Another Christian Being Offered On The PC Alter?

[Joel]

So, the only way you can intelligibly describe health, happiness, minimizing suffering, etc. as good is to describe what they do. So go ahead; explain why those things are good by describing what those things do (or just pick one of them to explain if you want).

Why? What would that do? Are you trying to say that it is impossible to do so to show a weakness in my view? I think if you went to a nutritionist because you were concerned with your health and he recommended that you start smoking, you'd be able to determine that this nutritionist was really bad at his job. We use evidence about the consequences of our diet, lifestyle, and actions, all the time in determining whether they are good or bad. You do it all the time. Suddenly when this same thing is used as the basis for intelligibly describing why something is morally good or bad, you suddenly pretend like it makes no sense.

What you are describing here is something that is "good for" something else. E.g. exercise is good for health. And it's an objective matter of fact whether something is good for one's health. Nobody disagrees on whether that is objective. But it doesn't tell us whether exercise is good. The only way to say that would be to say whether health itself is good. A "good for" something else is not a stopping point. It's a reference to something else, and raises the question of whether that something else is good. If there only exists "good for", then you have infinite regress.

You seem to be claiming both that you only ever have "good for", but that you don't have infinite regress. I can't see how you resolve that contradiction. So I'm trying to get you to illustrate it with an example.
You say that something is good because it minimizes suffering.
Me: According to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe "minimizing suffering" as good is to describe what it does. So what does it do?
You: "Minimizing suffering" is good because it does X.
Me: Only if X is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe X as good is to describe what it does. So what does X do?
You: X is good because it does Y.
Me Only if Y is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe Y as good is to describe what it does. So what does Y do?

And so on. How can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?

You continue to misunderstand my position in this thread. My position is not the claim that morality depends on god. My position is merely that I doubt there is an inescapable logical dilemma. I'm not making a positive claim. You are. (Your claim that there is an inescapable dilemma.)

And in that case you have not shown a way out of the dilemma. And so you've been wasting my time for weeks making really bad arguments that amount to you basically just assuming there is no dilemma or making an argument that would actually show that morality is independent of god. Great thinking.

No, it's that I have yet to see any dilemma. That is, I have seen no proof of your claim.

To your second point, there is no logical way out of the dilemma and you have not provided a counter example that avoids the dilemma.

Your attempt to show that the theory I presented runs into your dilemma is to claim that C follows from P, a claim which you still haven't bothered to try to defend.
And you haven't attempted to argue that Alston's theory runs into your dilemma. (And neither does Koons argue that.)
Each of those two theories appears to be a counter-example to your alleged dilemma. (And again, I'm not claiming that either theory is true, only that they seem to be counter-examples to your alleged dilemma.)

You've asserted that morality cannot or does not exist independently of god.

Nope. As I keep saying, I'm only doubting your claim of a dilemma.

Thirdly, I notice that your supposed circular argument there is not logically circular. One could hold a non-circular theory in which both "X is good" and "God is good" follow from "God has X." It would be a circular theory only if it, in turn, tried to use "X is good" or "God is good" to then prove that "God has X."

you are claiming "X is good" and "God is good" follow from "God has X."

Wrong again. I didn't claim that.

If god has X, that in no way implies that other things cannot also have X, and would still have X if god didn't have it, or if he didn't exist. You need to justify why that is not the case to have a point.

God is loving. A man is loving. So what? Nobody claims that only God is loving. That wouldn't contradict with supposing that the truth of "Loving is good" is dependent on God.

Fourthly, through our discussion, we discovered that the reason you believe that the theory I presented falls into your dilemma (specifically your 2nd possibility), is that you claim that P necessarily implies C:

P) "Loving is good" exists independently of god's moral goodness.
C) "Loving is good" exists independently of god.

Without which, your claim of a dilemma collapses. I see no way to logically get C from P, so unless you can demonstrate it by making it into a valid syllogism, it seems your dilemma is non-existent.

To your fourth point, we'd need to bring in other arguments about god's existence or non-existence which is not typically the case with the moral argument. In other words, you're forcing in other arguments for and against god by assuming that nothing will exist without god. This is not routine with debating morality on theism.

You are the one making the claim that P implies C. I'm only asking that you prove your claim. (And I don't see how "nothing will exist without god" has to do with it.)

