Still no idea - 2

From last post with Maximum Awesome.
I will do my best to separate out our interactions under the categories he set out, and add two others of my own.

DISCUSSION 1: Objective morality.
What about "the degree to which systems of behaviour mutually satisfy all adult participants"? Wouldn't that rule out the "bad" behaviours you list, and rule in the good ones?

1) This would mean that kiddie porn rings are perfectly acceptable.
2) How in the world would this work in the real world for most anything (except kiddie porn rings)?  When are ALL adult participants "satisfied" in this fallen, messed-up world?  Aren't there always dissenters? By what standard and authority do you simply write them off and arbitrarily exclude them? You didn't tell us, which tells us --AGAIN-- that you have a different moral standard than the one you're expressing explicitly. And it seems to be nothing more or less than "That which is moral is what is in accord with my personal preferences".
3) Why SHOULD anyone else accept this moral standard? Where is your Pope of Morality badge to foist this moral standard on the rest of us?
4) Why not choose "the degree to which systems of behaviour mutually DISsatisfy all adult participants"? Why did you choose that which is more comfortable to you? Again you're letting your real motivations slip through the cracks. There's no a priori reason to accept satisfaction over dissatisfaction, pleasure over pain, survival over death, other than your personal preferences.
5) In fact, I bet there are situations about which you'd agree it's better not to achieve wide acceptance from other people, such as heroically standing up against a prevailing attitude of injustice. This causes dissatisfaction among the majority of people, and can lead to pain among everyone involved. One example would be opposing S African apartheid, or the American civil rights movement of the 1960s with Martin Luther King.
6) You say "the 'bad' behaviours" I listed. how do you know they are bad? Isn't that the very question at hand? Which you're, here, begging?
7) You put "bad" in quotes. May I take that to mean that you don't in actuality think that torturing children, creating a fascistic state, and killing all intellectuals and freethinkers are not really bad, but just "bad"? What does this even mean?  And why don't you live like that?



it was made clear to me that being a dick wasn't the way to go, for anybody.

This begs the question that "the way to go" = what people wanted you to do.
In essence, you caved to peer pressure. Why should that be an example for anyone else to follow?
How do you know that what you heard was right? To what did you compare it to make a correct judgment? It sounds like societal approval was, here, the very standard itself.
How do you know that following the path of less resistance in this case was the right move?
Why did you follow society's definition of "being a dick"?  Are we supposed to accept this as some sort of well-thought-out move on your part, which others should emulate because of your deep and profound reflections about it?



Unless I wanted to be a hunted maniac cackling in the deep woods while the FBI dogs searched for me, I'd have to "get along".

Notice that this is merely an argument from unsavory consequences.
You didn't want to be persecuted, so you acceded to others' demands. There is no principle here.



It's simply never occurred to me to wonder why genocide is "wrong"

I know, and that's probably one big reason you're a "possibilian" - you haven't ever thought deeply about these issues and realised your position's utter absurdity.
Now's your chance. I encourage you not to let the opportunity pass you by. Stop feeding yourself, and the rest of us, this pablum and actually deal with my questions, the ones I am asking, not the ones you wish I were asking.



I looked through a few of the archived discussions on your blog, and see that a few other people have expressed similar reactions - they get a few posts in before they realise that what seemed like a Socratic method is more like a five year old emptily repeating "why".

Oh yes, like the amazingly profound and thoughtful tracieh from the Atheist Experience, LOL.
Notice that the passage you quoted from her was nothing more than dismissive drivel. Where did she actually deal with my questions?



I'm starting to know how she feels

Imagine how stimulating our conversation would be if you actually started dealing with my questions the first time around, instead of requiring that I keep digging at you to get you to deal with the real issue!



You seem to think of morality as a top down set of rules held together by the authority of their author (etymology pun?), whereas Damion and I think of it as a system for "getting along" held together by its internal consistency.

Morality is defined as "what one OUGHT TO do", basically. How else to explain that besides an authority, a source of normativity?
You're assuming that "getting along" is an ought. I keep asking you to PROVE IT. Here's another chance.



>That's the naturalistic fallacy. 
I admit I've never heard of that before. So I looked it up. I don't find it compelling.

