Thanks for your input, Vessel.

My counter to the refutation of line 3 would depend on whether god is considered immaterial. If that's the case, material reality remains worthless in Christian philosophy, since even if god had intrinsic value, he's immaterial, not a thing, and so carries no intrinsic value into the realm of things. This does assume revelation is invalid, and that the specific whims of a fickle and arbitrary agent can't specifically be known (induction is made worse by Christian theology, contrary to what the presuppers say). If revelation is valid, then my argument seems to fall apart at that point, though I would still see an externally dependent value system as nihilistic.

Your latter statement reminds me of a story a Hindu-Buddhist monk told me as I sat among an informal group of students. It was something about a military leader who had a spiritual crisis when he was forced to slay his own brother in battle. He was advised that it was alright, because he was dharma, and his brother was dharma, and the battle was dharma -- everything was dharma. I'm brutalizing the details of the story, but the point seemed to be that nothing mattered because Brahma was everything. I think either perspective has a similar effect: raise it as the Hindus may, or lower it as the Christians do, there is a flattening of values that contradicts the inescapable values imposed on us simply existing, thinking, climbing an ontological ladder only to turn around and denounce the things the possibility of such acts as denunciation are wholly dependent upon. Aside from a disciplined few, like suicidal buddhist monks who torch themselves without apparent remorse, everyone is wired to preserve their lives. I don't think it's an appeal to fear as in the "atheists in foxholes" argument, as fear of death is the very root fear on which the argument depends. "As if your life depended on it," the saying goes.

Very nice line of reasoning. This was one of those things that I could always see as "something wrong" with Christianity, but couldn't nail down nearly as well. I generally looked at the obsession with an afterlife.

I'm sorry if it's already mentioned, but some Christians might attack item 6. They'd claim that we can know some values of god (ignoring the idea that god could be jerking us around with that bible of his... if it even is his.)

-Triften 

It's up for discussion.

And buddhism as well, but I'm here rephrasing it and exploring it. Anything to, you know, add (for a change)?

Yawn.

Nothing to do with religion has well-defined properties, so in depending on that my argument would easily fail. I refer specifically to adherents to divine command and god as a provider of meaning and purpose (whatever those things are meant to mean in that use).

I'm not under the impression you're able to "check with god" about anything, which is what lead me to my conclusion that any valuation which relies on a textual definition of a fickle conscious agent's intents would make an unjustified assumption, leaving neither intrinsic value, nor a specific knowledge of supposed divinely-outlined values.

Your own name betrays your need for an unsubstantiated external validator, even for you to be able to make this argument. It's a complete non-sequitur, but it does make your argument all the more bizarre.

Swap in any vector attributed to a god, and you have it. That's not the divine-command, god-needed-for-purpose position, though. Or the god-needed-for-logic/god-needed-for-uniformity position, either.

If you don't slap a god on top of that, that's a monist position. Lulz.

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EDIT: I didn't think references necessary due to the commonality of the divine command / external validation argument, but I plucked one out of the steady stream of such arguments, thus: "No one is good but god..."

So, you're saying I'm begging the question? Perhaps, if existence itself is in question -- but I don't see how one can question it without, again, stealing the concept (by, y'know, existing).

Sorry, I should have clarified: Not existence, but the "intrinsic value" of existence. Why should they have to acknowledge something that which they deny? What is the intrinsic value of existence?

One could use the same argument for science in modern methodology. For something to be considered true, it must be verified by external sources and checks, and thus is not considered intrinsically true. #5's "inscrutable agent" would be the basic principles of Western logic and philosophy.

I like the Western way of thinking, and hope for all our sakes that this argument is not valid. Otherwise, our work and way of thinking could largely go down the drain.

Non-existence isn't as much fun.

Existence doesn't imply value; but the ability for the subject to value emerges from existence (most things that exist aren't conscious). No value is possible without existence, so a value judgement that doesn't value what's necessary to itself steals the concept.

Any value judgement requires existence first, then consciousness. To disregard either is to refute whatever follows.

I think questioning the word "intrinsic" is valid, though, and I'd like to qualify it. By it I meant that the subject can regard something through direct experience -- however "direct" it actually is -- rather than as granted by the aforementioned inscrutable agency. I may be, for example, compelled to help another person because of the subjective experience of something like empathy; where a fairly standard Christian practice is to negate the idea of a naturally-derived and culturally-developed "morality" in favor of morality juice dribbling in from another dimension (along with the value, love and meaning juices).

I see where you're coming from. However, I don't think that constitutes being intrinsic; again, the value is applied from the outside, though. The concept of existence, again, can only have value if it is applied from something that exists (i.e. it is not a part of the concept itself.) The better word for your argument would be "extrinsic."