Your own moral judgements, of course, come from God, the source of all goodness and without whose grace man is utterly corrupt and incapable of anything good of his own will. That is what conscience is (according to Christians). So this is not tautological at all, but simply a matter of taking all the evidence into account and making the best judgement we can in the face of our own fallibility. A theme of this very site, on occasion.
Ah, good point. But the specific example was that He had commanded you to do something apperently wrong - kill your son - hence the partial tautology.
Yes, I mentioned that ("personal revelation"). But it's only one component of knowledge of the divine, and you still have the problem of deciding when you've received one and what it means.
Whoops, so you did.
... how is that compatible with "None of this bears any more resemblance to "direct orders from God", than evolutionary biology does to "a monkey gave birth to a human"."?
Not at all. Your formulation of the question is exactly what I had in mind, and your answer to it was exactly what I expected.
Then why complain I had twisted it into a tautology?
You cannot cross a chasm by pointing to the far side and saying, "Suppose there was a bridge to there? Then we could cross!" You have to actually build the bridge, and build it so that it stays up, which Penn completely fails to do. He isn't even trying to. He isn't addressing Christians. He's addressing people who are atheists already, getting in a good dig at those dumb Christians who think that a monkey gave birth to a human, sorry, that anyone should kill their child if God tells them to. Ha ha ha! Is he not witty!
The more I think about that quote, the stupider it seems.
Happy New Year! Here's the latest and greatest installment of rationality quotes. Remember: