You're attacking an Old White Guy with a Beard. I'm not defending an Old White Guy with a Beard. That would be absurd.

Whether you get your morals from yourself, your pastor, or God, one of two things is true. Either those morals are arbitrary, or they are chosen for a reason.

Yes.

Nothing about that suggests that God is the only possible reason (and I would argue that God is more arbitrary a reason than the ones we invent for ourselves),

You're doing it the opposite. God is not the "only possible" reason: it's just the only one which is not arbitrary. What is more arbitrary is what comes from individual whims. God is, if anything, outside and above all individual whims. It isn't just an Old White Guy with a Beard.

nor that God is necessarily the best reason - unless you presuppose that God is an existing being (and not just an imaginary one) that is smarter/better than humans,

Duh! Of course I presume that! If I didn't presume that, I'd be an Atheist. God is and has to be exactly that.

and there is no proof of that.

As I also said in the sub thread, I take the apparent orderliness and predictability of the universe as proof. But it's ultimately an irrelevant point, because...

At worst, you could argue that atheists are wrong. But there's no ground for you to accuse them of being, by necessity of their position, "amoral".

...without the assumption of something which is (1) eternal (2) unchanging (3) wise above all and (4) good above all [for short, let's call that "God"]; then your moral theories necessarily come from your personal tastes and nothing else. And most certainly, even if you can be willing and able to follow your moral theories through, you cannot validly advocate for others to join them.

If God commanding his followers to commit genocide doesn't make genocide moral, then it's not God you're getting your morals from.

There you go with the Old White Guy with a Beard again.

Funny, of course, that for a few hundred years already genocides have been committed mostly by secularists, including some downright Atheist.

I've never seen God commanding genocide. All known genocides have entirely human origins. Even those ostensibly committed in God's name like the Crusades or the Conquista of the Americas.

And if you think that makes genocide moral, then you, sir, are an amoral person.

No, I don't think genocide is moral. (Btw, most people who did and do commit it say they're "just following orders / the law")

A person with no moral compass, who will do anything you believe your God commands, regardless of any concept of morality, which can only pale in the face of a divine version of "Simon says".

No, I will (try to and repeatedly fail to) do anything that God commands precisely because it is moral, and precisely because a God who is good above all would never command genocide (or, generally, evil). Human lies are human lies; God does not lie.

Although the most sinister part is that nobody communicates directly with God.

Erm, no?

That would be a form and sort of power too high, too deep and too powerful to entrust to any human being.

Either it's your human pastor doing the saying (and do you really trust him as you would trust God?), or else it's your own brain, and we have no reason to believe that the human brain can't trick us into perceiving that we've communicated with God, when we really haven't.

If you can't trust the human brain, then all knowledge is impossible. Not just all morality, all knowledge.

I would respect that position. That would be the consistent Atheist position. Problem is, most Atheists resort to skepticist views of the mind in order to deny God and then turn around and are no longer skepticist in regards to almost everything else.

In fact, there's more evidence for that than the alternative. And if you disagree, then how do you account for different people receiving conflicting messages from God? How can you trust your own perception any more than another's?

I don't. That's why I seek more, constantly.

But to explain it is simple, and I don't know why people make it so complicated.

Google "Parable of the Elephant and the Blind Men".

That's how I account for apparent religious conflict. Many people can be simultaneously right, and yet in conflict among them; when the phenomenon is too great and complex and their tools insufficient to perceive it in full. God being so much above humans, it would necessarily follow both that our tools are insufficient and the phenomenon too complex. Therefore, we should expect apparent contradictions.

The only true moral compass we have access to is logic - which is something that can be debated, and made mutually agreeable compromises about.

Mmmm, no. Logic is not debatable. Things either follow the rules of logic or they don't. There is no middle point. Apparent paradoxes are just gaps in the rules of logic, which, historically at least, have always been solved eventually through perfecting the rules of logic.

On the other hand, logic only tells us about the formal consistency of the argument. It does not and cannot tell us if the argument is true. Only whether it is formally correct.

There is nothing else that can rightly be called "moral". And there is no such thing as "absolute" morality. The very concept is an oxymoron, because nothing that is absolute could be considered moral.

If morality isn't absolute (ie, applicable for all agents in all circumstances) then it is relative. So, genocide is wrong you say? Always? That's quite the absolute. If there are no absolutes, then there are exceptions in which genocide is right.

(E.g., that all sex with minors is abusive).

That's a plain idiotic example, sorry.

"with minors" -- states a category which only exists in law. Law does not determine morality. Ever.

We have left...

"all sex invalid category is abusive"

That forces us to define abuse.

Feminists define abuse in such a way that it includes all sex. To them, "all sex is abusive" is a tautology. It is a consistent position.

Other people, myself included, define abuse in less expansive terms. In the case of interactions between people, abuse is defined as mistreatment and causing of harm.

So, now we have...

"all sex is mistreatment and causing of harm"

Need I explain that's false?

"all sex" is also problematic in itself. "sex" is a subcategory of interactions between agents. There is no good reason why sex has to be set apart from other interactions between agents. Therefore we actually should have:

"all interactions between agents are mistreatment and causing of harm"

Again, that'd be false.

Regardless, the need to include "with minors" and the need to specify "sex" among all possible interactions make the statement far, very far, from being absolute.

It is merely mandate. Pawning off responsibility for that mandate to some imaginary authority (that is as arbitrary as it is absolute) doesn't change that.

Something that is entirely above all in wisdom and goodness is as close to absolute and as far from arbitrary as is possible. To just act on personal feel good whims would be arbitrary, and yes, as relativistic as possible.