[maurile]

[ QUOTE ]
Nice thoughts. Your analysis would be accurate if God were just any other guy, like you or me.

[/ QUOTE ]
So who says that the creator's preferences matter more than mine? If the creator made that rule, it's circular and empty. It's no different from my own pronouncement that my preferences are the ones that matter. "What I say goes because I say so." If, on the other hand, the rule favoring the creator's preferences over mine didn't come from the creator, then evidently creators don't get to make the rules.

Either way, objective moral rules cannot come from a moral dictator.

(For you fans of Greek philosphy, this is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma. Socrates asked: "Is something good because God says so, or does God say a thing is good because it is?" If the former -- if God's preference for something is what makes it good -- then morality is empty and the claim that "God is good" is a vacuous tautology that says nothing more than "God wants what God wants." It's content-free. If the latter -- if God prefers something because it is good -- then it was already good before God stated his preference, and the standard for what is good exists independent of God.)

Christians who believe that moral rules come from God therefore believe in a subjective morality.

An example of an objective morality would be John Stuart Mill's "greatest good for the greatest number" -- which, not coincidentally, is non-theistic.

So to say that morality can't be objective unless it is divinely inspired is patenty absurd.