How do we know God is good rathe
r than evil? After all, there is a mix of both good and evil in the world. Which one is God responsible for? As Christians, we look to the Bible to tell us about God’s moral nature, but what if we didn’t have Scripture? Could we discern that God is good from natural theology alone? Yes, and here’s how.
Most people would agree that the concept of God is best described as “the greatest conceivable being.” If we posited a being, Q, as God, and yet we could conceive of another being, X, who is greater than being Q, then being X—not being Q—must be the true God since nothing can be greater than God. If God qua God is the greatest conceivable being, then He must be omnibenevolent (OB) because it is greater to be good than it is to be evil, and it is greater to be all-good than it is to be partially good. So if there is a God, He must be OB.[1]
This argument trades on the notion that it is greater to be good than it is to be evil. But what justification do we have for thinking this to be the case? Why not think that evil is greater than good, and thus God must be omnimalevolent? I would argue that we are justified in thinking that good is greater than evil because our moral intuitions plainly tell us so. There’s a reason we praise those who do good and punish those who do evil, rather than punishing those who do good and praising those who do evil. There is a reason we promote selflessness rather than selfishness; why we extol courage and condemn cowardice. The reason is that our moral intuitions tell us good is to be sought for its own sake and evil is to be shunned. Why would our moral intuitions incline us toward the good if evil is greater than good? Our intuition that good is superior to evil is so basic that even atheists recognize as much. In fact, they are so convinced of this truth that they employ it as part of an argument against the existence of God, reasoning that if God exists He would not permit the amount of evil we see in this world. Since a gross amount of evil does exist in the world, they think it proves that God (probably) does not exist.
Even when we participate in various evils, we do not do so because we think they are greater than the good. This is made obvious by the fact that when we do such evils, we do not want others to reciprocate. When it comes to the good, however, we do want others to reciprocate. For example, while we may steal from others, we don’t want them to steal from us. And yet no one would say that while they want to be kind to others, they hope no one is kind to them. Our moral intuitions make it obvious that good is superior to evil, and there is no good reason to be skeptical of this. Indeed, we can be just as certain that good is greater than evil as we are certain of logical laws such as the sum always being greater than its parts.
Another reason for thinking God is good is because the good needs an ontological foundation. It cannot just exist “out there.” It needs to be grounded in something. As the metaphysical ultimate, God is the best grounding for objective morality. This becomes particularly apparent when we look at the nature of moral values and moral duties. Moral imperatives require a conscious person to issue such commands, and moral obligations only make sense in the context of personal relationships. If moral imperatives require a person to give them, and if those moral imperatives transcend all human persons, then it makes sense to ground those imperatives in a personal, transcendent God. And if God grounds the good, then God is good.
But why think it is the good that needs to be grounded ontologically, as opposed to evil? I would argue that it is because we have good reason to think that goodness is a positive ontological reality, whereas evil is merely a privation of the good (and privations—since they do not have existence—do not need to be grounded in anything). Just as coldness does not exist, but is an absence of heat, and just as darkness does not exist, but is the absence of light, evil does not exist as a positive reality. It is the absence of or frustration of the good. All things have an innate potentiality to become a particular kind of thing, and/or to act in a particular kind of way. Evil is “present” when those innate potentialities are either absent, frustrated, or perverted.
One might counter that we could just as easily claim that evil is a positive ontological reality, and goodness is just a privation of evil. In such case, it would be evil that needs an ontological foundation rather than the good. And if God—the metaphysically ultimate being—serves as the best grounding for evil, then God is evil. So why should we think it is goodness rather than evil that exists, and it is evil rather than goodness that is the privation? The reason is simple: While all evils depend on the prior existence of some good, not all goods require the prior existence of some evil.[2]
We can envision a world in which there is marriage (good) without divorce (evil), but there could not be a world in which there was divorce (evil) without marriage (good). We can conceive of a world in which there is life (good) without death (bad), but there cannot be a world in which there is death (evil) without (life). We can conceive of a world in which there is health (good) without sickness (evil), but we cannot conceive of a world in which there is sickness (evil) apart from at least the concept of health (good). We can conceive of a world in which there is private property (good) without theft (evil), but we cannot conceive of a world in which there is theft (evil) without private property (good). We can conceive of a world in which there is sex (good) without lust (evil), but not of a world in which there is lust (evil) without sex (good). We can conceive of a world in which there is truth and honesty (good) without lying and deceit (evil), but we cannot envision a world in which there is lying and deceit (evil) without the concept of truth and honesty (good). Or consider blindness. We consider blindness to be evil precisely because it frustrates the natural function of the eyes. It would not make sense to speak of blindness, however, apart from the prior concept of sight. Murder is evil because it causes an unjust privation of life. Evil is parasitic on the good, and thus goodness is not only greater than evil, but ontologically prior to evil.
