Mike Johnson asks:
Question for discussion: If morality is exclusively human in origin and relevance, why do we judge the God of the Bible with it?
Explained:
On the premise that human moral values and obligations are a product of human evolution, they would necessarily only apply to human beings and useful in governing and judging human behavior, and would be subject to change and further “evolve” over time.
Many atheists object to what they conclude are “immoral” acts committed by God described in the Bible, i.e. murder, commanding genocide, incest, slavery, etc.
How can morality that only applies to contemporary humans be used to make moral judgments against a hypothetical Creator God, who, if He existed, would not be bound to moral laws from human conceptualization, based on descriptions of immoral acts that the Bible portrays as occurring thousands of years ago? Doesn’t this show that even the atheist who would make such objections holds that morality is universal and absolute regardless of time, place or person, thereby placing the origin of moral values and obligations somewhere outside the scope of human convention?
Excellent question! First, let me address a minor detail before moving on to the main point of your question. I think other animals share a sense of morality with us humans. Some of the great apes like bonobos and chimpanzees for example, demonstrate a sense of morality, albeit a less complex and nuanced sense than we humans have.
The point of your question as I understand it is this: if morality is a human thing and is the product of evolution, vs. an absolute thing or a divine thing, then how can we humans judge the morality of God who is not a product of evolution and who is divine? Did I state your question correctly?
If I believed that God who create me existed, I would defer to his definition of morality, regardless of how out of step it seemed with my own sense of morality. But to reach that point, I have to first believe that a Creator God exists.
Atheists don’t judge God’s morality. In fact, anyone who judges God can’t be an atheist because atheists believe that gods don’t exist. To judge God, you have to first believe that he exists.
To atheists, gods are hypothetical; they exist only in concept and not in reality. I and other atheists judge the soundness of the concepts. If for example one believes that it is immoral to torture someone for eternity, but conceives of a moral God who tortures some people for eternity, then that concept of God is flawed.
As you point out, when we look at ancient writings like the Bible, we judge many of the acts it describes (genocide, etc) to be immoral. However atheists (and other non-Christians) think that the Bible was written by humans with no divine guidance, and we assume that the writers didn’t consider those acts to be immoral. They expected that those acts could be performed by a righteous God.
Morality isn’t absolute or even constant. We see that it changes over time and that it is different across different cultures. Our modern, Western sense of morality is different in certain respects from that of the writers of the Bible. Despite important differences among different cultures, morality by and large is consistent. It is certainly not perfect and so it doesn’t seem to have a divine origin (in fact it appears to have evolutionary origins). However it is consistent enough for societies to form rules, laws, and religious norms based on this common sense.
@The Atheist, thank you for your response. As far as animal “morality”, I think there are key distinctions between what we observe in animals and what we know of how we perceive morality, and it isn’t just a matter of degree or nuance. When something is mauled to death on Animal Planet, we don’t just get the sense that it is somewhat less murderous. We don’t think of it as murder or evil at all. When humans kill each other, it’s completely different. Biblical Christianity teaches that animals were not created with a sense of right and wrong, ability to reason and consider consequences, but rather react on programmed instincts that help them survive. It’s impossible to know exactly what’s going on in animal brains, but so far what we’ve observed hasn’t shown moral awareness as we experience it.
I won’t go further on that here because I don’t think it is relevant to this question, except to say that obviously humans do not apply moral judgment on animals because I think we recognize the gap—a gap that is perceived as even greater than the one separating human morality and the morality of a hypothetical God, judging by how many atheists’ tend to talk about God in human moral terms.
You have correctly restated the question, and I do understand that on the atheist view God does not exist, so any description or attributes of God would be purely hypothetical. When you say “Atheists don’t judge God’s morality “, I think that is the only logical recourse. To have any real opinion on God’s moral actions would mean applying our moral views on a Being who, IF He existed, would be out of our jurisdiction so to speak.
