(For the sake of completeness, I’ll still include the priest’s answer here. He gave a somewhat complicated argument, but the main idea was that the Old Testament is not accurate. In general, according to him, the bible was written taking into consideration the people of the time who would read it.)
From that, I would say that both you and priest have formed a morality that it is independent of the text and is then reflected that back on the text. Ie read one passage (my favorite would instructions to Joshua to commit genocide against the Canaanites) and say “Oh, that one needs to be read in context”, whereas read other eg “Love your neighbour” and say, “yes, that is where I derive my morality”. Ie it seems to be starting with a sense of what is moral and projecting it back onto a concept of God.
Take another step—did say the Ancient Greeks or say the Masai have a concept of morality? What formed their moral world? And as others have said, you can derive a morality from game theory for social animals via evolution (eg see work of Martin Nowak at Harvard). Or simply, that well-being of the tribe is utility function. A behaviour that would damage that well-being if EVERYONE did it, is labelled evil. A behaviour that enhances the tribal well-being if everyone did it, is labelled good.
(For the sake of completeness, I’ll still include the priest’s answer here. He gave a somewhat complicated argument, but the main idea was that the Old Testament is not accurate. In general, according to him, the bible was written taking into consideration the people of the time who would read it.)
From that, I would say that both you and priest have formed a morality that it is independent of the text and is then reflected that back on the text. Ie read one passage (my favorite would instructions to Joshua to commit genocide against the Canaanites) and say “Oh, that one needs to be read in context”, whereas read other eg “Love your neighbour” and say, “yes, that is where I derive my morality”. Ie it seems to be starting with a sense of what is moral and projecting it back onto a concept of God.
Take another step—did say the Ancient Greeks or say the Masai have a concept of morality? What formed their moral world? And as others have said, you can derive a morality from game theory for social animals via evolution (eg see work of Martin Nowak at Harvard). Or simply, that well-being of the tribe is utility function. A behaviour that would damage that well-being if EVERYONE did it, is labelled evil. A behaviour that enhances the tribal well-being if everyone did it, is labelled good.