Another reason to think goodness exists and evil is a privation of goodness is the fact that our moral intuitions inform us, and our conscience confirms in us, the truth that we have a moral duty to do good rather than evil. It is more reasonable to think that we would have an obligation to a positive reality rather than a privation of reality.
For these reasons and others, I think we have good reason to believe God is good.
[1]If the ontological argument for God’s existence is successful, it establishes the necessary existence of a maximally perfect being, and hence a being who is OB.
[2]I say “not all goods require the prior existence of some evil” rather than “no goods require the prior existence of evil” because there are some goods that do depend on the prior existence of evil. Consider mercy. Mercy presupposes the existence of some wrong doing. There would be no place for mercy in a world bereft of evil. Of course, this does not make evil more basic than mercy because mercy is only needed due to the absence of some good, and that absence of good depends on a prior good. While mercy may only exist because evil exists, it is dissimilar to evil in the fact that it is not a privation of some evil, whereas evils are always a privation of some good. So while all goods may not be ontologically independent of all evils, the fact remains that all goods are basic to evil in ways that evil is not basic to the good. To say evil is a privation is not to say that all goods are ontologically independent of evil, but rather that evil is always parasitic on the good, and thus evil cannot be a positive ontological reality.
Thinking to Believe 
November 29, 2011 at 7:42 am
Interesting points!
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November 30, 2011 at 12:33 pm
I think another way of knowing the God is good is because of Jesus Christ.
If Jesus is Lord and not a lunatic nor a liar, then God is good.
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February 14, 2012 at 4:00 pm
Shite
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May 28, 2012 at 12:27 pm
A couple of problems: First, an appeal to intuition is a fallacy, since intuition is not a measure of truth. For instance, it is intuitively obvious that the sun rotates around the Earth, which is the opposite of what’s actually true. Thus any appeal to intuition is an invalid argument.
Second, the examples of evil being a perversion of good are cherry-picked. Choose alternate options like warmongering vs. peacemaking, or selfishness vs. unselfishness, or greed vs. altruism, etc. and you can make the opposite case. Also, many of the things listed as “good” (like life, marriage, private property, blindness, etc.) are simply neutral and can even be evil, not necessarily good at all.
So I don’t think one can claim God is good any more than one can claim he is evil.
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May 29, 2012 at 3:24 pm
Derek,
When I speak of intuitions, I am not speaking of hunches or “the way things seem to be,” but innate knowledge. For example, logical intuitions. I know that A cannot be both A and not-A, and yet I could never prove this. Indeed, we rely on such things as being true in order to prove other things.
Please explain how your examples show that evil is not a perversion or absence of the good.
I don’t see how your conclusion follows from your premises. Do you honestly not believe that there is such a thing as good and evil, and that we can distinguish between the two? And as for God, if God exists He is the greatest conceivable being and thus must be good by definition. Either God exists and He is good or God does not exist. There is no possibility of an evil God if theism is true.
Jason
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May 29, 2012 at 4:43 pm
Well, I have several problems with this. You say you refer to moral intuitions being innate, but they’re not necessarily so. Is it moral to divert a runaway train down a tunnel so it kills one person rather than leave it on its course to kill five people? (And if so, then is it moral to kill an innocent passerby to harvest his organs just because five other people will die of organ failure if you don’t?). Is it moral to use immoral acts to achieve a moral goal? If we innately know it’s immoral for us to kill and steal, is it moral when God does it? In some cultures theft, slavery and child brides are moral, although not in ours.
Also, A can also be seen as not-A in the case of, say, identical software copies. Or perhaps even ambivalent emotional states (love-hate, for instance).
Morality in nature can be explained by behavior that increases the survivability of a species while reducing its vulnerability. In all social species, there must be some inherent mechanism to allow species to coexist at least relatively peacefully–otherwise they’d go extinct. Piranha don’t kill each other, for instance. Humans and other advanced social mammal species have evolved more sophisticated moral behavior, including cooperation, altruism, friendship, kindness, etc. In that sense you could claim morality is innate, but it’s not, as you said, something that can’t be proven.