However, so many atheists I have talked to have expressed their disdain for the type of God that they see in the Bible that I can’t help but think they do not see it as illogical to morally judge that God concept. I think they cannot help but think in those terms because of the universal nature of morality. Even if you don’t “defer to [God’s] definition of morality” on paper because He is theoretical, you still make a real moral evaluation of Him. The “concept of God is flawed” only if we have Him doing something not in line with our own morality.
If “Morality isn’t absolute or even constant” as you say, this presents an even larger problem. Even if a clear-thinking atheist in the West is judging the humans who wrote about God as immoral, rather than the God concept, they are applying contemporary morality to another culture on the other side of the world for immoral concepts written centuries or millenia ago. On this view, there is really no reason to have any kind of moral opinion on what the Bible says. Yet we all do. I think this supports the idea that all humans have the expectation that morality applies to everyone regardless of belief, time or location.
Regarding belief, I think thereis a fundamental difference in how atheist and theists in general define morality. When you say “Morality… changes over time and that it is different across different cultures” you are talking about our perception of moral law or our own beliefs on what is right and wrong. I believe this is because of the limits you put on moral law; they do not come from or extend beyond humanity.
The Bible says that all people are created in the image of a moral Creator (Gen. 1:27) who wrote moral law on our hearts, of which our consciences bear witness (Rom. 2:15). Morality represents the laws we seek to follow, not how we interpret them or the beliefs we form about them. On atheism, our interpretation of them is all we have because there is no external source. It’s our interpretation of moral law that has changed over time and varies from culture to culture. What you see as minor differences in evolved understanding but “by and large” consistent morality via evolution, I view as different understanding of many moral laws but a general agreement on our understanding of the most obvious moral laws. Different interpretations do not change the truth of what’s being interpreted. Sometimes we get it wrong. :)
Christian teachings notwithstanding, we do observe that animals act as if they feel guilty when they have transgressed the “clan rules”. Christian teachings notwithstanding again, we observer that different animals do reason to varying degrees. You made a claim here that I’d like to press you on a bit further. You said that “so far what we’ve observed hasn’t shown moral awareness as we experience it.” There is research in animal morality that is readily accessible. Do you disagree with it, or are you unaware of it?
When we judge the morality of anyone, including the various authors of the Bible who wrote thousands of years earlier, we are clearly measuring their sensibilities against our own. We should respect that others may have morals that our different than our own, but all to often we don’t.
But this is different in a significant way than the argument against Christian claims that the morality of the Bible is absolute. We can point out actions and concepts that are clearly immoral to the Christian (e.g., genocide), and ask him to reconcile that with reasons he accepts the actions or concepts as absolutely moral. He has to either admit that genocide is moral, or that the Bible depicts God as less than absolutely moral.
At the end of your post, when you talk about the moral Creator of the Bible who wrote the moral law on our hearts, you seem to favor the position that I said I would adopt if I believed in a Creator – that I wouldn’t be in a position to judge the morality of my Creator who created my sense of morality. That would put me in the difficult position of admitting that “genocide is good”. You also said that “it’s our interpretation of moral law that has changed over time and varies from culture to culture.”, and not morality per se. If we take an example, genocide, what is another interpretation, perhaps the original interpretation, in which genocide can be seen as moral?
I’m aware of the research on ‘animal morality’ but I disagree with the conclusion that animals are moral agents. I agree that there are similarities in appearance and behavior (common designer=common traits), but I think evolutionist presuppositions can cause us to project human reasoning and morality onto animals that “act as if they feel guilty” when there are other plausible explanations (i.e. fear response). I agree that animals are “morally considerable” by human moral obligation because God has charged humans with careful stewardship of HIs creation (Gen. 1:26). However, animals lack the ability for moral transactions; to make moral judgments and act on them. I would agree with Kant’s ethics on human understanding of personhood and self-reflection, further developed by Korsgaard. The truth a Christian has to consider is that scripturally, God made man, not the animals, in His own image. Our uniqueness supports this, as does the fact that moral expectations of humans are far and away greater than any animal (and it is generally considered immoral to act like an animal, unless you’re an animal). If human moral obligations were not universal, would we care so much about other species? Are we repulsed by animal cruelty because of our evolved instinctual reciprocal tendencies toward other species which make us aware of the importance of a balanced ecosystem and diversity of life, or is it because it’s just plain wrong?
