Does God Deliver Objective Morality?

Christian apologists like William Lane Craig insist that what God supplies -- and which nothing else can provide -- is objective morality. What does he mean? He defines objectivity as "independent of human opinion." But that gets us nowhere because it raises this question: is Craig's so-called objective morality independent of God's opinion? It couldn't be because on Craig's terms nothing would be outside of God for it to refer to.

All that God could be said to supply, then, is its own subjective capricious commandments: "Thou shalt not kill (because that's how I feel ... today. Check back with me tomorrow for possible updates.)"

The term objective suggests a frame of reference -- reality -- beyond whoever expounds a proposition, including a moral proposition. But God by definition would have no such frame of reference. Therefore, his moral pronouncements would be no more objective than anyone else's. (An apologist might respond that, being all-knowing, God could perfectly foresee the consequences of different moral codes -- except that being all-powerful, he could change those consequences.) So God says something is bad not because it is bad but because God says so. Same with the good. (Abraham must have thought that killing Isaac was good simply because God commanded him to do it, meaning he'd be in big trouble if he refused. What other reason could he have had for being willing to go through with such an otherwise cruel act? He couldn't have known that God was a prankster.)

Claims that God is all-loving, all-good, etc., do not get the apologists out of this bind. The claim that God is all-good only makes that bind tighter because it openly puts the rabbit in the hat. If good and bad are whatever God says they are, then it's trivial to say that God is all-good. By that standard he couldn't possibly be bad. It reminds me of Richard Nixon, who once said, "If the president does it, it isn't illegal." He was mimicking God: if God does or commands it, it is ipso facto good.

Of course per definition, God is said to have the power to reward or punish us if we obey or disobey its commandments. But that promise and threat make the commandments no less subjective.

From God to objective morality? Sorry, Dr. Craig, you can't get there from here.

PS: Dr. Craig seems not to know his Bible. As Yale religious studies authority Christine Hayes points out, the Bible contains more than one story in which Moses or someone else changed God's mind on a moral point simply through an argument that appealed to a standard of fairness beyond God.