You ask, “So why should we think it is goodness rather than evil that exists, and it is evil rather than goodness that is the privation? The reason is simple: While all evils depend on the prior existence of some good, not all goods require the prior existence of some evil.” But the problem is that it’s easy to come up with contrary examples that lead to the opposite conclusion: selfishness (evil) must exist before altruism (good), warmongering (evil) must exist before peacemaking (good), fear (evil) must exist before courage (good), etc. All these goods require the prior existence of some evil. And many of your examples are not inherently good-evil but arguably neutral or even the opposite in some cases. For instance, life is not inherently good (it’s inherently destructive), nor death inherently evil (most life cannot evolve or even exist without the deaths of others); private property isn’t inherently good (ask a communist), nor theft evil (all living things depend on taking something that doesn’t belong to them); etc.
Furthermore, here’s a little moral test you can try: Ask anyone to write down the list of behaviors they consider evil–behaviors they themselves use to identify evil persons. Chances are, they’ll come up with most or all of the following: murder and genocide, animal and human sacrifice, torture, child abuse, animal abuse, theft, slavery, pedophilia, rape, forced incest, cannibalism, betrayal and lying. Then look through the Bible to see who commits or condones such behaviors…and you’ll discover that it’s not Satan who does these things, it’s God. I know apologists object to these claims, saying God has a right to do these things or the actions may not have been quite as bad as the Bible portrays them…but the fact remains that God is the one who commits the behaviors we use to identify evil. That would tend to imply God is evil, don’t you think? Either that, or our innate moral sense is out of whack.
Perhaps this is more detail than you wanted…but you did ask. 😉
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August 4, 2012 at 6:17 pm
Which if these two fathers is more good:
1. A father who lets his two year old children choose either to play in busy intersections or not, and then suffer the consequences of their actions (being killed by a car)?
2. A father who pulls his two year old children away the moment they set foot on a busy intersection, and then tells them what would happen if they kept doing that?
Similarly, which of these two gods is more good:
1. A god who lets his children choose to lie and steal or not, and then suffer the consequences of their actions (their souls being lost)?
2. A god who pulls his children away the moment their hands reach for something that does not belong to them, and then tells them what would happen if they kept doing that?
Which of these two fathers is more good:
1. A father who lets his children come up with countless conflicting ideas about what he wants them to do, and argue among themselves about which one of them has the most accurate idea?
2. A father who talks to all of his children and tells them what he wants them to do, and doesn’t leave it up to his highly imperfect children to tell each other what he wants?
Similarly, which of these two gods are more good:
1. A god who lets his children come up with countless conflicting ideas about what he wants them to do, and argue among themselves about which of them has the most accurate idea?
2. A god who talks to all of his children and tells them what he wants them to do, and doesn’t leave it up to his highly imperfect children to tell each other what he wants?
Keeping in mind that we children are infinitely more inferior to these gods in understanding our actions than a two year old is to his father in understanding his actions.
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August 6, 2012 at 2:53 pm
Frank, your point is obvious. But your presupposition is that God is supposed to act like a human father. But if he did so, he would have to violate the very freedom of the will that He purposely endowed us with. God has a morally sufficent reason for permitting the evils that He does, and those purposes could not be accomplished if He stopped everyone from choosing evil.
Jason
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August 6, 2012 at 4:37 pm
Christians often compare God with a father taking care of his kids, so it seems only fair to show how the comparison is faulty.
But as for free will…do you have any evidence that it actually exists? I know it seems intuitively obvious that we have free will, but as science has shown us again and again, intuition is no indicator of truth. We do know that particles behave deterministically and that we are made of particles, so it’s reasonable to conclude our behavior is determined. Furthermore, recent tests studying brain scans of subjects has shown that researchers can accurately predict what decisions a person will make seven seconds PRIOR to the subjects actively making a free will decision, which implies free will is only an illusion created by our brains after they have made our decisions for us unconsciously. While neither piece of evidence is conclusive, it’s still better than the evidence for free will.
But even if we assume free will exists, what can be considered a “morally sufficient reason” for allowing people to commit atrocities against other people? If our having free will is so important to God, then why does he allow some people to eliminate the free will of other people (which is what happens with rape, murder, theft, etc.)? And why does he give us predispositions that subvert our free will decisions (like who in his right mind would “choose” to eat his own arm off or slaughter his own loved ones, both of which sane people are predisposed against)?
