To ground a coherent moral system, one cannot simply assume there is a moral realm in which moral facts exist and that this realm is evidenced by certain (cherry-picked) emotions. Emotions exist in the absence of moral systems as is clear from the emotions observed in the animal worlds and in quite coherent societies lacking personal, morality-generating Gods such as seen in Japan.

The following exchange between a Christian and a moral non-realist highlights a common tactic employed by theists in an attempt to suggest emotions and emotionally-derived values need their particular God for legitimation. The topic that sparked this exchange was the commandment of the Christian God to kill Amalekite infants. Here is serves as an illustration of the inability of theists to either comprehend the argument or to honestly engage it as presented.

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An Analysis:

1. Incoherence: Claiming Compassion Is Borrowed from the Bible

Sean says:

“You are stealing from the Bible if compassion is your top moral virtue.”

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❖ Logical Flaw:

Sean assumes that compassion is exclusively biblical in origin—yet fails to show why a biological, psychological, or social explanation for compassion is insufficient. This is a non sequitur: the existence of compassion does not require a divine origin. Phil rightly points out that emotions are ontologically orthogonal to morality, meaning they arise naturally in humans, independent of any moral system.

🟩 Phil’s counter: Compassion is pragmatic, not moral. It promotes well-being and emotional harmony. This requires no moral ontology—just an understanding of cause and effect in social behavior.

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2. Incoherence: Using Emotion to Justify Morality, While Insisting on Objective Morality

Sean argues:

“Your heart discerns that rape is evil which is why you would want to punish a person who did that to your friend.”

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❖ Logical Flaw:

This conflates emotional reaction with moral knowledge. The fact that someone feels anger or disgust at rape does not logically entail an objective moral truth about rape. Emotional aversion ≠ objective moral wrongness. Sean commits an is–ought fallacy: deriving a normative conclusion (rape is evil) from a descriptive premise (you feel angry when it happens).

🟩 Phil’s counter: Emotions like anger or compassion do not require belief in objective good or evil. They emerge from evolutionary pressures, upbringing, and psychological states. Phil is internally consistent by grounding his responses in pragmatic well-being, not moral realism.

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3. Incoherence: Accusing Phil of Inconsistency While Relying on a Circular Moral System

Sean claims:

“Try to be internally consistent by not having any emotional reactions to evil like rape.”

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❖ Logical Flaw:

This assumes that unless you believe in objective moral truths, you are not permitted to feel strong emotions. That’s false. It’s possible—and perfectly coherent—to feel anger, love, or compassion based on subjective emotional values, not moral obligations. Sean is incorrectly tying emotional experience to moral realism.

Meanwhile, Sean’s own system defines morality as “what God commands,” and then retroactively justifies God’s goodness because He commands the “right” things. That’s circular:

• God is good → His commands are moral
• His commands are moral → Therefore, God is good

🟩 Phil’s position is clearer and more coherent: emotional reactions are pragmatically justified responses that do not pretend to access metaphysical moral truths. You don’t need objective morality to feel outrage or protect others—you need only value their well-being.

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4. Incoherence: Conflating Morality with Obedience

Sean’s worldview implies:

Rape is evil → because God forbids it
Killing infants is good → if God commands it

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So under this system, morality = divine command.

❖ Logical Flaw:

If rape is evil only because God forbids it, then if God had commanded it, it would be good. Sean tries to deny this hypothetical as “impossible,” but he has no mechanism to explain why infant-killing is justifiable (since it happened) but rape could never be. That’s special pleading: accepting divine command when it’s convenient, rejecting it when it becomes emotionally or socially indefensible.

🟩 Phil rightly exposes this: “This is not morality. It is blind obedience.” Phil’s position is that morality, if it exists, must be coherent and testable, not just asserted by fiat.

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5. Incoherence: Implying That Emotions Need Justification

Sean says:

“Otherwise, if you sense no injustice, which is evil, then no anger proceeds.”