To clarify, re: “morality of the Bible”… The Bible isn’t the source of moral absolutes; God is. The Bible describes God’s moral nature. The Bible is both descriptive and prescriptive—just because something occurs in it does not mean it is telling us to do it. Some things only God has the right to do. “The Christian…has to either admit that genocide is moral, or that the Bible depicts God as less than absolutely moral” is another false dichotomy. God, as the author of life, has the right to give it and take it, and as God He is likely to have reasons for doing so that we will not know or understand. There may be good outcomes in loss of many lives that outweigh the good if that life were to remain. Being finite, there’s no way we could know. Consider that when God flooded the earth, almost all life, including those of babies and young children, was wiped out. Given that “man’s wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every scheme his mind thought of was nothing but evil all the time” just before the Flood (Gen. 6:5), are we sure that a sovereign God allowing those children to grow up in that wicked world wouldn’t have been the greater cruelty? Admittedly this is a hard concept for Christians, but if God exists as He is described in the Bible, taking life or allowing death and suffering (then and now) for His purposes is God’s sovereign right, and He doesn’t contradict His nature in doing so (Numbers 23:19). In the cases where God directed the destruction of certain nations as judgment and ‘innocent’ death resulted, I believe He had morally good reasons, even though I’m agnostic as to what they are.
On the atheist view, nobody claims to not know what good is because Christians can’t fully comprehend or thoroughly explain God. There also should be no reason that I would have to provide a defense for God’s actions, since on atheism, morality is personal or at least localized to groups and/or eras of time. Clearly moral obligations are not prescribed by us; they are transcendent and over-arching enough to encompass the grandest Being imaginable. You may claim that “good” evolves, but absolutely nobody lives that way. The fact that there is debate over anything proves that everyone assumes we are all bound by the same rules and we have no livable expectation that basic morals will be different in the future. There would be no purpose in trying to persuade others to the right view if we didn’t all presuppose a universal standard for what is right. On the atheist view, there is nothing that guarantees my moral viewpoint is any less true than yours, so opposing views and paradoxical ideas can theoretically agree. But we all know better, because clearly we disagree. :)
A thought experiment on moral evolution: Imagine the very first act or thought or inclination conceived or performed by some ancestor in our evolutionary past, whether or not that being thought of it as ‘moral.’ We have to look back on whatever and whenever that event was and define it as the beginning of human morality. At the point where morality in this sense first appeared, by what standard do we call it moral?
Sorry to take so long to respond – I had an enormous about of work fall in my lap over the past several days.
Let me try to answer all of the questions you had for me, and to expand on my view a bit, and also ask a few questions of my own:
I thought as you did, that the discussion of animal morality was a bit of an aside, but I think it’s turning out to be a substantial part of this discussion. So I’d like to pursue it a bit more with your permission. When you say that you disagree with the conclusion of animal morality, do you disagree because you find aspects of the research that is flawed? If so, what are some flaws? Or is it because you find that there is a leap of logic? If so, where do you find the leap? Or do you agree with the research and the logic but simply don’t like the conclusion?
Which evolutionist presuppositions to you disagree with?
My understanding of Kant (and Korsgaard) is that he defines a Person as having the ability to reason. Do you agree that animals can reason and that some humans, like certain mentally impaired humans, can’t? Would you consider humans that can’t reason Persons? To provide some context to my question, Kant thinks it’s OK to shoot his dog because the dog is not a Person.