My view of course is that we don't need god for the universe to exist. So if there were two universes, one with a god, and one without it, and the worlds were exactly the same except those two differences, in the atheistic world, conclusion C would follow from premise P. In the theistic world it wouldn't, because nothing can exist independently of god.

!!!
So in the "theistic world", C does not follow from P.
So in the theistic world, the Christian does not fall into your dilemma. That is, in the theistic world, your dilemma doesn't exist.
It at most the dilemma exists in the atheistic world.
So then your insistence that your dilemma exists, is really just a conclusion depending on an underlying assumption that God doesn't exist.
For you to then try to use your dilemma in any attempt to prove that the atheistic world is actual, would be circular reasoning.
And any attempt to use your dilemma to say that the Christian runs into a dilemma in the theistic world would be entirely fallacious.

Nonsense, for the same reason that it's nonsense to say, "If the meter-bar particularist doesn't strip the bar of all physical length, then the meter bar is a meter because it has the length of a meter." The fact that the meter bar confers meterness onto whatever length it has, necessarily requires/implies that the meter bar has some physical length.

What you're trying to say is that god has good-making properties, absent his good-making properties.

No, I am, right there, saying the exact opposite. How are you not understanding me?

The meter bar analogy is problematic because we know the meter bar was made to fit the arbitrary length of a meter.

Why are you still stuck on this? As Koons explains, we are imagining a slightly different history of the Paris meter bar. Or if you like, we could create a new bar establishing a new unit (we could name it whatever we like), and use that bar as our example. Or better yet, just imagine that we did so. This only takes a tiny bit of abstract thinking.

On the particularist analogy, it's not that we're saying that we strip the meter bar of all physical length, we're stripping it of meter-ness,

Wrong. In the analogy, meter-ness corresponds to goodness. The physical length corresponds to an attribute like lovingness.

If he is good because of his characteristics, then those characteristics are good independently of god.

That would be true only if P implies C. But you admitted that P implies C only in the hypothetical atheistic world (in which your statement here makes no sense.)

[Jichard]

The part I set in bold depends on what it is that causes those properties to be good. It might be the case that both the following are true:
A) God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, such as God having certain character traits (ex: being fair, being merciful, etc.).
and
B) The cause of those properties being good is in God.

The two options are incompatible. If the properties are what makes God good (as per option A) it makes no sense to claim that those properties need God in order to be good (option B). Your running to gether a descriptivist/Platonist position (A) with a particularist option (B). It'd be an nonsensical as saying that:

what makes my poodle is a dog is some properties P, and my poodle is what makes those properties P suffice for dogness

The problem is that one is the above claim treats the P's status as as dog-making as depending on my poodle, while also claiming that my my poodle is a dog because of P. That makes no sense, since on option A, property's status does not depend on one certain particular that has that property.

In previous posts I have made the point that we could imagine a "vicious" deity that both contains the objective moral Standard and fails to conform to that standard and thus is vicious. The standard (or cause of morality) may be an independent property from God's morally good properties.

Given your above comments, I have no idea what you mean by "objective moral standard". If you mean something like the properties in virtue of which something is morally good, morally right, etc., then a vicious deity would not contain an objective moral standard. If you instead meant something like a description, set of statements, etc. that state what is morally good, morally right, etc., then a vicious deity might have that. But one would not require a God to have such a standard, since humans can make objectively true descriptions, statements, etc. without a god.

I think the Craig/Alston view is not quite the same as this. I think the idea is a 4th option to add to your list: That God is the (particularist) standard of Good. That's not the same thing as saying that "God is morally good" is a brute moral truth. Rather, "God is morally good" is a conclusion that would follow from God being the standard.

Remember, this is the question that the options were meant to address:

in virtue of what does God have the property of being morally good?

What you wrote above is an version of option 3, since the particularist denies that God is good in virtue of other properties God has.

Also saying that God is the standard of the good does not explain why God is morally good; instead, it presupposes that God is morally good, much in the same way that saying Tom is bachelor does not explain why Tom is malee, but instead presupposes that Tom is male.

In this 4th option, God is the standard, and thus confers goodness onto things like lovingness (because God possesses lovingness).

Which has some of the same problems as option 2. For example, you'd be committed to saying that omnissicence, omnipotence, omnipresence, etc. are morally good, simply because God has those properties.

And then, in turn, it is reasonable to say that God's properties, such as lovingness is, what is meant by God's moral goodness, even though God's being the standard is the answer to why lovingness is good. (Thus God's moral goodness has content.)