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❖ Logical Flaw:

This assumes that anger is always a response to “moral injustice.” But anger can be a natural emotional reaction to a threat, betrayal, or harm, without any appeal to moral truth. This is another category mistake: treating psychological reactions as if they must be grounded in moral metaphysics.

🟩 Phil’s framework is clearer: Emotions are emergent, shaped by biology and culture. We feel anger toward child abusers because that response protects vulnerable individuals, not because the cosmos whispered a moral law.

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6. Incoherence: Framing Objective Morality as Required for Society

Sean implies that without God’s objective morality, social structures like compassion or justice fall apart.

❖ Logical Flaw:

This is an appeal to consequences: “If morality isn’t real, bad things might happen.” But the usefulness of moral narratives for social cohesion does not make them objectively true. Furthermore, Phil dismantles this assumption by offering a counterexample:

“Look at the essentially godless Japanese society for evidence of its success.”

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Japan functions with high levels of cooperation, compassion, and safety—not because of biblical morality, but because of shared emotional values and cultural norms.

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Conclusion: The Internal Consistency of the Arguments

✅ Phil’s Position

• Does not claim moral objectivity
• Grounds action in emotional and pragmatic concerns
• Admits values are emergent and adjustable
• Allows for societal cooperation based on shared emotional patterns
• Avoids circular reasoning and special pleading
• Responds to threats (e.g. rape) with defensible emotional and practical justification

❌ Sean’s Position

• Shifts between divine nature, divine command, and intuition
• Conflates emotion with moral realism
• Uses circular logic to validate God’s moral authority
• Cannot coherently explain why infant-killing is good but rape could never be
• Insists on objective morality but avoids its philosophical burden

In short, Sean did not demonstrated coherence. He merely assumed it, asserted it, and then demanded others respect it. Phil’s view makes no unjustified metaphysical claims and operates within a transparent, self-consistent model of pragmatic emotional behavior.

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◉ The Symbolic Logic Formulations:

Below is a symbolic logic formulation of Phil’s primary arguments, using tags to enclose LaTeX-formatted equations.

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1. No Morality Without a Coherent Moral System

Phil’s core position is that moral claims like “rape is evil” require a coherent moral ontology. Without that, “evil” is just noise. This is a critique of Sean’s use of the term “evil” as if it has meaning independent of a justified framework.

Formalization:

If no coherent moral system exists, then all moral claims (e.g., “rape is evil”) are meaningless.

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2. Divine Command Theory Results in Circularity

Phil critiques Sean’s Divine Command framework as circular—morality is based on God’s commands, which are then said to be moral because they come from a moral God.

Formalization:

This forms a loop:

The moral validity of God’s commands is established by presupposing His goodness, which is itself inferred from His commands.

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3. Emotions Do Not Depend on Moral Realism

Phil asserts that compassion, anger, and other emotions do not require objective moral truths.

Formalization:

Emotions can be experienced, managed, and acted upon without invoking any moral realism.

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4. Pragmatic Foundation for Behavior

Phil’s guiding principle is that behaviors like compassion are justified not morally, but pragmatically—by their outcomes for well-being.

Formalization:

If an act like compassion yields positive pragmatic outcomes (e.g., happiness), it is justified—without reference to any moral truth.

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5. Coherent Societies Can Be Built Without God

Phil argues that mutual emotional dispositions, not divine command, are the foundation of cooperative societies (e.g., Japan).

Formalization:

Societies can be structured around shared emotional responses rather than shared moral doctrines.

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6. Divine Command Theory Cannot Exclude Atrocities Without Incoherence

Phil shows that if morality is determined purely by God’s command, then even atrocities could be deemed moral.

Formalization:

But if God had commanded rape:

Contradiction arises:

Divine command theory cannot rule out atrocities without either contradiction or appealing to something outside itself, which collapses the system.