Oh, do tell. How precisely do you take an IS and turn it into an OUGHT?
As Darwinians like to say (in their naked appeals to authority) - how about you take your thoughts, write them up, and submit them to a philosophical journal? I'm sure the philosophical community would love to see Hume's Guillotine solved! You could be famous overnight!




If it is, in fact, "good" to torture, rape, kill, and exterminate each other, suffer for no reason, etc - so what? 
If that was what god wanted, would you do it?

This "if that was what God wanted, would you do it?" may sound sophisticated and trenchant, but it's actually 100% irrelevant. God's morality and laws exist above any obedience from His creation. Even if nobody ever obeyed His law at any time in any way, His law would be no more or less righteous and just than it is now.
At the risk of overwhelming you with proper theological reasoning, see here if you're really interested in the answer.



The term "good", in that sense, just seems empty and uninteresting to me. It's like asking how we know breathing is "fantabulous" - I don't care. What's "fantabulous"? Why is it "fantabulous" that I should care what "fantabulous" is? It's just a fatuous term that refers to nothing.

Then why did you frame your initial comments to me using those terms?
You don't really believe this. You're just backtracking to it now that your bluff has been called.
Example:

here's my problem, and maybe what I should have said in the first place - "the important thing" about his atonement here is still that it is *scapegoat human sacrifice*. Any person that did that would be reprehensible - but somehow it's good when god does it.

So is this what you meant?

here's my problem, and maybe what I should have said in the first place - "the BLAH" about his atonement here is still that it is *scapegoat human sacrifice*. Any person that did that would be BLAH - but somehow it's BLAH when god does it.

I can only assume that this is the only consistent way to take your initial comments to me.

Here's another one, ripe for filling in the blanks with what you really meant:

The overall vision of the world you seemed to paint for me *was*, in fact, simply nihilism - with the concomitant lack of reasons for "good" and "bad": the only addition you had made to nihilism, as far as I could see, was the far-more-horrifying introduction of the possibility of an infinity of suffering if we guess wrong about the nature of our situation, and an infinitely powerful, infinitely free agent (I said "entity" because the way you described said agent didn't sound like any god I've ever heard of) roaming through the universe, plucking living souls out of life and burning them forever as it felt like it.

What's so very funny/sad about this is it only took about 7 comments for you to fulfill precisely what I was saying, and which you had originally decried.
"Lack of reasons for 'good' and 'bad'" - you've just now demonstrated that this is exactly what you believe.
And given that, your complaints about the "infinitely powerful...entity...burning them forever as it felt like it" are meaningless, aren't they? So what? Is this a bad thing? Isn't "bad" the opposite of "good"? And as you said, in your view, the term "good", in that sense, just seems empty and uninteresting to you. It's like asking how we know breathing is "fantabulous" - you don't care. What's "fantabulous"? Why is it "fantabulous" that you should care what "fantabulous" is? It's just a fatuous term that refers to nothing.
So this stuff about God being mean for casting people into Hell... it's fatuous. So what? What's "bad"? Why is it "Bad" that you should (or shouldn't) care what "bad" is?

You're lost in a sea of autonomous cluelessness. Such is the fate of all those who reject the God Who created the universe in which you live.


I don't see why an invalid if invalidates ifs. "If" we want to catch a cold, we "ought" to lick doorknobs. Does that invalidate hygiene?

That's a far too simplistic restatement. It's not "invalidating 'if's". It's showing you that they're useless.
People have all sorts of desires. The whole "if" thing you've set up doesn't differentiate between "if"s - that's the problem. You have no way to know whether my "if"s are better than yours, even if my "if"s are based around (to take approximately the worst thing I can imagine) how I can achieve power over the maximum number of girls so as to rape and kill them whenever the mood strikes) and your "if"s are about feeding and clothing starving children and elderly.


why would I want to do brutal things?

B/c of personal preference, and nothing more.
My question was designed to reveal that you don't have a reason beyond your preferences and peer pressures and "upbringing".
See, that's not how *I* answer moral questions, thank God. I have an ultimate standard to which I can appeal, no matter what zilch cluelessly says.