It seems to me the only moral position a good God would have would be to allow free will decisions only as far as they don’t cause significant harm to others. After all, is there ANY good reason to allow people to commit rape? Genocide? Slavery? The moral position is to OPPOSE and PREVENT such behaviors whenever possible, even if they restrict one’s freedom of action, and since God evidently refuses to help, shouldn’t the default assumption be that he is evil?
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August 7, 2012 at 1:49 pm
Derek,
God is our father, but merely sharing the same title as our human fathers does not mean that God is going to act just like a human father. My human father played with me, but God does not. My human father audibly speaks to me, but God does not. Just because God is like a father in some respects does not mean he is an exact parallel to a human father.
I don’t need evidence to believe in the existence of free will. I experience it. It is a properly basic belief. As such, we are justified in believing it unless and until a defeater arises that would show the belief to be false. Interestingly, however, if there is no free will, I would not be free to follow the evidence if such a defeater was presented because even my response to the defeater would be determined. That’s why the belief that there is no free will undermines itself. It is not a rational belief, because the only reason one would have for believing it is that they were determined to.
I don’t have to know what God’s morally sufficient reasons are in order to know that He has them, or in order to know that they could not be accomplished if evil was never permitted. What I do need to know is that God exists. If I can know that, then given the presence of evil in the world and the character of God, it follows that He must have some morally sufficient reason for permitting the evil.
Giving us the ability to choose does not mean God creates us with a blank slate. He even gave us a conscience to help guide us in the right direction. All freedom means is that if we so choose, we can ignore conscience, wisdom, commands, and common sense to do what we want to do even if it is harmful to ourselves or others.
Freedom is required for us to be good. But that freedom can be abused. It’s not as though God wanted us to do evil. But he can’t give us free will and then prevent us from using it in a harmful manner. To do so would obviate our freedom. So if we are going to be free to do good, then we have to be free to do evil. The good thing is that God can use acts of evil for a greater good.
Jason
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August 7, 2012 at 5:03 pm
Good, at least you get that a father is not a good analogy to God. But SO MANY Christians use that comparison all the time, not realizing that there’s more wrong with the analogy than right.
Of course you don’t need evidence to believe…you’re a theist. 😉 If evidence were critical to you, you wouldn’t be a theist.
I however, DO need evidence before I believe anything. Most people believe we have free will because it seems to intuitively obvious…just like it’s intuitively obvious that the Sun revolves around the Earth and it’s intuitively obvious that you turn motorcycle handlebars to the right if you want to turn right. But as science has shown time and time again, intuition is no indicator of truth. And since the only evidence we have implies that free will is nothing but an illusion, it is irrational to assume as a “properly basic belief” that we have free will.
You seem to have a simplistic view of what having no free will would mean. It does NOT mean that we cannot make complex choices, merely that under the exact same circumstances we will ALWAYS make the exact same choice. There is no reason to believe we would feel any differently whether or not free will exists, nor would there be any reason to live our lives as if our choices are not predetermined. After all, PERCEPTION of free will would be factored into any choices we make.
How can you even say this? God could be pure, malicious evil, a monster who creates humanity, gives us hope and allows us to experience love and joy in our brief lives, only to make us suffer for all eternity haunted by the memories of that brief life…except for the very few he has worshiping him for all eternity. ALL the evidence would fit such an evil God perfectly.
You can’t KNOW God is moral, you can only HOPE he is. But to claim that he is moral in the face of the evidence we do have requires faith…and faith is no indicator of truth (and is, in fact, almost guaranteed to lead one to false beliefs, as indicated by the many thousands of mutually contradictory religions that exist).
And yet God advocates slavery and even insists that they obey their masters as they would obey God.
That’s simply not true. If you were suddenly made utterly revolted by the thought of raping and slaughtering innocent children, would you feel any LESS free? Not likely, because you probably are ALREADY revolted by the very notion. Thus, your freedom is restricted. A GOOD God could easily ensure such disgust toward that and other atrocities was UNIVERSAL, thus eliminating truly heinous acts. Would that be a reduction in our freedom? Sure it would…but so what? You likely ALREADY have that reduction in your freedom, yet I’ll bet you’re FINE with it, just as I am and just as are billions of people on this planet.
