# God as the basis for morality--is-ought fallacy?



## SRoper (Jul 16, 2010)

How does saying that morality finds its basis in God avoid the is-ought fallacy? Isn't it just saying that this is the way God is so this is the way things ought to be? Why is that necessarily so?


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## Philip (Jul 16, 2010)

Morality must find its basis in a standard---God's nature _is_ the standard of moral judgment, therefore I _ought_ to follow it.


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## T.A.G. (Jul 16, 2010)

its not a fallacy what many "philosophers" state it is an error to divine morality from God they usually refer to a traditional pagan understanding of divine command theory which states God arbitrarily chooses something is right or wrong thus God can state random killing or genocide is right and helping an old woman across the street is wrong. But when they present it like this they are building a straw man for
1.Morality stems from God's nature, who He is etc not an arbitrary command
2. God is immutable


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## Dieter Schneider (Jul 16, 2010)

I'd recommend John Blanchard's 'Can we be good without God?'. An ideal present, too!


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## cih1355 (Jul 16, 2010)

God gives us commands and His commands are based upon His character.


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## Skyler (Jul 16, 2010)

The difference is in the level we're talking about. You can't derive a transcendental "ought" (which morality must be) from a finite "is", like the creation. You can derive a transcendental "ought" from a transcendental "is" (like God).

I could be wrong though. That's just the first thing that came to mind.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jul 17, 2010)

There is no way of avoiding the fallacy if one is a moral skeptic. The problem assumes the autonomy of human reason.


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## jwright82 (Jul 19, 2010)

The is-ought fallacy does not apply to christian ethics because for us the word "good" has a slightly different meaning than the unbeleiver in his or her own philosophy generaly means. Both agree that "good" actions are things we should do but we disagree over what "good" is. For the unbeleiver it is this quality or essence that is attached to ideas and actions that legitamize them being good. In short this makes "good" a self supporting concept, it takes the divine attribute of aseity. This Dooyeweerd would rightly criticize as being immanatistic philosophy, because it takes the attributes of God and gives them to creation instead of God. 

For the christian "good" is a dependent concept for it totally depends on the commands and charector of God who truly has aseity and therefore can be a support for the whole of ethics. When ethics was suppossed to support itself under the modernistic project it crumbled along with nearly everything else, we have been trying to pick up the pieces eversince.


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