standard (GM). Let us rephrase the questions he asked me with that clarification :“Your mind is your highest authority on goodness according to GM, right ? Why is what you believe actually good according to GM, since your mind determines it ?”Those questions are nonsensical to ask an atheist who has given no indication to believe anything close to what they imply. The thread is full of such questions.What is more likely to go on is that my opponent thrives on the confusion about the ambiguity of the used moral standards. It doesn't make any sense. No one understands it. Therefore, God must have done it.Conclusions :With morality, we mean moral standard.Moral claims are ambiguous in absensce of reference standard.Does objective morality exist ?Another ambiguity is the meaning of the term 'existence'. Existence is clear for physical objects. However, what does it mean for a standard to exist ?Consider the following moral standard :'Stealing is wrong.'It is a substandard of the moral standard of almost everyone (which is why almost everyone agrees with it) and is extremely incomplete, but does it exist ?I think a good definition for existence for standards is to let it depends on their use : if a standard is used, then it exists. Furthermore, if one has an objective standard for ownership, for example as part of a legislation, then the standard is objective, as one can objectively classify theft as wrong. Given the 7 billion people on earth, at any time someone must be using an objective moral standard, which then by definition exists.Conclusion : objective morality exists.Does objective morality depend on God ?Obviously in order to use an objective moral standard one does not need God's help. That falsifies the first premise of the argument.But objective morality is subjective !?My opponent will likely object that using an objective moral standard does not make your morality objective, as you could have chosen another objective moral standard.Consider the two contradictory, objective moral standards :'Stealing is wrong.''Stealing is right.'Just by virtue of choosing your moral standard – the second one has its merits – you make your morality subjective. However, by arguing that way you are changing the meaning of objective and invalidating the conclusion we reached earlier, namely that objective morality exists.Making moral claims or judgements requires the use of a moral standard. Since there is more than one mutually exclusive standard that one could use, that necessarily implies choosing one. That would make all morality subjective. . May the truth prevail. . REFERENCES : [1] Understanding Arguments by Walter Sinnot-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin : zu.edu.jo/UploadFile/Library/E_Books/Files/LibraryFile_17113_11.pdfSee page 17 on language and convention[2] www.coursera.org/learn/understanding-arguments[3] The subjectivity of objective morality : http://www.debate.org...[4] http://www.debate.org...