No, the only reason for God to allow atrocities can only be because he ENJOYS it or he simply doesn’t care. There aren’t any other rational explanations. Well, except one: that he doesn’t exist. 🙂
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August 8, 2012 at 3:52 pm
Derek,
“Of course you don’t need evidence to believe…you’re a theist. If evidence were critical to you, you wouldn’t be a theist.” The smiley tells me you are somewhat kidding, but what you went on to say makes me unsure. Hopefully you were kidding, because this is clearly not true.
There is a difference between common sense and intuitions. It was common sense that the Sun was moving, not the Earth, but science showed that this was not true to reality. Intuitions are not like this. Rational or moral intuitions are basic tools of thought that cannot be further analyzed. We consider them to be properly basic beliefs because they cannot be justified by any deeper principles, and we have no reason to doubt that they are true. The law of the excluded middle is like this. Either God exists or he doesn’t exist. There are no other options because existence and non-existence are mutually exclusive categories. There can be no third option. This law is a rational intuition that cannot be justified by any deeper laws or principles, and thus it is considered a rational intuition. Rational intuitions are properly basic. While these intuitions could be shown to be false by some evidence, we are fully rational to maintain their truth until that time. That’s what I’m talking about when I refer to our moral intuitions. We have a basic moral intuition that taking the life of an innocent human being is wrong, and we are justified in believing that this intuition reflects a real moral truth unless and until evidence could be brought forward to show that this is not so. But given how basic such intuitions are, the evidence would have to be pretty good to serve as a defeater. Indeed, that’s why Louise Antony, herself an atheist, argues that any reason we have to be skeptical that our rational faculties are connecting us with a realm of objective moral values could also be applied to the reliability of our sensory faculties to connect us with physical reality.
As for determinism and free will, if all of our acts are determined, then there is nothing complex about choosing because we don’t actually choose anything. Choice is an illusion. I may think that I have a choice between A and B, but physics has determined that I must choose A billions of years ago. We are not agents who are responsible for choosing anything, but passive conduits through which prior physical conditions manifest themselves in predetermined ways.
I can know that if God exists, He is good. I provided such reasons in my blog post titled “How Do We Know God is Good?” I have also given reasons not to believe the evil god hypothesis in a couple of other posts.
Seriously, you are going to bring up slavery in the context of free will? As though that has anything to do with free will. Even slaves would still have free will.
The fact that we have reasons for not choosing A over B does not mean that we are less free. I am free to eat my dog’s crap, but I will never choose that. That doesn’t make me less free, it just makes me smart. But on determinism, I am either forced by prior physical forces to eat my dog’s crap or I am forced not to. There is no choice involved. A limitation on our range of choices is not the same thing as the elimination of the freedom of choice.
Jason
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August 9, 2012 at 10:37 am
The wink was for irony, not kidding. Evidence is meaningless for the majority of theists as revealed by their behavior when evidence comes to light that contradicts their religious beliefs. Do they change their beliefs to fit the evidence? Of course not…either they do some creative interpretation of scripture (“I know the Bible describes the world as a circle, but that’s what a sphere looks like from a distance!”) or deny the science (evolution, cosmology). In fact, both AiG and CMI, two leading creationist organizations, have the following statement actually codified into their statements of faith:
“By definition, no apparent, perceived or claimed evidence in any field, including history and chronology, can be valid if it contradicts the scriptural record.”
That’s putting belief before evidence, and that’s simply not honest. It’s a disgrace against rationality.
Religion is based on FAITH, which is belief without evidence (or with evidence to the contrary), not EVIDENCE.
I’m glad you understand that “common sense” is no indicator of truth (indeed, science has advanced human knowledge considerably by challenging it), but you are incorrect in saying intuition is any different. Intuition is essentially the same thing as common sense, and there’s a reason claims made based on intuition are called “appeals to intuition” fallacies.
Intuition is defined as “the act or faculty of knowing or sensing without the use of rational processes.” Its lack of rationality is part of its very definition. Common sense is defined as “sound judgment not based on specialized knowledge; native good judgment.” As you can see, the meanings of the two terms are essentially the same. It is common sense that the sun revolves around the Earth, just as it is intuitively obvious that the sun revolves around the Earth. Both methods of thinking lead to the same fallacious conclusions.
