God is Incapable of Dictating Morality

---------------Now, as we begin we must pay close attention to the attributes ascribed to the God that I am arguing, which is the God of Christianity. My opponent allowed a God of my choosing, that comes with all the attributes ascribed to him, this including but not limited to Omni-Excellence. In this debate, i will be arguing that the Christian God does in fact have the ability to dictate morality. The two attributes i will be primarily focusing on, are God's omnipotence and God's Omni-benevolance. Meaning, he is infinite in power and authority; AND, all good.-------------- Fine fine, no problem. ---------------"Possibility 1: "God says that these things are moral or have meaning, value, and purpose, and therefore they have morality, meaning, value, or purpose." "Presumably, the statement "I have faith in that what God says is true" is not to be found too far from this statement. Unfortunately, the statement "I have faith" quite literally is an admission that "I do not have justification for what I believe." But let's ignore this and move on." Unimportant, we are assuming that the Christian God and all attributes ascribed to him exist.------------ I think you have gotten sidetracked by my statement here, this was not necessarily part of the main stream of my argument, so your claims to this as unimportant makes no difference at all to my argument, similarly I have not claimed that God does not (for the purposes of this debate) exist - you have committed a straw-man fallcy by arguing against a point I have either not made or is irrelevant to my main argument. --------------"If God says that X is wrong, then I ought not do X") as being true in the first place. But this is independent of anything that God could ever justify, or, more precisely, be used to justify. This requires you, the human, to make the first "move," so to speak, in order to justify God's morality; you have to put meaning into God, otherwise everything that God says has no justification. Ergo, what God says has no ultimate justifiable meaning, because it requires a human to say, "I agree with this" in the first place. So it cannot be "absolute" in any sense of the word." This is not true. Logic dictates that as the creator of the Universe, God has the capability and authority of setting the standards of morality for his creation. Basically, his game his rules.------------- Prove it. Show this logic of yours, I have gone to the effort of having constructed a comprehensive argument showing how God cannot dictate objective morality, I would appreciate something that makes an attempt at refuting my argument instead of relying on an implied meaning behind a semantic-linguistic term. Can you show this logic? If not then I suggest you recant this and try a different approach, so far you have refuted nothing of my argument. --------------As God is the creator and ruler of this known world, which is pre-established along with his Omni-excellence it is absurd for one to think that he could not lay the laws for his creation. As my opponent allowed, God is infinite in power and authority. It is also absurd to say that we must first put meaning into God before he has any justification powers, like i said above his existence is pre-established.--------------- All you've said is that something I have said is absurd, you have shown no reasoning, no backup, no rationalisation, no logic, no definition, all you've said is that it's absurd... Justify this or recant it, saying it's absurd is not a valid form of argument. It is not a question of existence, it's a question of omnipotence, I have given leash for any definition of God you like but my arguments show that the attributes attributed to God are not tenable, for this debate to continue you must either show a fault in my reasoning, or show ----------------As well, because God is infinite in power and authority, and everything he wants is good and/or moral (definition of benevolent) in that infinite power and authority, he has the power to dictate the moral code for his creation.--------------- God can dictate whatever he/she likes, my argument is that whatever God does dictate as moral must be justified in human terms in order for whatever he/she says to be moral. You have done as I thought you would and try to rely on a linguistic definition of omnipotence that doesn't actually work as my argument shows - try attacking my argument instead of trying to posit an argument of your own that relies on presupposed definitions. ------------------When my opponent says that God does not have the ability to do something by our logic, he is presupposing that God is bound by the same logical chains that we are, which is most definitely not the case, if this were to be true than God would not be omnipotent which contradicts the agreement that was aforementioned.--------------- I haven't actually said this in the first round at all. Another straw-man fallacy, however as you raise the issue of God and the 'chains' of logic - The burden of proof falls to you to show how God is not subject to the 'chains' of logic as it is you (the theist) that has claimed that God is not subject to the laws of logic. Please do so or recant your assertion.