Particularists can't say that, since that is a descriptivist/Platonist response, where the properties are the standard of goodness, not God.

And it's not circular because you aren't starting with God's goodness, but with God being the Standard of good.

It's viciously circular, since saying that God is the standard of the good presupposes that God is morally good. So you're assuming what you're trying to show.

[Joel]

It might be the case that both the following are true:
A) God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, such as God having certain character traits (ex: being fair, being merciful, etc.).
and
B) The cause of those properties being good is in God.

The two options are incompatible. If the properties are what makes God good (as per option A) it makes no sense to claim that those properties need God in order to be good (option B). Your running to gether a descriptivist/Platonist position (A) with a particularist option (B). It'd be an nonsensical as saying that:

what makes my poodle is a dog is some properties P, and my poodle is what makes those properties P suffice for dogness

The problem is that one is the above claim treats the P's status as as dog-making as depending on my poodle, while also claiming that my my poodle is a dog because of P. That makes no sense, since on option A, property's status does not depend on one certain particular that has that property.

First, in your dog example, your predicate is a genus-species relation (as opposed to a property), and I suspect that that may alter the relevant reasoning. (We aren't saying that "God is a good.")

Second, my (B) is not proposing a particularist option. Rather, it is just saying that the cause is in God--but may be a different property, separate from the good-making properties. I'm suggesting that God could have both lovingness AND a completely independent property that makes lovingness good. If there is a metaphysical cause of lovingness being good, I see no reason why that cause cannot be inside God. And that cause need not be the same as God's lovingness. (It might be possible to imagine an 'evil god' that both contains that cause (of lovingess being good) but who happens to be unloving.

And thus you are clearly misunderstanding when you say "claiming that my my poodle is a dog because of P." You used P in both places, but I'm talking about two different properties.

Given your above comments, I have no idea what you mean by "objective moral standard". If you mean something like the properties in virtue of which something is morally good, morally right, etc., then a vicious deity would not contain an objective moral standard. If you instead meant something like a description, set of statements, etc. that state what is morally good, morally right, etc., then a vicious deity might have that. But one would not require a God to have such a standard, since humans can make objectively true descriptions, statements, etc. without a god.

What I mean by objective moral standard is closer to the latter: the set of true moral propositions, and their ground (or metaphysical cause of their being true).
I'm suggesting that it is possible that that cause of their being true may be in God. (Which is different from humans discerning truths and describing reality.)

Remember, this is the question that the options were meant to address:

in virtue of what does God have the property of being morally good?

What you wrote above is an version of option 3, since the particularist denies that God is good in virtue of other properties God has.
...
Particularists can't say that, since that is a descriptivist/Platonist response, where the properties are the standard of goodness, not God.

This is why I think what I was describing is different: option 4.

Something like:
P1) God is the particularist standard of good.
P2) God is loving.
C1) Loving is good. (From P1 and P2)
C2) God is good. (From P2 and C1)

You complain that it is circular. But only in the sense that for all valid deductive arguments, the conclusion is implied by (and thus presupposed by) the premises. But I'm suggesting more than that. I'm suggesting that the above is also the causal order. That is, C2 would be caused by P1, and P1 is not caused by C2, so there isn't a causal loop. (I'm not sure "cause" is exactly the right word, but I think it gives the idea of what I'm thinking.)

Alston uses the example of a particularist meter bar standard. The starting point is not a pre-existing definition of the length of a meter, but a bar that is the (particularist) standard. Thus the bar confers meter-ness onto whatever physical length it has.
So then you would ask, "in virtue of what does the bar have the property of having a length equal to 1 meter?" But that's already answered: its being the standard gives it that property because that conferred meter-ness onto whatever physical length it had.

Also saying that God is the standard of the good does not explain why God is morally good; instead, it presupposes that God is morally good, much in the same way that saying Tom is bachelor does not explain why Tom is malee, but instead presupposes that Tom is male.

No, not the same way. Tom being a bachelor, does not confer maleness onto Tom. (Rather maleness is a prerequisite. Maleness is one of the necessary conditions for conferring bachelorhood onto Tom). Which is exactly the opposite order of explanation/causality from particularism, in which being good is not a prerequisite to being the standard (just as being a meter is not a prerequisite to being the meter bar standard), but rather being the standard confers goodness onto God's properties and thus onto Himself.

[The Thinker]

You are doing it again!!!! You said: Within our own respective ethical frameworks, your ethical theory ends up being circular and mine does not.