Every species is unique, not just humans. Then our uniqueness doesn’t serve as evidence that man is made in God’s image. I would agree with a statement that it is immoral for us to act like certain other animals, but not your more general statement that it is immoral to act like an animal. For one thing, we do act like animals, a very specif type of animal. For another thing, we might think that it’s OK to be as gentle as a lamb, wise as an owl, or graceful as a gazelle.
Morality isn’t universal. Some people care nothing for other species. Others like Jains for example, care deeply about species that you are I don’t care about. Jain monks are careful as they walk not to step on insects for example. The reason that any of us cares about other species is that we can empathize with them. We feel their pleasure and pain to a certain degree. In some cases this is because we share enough gestures and vocalizations so that we can recognize to a certain extent how the animal feels. In other cases, it’s simply a recognition of our similarities; for example we all have a brain and nerves and can feel pleasure and pain. We therefore project what might cause pleasure or pain to these species.
When you say that the Bible isn’t the source of moral absolutes, God is, it seems to be a distinction without a difference. The Bible tells us everything we know about the Christian God; we don’t know about God outside of the Bible. In addition, if you believe that God is the Word on some level, and that the Bible is the Word of God, then the difference fades even more. In any case, when we talk about the nature of God, we are always talking about what the Bible’s says about the nature of God. Then the Bible must indeed be the source for any Christian claim of moral absolutes.
When we’re talking about absolute morality, we’re not talking about who has the right to do what, we’re talking about the morality of an act. Is killing always immoral? We’ll probably agree that it is not. For example, we may say that killing an attacker in self defense or in defense of another is moral. But how about killing a child in the mother’s womb? Is that ever moral? If so, under what circumstances? If your answer to this and other similar questions is “when God does it, because God has the right to do anything”, then you are also saying that something is moral because God does it and not because there is an absolute moral standard that God obeys. For example, if God decided to punish all humanity for all eternity in a construct such as hell, regardless of “salvation status”, would that be a moral act? If God created all that exists including us, and if he is completely sovereign, then he has the right to do it and he can declare it moral. Do you agree? However Your admissions that “we know innately what good means”, that “as moral agents can recognize [good] universally”, and that “you can know God is good by the self-evident experience of good.” seem diametrically opposed to this theory that God is sovereign and even his acts that don’t seem “good” are still good, merely because God does them. This is precisely the dilemma we touched on earlier.
You say that God cannot change who He is. We have the ability to change who we are, is God less able than we are? And if he is able, does God have the right to change who he is?
Regarding your comment that no one lives as if our concept of “good” evolves, I think that’s right: we live by current moral standards. The recognition that our standards have evolved doesn’t seem to dampen our desire to live by standards we have today. Some of us do consider that our sense of morality will most likely continue to evolve, but that still doesn’t change our desire to live by our current standards.
The reason we try to persuade others to live by our sense of morality is that it is our sense of morality and we feel strongly that it is right. For example we are offended by suicide bombing, even if we know that the bombers believe their acts are moral (they are obeying the words of God), we would like them to see from our point of view that it is not.
I think there is a way to say that my moral viewpoint is less true than yours (and vice versa). if we begin with questions of why certain acts are more or less beneficial, we are likely to find common ground. We can compare our theories about why one act is better than the other in the context of which is more beneficial under what set of circumstances. For example, if we agree that doing God’s will far outweighs any other benefit, then we might agree that the crusades, the inquisition, and suicide bombings are moral acts. Or if we’re unable to agree on the benefit of doing God’s will, we might agree that the balance of a peaceful society and respect for the individual are paramount. Paradoxical ideas can’t theoretically agree, at least not in a rational discussion. However agreement on ideas doesn’t necessarily depend on the the acceptance of any one moral view over the other.