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Conclusion

Phil’s position is logically consistent:

• He denies objective morality.
• He grounds behavior in pragmatic emotional realities.
• He points out that divine command theory is internally circular.
• He shows that moral language used by believers lacks ontological grounding unless supported by a logically coherent framework.

Sean’s system, by contrast, depends on:

• Circular reasoning,
• Arbitrary obedience,
• The conflation of emotion with moral truth,
• And the inability to justify distinctions like “killing infants is good, but rape is always evil” without special pleading.

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Common Evasion Tactics Used by Theists to Avoid Logical Scrutiny of Their Moral Systems

When confronted with internal critiques of their belief systems—particularly the logical incoherence of divine command morality—many theists frequently resort to a pattern of rhetorical tactics designed to evade rather than engage. These tactics do not advance discourse; they sidestep the core epistemic challenges, often replacing dialogue with dogmatic assertion or personal invective. Below are some of the most common evasion strategies employed:

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1. Asserting Moral Certainty Without Justification
Rather than demonstrating that divine moral commands are coherent or independently verifiable, the theist simply declares them to be right by definition:

“God is right 100% of the time because He has proven it.”
This is a classic instance of circular reasoning. The claim presupposes God’s moral perfection as a premise to justify His commands, which in turn are used to establish His moral perfection. No actual evidence or method of verification is provided.

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2. Deflecting with Emotional Rhetoric and Ad Hominem
Instead of addressing logical contradictions, the theist often attacks the interlocutor’s motives or character, suggesting pride, arrogance, or intellectual dishonesty:

“You’re lazy… You have no sincerity… Your pride keeps you from accepting the truth.”
This tactic does nothing to resolve the logical problems under discussion and serves only to poison the well by painting the questioner as morally defective or unworthy of an answer.

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3. Retreating into Mystification and Special Pleading
When coherence cannot be demonstrated, the fallback is often that God’s logic is too sophisticated to understand:

“God’s will is more sophisticated than your tiny mind desires it to be.”
This appeal to mystery undermines the very claim of coherence. If divine morality cannot be understood or assessed, it cannot be said to be coherent in any meaningful sense. Special pleading exempts the theist’s position from the very standards they would apply to others.

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4. Misrepresenting the Challenge (Strawman Arguments)
Rather than responding to the actual logical critique, the theist reframes it as an attack on personal morality:

“It’s insulting to say I don’t know rape is wrong.”
But the critique was never about their personal feelings—it was about whether their system can explain why such things are wrong independently of divine command. By reframing the argument, the theist avoids engaging with the original point. Here the point was the fact that obedience does not constitute morality. You’ll need to show that rape and killing infants is morally wrong rather than simply obeying orders.

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5. Overstating Revelation and Denying the Need for Reason
Another frequent tactic is the elevation of faith or revelation above reason, asserting that the answers are already available to those who submit:

“If you had accepted the Biblical system, your question would be answered.”
But this presupposes what must be shown. Logical coherence must be demonstrated through argument—not merely declared as self-evident to those who believe.

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6. Justifying Atrocities Through Divine Fiat
Rather than admit a moral inconsistency, the theist will often justify deeply problematic commands (like genocide or infanticide) by appealing to divine wisdom or context:

“Killing children was a better trade-off than letting them live without parents.”
This exposes a deep incoherence. The standard of morality shifts from human well-being to divine preference—rendering morality completely contingent on what God says, regardless of the consequences.

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Conclusion
These evasive tactics highlight the epistemic fragility of theistic moral systems. Rather than welcome rigorous inquiry, they often retreat into assertion, mystification, and deflection. The result is a system that demands belief prior to critical evaluation and resists any attempt to test it from within. These patterns do not reflect confidence in coherence—they reflect an unwillingness, or inability, to demonstrate it.

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◉ Sean Comment Updates:

✓ March 25, 2025: “[Phil] thinks he is more moral than God.”
^{This after Phil’s many unequivocal statements he sees no evidence for actual morality.}

✓ March 25, 2025: “your compassion based moral laws are incoherent my guy guy [sic]”

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