Sorry, but this is a “burden of proof” (onus probandi) fallacy. Anyone making a claim for the existence of something takes on the burden of proof, not the person questioning that claim. It is irrational to base beliefs on having “no reason to doubt” that something is true. At one time there was “no reason to doubt” that diseases were caused by spirits, that lightning was caused by gods, that the Earth was flat, that free will existed, etc. If you make a claim you MUST be able to back it up with evidence, or else your claim is NOT RATIONAL.
Sure there is! Without further clarification, there can be all sorts of gradations…such as WHICH God or gods, or whether god-like counts. It’s like saying a box is empty or not empty are the only two options, when dust, air or even the quantum fluctuation of particles could be counted as contents.
Well, your example doesn’t work, but I can envision an example that would…but then it wouldn’t be intuition, would it? It would be a RATIONAL conclusion that can be shown with actual examples…but intuition is NOT a rational process BY DEFINITION. Thus your “rational intuition” is an oxymoron.
Untrue again. People are biologically predisposed to experience a certain amount of empathy, but they must be taught values. It’s not a “basic moral intuition” that killing innocents is wrong, but a value we have LEARNED is harmful to individuals and society. There have been societies that thought nothing of killing innocents (often by vilification of the innocents but often simply by using an “us vs. them” mentality). WE would call them immoral, but THEY would not. They would consider US immoral for coddling the weak. Morality is RELATIVE, not absolute.
And the God of the Bible many times ordered the killing of innocent humans (the Amalekites are a perfect example). By your own reasoning, doesn’t that make it a basic moral intuition that he is evil?
That is as untrue as claiming that computers can’t be complex because they function purely deterministically. Come on, you KNOW this to be true. Some computer programs are so complex we often “intuitively” think they are sentient (see IBM’s Watson beat the best Jeopardy players), yet they are not (yet) sentient, nor capable of free will choices. The decision-making process can be massively complex, and in humans that would evidently be the case.
Choice is an illusion. I may think that I have a choice between A and B, but physics has determined that I must choose A billions of years ago. We are not agents who are responsible for choosing anything, but passive conduits through which prior physical conditions manifest themselves in predetermined ways.
Now you’re getting it! Although it IS a little more complex than that, since even deterministic programs can be altered by environmental factors, and behaving as if free will exists is certainly one of those factors. If believing we have free will is evolutionarily adaptive (and it would be, if fatalism causes inaction), then we will come to “intuitively” believe we have free will…whether or not it actually exists (because those who don’t will die out over time). That’s a perfect example of how belief based on intuition is a fallacy.
And I believe I’ve countered your claims in those posts. Ultimately, arguments for God being good or even for God existing boil down to arguments from intuition (William L. Craig, poster child for the Kalam Cosmological Argument, even admits as such). And as you know by now, intuition is not a rational process, and arguments based on it is a fallacy.
Finally, the slavery issue IS relevant. Slavery is the subversion of free will BY DEFINITION. A slave will generally suffer terrible consequences for defying his master. The Bible even says slaves should obey their masters as they would obey God himself! And if a person will suffer for choosing to do something other than he is told, his free will isn’t all that free, is it?
And this is perfect evidence for why the God of the Bible, if he exists, is evil: He supposedly allows atrocities to occur because he “can’t violate our free will.” But atrocities are BY DEFINITION a prevention of the exercise of free will for the VICTIMS. A victim’s choice to not be raped or murdered or robbed or enslaved doesn’t seem to matter to God. No, he sides with the rapist or murderer or thief or slaver, letting THEM limit the free will of their victims. Thus, true free will is either not really important, or God is a hypocrite. If free will exists and it is important for humans to have at least some, then a GOOD God would allow free will choices only as far as they don’t abridge the free will of OTHERS. Thus, you can choose to hate someone or not, but you can’t choose to kill them. Or enslave them. Thus the relevancy of slavery to the free will issue.
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August 9, 2012 at 10:44 am
One more thing. Another word for the way you’re using intuition is called “truthiness,” a word created by Stephen Colbert meaning turning desire for something to be true into a claim of truth (http://www.kurzweilai.net/can-a-picture-inflate-the-perceived-truth-of-true-and-false-claims?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=040f2ecf05-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email)
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August 9, 2012 at 9:33 pm
So are you saying that a god who lets his children come up with countless conflicting ideas about what he wants them to do, and argue among themselves about which of them has the most accurate idea, is more good than a god who talks to all of his children and tells them what he wants them to do, and doesn’t leave it up to his highly imperfect children to tell each other what he wants?
