(Divine command theory, where you obey God because He's God as such (and not because He's God and He commands things because they're good), is not the most popular way to tie God into your meta-ethics, and it has various semantic problems. In better-justified meta-ethics God is useful as a necessary final cause of existence but it's not immediately derivable what properties He has that make Him a justified final cause, nor how we as creatures should orient our actions towards Him—these are matters of ethics that are somewhat decoupled from "grounding" morality in God in a higher level sense. God is used in such meta-ethics in a way similar to how an oracle machine is used in theoretical computer science, that is, He's an important part of a larger interconnected framework. One can't evaluate theistic meta-ethics without knowing what the other parts are.)
Yeah, the better-justified version you describe strikes me as, if not necessarily better justified, at least more intelligible.
That said, now that I think about it a bit more, I'm enough of a consequentialist to have serious difficulty thinking straight about what it even means for a choice to be moral in the presence of a force capable of, in practical terms, divorcing my actions from their consequences. (Of course, not every theistic theory posits such a force, and it is possible to be in that position in a nontheistic context as well.)
I might quibble a...
I recognize the title could be more informative. At the same time I believe it says what is important.
I believe in a deity, I believe in mathematical entities in the same way.
The community of LessWrong (from whenceforth: LessWrong) is deeply interesting to me, appearing as a semi-organized atheist, reductionist community.
LessWrong seems very interested in promoting rationality, which I applaud. The effort does seem scattered, though, and this is the reason I post.
One has Eliezer's website with some interesting posts. The same of this community. The community links to some posts when you are coming for the first time into it, and you also have a filter for top posts. One has the blog. And recently, the center for modern rationality (in the same page as harrypoter fanfiction about rationality).
The point being there is no defined roadmap to go from AIC (average irrational chump to make an analogy to Game - which also seems to come up around quite a bit) to RA (again, rationality artist).
I write this post as to maybe generate a discussion on how the efforts could be concentrated and a new direction taken.
Should the creation of the Center for Modern Rationality envision this same concentration, this post may and should be disregard.
If it does not, then I leave it to your consideration.
Hang.