It seems clear enough to each of us when intent does not involve morality (like when an ant carries a leaf to the ant bed), and it also seems clear enough to each of us when intent does involve morality (a woman returns a wallet that she finds on the sidewalk). The fact that there is a continuum of morality, and that there is no clear boundary in that continuum, doesn’t undermine our ability to recognize clear cases where morality is or is not involved. A view where boundary cases can undermine any evidence is a recipe for insanity. For example it allows us to call a grain of sand a “mountain”. To very liberally paraphrase Mat 17:20 – if you have faith, you can move a mountain the size of a mustard seed. :) The fact that the earliest moral intent is difficult to identify doesn’t undermine the idea that morality appeared at some point in the past, and that it has evolved to be what we experience today.
I think you are right that there are systems that we might call “religions” that don’t accept a system of one or more gods. We could take a more liberal definition to include other types of belief in the spiritual, but I’m not sure how that would change the conversation here. I think it’s reasonable to consider Buddhism a religion in general, since most forms of Buddhism incorporate a belief in the spiritual (Buddhism’s is grounded in a concept of a cycle of death and rebirth). The agreement across sects about the nature of God doesn’t seem necessary to define a belief system as a religion. At most it means that the sects are simply different religions. As you point out, Jains don’t believe in a creator or destroyer God, but they do believe there is a “divine”. I think you could say that there is an area of overlap between atheism and certain religions like Buddhism and Jainism in that the thing that defines an atheist is the lack of belief in a god. One can believe in an afterlife without believing in a god and in that degree, some subset of atheists can overlap some subset of secular Buddhists. However I don’t think you can equate atheism to religions like Christianity and then draw conclusions on that basis.
Sorry for MY delay in responding. After a week of no reply I wrongly assumed we were done and must’ve missed a notification until I happened to come back and check yesterday. :) Anyway, Happy 2012 to you and I’m glad to see a very well thought out response. I’ll do my best to address all points.
Addressing this question first: “Which evolutionist presuppositions to you disagree with?”
I don’t agree that evolution occurred on a macro level that explains the development of life on earth over millions of years from a spontaneously generated living cell. There simply isn’t evidence to support that which cannot be also used to support the Biblical concept that life was created to reproduce within kinds. That’s what we observe; varieties of cats, varieties of butterflies, varieties of roses; varieties of salamanders, varieties of finch, driven by natural selection. Novel structures and body plans occurring over time via genetic mutation isn’t observed. It would probably require orders of improbabilities to become the norm for a natural increase in information and complexity, the likes of which we never observe as we live life. Stratigraphic ordering is too inconsistent with evolutionary models (marine fossils at Everest’s peak, polystrate fossils, trilobite tracks spanning multiple layers, etc.) to say that it’s a better explanation than a large-scale flood. I could go on but there are other forums for ToE debates. :) I think that when we presuppose that evolution happened, its easy to claim new findings as evidence for it. Of course, the same can be said for creation. That’s the problem with looking at the distant past. I’d rather look to evidence that we can observe and test right now, which is why my original question is based on a moral argument.
When discussing animal morality, evolutionists presuppose when we look at, say, a whale, we are looking at our ancestor and therefore the moral behavior of animals and humans must be the same. It steers the logic in a direction that seeks information about us while studying animals that we only assume is relevant to us. If we examine something we have most available, which is our own moral thinking, instead of speculating about the past or how animals think (far less observable), we can make sensible conclusions about its scope and origin.
I believe that under “normal” conditions, human beings reason on the level I have mentioned earlier, specifically that we can reason about the implications of our actions; we negotiate moral transactions; we make moral judgments and act on them; we act in regards to a conscience rather than instinct, or simply recollection of pain or reward in familiar circumstances. I realize it’s difficult to separate some of those elements and I am not well enough read on animal morality to speak to it beyond a certain point. I don’t think animals “reason” the same way we do in considering moral obligations.
But yes, I think mentally impaired individuals are persons, and it would be hard to argue that even the most severely impaired humans are devoid of moral reasoning. Recent tests have shown that people in vegetative states recognized loved ones (http://abcn.ws/yVcoM6), so those impaired in other ways may surprise us in the depth of their moral understanding. Re: Kant, I can’t say it’s permissible to shoot a dog without a reason, because although a dg is not a person, he is God’s creature and morally considerable by humans. But it is on a completely different level not okay to shoot a human unless there is a very good reason.
