Lets look at this logic from your perspective where your God is the highest authority;
You should probably be aware that I'm not a Christian.
If your God is the highest authority of right and wrong, “right is whatever he tells you to do; others have no basis to even begin to judge because he is the only authority of right and wrong
What you are articulating here is what's called the "divine command theory", which is actually a bit distinct from what I've been talking about. That's also technically a case of ethical subjectivism, wherein the rightness or wrongness of an act is not contingent upon whether it corresponds to some objective aspect of reality, but upon whether it conforms to what God has commanded.
Humm… sounds kinda the same to me; but the difference is; if a real person is the highest authority, I can have a conversation with him and convince him when I think he is wrong; and he is going to be more willing to listen because he doesn’t start from the position that he is perfect and could never be wrong unlike your idea of God
Again, you have already ceded that this other person, by definition,
cannot be wrong. You cannot really think he is right or wrong in any moral sense, because you have already granted that he is the sole authority of what's right and wrong for him, and that your attitudes about his actions have literally zero bearing on that. Given that, on what basis do you even begin to justify your own belief that some other person is "wrong" in something they do, let alone convince him of such a thing? Trying to convince him that he's wrong would be like me trying to convince him that he actually
does like strawberry ice cream.
Lets try this with yours.
If your God cannot be wrong, then he cannot be right either. If he can’t be right, he can’t be moral. Thus any sort of discussion of what he says we should do breaks down entirely; after all he has already decided what we should do and he cannot be wrong about this
Again; kinda sounds the same to me, again the difference is a person can be reasoned with; your idea of God cannot. If your God tells you to murder your son as a sacrifice to him, that is right and you have no basis to refuse. If a person tells me to sacrifice my son to him, I would curse him and tell him why I will not.
Yeah, and it has presented a bit of a quandry for Christian philosophers and theologists over the years. There are some answers to these sorts of issues that have been proposed, and a few others have simply accepted that, yes, cruelty would be moral if God commanded such a thing.
But as I said, I'm not a Christian, so you're barking up the wrong tree here.
You are assuming if humans are the highest authority, that they would behave like God; they won’t.
I don't think I've ever once articulated or even implied such a thing during this conversation.
Humans believe they are right at any given time according to the data they’ve accumulated up until that day.
Of course, the next day new data may be discovered which could invalidate their previous beliefs. This is because people evolve day by day; your idea of God does not.
The problem is that all that's happening (when taking into account everything previously mentioned) is someone changing their opinion on some
thing, whatever that thing is. If I decide on Monday that I like band XYZ, then I'm over them by Friday, and then the following Wednesday I like them again, my opinion on each of those days is technically just as valid as any other day.
When you're talking about questions of "should" and of binding conduct, however, this presents a major problem. I think right now that, say, rape is immoral. If I decided to go out and rape someone tomorrow, however, then it would follow that, for at least as long as it was happening, I thought rape was acceptable, and
I would be absolutely correct in saying that rape was acceptable. Do you not see the kind of problem this presents?
If I disagree with a person, I have the option of presenting new data that he has yet to discover, which could cause him to invalidate his previous beliefs. With your idea of God; I don’t have this option.
What data is going to invalidate my (obviously hypothetical) belief that rape is okay, or that handing over Jews to the Gestapo would be the moral thing to do?
Redac likes strawberry ice cream, is objective.
Strawberry ice cream taste better than all other flavors; is subjective. See the difference?
It's subjective in that the true/false value of "Redac likes strawberry ice cream" is not determined by anything external to my own opinion of the taste of strawberry ice cream.
I disagree; the moment you begin considering extenuating circumstances, differences in context, etc. before making a judgment, it is no longer based on fact. If it is not based on fact, it is no longer objective.
Suppose two moral statements: "cruelty is immoral" and "self-preservation is moral". Suppose for a moment that these statements are both true, and that they are true because they correspond with something beyond my own opinions.
Supposing those two moral truths, let's look at a particular action: killing. If we accept the above statements as true, and as being true regardless of the opinion of the person doing the killing -- that is, if we accept it as being
objective -- then context suddenly becomes
very important. Killing someone purely for the enjoyment or thrill of killing would be wrong, while killing such a person in order to save your own life would be just fine.
In such a case, you'd have some objective moral values derived from something beyond opinion or perception, and you'd have a moral system in which the exact context and circumstances of a specific action -- killing someone -- make a big difference in whether that killing was right or wrong. See how that can work?
I think you're confusing "real" or "objective" with "absolute". Moral absolutism would posit what you're saying here: that there is some ironclad moral law (for example, "stealing is wrong"), and that circumstance or context (for example, to avoid starvation or to help someone in need) has no impact on whether it's wrong or not. Wrong is wrong, period.
I don’t believe morality is based on true or false It’s based on right or wrong.
"Rape is wrong." Do you believe this statement can be true or false? And if so, is it true or false?