Not cowardice at all because what was commanded wasn't objectively evil due to both who commanded it and why it was commanded.

I don't mean to say that what God commands is good because God commands it (as if what is 'good' or 'evil' is arbitrary based on what God says or does at any given time), but that God cannot do anything but that which is good because He does that which is in His nature to do, and His nature is perfectly good and holy.

The reason why it was good for the Israelites to destroy the Canaanites is because it was execution of God's perfect and holy justice against a people who God had given land to and blessed with His common grace yet who did not honor God as God and did what was detestable in His sight.

God can take the lives of any of His creatures as He pleases, and the Canaanites are no different. God can also choose to use instruments to exact justice, as He did with the Israelites. God punished the people of Canaan for their wickedness and used the Israelites to do it. God has the authority and the obligation to punish sin, and that's what He did.

What would be objectively evil is if human beings, of our own accord, went into a place and killed all the people there without warrant, because it would be considered murder to do so due to our lack of authority to do so on our own.

Just as there is a distinction between a civilian taking the life of a person they don't like (murder) and the government putting to death a criminal (capital punishment), so too does the context matter in this.

Understanding the context isn't cowardice.

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It absolutely is rape and you, personally, are a pure piece of shite for excusing it in your cowardice.

It isn't, but even if it were, you have no basis in your worldview for judging me or anyone else on this point.

Have you admitted that your lack of objective moral reasoning inherent in your worldview precludes you from making such moral judgements, or are you too cowardly to do so? See? Others can arbitrarily call people cowards as the please, too.

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I have refuted this pretty soundly but just keep repeating your little canned maxims. You're a coward and a fool.

What have you refuted? You have said that empathy provides an objective source for morality but haven't shown why that is the case. I, on the other hand, provided reasoning for why empathy doesn't provide a basis for objective morality and can't, and you haven't responded to that at all other than to say "well yours isn't any better" (paraphrase).

No, empathy cannot provide a basis for objective morality, and I'll repeat why in a different way:

1. Empathy is an emotion based on a chemical reaction that is experienced in the individual. By definition, it's subjective because it originates from within rather than is enforced from without.
2. Empathy is an arbitrary designation for morality. Anger, lust, jealousy, fear, or any other number of emotions could be used instead as a subjective means for morality.
3. Empathy isn't experienced by every person, and not everyone experiences empathy the same way. Empathy is also based on experience, and if a person has no experiential context for a given action, they cannot empathize the same way as a person who does have that context.
4. Empathy is often times the reason why immoral actions are taken. People do some really terrible things because they think it's for the good of others all the time.

Please explain how empathy is an "objective" source of morality given what I've laid out for you.

This post was edited on 12/17/22 at 9:23 pm