DISCUSSION 2: Radical solipsism.
you're of course free to disagree, but I invite any third party readers to contemplate their own feelings of ambivalence regarding the relative worth of fortune cookie based decisions vs evidence.

Of course, this is no answer to my challenge. You're acting like an insecure bully who, after your ritual posturing of dominance didn't work, now appeals to his buddies for courage. This isn't a fight, of course, but you're turning around to your audience and asking "Right? Right?" and feeding off their imagined chuckles and snickers.
This doesn't assist you in actually answering the question, however. That's the main problem. How about you just answer it?


It's like saying a glass of water and the ocean are both "water", so how can you decide which one you'd rather drink without referring to supernatural authority?

I don't see how this analogy applies. I'd appreciate clarification.


There comes a point when "our spade is turned". My question to you would simply be: why is your spade-turn moment more valid than mine? You claim that, because god has such-and-such attributes, you know logic works - but how do you know he has those attributes?

Mine is more valid because it is internally consistent, while yours is internally INconsistent.
Mine answers the fundamental questions, and yours merely assumes them.
I have a coherent First Principle - God lives and speaks - and you don't.
I have every reason, given my First Principle, to think that I have access to truth using my cognitive faculties. You don't have any reason to think that.
I know He has those attributes b/c He spoke and revealed them.


And dear god, don't quote the bible at me

Tell you what - I won't quote the Bible as soon as you stop quoting YOUR Bible at ME. Stop aiming the utterances of your cognitive faculties and personal preferences at me until you justify them.
Oh wait, that's impossible.
Exactly.
It's impossible for me to reason apart from God, b/c He is the source and author of reason itself. He is the necessary precondition for all reasoning and rational thought.
You're doing the same thing as you think I'm doing, but you don't realise it.
If you disagree, give me some evidence that your cognitive faculties are reliably aimed at producing true beliefs, given your position's tenets and implications. Do us all a favor and make sure to analyse your answer in advance and ask yourself "Did I just make another set of blind-faith statements and naked assertions, or did I actually answer Rhology's questions?"



How do you know the bible didn't just randomly form out of nothing in the last few seconds, along with your false memories of it?

Here you go.
You have a far bigger problem with that question than I do.


MAX 2: "when confronted with multiple spade-turn moments, we pick the option requiring the least faith".

1) How do you know that is right and true?
2) How do you measure "least" vs "most" faith? What is your standard?
Can't you see how, as you continue to explore your rebellious and autonomous 'reasoning', you keep raising more crippling questions than you're answering?



(My own addendum)
DISCUSSION 3: Defining the Christian position
I invite you to post "only a religion of scapegoat human sacrifice can provide a standard of morality" on your blog header.

1) I'd be happy to do so, if it were true.
Christianity is far, far more than what you said, for one thing.
Also, it's not just "a" religion. It's THE TRUE religion, the one God revealed. Christianity has no value unless it comes from God.
2) The statement's content is not actually true. ANYone can provide "a standard of morality". The challenge I've been making to you is to provide one that is beyond:
   a. Your own personal preferences (ie, show me your Pope of Morality badge)
   b. Fallacious appeals to IS to get OUGHT
   c. Counting noses (ie, appeal to societal approval, as you imagine it) (which is, of course, a mere argumentum ad populum)

The question here is, once you give your your standard, whether your standard is correct and has any value.
By that virtue, Christianity's standard is of infinite value and truth, since it is based in an infinitely knowledgeable and good Creator.



>>God is always justified in putting anyone to death whenever He wants. You and other humans are not so justified. 
The idiom "above the law" means "exempt from the laws that apply to everyone else."
The condition you've described for god is *exactly* "above the law".

You didn't say how He is above the law, so there's nothing to do here.
To explain what I think you're saying: Since God is justified in putting anyone to death at any time, He obeys His law perfectly, since the law is "Don't unjustifiably kill".
Such is not true of humans. We're not God.



In what sense is he the definition of goodness if he does things that aren't "good" (scapegoat human sacrifice)?

On Christianity, the sacrifice of Jesus was the good-est thing that was ever done - the ultimate expression of God's love for His rebellious and evil people.
I'm not sure what this question is meant to express.



