Please help me understand non-religious metaethics.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Otherwise acts of genocide in the Old Testament for example, would remain unjustified.

What I think both you and Nathan find so unjustifiable in the Old Testament is because you place a much much higher value on individuality than its authors did.  You find it unjust that others suffer for the sins of others because you see them as distinct individuals who should be judged entirely based upon their own merits and faults.  Yet it is clear that the Old Testament authors did not view the world that way.  Children even unto the third and fourth generation are punished for the sins of their ancestor because they are that ancestor.  The commandment to honor your father and mother is also a commandment to honor yourself, for you are a part of your father and you are a part of your mother, and it was meant it in a way considerably deeper than the mere symbolism most of us would understand such a thing.

The place in the Bible where I think that viewpoint finds its strongest expression is in Genesis 24, where Abraham's servant is seeking to acquire a bride for Isaac.  It's clear from the context that while negotiating for Rebekah that servant is speaking with Rebekah's mother and brother and that physically her father Bethuel is not present, possibly because he is absent, but more likely because his body is dead, and yet the agreement is made with Bethuel in the form of his wife and his eldest son.  Bethuel is dead but long live Bethuel.  Indeed, Bethuel lives even today via the descendants of Isaac and Rebekah.

Where the New Testament differs from the Old Testament on this is not in abandoning the idea of collective identity, but in emphasizing its logical conclusion.  We humans are all sons of Adam and thus are all one.  Our enemies are us.  Yet that doesn't negate the possibility of conflict with other humans as we seek to maximize the well being of Adam, merely that we should look beyond merely the interests of our selves, our families, our clans, or even our nations, but to the interest of us all.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Given that intelligence is a product of evolution and even thought is dependent on matter and energy, there is no reason to believe that it can exist independently of the physical form. Even if we delete this definition to allow us to run with the idea, then evidently we would still be dealing with a higher ‘self’, to such an extent it does not exist as nor require a corporeal form. It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us.

Doesn't appear to me that you've deleted the definition.  To me it looks like you're still holding on to it, even as you claim to be considering what if you didn't.  You still are equating the self with an individual corporeal form, otherwise I fail to see how you can assert "It is not us."

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Andrew, it looks like an unclear pronoun reference in what I quoted earlier was the cause of some confusion.  I was taking "it" as referring to "the mind" and you meant "the mind of God".  But even so, I fail to accept your assertion that if God exists, he must lack a physical form.  Granted, the Abrahamic religions generally reject the idea of an anthropomorphic deity, but that still leaves open pantheism, pandeism, panentheism, and no doubt other concepts that also posit a physical yet non-human deity.

Assume for a moment that God is pantheistic.  Your assertion that "It cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that we take because it is not us." would be analogous to "A human cannot therefore ‘judge’ the actions that its pinky finger takes because it is not a pinky finger." Now I don't know about you, but I think I can judge my pinky.  But even if you disagree, then what about the Christian belief that God became Man in the form of Jesus?  Even if one asserts that one can only be justly judged by one's peers, then if Jesus were indeed both Man and God, it would seem to me that he meets your requirements to be a judge of human actions despite being God.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Regardless of whether god has a physical or not physical form it is a god. It is not a human. If it spends a brief sojourn in a human body, it's still not 'a human' as by being able to do such a thing, to come and go as it pleases from form to form, clearly demonstrates.

Except that if one accepts at face value the gospel account, clearly God clearly did not go from form to form as it pleased.  The body of Jesus did not spring into existence out of nothing, he was born.  He did not wink out of existence, he died.  The resurrection was into that same physical form, with all the wounds he suffered during the crucifixion still present.  He did so because to have done otherwise would have indeed meant that as you assert, he hadn't really been human.  If that were the case, then the crucifixion and resurrection are a farce without any validity because they only have merit if Jesus was human.  You keep asserting a very black or white viewpoint that there are certain categories which it is impossible to be jointly a part of, but that is solely because of how you define what it means to be a member of those categories.

As for the pinky analogy, no analogy can ever be a perfect representation, but I must reject your assertion that your pinky is you.  While it could not exist without you, you could exist perfectly well without it, albeit you would be somewhat different.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Actually, I do subscribe to adoptionism.  As for the virgin birth of Jesus, it couldn't have been parthogenesis since Jesus was male. Aside from that nitpick, the whole of the nativity story is non-essential to my own views of Jesus. In part that is because as an adoptionist I do not see the need for any miracles prior to Jesus' baptism, but also those alleged miracles run counter to the theme that when Jesus began his ministry, everyone was startled that Jesus was acting as he did.

As for Matthew 19:17, I don't see it as deference, in the sense of subservience that you seem to mean it, but acknowledgement that without the omniscience ascribed to God, it is impossible for us as humans to fully foresee the consequences of our actions and thus know what is absolutely good.  At best, we can establish general rules that certain actions are more likely to lead to good than to evil. I happen to be a gradual adoptionist, so my view is that at that point in the ministry of Jesus, he had some but not all of the aspects of godhood, and in particular he did not at that time possess omniscience.

That said, it is clear that I can't convince you that is possible for a being to be both god and human. The definitions you use preclude not only that possibility, but also the possibility that god could fully ken man or vice versa.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

@Nathan: why is it more difficult to reconcile the presence of good in a world created by an evil God than it is to accept the presence of evil in a world created by the God of Christianity?

I think Nathan laid out a fairly clear position. (Italics Nathan's, bold mine.)

I grant that it's not by any means self-evident that creating the universe would give a deity the right to establish moral norms but I don't see where else in a divinely created universe moral norms could have come from, without positing either that the deity that created it is in some way not omnipotent and has less than complete power over it or that the moral norms are not objective. I don't see any options for a theistic universe having any other setup than its creator deity establishing moral norms or morality being entirely subjective, and neither of those provide any real basis on which to call the creator deity 'evil'.

It's not that Nathan finds it impossible for there to be good in a world created by an evil deity, rather Nathan finds it impossible for there to be an objective standard of good and evil under which a creator deity could be deemed evil.

I'd have to disagree with that proposition.  Granted, in a theistic universe it is difficult to see who else would be in a position to judge "absolute good" but "relative good" doesn't require deific omniscience to determine.  Relative good involves acting upon others in a manner that is mutually beneficial whenever such an option exists.  In that sense, it would be possible for a creator deity to be evil if ey acts in its own benefit to the harm of others, even when a action that would be beneficial to both exists.