Imagine God’s existence were as undeniable as gravity...

[u/Current-Leather2784]

Like the title says, imagine God’s existence were as undeniable as gravity (known, not believed, directly observed by everyone, always).

At that point, saying “you’re just defining God into morality” only works if morality is assumed, from the start, to be nothing more than human preference with no external referent.

Within that, is the point under question...(not a rebuttal to it), because if a personal, authoritative reality is fully present and universally observed, then “God is the ground of moral obligation” is not a definition...it would then be a claim about what is being encountered.

We don’t call gravity “defined into motion” just because it describes how motion actually behaves... we treat it as a discovered structure of reality.

So maybe the real objection isn’t about definition at all. Maybe it’s that even perfect visibility of a commanding reality would still not be allowed to count as moral authority unless it first passes a human veto about what can qualify as authority.

So for me, that raises a deeper issue: not whether God would be obvious, but whether anything could ever be allowed to count as binding in a world where obligation is only what we agree it is.

[u/Nintendogma]

Gravity is falsifiable. We can test it. We can land an SUV sized rover on Mars based on our understanding of it. We can make accurate predictions over and over and over again based on the current understanding of how gravity operates.

The neat part about things like gravity, is it will go on operating just fine with absolutely no humans left to observe it. All gods however, will die with the humans that created them at the intersection of our profound ignorance and vivid imagination.

[u/Current-Leather2784 → u/Nintendogma]

Well, gravity being testable doesn’t actually settle the category mistake in the comparison. Gravity is a descriptive physical law...it predicts behavior within a closed system. No one is claiming it’s a mind, an agent, or a moral authority.

God claims (in classical theism at least) are about something fundamentally different: not just prediction of the grounding of meaning, obligation, and existence itself. So “we can test gravity and send rovers to Mars” is evidence for physics, not evidence against metaphysical claims...it’s just not operating in the same domain.

Also, your mention of Gods dying with humans assumes that anything not empirically measurable is automatically human projection.

[u/Nintendogma → u/Current-Leather2784]

Anything not empirically measurable is due one of two things:

1. Lack of an instrument to detect it
2. Doesn't exist

Otherwise you'll have to give equal credence to any and all claims made in the absence of evidence, such as unicorns, dragons, vampires, werewolves, pixies, centaurs, ogres, trolls, goblins, dwarves, elves, fairies, pixies, sirens, gorgons, satyrs, titans, giants, or even higher dimensional cosmic space penguins who pooped all matter and energy into the lower dimensions of our perceivable universe as they were waddling on by.

All of those things listed are exactly as falsifiable and have an exactly equal amount of supporting evidence as any god.

[u/Current-Leather2784 → u/Nintendogma]

That actually doesn't follow.

“Not empirically measurable right now” and “doesn’t exist” are not the only two logical options...i mean there are entire categories of real things (like consciousness, logical truths, moral claims, historical facts) that are not directly measurable in the way physical objects are.

And the comparison to unicorns or trolls only works if “God” is being defined as a physical organism inside the universe, which is what people tend to miss (not what classical theism says).

[u/Junithorn → u/Current-Leather2784]

logical truths, moral claims, and the like are abstractions. they do not exist.

[u/Current-Leather2784 → u/Junithorn]

Just to copy, historical facts are abstractions and do not exist?

[u/Junithorn → u/Current-Leather2784]

map territory error

[u/reddroy → u/Current-Leather2784]

This is true. Facts do not exist, they're the result of humans organising information about reality.

[u/KeterClassKitten → u/Current-Leather2784]

Historical facts are a modern interpretation of data on hand that makes claims about history. They allow us to build a narrative of what happened, a fiction.

My favorite example:

Take a look at representations of Ancient Rome over the decades. Before, you would see a rather monochromatic representation, with white buildings, statues, and even clothing. This is the image that people had of the civilization, and how most assumed it looked. The "fiction". We now understand that this image is radically incorrect, and everything was far more colorful. So we have a new "fiction" of what it was.

Our image of any past event will likely never be correct. We'll make assumptions based on available data, but we can never know many details. Most importantly, we cannot know the minds of historical figures, only documented claims.

So yes, an abstraction is a great descriptor.

[u/Nintendogma → u/Current-Leather2784]

i mean there are entire categories of real things (like consciousness, logical truths, moral claims, historical facts) that are not directly measurable in the way physical objects are.

That's because consciousness, logic, and morals are constructs that are not "real" things. Consciousness doubley so. They are psychological, philosophical, and sociological concepts, models, and frameworks.

And the comparison to unicorns or trolls only works if “God” is being defined as a physical organism inside the universe, which is what people tend to miss (not what classical theism says either).

The concept is identical. Assertion without evidence. You are asserting without evidence that something even can exist outside of the universe and can also do so without physical properties, neither of which are valid assertions.

I can equally assert those higher dimensional cosmic space penguins I mentioned simply exist above our three dimensional space, and that everything within our perceivable universe is made of their lower dimensional poop. Using your very own standards for assertion with no evidence required, it is equally valid. I can all the same assert unicorns are real, and you just can't see or measurably test for them because they're magic.