(My own addendum)
MINI-DISCUSSION 4 - Odds and ends
If the wars of the twentieth century had killed the same proportion of the population that die in the wars of a typical tribal society, there would have been two billion deaths, not 100 million. "

1) Even if that were true, it still requires much more effort to kill 100 million than to kill 100.
2) You forget that y'all education-idolaters like to claim that, with education, anything is possible and massive advances are just over the horizon. Has the entire world ever been at war before?
3) More than just "war" occurred during the 20th century. Remember the massive genocidal projects, beyond the scope of anything attempted before. Done in the name of "scientific progress"?

Still no idea

Lots of good interaction in the last post's comment box.



Hello gentlemen,

Maximum Awesome said:
I'm prepared to admit that my initial impression of you as "closed minded" was off the mark.

That's appreciated. Thank you.


To put that another way, we probably do share moral intutions and want to live in a reality where genocide, burkas, acid-in-little-girl's-faces, etc, can be objectively ruled out in a way satisfactory to everyone.

That depends on what you mean by "objectively ruled out". I don't know of a way that this could be accomplished in a possibilian worldview, at least an atheistic one.
OTOH I absolutely decry acid in little girls' faces. Burqas as demanded by fascistic Islam, yes. Genocide when it's undertaken by men with evil agendas, yes. There are a few instances in history in which genocide was justified, but the vast majority of genocidal actions throughout history have been UNjustified, so we're close to the same page.

But as to the WHY we're on the same page, I'm there b/c I obey and love Jesus.
You're there b/c Jesus has made you in His image; you know that certain things are actually morally wrong but by your professed worldview deny their foundation. You're borrowing from my worldview while professing not-my-worldview. The sooner you quit your self-deception, the better for you.


I'll try to stop being such a dick.

:-P Believe me, I've met far worse. You're not too bad. This is a friendly discussion and debate, so no hard feelings here, please be assured.


I was listing two acts near the opposing poles of "caused discomfort" to give an idea of a vast scale, as if I had said "all the numbers from zero to infinity."

Ah, OK.
Well, may I ask on what basis you rate the one on the low end and the other on the high end?  How do you know which is which?


I see as the mistake of claiming we can be sure:
1) There's no god(s).
2) Therefore, nihilism is correct.

In fact, I make that very argument. Here's why.
Only the biblical worldview is self-consistent and coherent, and only it thus provides a reason to think that our cognitive faculties are reliably aimed at producing true beliefs. Atheism never even gets off the ground in that regard; the "my cognitive faculties are tuned to reality" is an article of absolute blind faith for an atheist, with no possibility of ever knowing whether it is actually true.
Same for an empiricist - no evidence can be adduced to determine whether evidence is the best way to discover truth.

Same for false religions such as Islam - they suffer from irresolvable internal contradictions and thus give every reason to doubt that the deity in question is a sufficient foundation for knowledge, reason, and morality.

Thus, the only possibility is nihilism, if one is to be consistent.



You say (the trunk) contains X, muslims say it has Y, ancient greeks say it has Z - I say I have no idea what's in there but I'm open to the evidence.

I'm afraid I can't agree with the analogy. Jesus isn't contained in a trunk; He created everything, including you and your brain, and He is the master of it all.
You're not an external observer; you're living in Jesus' universe, as is the Muslim. I see the truth about it and you and the Muslim won't admit the truth about it. It's more like the trunk is a McDurgle brand, and Mr. McDurgle is standing right there showing you his trunk: "You like it? Let me tell you about it," and you're looking the trunk over to try to show that it's not a trunk, but actually a giraffe.

IOW, you're not "open to the evidence" at all.
1) If you were, you'd be a Christian.
2) You SAY you rely on evidence to inform your decisions, but that's not true either. There's no evidence to back up your moral claims, which you make in abundance. That's the naturalistic fallacy.
Further, there's no evidence for the assertion that evidence is a good way to discover truth. You assumed that. Why did you assume it? Answer that and we're getting more to the heart of the issue.


I was using the "conversation stopper" argument strictly in reference to the possible formulation of a universal moral rule.

Would you say that "it is OK to rape and torture little girls for fun" is open for "conversation"?


An honest account of what we know and what we don't is the precursor to finding truth.

