Your “refutation” is embarrassing because - like many of your arguments - it relies on deliberately misinterpreting what Socrates means by “piety”, and then deliberately conflating two different meanings of the word “love”. This is popularly known as a “straw man” argument, and is one of your favourite tactics. Anybody who wishes to see evidence for this can read the section in question themselves, and judge for themselves.

Incidentally, the accusation that I call into question the intellectual capacity of other people is dreadfully ironic and faintly amusing. I’m not the one who has just published an entire book predicated on calling other people’s intellectual capacity into question.

Yes, I’ve returned to my initial point to rehash my position because no one has addressed it to my satisfaction.

Blogger quotes Karl Rahner: “‘Anyone who is just looking for religious inspiration and shies away from the demands of patient, laborious, and at times tedious reflection should not enter into this investigation.”

I can quote people too:

“So what are we left with? A collection of assertions about the ultimate nature of existence that are riddled with contradictions, defy reason and logic, convey no intelligible meaning, invalidate our consciousness, destroy our concept of reality–and that we are meant to take seriously while being told our limited development makes it impossible for us to understand them. If one does not have have an intellectual inferiority complex and is not easily intimidated, this is not impressive.” –Nathaniel Branden

The “simplicity” is not incoherent as it has been well understood for close to 900 years (perhaps “able to be well understood by those that apply themselves”: “Anyone who is just looking for religious inspiration and shies away from the demands of patient, laborious, and at times tedious reflection should not enter into this investigation.” Karl Rahner)

I suppose. The question is, if God existed, would His rules be an objective moral code? Or would His code just embody another set of preferences, albeit the preferences of someone very powerful?

I see no necessary reason to believe the former. Which is why I don’t see why so many theists think the existence of God would be both necessary and sufficient to establish the existence of objective morality.

“The ’simplicity of God’ is that His Goodness, His Will, His Existence, etc are all the same thing.”

That is incoherent.

If God’s rules are established as the objective morality, it may or may not be moral to do what someone threatening you demands, you have to make the (prudent) choice, perhaps leading to martyrdom.

“I don’t understand what simplicity has to do with goodness.”

The “simplicity of God” is that His Goodness, His Will, His Existence, etc are all the same thing. This resolves your last point as well.

Yes, if God existed, obedience to His rules might be an instrumental good, in that it might help you get something you wanted, or avoid something you didn’t want.

In the same way, it might be prudent to obey anyone who has power over you, whether he be a prison guard, kidnapper, terrorist, policeman, bureaucrat, parent, etc. That doesn’t mean that it’s immoral to disobey, or that the person who has power over you has provided the basis for an objective moral code. It just means someone else’s will is a fact you have to consider when you’re figuring out how to get what you want.

“Take as the axiom the simplicity of God. Then His existence and goodness are one in the same, thus, we have an objective morality.”

I don’t understand what simplicity has to do with goodness.

In any case, if you want to define “God” as an objective moral good that we all ought to seek, then you’ve “proved” (in a tautologous fashion) that “God,” if it existed, would be the basis for an objective morality. But you’ve done so by sacrificing the usual notion of “God,” the one that theists and atheists argue over. The word “God” does not normally refer to some sort of end state to be attained or maximized.

Or don’t take that axiom. Go with hedonism, or happiness, or avoiding pain, or whatever else has been posited as “good”. Then what is moral is what gives you eternal reward and immoral is the opposite, that which doesn’t.

Regardless:
As stated, you are free to determine your own morality (Fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil…), but you won’t necessarily be judged on it…in the God’s Game, God’s Rules (← objective morality) scenario.

So what you’re saying is that it would be prudent for me to follow God’s rules, assuming I don’t want to suffer. Fine, but that’s not the same thing as saying it’s immoral not to follow God’s rules, or that God provides a basis for objective morality.