I agree that every species is unique, but this isn’t the only reason to say the humans are made in the image of God. And acting like an animal can be viewed in a positive way, but I’d have to say generally it is not. “You’re acting like an animal” is seldom taken as a compliment. The assumption is I’m being unnecessarily aggressive, sloppy, mean or stupid. Owls are attributed wisdom because, some sources say, their faces look somewhat human, or as some legends have it, their keen vision allows them to see past “the blanket of dark magic.” In those cases, to say someone is wise as an owl, we’d actually be comparing a human to a human trait.
Re: “Morality isn’t universal. Some people care nothing for other species. “: From what you say here and where you talk about “moral vewpoints”, it’s clear you are defining morality as each individual’s feelings or convictions about right and wrong unique to each situation. Obviously humans interpret things differently, but this doesn’t change the nature of what we seek to understand. The fact there is always something we all feel we should do or ought not do in any situation shows that we are innately aware of some type of absolute law independent of our point of view.
That we agree on a majority of these “laws” goes a step further to show the universality of it. And when we, even though we disagree with others, expect them to see the same right and wrong that we do, it’s because we expect everyone is bound to the same law.
And when we look to the distant past and imagine the first murder and have this feeling that it was wrong, we transcend any moral time or geographic barrier that we’ve postured which evolutionist presupposition demands.
And finally, when many atheists make moral judgments on the concept of God, they are putting the highest conceivable being under the umbrella or morality that evolution demands be relegated to humans.
Can you think of a single alien movie or book where the human race is portrayed as apathetic about the invasion and subsequent annihilation of our world or our abduction into slavery? Would it be OK for us to conquer another planet, since our morals don’t apply in their world? Didn’t Obi-Wan cringe when the Empire blew up the planet Alderaan (not his home planet)? Didn’t Dennis Quaid and the alien on Fryine IV (had to look that one up on IMDB) negotiate through hatred for each other before arriving at compassion and mutual respect? These are stories, but they’re written by real people who understand that morality is universal. We don’t write stories any other way because we can’t live any other way.
I wouldn’t say that “we don’t know about God outside of the Bible” in the sense that you mean. There are those in the earliest portions of the Biblical narrative who knew of God. The Bible is an authority for believers because from it we know ABOUT God, His attributes, works, and the story of His relationship with mankind. We know OF God because His revelation through nature: “…what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, because they are understood through what has been made. So people are without excuse.” That’s Romans 1:19-20, and yes, it is information from the Bible, but it provides the answer to why most people look at nature and understand that it has to be the work of a Creator. I think we also have an innate sense of God that can be suppressed, as 1:18 suggests, and it is on the level of the heart (synonymous with volitional belief) that “a fool says in his heart, ‘There is no God.’” (Psalm 14:1) and His moral law is written on the hearts of men (Rom. 2:15). Without the Bible, we would still have at least a general awareness of God and His moral law.
Killing without just cause is murder, and that is wrong, even for God. However, when God “kills” He is justified because He is the author of life. Taking human life is probably the only moral issue we can take with God because many see it as a contrast to His character. The sovereign Creator of life undeniably has this right. He doesn’t change what good is by taking life away because it isn’t wrong when God does it; it’s wrong when people, who are NOT the Creator, do it, unless it is under the conditions He has allowed in scripture (self-defense or capital punishment). Ultimately it is good for God to take life He deems necessary for His ultimately good purposes, or if He judges sin. Ultimately, because we can’t possibly see the end result and understand His reasons that it’s easy to condemn God because of it. Since it is ultimately good for God to take life for His good purposes, then there is no contradiction in His character or the moral law that is part of His nature. When children suffer and die, it’s hard to see this emotionally, but intellectually we can’t find God guilty if we understand who He is.
