out of the blue

Thesis 1: Morality Exists Regardless of God's Existence

If you can answer this question "no", you're saying that regardless of whether God exists or not, you're not going to go around raping people and murdering people. You're saying that it doesn't matter whether God exists or not: this is still going to be wrong.

To say this is to say that God Himself exists only within morality. You may say that this morality is a part of Him, but no matter how you look at it, God is bound by morality. He cannot morally do anything that would be wrong if we did it, were we in His place with all of His knowledge and wisdom. Therefore, we can evaluate God's supposed actions from a moral standpoint and decide whether he was behaving morally or not (always keeping in mind that, of course, we do not possess omniscience or perfect wisdom, things that God is postulated to possess).

This isn't, of course, a watertight argument. You may argue that if God is morality, then the only reason you don't steal rape or murder is because God commanded it. This seems to me to be the strongest counterargument, but I would still find it difficult to accept. To accept this is to say that morality is arbitrary – that God, in His Infinite Wisdom, spoke forth into the Darkness and said "and This is the Way it Shall Be: Man shall not take from his brother that which is not freely given unto him; Neither shall he take from a woman that which she does not freely give unto him", and he could just as likely have said "and This is the Way it Shall Be: Man shall go and do whatever the Hell he wants, for I have created him that if he be strong, he shall rule over the earth and over his fellows to his heart's content."

I, for one, find this distasteful.

Therefore, I subscribe to the Thesis: that Morality exists regardless of God's existence.