You keep making this claim with no rational justification. It is on you to back up this assertion. Stop playing games and put up or retract the assertion.

Are you saying that I have no rational justification to say that your moral framework is circular? Is it circular, yes or no?

[The Thinker]

What you are describing here is something that is "good for" something else. E.g. exercise is good for health. And it's an objective matter of fact whether something is good for one's health. Nobody disagrees on whether that is objective. But it doesn't tell us whether exercise is good. The only way to say that would be to say whether health itself is good. A "good for" something else is not a stopping point. It's a reference to something else, and raises the question of whether that something else is good. If there only exists "good for", then you have infinite regress.

You seem to be claiming both that you only ever have "good for", but that you don't have infinite regress. I can't see how you resolve that contradiction. So I'm trying to get you to illustrate it with an example.
You say that something is good because it minimizes suffering.
Me: According to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe "minimizing suffering" as good is to describe what it does. So what does it do?
You: "Minimizing suffering" is good because it does X.
Me: Only if X is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe X as good is to describe what it does. So what does X do?
You: X is good because it does Y.
Me Only if Y is good. And according to you, the only way you can intelligibly describe Y as good is to describe what it does. So what does Y do?

And so on. How can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?

I say that one of the reasons why something is good is because it minimizes suffering. It's not the only reason. Regarding a termination problem theists try to tell me that the termination ends in god. But given the dilemma they face, that becomes unintelligible. The only intelligible way out of the dilemma is to ground what is good in what things do, and also what they're motivated by, or intended to do. Exercise is good because it leads to good health, and health is good because being healthy produces happiness, minimizes suffering, enable one's maximal potential, and life quality, which naturally almost all living things want as it is necessary for survival, well-being, and flourishing. That is an intelligible grounding for why exercise is good.

The theistic alternative would be to say exercise is good because god commands it. How does that make it good? Couldn't god command we don't exercise? The theist would say, "No, god's immutable good nature prevents that!" That still doesn't intelligibly explain why it is good. Another theist could tell me their god commands we don't exercise, and how would I compare the two? The only intelligible stopping point is to make a case for what exercise does.

No, it's that I have yet to see any dilemma. That is, I have seen no proof of your claim.

Well you haven't offered a way out of the dilemma. You originally tried to assume there was no dilemma. When I pointed that out you stopped making that point. Now it seems you're trying to make the claim that goodness can exist apart from god's goodness, but not god. You need to justify this.

Your attempt to show that the theory I presented runs into your dilemma is to claim that C follows from P, a claim which you still haven't bothered to try to defend.
And you haven't attempted to argue that Alston's theory runs into your dilemma. (And neither does Koons argue that.)
Each of those two theories appears to be a counter-example to your alleged dilemma. (And again, I'm not claiming that either theory is true, only that they seem to be counter-examples to your alleged dilemma.)

I think you need to go read Koons' paper again. He clearly says that Alston's particularist view is unintelligble. He writes, "And we will see that this view is incoherent; it makes God’s goodness unintelligible."

Nope. As I keep saying, I'm only doubting your claim of a dilemma.

Then you need to make an argument that refutes it. Still haven't made one.

God is loving. A man is loving. So what? Nobody claims that only God is loving. That wouldn't contradict with supposing that the truth of "Loving is good" is dependent on God.

So goodness can exist independently of god and if god didn't exist. If not, justify why not.

You are the one making the claim that P implies C. I'm only asking that you prove your claim. (And I don't see how "nothing will exist without god" has to do with it.)

!!!
So in the "theistic world", C does not follow from P.
So in the theistic world, the Christian does not fall into your dilemma. That is, in the theistic world, your dilemma doesn't exist.
It at most the dilemma exists in the atheistic world.

So then your insistence that your dilemma exists, is really just a conclusion depending on an underlying assumption that God doesn't exist.
For you to then try to use your dilemma in any attempt to prove that the atheistic world is actual, would be circular reasoning.
And any attempt to use your dilemma to say that the Christian runs into a dilemma in the theistic world would be entirely fallacious.