You ask if God is less able than we are if God cannot change who He is. The inability is not due to lack of power or knowledge, but the idea would contradict Himself; God has said that He does not change (Num. 23:19, James 1:17). He also can’t make a square circle or a rock too heavy for Him to lift. These are logical absurdities, and logic and reason are also a part of His nature (Isaiah 1:18).
“The reason we try to persuade others to live by our sense of morality is that it is our sense of morality and we feel strongly that it is right. For example we are offended by suicide bombing, even if we know that the bombers believe their acts are moral (they are obeying the words of God), we would like them to see from our point of view that it is not.”
I don’t think we condemn bombers (if the survive) to prison because we feel strongly that they should see our point of view on their deeds. We condemn murder and make civil laws to punish and deter criminals because of the undeniably self-evident laws that compel us toward good and away from evil. In an arena of rational discussion, we can hardly call ourselves rational if we settle on the idea that such moral judgments are relative; that our morals condemn the bomber whose morals in turn condemn us for condemning an innocent man. We can say that “we desire to live by our current standards”, which is probably true, but haven’t we wronged the bomber who feels his moral standards differ? It almost seems a form of self-denial to deeply analyze the universal way we apply morality and say it’s because we somehow can’t get past an existential and emotional need to project subjective morality on everyone else.
“The fact that the earliest moral intent is difficult to identify doesn’t undermine the idea that morality appeared at some point in the past, and that it has evolved to be what we experience today.”
I think these are, in the vein of Occam’s Razor, assumptions beyond what is necessary. On evolution, we say moral acts first occurred in the past because the morality we use now had to have had a beginning. The fact that the earliest moral intent in the “continuum of morality” is impossible to identify is not because no one alive now was around to witness it, but that it is logically impossible for any moral thought or action to occur without an earlier standard by which we can call it moral. If activity passed from non-moral to moral at any point in time, that point requires a priori moral standard already in place. In light of the logical contradictions with the idea of moral evolution and the inconsistency between the idea of subjective morality and the universal way in which we always apply it, it seems moral law logically must have originated outside of humanity.
With your last paragraph on religious systems, I fully agree. :)
Hi, Mike. Sorry (Again!) for taking SO LONG to get back. I’m STILL swamped with work – people say “it’s a good problem to have”… but it’s still a problem.
I’d like to respond, but you mentioned that when I didn’t get back last time, you thought we were done – so please let me know if you’re still around (either post here or send email) and I’ll respond in detail. Thanks for taking time to clarify your views!
Atheists don’t have to hold God to human morality. But it’s important to evaluate a given god-concept according to some external standard. Here’s why.
If God is held to no standard than his own, then Goodness is meaningless. To say God is Good is just to say God is God. He could order contradictory things and we would have to say they are both Good. And he could torture children and we would have to say it was Good. Goodness has no meaning in authoritarian, unaccountable regimes. You end up following mere Power.
So, we don’t care what standard you hold God to, but it has to be something. Or you give up Goodness itself.
Donald, you describe a conundrum only exists on the belief that God does not exist. You have to hold God to SOME sort of standard because you haven’t allowed Him to exist as that standard. Goodness is not an attribute or character trait that God has adopted, but rather goodness is a part of God’s nature. In a very literal sense God is good. This is why the Euthyphro dilemma is a false dichotomy; it excludes the possibility that these things are a reflection of God’s moral nature. If God were to be held to a greater standard, that greater standard would have to be God. As infinite and eternal Creator, He is first cause and first principal of morality.
>it excludes the possibility that these things are a reflection of God’s moral nature.
This is Wm Lane Craig’s attempt to navigate the Euthyphro dilemma. But to simply say that God is good by his nature is another way to redefine “Good” so that God fits the definition. And it still require us to say that torturing kids is good because God stands by and watches, doing nothing.
The first horn of the dilemma, where God is held to an independent standard, is the only resolution that preserves “Goodness”. The second horn or Craig’s resolution both give up any meaningful definition of Goodness.