Do you know or not-know the truth of that statement?
See what you're doing? You're claiming you're talking on a foundational level, but in reality you already have your mind made up and you're sneaking in your assumptions.  What is your real position on these matters?


would you like it if such an objective standard were to be formulated, without recourse to supernatural claims about any particular god?

Whether I'd "like it" is immaterial, really, as I think you'd agree. No, I don't suppose I'd like it, but it wouldn't be the death knell for my position.
I've asked many, many atheists and naturalistic empiricists to provide me with such an objective standard, and they never have been able to. I welcome your attempts, however, to see how it goes. I am a seeker of truth above all.


I do *not* accept the apparent implication that my resulting system is entirely random and variable

OK, then what prevents it from being random and variable?



I would argue that my, admittedly less-clearly-delineated-than-yours moral views are, nonetheless, mostly in agreement with most of yours and most of humanity's.

Which has no bearing on whether it is entirely random and variable, as I'm sure you'd agree.


This similarity, in itself, makes me wonder what these systems may have in common.

How about that everyone is wrong?
Have you ever considered that?



To put that another way, we disagree about the basis of morality, but agree on most of its specifics.

Which is entirely consistent with and explainable given the biblical position, wherein God creates everyone with conscience and with a heart that yearns after eternity, yet by virtue of the Fall of Man, hasten after evil things even while suppressing within themselves the guilt they feel for doing evil.



It may be fine on your end - but it is, still, scapegoat human sacrifice.

Yes, it is.


I'm using it in the "inevitable consequence" sense, that is, that 2+2=5 and 3+3=7 are both wrong because of the principle of addition.

OK, but I still don't see how what I've said doesn't resolve the issue for my position.
God's nature and character IS ITSELF a principle too, in the way you defined it.


You're using "argument from authority", I'm looking for an actual argument.

What you don't seem to realise is that all moral questions reduce to questions of authority and normativity. Who has the right to tell you what to do?
there's no "argument" to be made, in the sense you seem to mean it. That's the problem Hume realised when he delineated the IS/OUGHT gap.
God as Creator and Ultimate Lawgiver and Basis for Morality provides the necessary precondition for objective morality.
No God? Good luck with that precondition; this jumps unjustifiably over that gap, and results in an utterly arbitrary morality.


"I'm disturbed at the idea of god being above his own laws."

He's not above His own laws.
The law is: Don't unjustifiably put people to death.
God is always justified in putting anyone to death whenever He wants. You and other humans are not so justified.
What's the problem?


You seem to be using an ad hoc justification to clean up after all his possible behaviour after the fact.

Yes, I seem to be, but in point of fact I am not. The Bible is much older than you or I. I'm just following what it says.


I realise you feel I have no standard to express dissatisfaction

It's not that I feel you don't have one. It's that you in reality do not have one. Big difference.


At one point, church fathers had a problem with Galileo - they do no longer.

1) The Galileo issue is vastly misunderstood; I suggest you look into it a bit more deeply.
2) Medieval Roman Catholics are most definitely NOT "church fathers".
3) I disagree with medieval RCs far more often than I agree with them, so I reject any association w/o a good argument to that effect.


At one point, the bible was presented as supporting slavery - mainstream christians now reject this.

Both of these examples are of people misunderstanding the biblical text, not a change in the text itself. Yet there were also those at those times who correctly understood it. Why not cite them?
I know why - b/c it would be unhelpful for your argument.


but would you agree that interpretations of it improve over time?

Yes, but in some cases they get worse too.


Evolving, becoming truer to the bible's intent?

Yes, and sometimes devolving to become less true to it. Men are fallible, transient, sinful, unstable, inconsistent. That's why we must base our foundations on the unchanging God.


Would you say the current interpretation of the bible (yours) is the best there has ever been, and that interpretations will continue to improve in future?

I doubt mine is the best that has ever been, but I require argumentation to correct my view. Let's say that my position, by God's grace, is aligned with the truth in many ways, but I am not infallible. I am blessed in that my position on many things is correct, but yet there are other things I don't understand. One must not be blind to his own fallibility and biases.
Yes, interps will doubtless continue into the future just as misinterps will continue to abound and get worse as well.  Humanity is far from monolithic, you know?


how do you think this improvement happens? Is it distinct from the process of rational criticism and marshalling of evidence shown in any other science?