No, no no. I'm not using the dilemma to prove atheism. That was never the point. The point of the dilemma is to show god is not an intelligible stopping point for morality, and god is not needed to have objective morality. If one assumes that nothing can exist without god, then it would be the case that goodness cannot exist without god. It is the theist that is making an assumption that is circular. The atheist like me is asking if there were two identical worlds but one had a god and one didn't, why would the same exact action in one world be morally good or bad, but not in the other? That is the question you must answer. If you cannot, then you must admit objective morality can exist independently of god. The euthyphro dilemma is not designed to prove god doesn't exist, it is used to show god is irrelevant to morality.

No, I am, right there, saying the exact opposite. How are you not understanding me?

Because you are using a really bad analogy to try and make a point. You need a better analogy.

Why are you still stuck on this? As Koons explains, we are imagining a slightly different history of the Paris meter bar. Or if you like, we could create a new bar establishing a new unit (we could name it whatever we like), and use that bar as our example. Or better yet, just imagine that we did so. This only takes a tiny bit of abstract thinking.

Because it is a bad analogy. Even if we assume the meter bar actually existed before the length of a meter was arbitrarily invented, and we used the meter bar as the source of what a meter was, it is still arbitrary. Why that bar and that length? It would still be an arbitrary decision.

Wrong. In the analogy, meter-ness corresponds to goodness. The physical length corresponds to an attribute like lovingness.

So then something else that was a meter would also be good, and would still continue to be good if the original meter stick didn't exist.

That would be true only if P implies C. But you admitted that P implies C only in the hypothetical atheistic world (in which your statement here makes no sense.)

But you need to show that in an atheistic world, P would not imply C, because my view is that we don't need god for objective morality. If you agree with this, then we can end this right now.

[seer]

Are you saying that I have no rational justification to say that your moral framework is circular? Is it circular, yes or no?

No, thinker you know exactly what I am asking. And since you have deceptively avoided a direct answer a number of times now it is obvious that you know that you can not present a case for your objective moral facts that is not circular.

[Joel]

And so on. How can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?

I say that one of the reasons why something is good is because it minimizes suffering. It's not the only reason. Regarding a termination problem theists try to tell me that the termination ends in god. But given the dilemma they face, that becomes unintelligible. The only intelligible way out of the dilemma is to ground what is good in what things do, and also what they're motivated by, or intended to do. Exercise is good because it leads to good health, and health is good because being healthy produces happiness, minimizes suffering, enable one's maximal potential, and life quality, which naturally almost all living things want as it is necessary for survival, well-being, and flourishing. That is an intelligible grounding for why exercise is good.

The theistic alternative would be to say exercise is good because god commands it. How does that make it good? Couldn't god command we don't exercise? The theist would say, "No, god's immutable good nature prevents that!" That still doesn't intelligibly explain why it is good. Another theist could tell me their god commands we don't exercise, and how would I compare the two? The only intelligible stopping point is to make a case for what exercise does.

This doesn't answer my question at all. Your discussion here of theism is a red herring. I'm asking you to tell me, within your theory, how can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?

No, it's that I have yet to see any dilemma. That is, I have seen no proof of your claim.

Well you haven't offered a way out of the dilemma. You originally tried to assume there was no dilemma. When I pointed that out you stopped making that point. Now it seems you're trying to make the claim that goodness can exist apart from god's goodness, but not god. You need to justify this.

How can I possibly offer a way out of a dilemma I have not seen?
I presented a theory in the form of an argument and you claimed that premise P1 assumes there is no dilemma (instead of seeing P1 as an additional alternative besides your alleged dilemma). You claimed that P1 is impossible (not merely false). And your argument relied on your claim that your P implies C, which you have yet to defend. And in fact, you admitted that P does not imply C in the theistic universe! Your whole argument against the internal consistency of the theist's theory thus vanishes.

And you haven't attempted to argue that Alston's theory runs into your dilemma. (And neither does Koons argue that.)
Each of those two theories appears to be a counter-example to your alleged dilemma. (And again, I'm not claiming that either theory is true, only that they seem to be counter-examples to your alleged dilemma.)

I think you need to go read Koons' paper again. He clearly says that Alston's particularist view is unintelligble. He writes, "And we will see that this view is incoherent; it makes God’s goodness unintelligible."

Which is a different claim than that Alston's view runs into your Euthyphro dilemma. Alston's argument amounts to him not seeing how God is a reasonable (for this he uses the word "intelligible") stopping point. (Which I've responded to in previous posts.)

Nope. As I keep saying, I'm only doubting your claim of a dilemma.

Then you need to make an argument that refutes it. Still haven't made one.

I can't refute a non-existent argument. I can't refute an alleged dilemma that has yet to be seen.