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August 13, 2012 at 10:56 am
Frank,
I believe God has revealed Himself to us in the Bible, as well as in the person of Jesus Christ. The fact that men can disagree over the meaning of the Bible does not count against such as being divine revelation.
And what would you have God to do? Everytime you are having a converstation with someone about the Bible and the two of you disagree, God speaks from heaven and says, “Sorry Frank, Jason is right on this one. Your interpretation is wrong.”? Can you imagine what life would be like if God made sure everyone had correct thoughts about Him? He gives us the freedom and responsibility to learn more about Him. We grow in understanding. And not every difference of opinion has eternal consequences, so it’s not as if we are going to meet our Maker and he’s going to say, “Sorry, though you had 999 points of theology correct, you were wrong about X. See you in hell sucker!!!”
Jason
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August 13, 2012 at 10:57 am
Derek, I’ll let you have the last word on this one. I don’t have the time to engage in long discussions right now. Sorry.
Jason
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November 21, 2012 at 5:37 pm
This is my issue
http://davesgud.tumblr.com/post/36232478175/i-used-to-be-a-christian
Your argument doesn’t make sense.
If good exists it does not automatically follow that:
a) God exists
b) God is good
You are assuming God is good and then assigning all good things to God in order to show that he is good.
I could say to someone who thinks my mother is a bad person “yes but Life is good, and so is laughter and happiness. Therefore my mother is good” that would be a ridiculous thing to say.
If you are talking about the God of the bible then he that God must be judged according to his actions, just as, apparently, we are by him. If it can be shown that God is morally flawed then it follows that in-fact God does not really exist but is just the product of man.
Please respond please read my blog post as this carries my argument more fully.
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November 21, 2012 at 5:39 pm
“Can you imagine what life would be like if God made sure everyone had correct thoughts about Him?”
Yes life would be very straight forward and most probably perfect. How is that even an argument? Basically you are saying that God must exist because the world is such a screwed up place. That is ludicrous.
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December 13, 2012 at 4:08 pm
David Shakespeare,
I have never claimed that “it follows” from the fact that objective moral values exist that “God exists” or that “God is good.” There is no logical entailment. The connection between God and morality is one of abductive logic, or reasoning to the best explanation.
No, I am not “assuming God is good.” I have argued for that conclusion. If you have a problem with my arguments, fine, but don’t call my conclusion an assumption.
There is a difference between determining what kind of being God is, and then demonstrating that such a being exists. If God exists, He must be good. So whatever evidence we have for the existence of God, we have for the existence of a perfectly good being.
If the God of the Bible could be shown to be morally imperfect, then that would either show one of two things: (1) The Bible is not inerrant; (2) The God of the Bible is not the true God. One thing it cannot do is demonstrate that the God of the philosophers does not exist.
I have a policy that I don’t read links. I just don’t have the time. It’s hard enough to respond to all the comments. So if you want to summarize your points, I’d be happy to do my best to respond.
Jason
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December 13, 2012 at 4:15 pm
David Shakespeare,
Look at the context of my quote. I wasn’t making an argument for the existence of God. I was discussing Frank’s problem with the fact that theological disagreements exist. I asked Frank what he expected God to do: to correct everyone every time they make a theological error? That would be annoying, interfere with our freedom, and interfere with God’s purposes for our intellectual life.
Jason
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December 14, 2012 at 4:31 am
“The connection between God and morality is one of abductive logic, or reasoning to the best explanation.”
That is no longer the case. As within a wholly new interpretation of the moral teachings of Christ is a unique, precisely defined moral imperative. A perfect good. One independent of human nature itself, logic or theology. Thus is faith required to test for and discover the efficacy of the claim, ‘raising’ our understanding within a new paradigm of intellect, freedom and moral purpose.
Already tried and tested myself and it is and does exactly what it claims to do! A first for any religious claim or conception. For those interested, more info at http://www.energon.org.uk
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June 11, 2014 at 8:49 am
Dereck there is a bit of a problem, imo.
You speak about making moral judgements about the “good” nature of god. Yet is this view viable?
We can debate the problem of evil day, but I think this is where it breaks for you. You claim your god is OB. Since this is the only quality you’ve ascribed let’s start with that. You state that we only want the good things reciprocated. Why? Because we have an innate sense of good. Which comes from God, who created everything and who’s very essence is love, hence “good”.