Exegesis and hermeneutics are sciences (as well as arts), so I would be comfortable saying this, yes.



a question for you about "oughts": why are they more necessary for morality than any other scientific discipline?

It's the definition of morality - that which ought to be done.


"you ought to do X but not Y ... if you want to be healthy."

Yes, I hear this a lot, but it always stalls out when one introduces different "if"s, thus demonstrating that the non-Christian has an unstated, underlying moral standard.
For example:
"You ought to carry a garroting cord and hood and not a pack of tissues, if you want to capture children to torture at home."
"You ought to spend your time learning to make explosives and shoot an assault rifle well, if you want to create a fascistic state."
"You ought to kill all the intellectuals and freethinkers, if you want to be a dictator."

Now, the real morality to which you hold (ie, "What I like is what is moral") will rise up and say "Hey, those are not good 'if's!" thus showing that you don't really believe this if-then thing you're professing here.

It's pretty clear you've never thought about this before. I'm not blaming you all that much, but your blame will be much heavier if you should pass this opportunity by: think about this stuff now that you've been confronted with it.
You have a responsibility to repent before Jesus and beg Him to be the Lord of your life and your Savior. Don't pass that up for the sake of your self-centered worldview.


If reason is enough to provide us with principles to rule out genocide, rape, etc

Studying 20th-century history should be enough to disabuse anyone of the notion that it is.


finding ways of behaving that are mutually agreeable for all parties.

Again, how do you know that what is agreeable for all parties is morally right?


maybe "ought" is just a grammatical conjugation, not a fact of reality?

Tell that to a family whose daughter was just raped and murdered. You can't live that out, so who am I to agree with it if you don't?



One more thing, in response to Damion, which Maximum Awesome actually anticipated:
Theistic morality thus becomes "If you desire to please God, you should follow the divine commands."
Humanistic morallity becomes "If you desire humans to thrive more and sufffer less, you should find out what makes that happen and then do more of it." 
Only the latter comes with a research programme.

1) That's not what the biblical morality is.
2) This is demolished by my alternative "if" statements above.
3) Damion has apparently forgotten about the millions of pages that have been written on theology and ethics from theistic authors throughout far more centuries than modern science has been in existence.
4) He has also apparently forgotten that most scientists up to very modern times have been theistic and looked to God to ground their scientific studies. There is every reason to reject this biased assertion about "research programme"s.

Possibilianism, morality, and no idea

Maximum Awesome, a "possibilian", dropped by on an older post to interact some with me. Here's my latest response to his comments.




Possibilian, eh?
Possibilianism is comfortable holding multiple ideas in mind; it is not interested in committing to any particular story.

So, do you think you can know much of anything about The Big Questions? Like God, death, life, man, knowledge, other minds, the one and the many, etc?


the necessity of holding multiple positions at once if there is no available data to privilege one over the others.

How can one get data without some position on how we know things, what data and evidence are, and how they relate to our minds?
Seems like empiricism masquerading as a pretty naive sophistic idea.



"the important thing" about his atonement here is still that it is *scapegoat human sacrifice*.

I don't accept that, though.
On the Christian position, God chooses how He does stuff and we judge the rightness/wrongness of our actions based on the standard that He has provided.
So, it's fine on my end. If you want to give us a way to know that that was wrong or right, I'd like to know it.



there is no underlying principle that can connect these scraps of memorisable commands into a comprehensible system

1) Would you mind quoting me to that effect?
2) I disagree; the underlying principle is God's unchanging character and nature.



There is no possibility of a Unified Theory of Morality

Not if atheism is true.
If Christianity is true, there is a unified morality.



By its very nature, this subject is not amenable to rational inquiry, nor could it ever be.

Reading and exegeting the biblical text is rational inquiry. Any viewing of a systematic theology will attest to that.
You might mean "rationalISTIC", and of course that would be true, since rationalism, the belief that human reason is autonomous and foundational, is irrational.
We think about things, sure, and we are in fact commanded to. But human reason is far from the final standard of truth.