God is loving. A man is loving. So what? Nobody claims that only God is loving. That wouldn't contradict with supposing that the truth of "Loving is good" is dependent on God.

So goodness can exist independently of god and if god didn't exist.

That doesn't follow at all. Lovingness existing outside God (e.g. in a man) does not imply that goodness exists outside of God (let alone independently of God), without the additional premise that "Loving is good." And the truth of that premise might depend on God.

!!!
So in the "theistic world", C does not follow from P.
So in the theistic world, the Christian does not fall into your dilemma. That is, in the theistic world, your dilemma doesn't exist.
It at most the dilemma exists in the atheistic world.
...

No, no no. I'm not using the dilemma to prove atheism. That was never the point. The point of the dilemma is to show god is not an intelligible stopping point for morality, and....

But your argument (for your dilemma) relies on P implying C, and it does so only in the "atheistic world". So your dilemma can at most show god to be not a stopping point in the atheistic world. So what? It would have been much easier to prove that by simply pointing out that in the atheistic world God doesn't exist, and therefore cannot be a stopping point for anything. And it means your argument is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Christian theology is internally consistent, which is the only thing I've been discussing with you.

It is the theist that is making an assumption that is circular. The atheist like me is asking if there were two identical worlds but one had a god and one didn't, why would the same exact action in one world be morally good or bad, but not in the other? That is the question you must answer. If you cannot, then you must admit objective morality can exist independently of god. The euthyphro dilemma is not designed to prove god doesn't exist, it is used to show god is irrelevant to morality.

That is a different thing than the claim of yours that I've been opposing. (E.g. your previous claims that the euthyphro dilemma proves that objective morality cannot possibly depend on God.)

Because you are using a really bad analogy to try and make a point. You need a better analogy.

Because it is a bad analogy. Even if we assume the meter bar actually existed before the length of a meter was arbitrarily invented, and we used the meter bar as the source of what a meter was, it is still arbitrary. Why that bar and that length? It would still be an arbitrary decision.

Sure that is a difference between the two things in the analogy. But that's a difference that is irrelevant to whether it is a particularist standard. That shared quality of being a particularist standard illustrates that it's absurd for Koons to demand that any particularist standard still be a particularist standard after stripping it of properties essential to its being a particularist standard.

So then something else that was a meter would also be good, and would still continue to be good if the original meter stick didn't exist.

I think what you mean to say is "So then something else that has the same length would also be meter, and would still continue to be a meter if the original meter stick didn't exist."
The 'something else' would continue to have whatever physical length it has. But if the (particularist) meter standard didn't exist, it would be meaningless to say that the something else is a "meter".

But you need to show that in an atheistic world, P would not imply C

As a reminder, P and C are:

P) "Loving is good" exists independently of god's moral goodness.
C) "Loving is good" exists independently of god.

In the atheistic world God doesn't exist. So, by definition, "Loving is good", if it exists, cannot depend on God (because God doesn't exist.) But (a) that's not sufficient to establish that "Loving is good" can exist at all in the atheistic world, and (b) it depends on the assumption that God does not exist, so it reduces to:

P) "Loving is good" exists.
C) "Loving is good" exists.

which is clearly circular, and not at all meaningful.

[The Thinker]

No, thinker you know exactly what I am asking. And since you have deceptively avoided a direct answer a number of times now it is obvious that you know that you can not present a case for your objective moral facts that is not circular.

I am not avoiding anything, I just need you to be open about your situation: that your moral views are circular. Admit that and we can move on.

[The Thinker]

This doesn't answer my question at all. Your discussion here of theism is a red herring. I'm asking you to tell me, within your theory, how can that ever terminate, given your criterion? What is the/a concrete point in your theory where it terminates?

It terminates in one's meta-ethical theory, which for me is in ethical naturalism. Moral features of the world are reducible to some set of non-moral features. It can offer an intelligible stopping point to what is moral and why it is moral, whereas divine command theory cannot.

How can I possibly offer a way out of a dilemma I have not seen?
I presented a theory in the form of an argument and you claimed that premise P1 assumes there is no dilemma (instead of seeing P1 as an additional alternative besides your alleged dilemma). You claimed that P1 is impossible (not merely false). And your argument relied on your claim that your P implies C, which you have yet to defend. And in fact, you admitted that P does not imply C in the theistic universe! Your whole argument against the internal consistency of the theist's theory thus vanishes.

