Re: Oh come on

My use of the predicate “good” to describe various things does not imply the existence of a personal god. You have asserted this implication, but so far furnished no logical argument for it. If I compliment my host by saying “this stew and dumplings is really good” I am not thereby asserting the existence of the deity; to compliment my host's culinary skills is not to suddenly and unexpectedly engage him in a theological disputation. A noun (God) is not a predicate (good) and cannot be substituted for a predicate in any sentence. “This stew and dumplings is really good” does not entail “this stew and dumplings is really God”. It was not stew and dumplings that spoke to Job from out of the whirlwind. You still have not explained how an abstract concept can be a person, and I do not find the assertion of identity any more intelligible than the assertion that the number five is Benjamin Disraeli. The butchering of the kids in Gaza which, despite the “infinite” value of their lives, you support, does indeed matter to me; and in this specific sense only is “personal”. But my caring about their killing does not commit me to the existence of a personal deity, and I do not see that you have furnished any argument for this implication. Your characterisation of what Hume is getting at in the Treatise is quite incorrect. Hume is making the philosophical point that reason is incompetent to judge ultimate ends. A man completely devoid of sympathy – a psychopath, say – cannot, on this view, be argued into genuinely moral behaviour. His lack of concern for others cannot be shown to be “unreasonable”. He might indeed be argued into feigning concern for others, for prudential reasons, but this is not quite the same thing. The matter has indeed been much debated in philosophy since Hume's time, and philosophers such as Parfit have attempted to demonstrate that there are moral principles that all rational beings must agree to, but I think Hume's argument still stands, and nothing you say shows why it doesn't. And even if Parfit is right, this still doesn't imply any theological propositions (Parfit was an atheist). Calling Hume a “moral idiot” establishes nothing. Sorry, but I am much more inclined to suppose that someone who defends the use of starvation against civilians (despite the putative "infinite" value of their lives) is a “moral idiot”. To claim that the fact that my morals are based on the passions rather than on “reason” makes me "selfish" commits the fallacy of supposing that all our passions are for selfish ends, which is simply not true. Sympathy, pity, love and so forth are real passions of the human soul. I do not require “reason” to love my cat; the feeling is an original one, and if I lacked the feeling, then no amount of "reasoning" is likely to make me feel it. Really, there is nothing in what you have written which addresses the point at issue. To have moral sentiments does not commit me to having theological beliefs, and your "arguments" rest on nothing but linguistic solecism.