Arguments that there is no real moral code for one who does not hold that God gives it to us are more worried about order than morality. We are using God to regulate others.
An arbitrary morality is not necessarily one that changes every five minutes. Whether a rule lasts for 5 seconds or 5 million years, it is random if there's no logic behind it.
The religionists fear morality being arbitrary. But they are thinking of arbitrary as in morality that changes with the weather forecast. They do not mind an arbitrary morality that changes but at a glacial pace. They should try the ultimatum test. It shows what really matters. They would choose the arbitrary morality that takes so long to change if the other type was the only alternative. They would call it unchanging objective morality simply because it deceivingly looks like it.
But they will say they need not worry about that for they have a non-arbitrary morality. But we know they have to be tempted to use a good counterfeit supposing their real morality was not so real after all. We know they must fear disorder that is just disorder apart from any moral considerations. We know they will prefer some order to be there even if it is not a morally grounded one. We know if they want food they don't care if providers are forced to give them good or do it for moral reasons.
To sum up, we know that objective morality does not matter to them as much as the order it seems to demand and impose. We cannot trust anybody who claims that values such as love, compassion, justice and mercy matter to them totally or mostly. They have no right to ask for that trust. If they are moral, they should not care what we think. But they do.
Religion says it grounds morality in God and that stops it being arbitrary. Permanent rules may have no moral justification and they are still arbitrary. The changing rules is a good sign that a morality is arbitrary. But that sign is not always there. We suspect as long as religion gets rules, it does not care if they are arbitrary or not. It's about avoiding chaos, not moral truth.
Do the ultimatum test. It shows what really matters. You have to go for holding something wrong for God says it is wrong. Or because God gives reasons to convince you that it is wrong. Which? If you go for the second, it is because you want God to respect your conscience and your understanding. You only do that if you think God could be arbitrary and if you don't want to be arbitrary yourself. It takes a lot of courage to be suspicious towards a higher being. You are not convinced that God is God of love. God is not Lord or God where love is concerned.
By the way if your God is arbitrary with morality and you serve him you are no better. You want him by your side so that you feel supported and don't feel alone as you live out that hypocrisy.
To want people to obey your idea of moral good, implies you want them to oppose and hate bad as you see it. To be good involves opposing evil.
People treat good and evil as magical intelligences no matter how much they deny doing so. Their worry about evil is as deep as their worry about good. They put them on a level playing field.
Religion does not convince us when it says it regards good as the only power and evil as only a defect. As far as evil is concerned, it is nothing and there is no need to wonder how a God could make it for he does not. There is nothing there to make.
If you set a magical good against evil, you see the evil as magical as well.
To see evil as a magical or supernatural substance, a real presence, leads to harm. Or to think evil can be used as if it were magic or bad luck, is irresponsible too. Also it can be inherently magic. Or made to do magic without any intrinsic occult powers. It can also be a magic force that is compelled to do a type of magic that is not intrinsic to it. Revenge is foolish and only makes sense to those who think there is magic in it. You will naturally use magic to fight magic. And if you think evil lurks waiting to pounce. Well there you have a rationale for revenge.
Morality then contradicts itself for it bans revenge and is based on it at the same time!
It is surmised that if you tell God to keep out of your life, if you exclude him, that your world becomes as if there were no God. He simulates a Darwinist atheist world. But can he if there would be nothing without him? No. He turns your world into a lie, a faked atheist world. Some would say that is what Hell basically is. None of this is coherent.
God supposedly remembers exactly the good that you did. It is frozen on his consciousness forever. You simply want it remembered and/or you want it to be effectively a shrine before him. That is two similar but yet different rewards. For that reason, you the believer, cannot ask yourself or anyone else to think your good deed was not, in the slightest, about getting something out of it for yourself. If God is a way of feeling it is not enough for the good to be simply good, what does that say of you?
You say you hope the other will be inspired by your selfless ways as a human person. And as a child of God. The other looks at you through human eyes and the eyes of divine grace. Sorry, that is double the trouble!
A God who is there to look at you, hear you and by extension, record, what good you have done forever is clearly a projection from your ego. You are not even acquainted personally with God so what you say about him says a lot about you and not much about him.
Believers say God is perfect and perfectly happy and needs no worship from us. They say he is just good and can't be anything else. So praising him then is like praising water for being wet. Religion says we should worship him for ourselves not him. Are we trying to force worship on him? Or do we subconsciously think that God is some kind of changeable anthropomorphic creature? Or both? Only a narcissistic God would look for worship he does not need. It is not good for us to go along with it. He will effectively rub off on us.
The teaching of Jesus that we should worship God with all our being and this is the greatest commandment is immoral. Worship cannot come before helping a baby. What if it had to be one or the other? The hypothetical test shows up phonies, as nothing else can.
We are told that morality is found in God but in reality the believer thinks it is in some book supposedly directed by God.
The Church says God used man, and human systems, to ensure the Bible would be recognised as his word and assembled but without miraculously saying, "Those books are my word". The books are full of miracles which they say justify believing in them though you do not see the wonders. They rarely explain why certain actions are bad preferring just to command that you avoid them.
It is odd that books assembled without signs and healings to show God's inspired them and that the selection is correct, are now considered to set a framework for miracle-assessing. The Christian uses the Bible to assess its own miracle claims. It is even used to defend modern miracles - in the light of the doctrine that people really need to believe in the Bible ones while modern ones can be dismissed for they are not as important.
The rule is that matter how wondrous something is, if it says that Jesus sinned or that someone other than Jesus rose and stole his identity it will be considered a false miracle for contradicting the Bible. Miracle claims are used for a bootstrapping purpose. The person decides what doctrine they want supported and then declare that such and such a miracle sign from Heaven shows it is true. The believer is not a believer in miracles at all but a user of miracle claims.
To base morality on a deliberate bias, a leaning to affirm the Bible no matter what, is counter-productive. The end result is a sham morality erected on mid-air foundation.
Conclusion:
The arguments presented reveal a deep skepticism toward the way religious morality is often framed—not as a pursuit of truth or love, but as a means of control, self-justification, and fear management. The invocation of God as the source of moral authority appears, under scrutiny, less about divine guidance and more about legitimizing human agendas and emotional needs. If believers only accept God's moral commands when they align with personal reasoning, then moral authority ultimately lies not with God but with the individual’s own conscience. This undermines the claim that religious morality is objective or divinely grounded.
Moreover, the theological effort to explain evil without granting it real substance, while simultaneously treating it as a powerful force, creates internal contradictions that distort our understanding of justice, responsibility, and forgiveness. Revenge, often cloaked in moral language, reveals a hidden magical thinking that contradicts the ethical standards it pretends to uphold.
The believer’s desire for God to remember their goodness forever exposes a self-interest incompatible with the claim that moral action should be selfless. And if scripture is accepted as divine without clear divine endorsement, yet used as the gold standard for testing miracles and truth, then the whole system becomes circular and arbitrary.
In the end, much of what is presented as divine morality appears to be a mirror—reflecting not God’s will, but human desire for order, validation, and permanence. Rather than leading us closer to truth or goodness, it risks trapping us in illusions of control, righteousness, and divine favoritism.