There is a dilemma, because the theist must try to assume (a) god exists and (b) nothing can exist without god. But the moral argument is an argument that tries to make the case for god, so one cannot assume god exists order to get out of a dilemma entailed from an argument that tries to prove god exists. That's circular reasoning. On top of that there is no good reason to hold that assumption.

Which is a different claim than that Alston's view runs into your Euthyphro dilemma. Alston's argument amounts to him not seeing how God is a reasonable (for this he uses the word "intelligible") stopping point. (Which I've responded to in previous posts.)

This makes no sense and I have no idea what you're talking about here. You seem to be confusing Alston with Koons. Koons clearly argues in his paper that Alston's particularism is unintelligible, which is option (3) in my dilemma.

I can't refute a non-existent argument. I can't refute an alleged dilemma that has yet to be seen.

You've seen the argument and have tried to pretend there isn't one. You really do seem to be assuming my (a) and (b) above. Is that true?

That doesn't follow at all. Lovingness existing outside God (e.g. in a man) does not imply that goodness exists outside of God (let alone independently of God), without the additional premise that "Loving is good." And the truth of that premise might depend on God.

OK, then please provide a reason for me to believe goodness cannot or does not exist outside of god.

But your argument (for your dilemma) relies on P implying C, and it does so only in the "atheistic world". So your dilemma can at most show god to be not a stopping point in the atheistic world. So what? It would have been much easier to prove that by simply pointing out that in the atheistic world God doesn't exist, and therefore cannot be a stopping point for anything. And it means your argument is completely irrelevant to the question of whether Christian theology is internally consistent, which is the only thing I've been discussing with you.

You simply don't get the nuances involved in this topic. Theists try to claim that there cannot be any objective morality absent their god. If you admit that there can be an objective, intelligible grounding for morality in an atheistic world, then there argument is false, as it is. Christian theology is not internally consistent for many reasons other than morality, but most, if not all Christians, make the moral claim that in an atheist world, morality or objective morality could not exist. That is false. If it is false, then god cannot be the grounding for morality, as the trilemma shows.

That is a different thing than the claim of yours that I've been opposing. (E.g. your previous claims that the euthyphro dilemma proves that objective morality cannot possibly depend on God.)

See above.

Sure that is a difference between the two things in the analogy. But that's a difference that is irrelevant to whether it is a particularist standard. That shared quality of being a particularist standard illustrates that it's absurd for Koons to demand that any particularist standard still be a particularist standard after stripping it of properties essential to its being a particularist standard.

To be a particularist in the Alston sense, you have to strip god of his qualities, because if you don't, the whole particularist thesis makes no sense as Koons showed in his paper.

I think what you mean to say is "So then something else that has the same length would also be meter, and would still continue to be a meter if the original meter stick didn't exist."
The 'something else' would continue to have whatever physical length it has. But if the (particularist) meter standard didn't exist, it would be meaningless to say that the something else is a "meter".

Who determines what a meter is? It is arbitrarily decided and that's why this analogy utterly fails. If a meter stick descended from the skies somehow, other objects that had its same length would still be a meter, and their effectiveness as meter sticks would be independent of the descended meter stick. But of course the scenario is absurd.

As a reminder, P and C are:

P) "Loving is good" exists independently of god's moral goodness.
C) "Loving is good" exists independently of god.

In the atheistic world God doesn't exist. So, by definition, "Loving is good", if it exists, cannot depend on God (because God doesn't exist.) But (a) that's not sufficient to establish that "Loving is good" can exist at all in the atheistic world, and (b) it depends on the assumption that God does not exist, so it reduces to:

P) "Loving is good" exists.
C) "Loving is good" exists.

which is clearly circular, and not at all meaningful.

This is a ridiculous caricature of my views. For (a) you need to outline exactly what's required for "Loving is good" to be true in a way that atheism cannot justify it. You haven't at all. That's why theists try to make the moral argument. I've argued morality is justified by what it does, not who commands it. For (b) we're not trying to prove god's existence here. At least I'm not. I'm just trying to establish two things. Grounding morality in god cannot be done because of the trilemma, and objective morality exists independently of god. If you have to assume that nothing can exist without god in order to escape the trilemma, that is not escaping the trilemma. If you cannot show that morality depends on god, then you cannot escape the trilemma, because if morality can be grounded in other things than god, to try to ground it solely in god would be false.