You can have Goodness or God, but not both.
>You can have Goodness or God, but not both
…unless we hold God to an independent standard of Good.
I would disagree with you on this one Donald. If there were a Creator God, then the Creator that created me would have by extension, created my sense of morality. I as a creature would have no basis for judging the morality of the creator of my morality. Stating that God is Good is not so much saying that God is God, but rather a confession that the creator of morality is beyond our moral judgement, and is therefore Good (in so much as he is Good, and not Bad, for having created us).
>I as a creature would have no basis for judging the morality of the creator of my morality.
But it doesn’t follow that God is Good, only that you can’t judge him.
>but rather a confession that the creator of morality is beyond our moral judgement
This, too, doesn’t say God is Good, just that we can’t judge him.
>and is therefore Good (in so much as he is Good, and not Bad, for having created us)
This doesn’t follow at all. Such a judgment would require an independent standard to compare God to.
And we can’t assume that creating humanity was “good”. It is true that none of the things we say are good could exist without humanity. But on balance it is not clear that existing is better than not existing. It really depends on how lucky you are or how much God favors you.
What we want to avoid is saying that being served for dinner or made into ointment is Good. 30,000 kids will die of starvation today. Right now, a girl is spending her last moments with her killer. God will do nothing. To say that is Good in the light of such facts is just to redefine Good so that God fits the definition.
The point is that saying ‘a God who watches little kids get tortured is good’ is meaningless. It simply means he follows his own rules. Leibniz noted that even the Devil does that.
God doesn’t have to meet our standard of Good, but he has to be held to some independent standard, or it means nothing to say he is Good.
Donald, I think it follows that God is Good without an external standard, but only by definition – it doesn’t say anything about the nature of God, but rather that we must accept the definition. However God happens to be, and whatever he decides to do would be good by definition, including genocide and being made into ointment. I think I’m agreeing with Plato here.
Like you I want to avoid saying that 30,000 kids starving to death is good, and fortunately for me, that is easy to do. But not so easy for someone who believes in a Creator who is Good and who is above all standards by which Good can be defined.
Mike, The question the Euthyphro dilemma raises is whether there is an absolute Good by which God is measured (in which case “God is Good” tells us something of God’s nature), or if instead God decrees that however he happens to be, that’s what is meant by “Good” (in which case “God is Good” tells us nothing of God’s nature). When you say that God is the standard, you are asserting the second part of the dilemma. In that case when you say that God is Good, it says nothing of God’s nature.
The statement “God is Good” either means nothing, or it means that there is a standard that is higher than God.
If I believed that I was a creature of the Creator, then I could affirm that I have no basis to judge morality and I would have to accept whatever the Creator tells me is moral. However, I would still be stuck with the dilemma of what it means to say that “God is Good”, just as you are now.
“[W]hen you say that God is Good, it says nothing of God’s nature.”
We know innately what good means because we experience good, and as moral agents can recognize it universally, so this tells us that God is. God cannot change what is good by decree, because He cannot change who He is. You can know God is good by the self-evident experience of good.
No. this does not tell ‘us that God is.’ It tells us that people have no confidence and want to believe that someone is in charge. Grow up. No-one is in charge of you except you. With the support of people we can stay sober. There is no need of this ‘ God ‘ you keep harking on about. There is no God. Open the door. Step out of the cage of theistic belief. Smell the fresh air of freedom and individual responsibility. It is far more beautiful than any God based belief.
Those who say A.A. is not a religion are the most dishonest of all, and most of all they are dishonest to themselves. A.A. is a religion, but it is quite possible to use the support of A.A. to get sober and still stay true to yourself; but it takes courage, same as it does everywhere.
Typical pseudo-logic god-fearing cr*p. Like much of the gobbledygook of A.A. it is written by the mentally ill for the mentally ill. This is the smegma of a syphilitic mind.
Addressing any comment in particular? :^)