How do we then explain the atrocities done in the bible (I don’t know if you view the bible as inspired)? The reason why we desire good is not just on “goodness” it’s self. It’s brought about by a few other qualities. Humans ability to empathetic. Our ability to recognize things that are beneficial.
Logically, a being that is OB would, by its very nature, also be empathetic and understand what is beneficial to life, happiness.
Can the Judeo-Christianity claim make this claim? With orders to kill the caannites, amaleks, Hebrews that followed moses, the flood, Yahweh has a record of doing those same things that are considered evil. Yet this cannot be possible according to your definition. If OB is in God’s very nature then we have two questions that need to be answered.
1. You say that A cannot not be A. I agree. Yet your god has shown to not be OB when it suites it. So is your god ob, and then how do you explain the “evil” actions it has done.
2. If the evil actions is man corrupting goods word, where is the OB essence in correcting man’s actions as a whole? Surely is one is OB, one is also empathetic and would not allow those it’s cares for to be duped and lead astray.
Either using biblical reference or physical world view, Yahweh is a contradiction unto it’s self. Looking either perspective, Yahweh falls short and your definition of OB does not fit.
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June 14, 2016 at 11:09 am
[…] from personal experience, from the experiences of other’s and from the accounts in the Bible. Here is another article that I found interesting on that topic as […]
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May 18, 2018 at 12:28 pm
Bro. Jason, the link in your “Best of TR” to this column is defective. It actually links to another column of yours.
This account, to me, is very inadequate. You restrict our knowledge of God’s goodness to our moral intuition and convention. I think there are much more solid grounds for God’s goodness than that.
In my estimation, you get close when you call evil a privation, but since your terminology isn’t clearly defined, that renders evil a privation of our moral intuitions and conventions. Surely morality has a stronger footing than that.
When God created the universe, He saw that it was good. Why were the things that He made good? Because they were functioning exactly the way He created them to function. We thus see a correspondence between the biblical concept of good and the ancient idea that something is good to the degree that it actualizes its nature. Good, then, is convertible with being. Any diminution of a thing’s actualization of its nature is evil (a privation). Consequently, there is an objective ground for good.
I anticipate a host of objections, but I’ll forego replying until you raise them.
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May 23, 2018 at 12:40 pm
stewpidmonkey writes:
How do you explain an “atrocity”? What is an atrocity and why should we be concerned about it? Isn’t one man’s atrocity another man’s progress? On what footing are you calling anything an atrocity? Is it your opinion or is there some sort of metaphysical ground for your moral intuition?
Considered evil by whom? There are a lot of people who do not consider His “record” evil, so on what basis is your opinion better than theirs?
Unless you can properly ground your sense of goodness, the “contradiction” exists only in your mind.
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May 23, 2018 at 5:31 pm
“………If we didn’t have Scripture? Could we discern what is good?……..”
Of course we could because we do it now; and every generation has done it beforehand too …………so……….why bring God into the question?
Children learn what is good from mother’s nourishing breast milk; they hunger; they cry, they feed ………ahh that is good. That is very good.
Bathing a skin irritation that washes away the soreness, redness, infection; ahhhhh that is good.
A tickling sensation that stimulates the senses ahhhhhh, that is good. Cleaning relief is good….
…….lots and lots of things we experience are good and we know good but we know nothing of God in any of the good we experience so why bring God into the question?
And scripture doesn’t tell us anything about those good sensations either; scriptures simply describe what we already know from sensory perception.
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May 24, 2018 at 3:05 pm
LTG:
So true; so very true.
Scripture only describe what we already learned as new born babies, upwards and onwards into adult life. After all, all scriptures are composed by adult men who themselves have already learned since, as little babies, describing what they already know.
To “what” one attributes the apparatuses (sensory perceptions) through which knowledge comes, memorized, archived, to be guided by, is a different bone to chew.
Whether the caricature creature idealized is called God, Evolution, Naturalism is moot; the Life Forces and/or transitions therefore between energy and materialism are made up of as many names as humanity’s imagination conjures. The conclusive name in any language is formed from the same set of premises despite the adopted name of your persuasion.
We talk past each other using different words but we are actually speaking to each other about the same entity. Or can there be more than one?
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July 9, 2019 at 12:52 pm
Problem with equivocation. When you used the term “greatest” in the first point where you said “God is the greatest .. being” The use there isn’t the same as when you say “being good is greater than being evil”. The first is a matter of proportion or power. The later is a moral qualification.
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