Physics Guy wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 7:08 am
Isn't Mormon morality derived, not from God, but from the eternal gospel principles by which the Mormon God gained exaltation?
In mainstream theism, God is the author of all reality, not just an exalted organiser. So I think some typical theists do consider God to be the source of morality. Even in mainstream theism, though, a major school of thought holds that morality exists independently of God. Theists in this school might still insist that it was logically impossible for God to be evil, but not because God defines right and wrong. They would say that God could not make wrong be right any more than God could make 2+2 equal five.
So it would seem that plenty of theists, including Mormons (if we count them as theists), believe in objective morality that is not defined by God. If theists can do that then I don't see why atheists can't do the same, and have objective morality that does not depend on God.
I can't peel back all of the levels of irony in Peterson's position here.
According to Mormon morality, whether or not what Ron Lafferty did was wrong depends upon whether or not God
really commanded him to murder them or not. According to Mormonism, God
does command such things on occasion, and the correct thing to do is obey what God commands.
But even if God
didn't command them to murder, Mormonism would cut the Laffertys some slack
if they sincerely believed that's what God commanded. In lessons on obedience that include God commanding Isaac to kill Jacob, Mormon prophets emphasize that if you are commanded to do something that is morally wrong, you
ought to obey anyway, and that you'll be blessed for your obedience, even if your course of action turns out to be "wrong."
So where is this absolute morality in Mormonism? There is none. That's because in Mormonism, the God of the mainstream Christian-Judeo tradition
is dead. Mormonism's Elohim isn't God. He is a power-hungry entity who wants to increase his power by getting others to follow him. In a word, Elohim is merely an Übermensch.
So what
is Mormon morality? Mormon morality simply promises that if you
obey the most
powerful being in the universe, that being will make you powerful too. In Mormonism, goodness is defined as following the course of action that will lead you to being a priest or priestess, a king or queen, a God or Goddess. It's all about acquiring power for the sake of having power.
So what's the difference between Mormonism's ethics and Nietzsche's ethics, exactly?