2) God can do whatever he wants. He is not beholden to human morality.

Yes.



He can behave in a manner befitting of Satan, Hitler and Ted Bundy combined

This is a specious characterisation.
Those men are murderers, grossly disobeying the law of God. By contrast, God always acts in accord with His law and His character. So no, it's totally different. God will judge (well, He has judged) those men, and I'd hate to be in their shoes.




He can both allow and cause infinite suffering for any reason he pleases.

Yes, but it's not as if those reasons are all that mysterious, or secretive. He's revealed quite a few of them, and quite clearly.
And all of His reasons are justified, by definition.
If you disagree, please make sure to let us know the standard which you're using to judge. Please also make sure to let us know how you're unsure (as a possibilian) about so many things but you're quite sure about morality. What "data" did you use to come to your moral conclusions?
If you haven't come to any moral conclusions, why are you talking like you have, and doing what seems to be judging God by them?



plucking living souls out of life and burning them forever as it felt like it.

If by that you mean "ending the lives of rebel sinners as He has decreed and given them far more patience than they deserved and placing them in the place that they wanted far more than they wanted God, which includes torment, which torment they preferred rather than bowing the knee to the God Who offered them the free gift of eternal life, which they scorned", then yes.



I was trying to get across the emotional flavour of my reaction.

Yes, and that's the principal motivating factor for pretty much any skeptic who argues like you. Y'all pretend to be so very concerned with reasonable inquiry, but it quickly becomes obvious that you're acting out of simmering bitterness.
The only ones who've got you beat in that regard are liberals.



Maybe it's the golden rule: do unto others, etc. The problem with this is, what if I'm a suicidal masochist? I can't just beat people to death because I want to be beaten to death myself.

Why not?
The problem that you haven't seen is that you proposed a rule (the golden rule) and then saw sthg that doesn't agree with your already-present moral standard and so you reject it.  So you're not being honest with anyone here, least of all yourself.
You need to come clean and acknowledge that you yourself personally have set up a moral standard by which you're judging these questions. The standard seems to be "What do I like?"
But that goes back to my common question - where's your badge and scepter? Who anointed you Pope of Morality?

What is your real rule?

This is where being a Christian comes in mighty handy - I can know the answer to most moral questions, and w/o much fuss.  I ask God. What He says goes. Done.



You can say this precept has no basis except feasibility, usefulness, enforceability, and popularity: and I can reply that that set of traits is more likely to unite the world than any one religion such as islam, judaism, christianity, zoroastrianism, etc.

Who says that "uniting the world" is a good thing? Apparently you do, O Great Pope of Morality.
You're sneaking your assumptions in again. You have more work to do.



Morality/ethics deals with how to organise people with respect to each other in such a way that they don't make each other uncomfortable

I don't accept that definition of morality/ethics. They are the study of what one OUGHT TO DO.
Yes, impossible on atheism (or possibilianism), but that's hardly my problem.



(with "uncomfortable" here meaning everything from public urination to genocide)

1) And free speech.
2) This sentence says an awful lot about your moral system, where public urination rates hardly above genocide in terms of moral character. You can't and don't really live this way, and thus you show you don't believe this really. If you don't, who am I to disagree?



I'm not saying these secular moral concepts are perfect - they're evolving.

So there's every reason to think that the moral value of genocide (and public urination) could evolve from unacceptable to acceptable. And apparently it did - Hitler thought it was a  mighty good call.
Maybe I'm farther evolved than you and have an understanding that genocide is just fine as long as it makes ME comfortable.
Who are you to judge me in the wrong?



you said something about morality being people's imperfect understanding, which evolves over time, and ethics being the permanent principles of why some things are right/wrong


I doubt I said anything of the kind, to be honest.



The statement "because god did it" is a conversation stopper:

1) So is "I have no idea and nobody else can know either".
2) "4" is a conversation stopper when it comes to the question "What's 2+2?" So what?




every believer in every kind of god can make it equally

But only believers in the True God can justify it.
Anyone can make a claim, but as we've seen with your own foundation-less claims, it's harder to substantiate the claim than to make it.

(For more on possibilianism, please also see Dusman's critique of "aloofianism".)