Is god moral?

[Amorphos]

Is god moral?

Lets imagine he exist and ask the question.

God in his wisdom would not treat us like puppets, hence where there is evil in the world it is because people act in that way, not because god wants it. I am happy enough with that argument as concerns our actions, essentially it is up to us how we act and that is freedom, however where the ‘puppet theory’ falls down is in what we have no say over; why cant god stop disease and cancers? …or tsunamis, earthquakes etc.

I think most things are causal and that this is necessary for the universe to work [hence evolution etc as part of that], but an omnipotent being could step in and stop disease and cancers without affecting our free will, in fact it would enhance that.

So how do you see it, is god moral? ~ in the greater respect that is.


Probably similar to half a million similar debates but worth asking/reiterating at this time of year.

[Helm]

Which god?

[Panzerbear]

god is imaginary.

[The Dude]

This is a problem that Boethius adresses in his Consolation of Philosophy. While he draws inspiration from his imprisonment in the cells of king Theodoric, which is different from a seemingly nonmoral thing like disease the solution to this problem still applies.

Lady philosophy, who represents divine reason in this article, argues the following:

Consider a mountain at the base of which is a valley with a river streaming through. Across this river leads a bridge. Now imagine three travellers, one on the mountainside, one in the valley before the river, and one across the bridge past the river. Now picture two spectators, one in the valley down below with his back turn towards the mountain, one on top of the mountain facing the valley.

For the spectator in the valley, his current reality exists of his view of the second and third traveller walking through the valley and across the bridge. The first traveller, still on the mountainslope, is a future event for him. The traveller already exists and already goes about his business, but for the spectator down below, this traveller entering his field of vision is a future occurrence.

For the spectator on top of the mountain, who sees all three travellers at the same time, all their journeys occur in the present. This is the position of god, who sees all and knows all, and he must because afterall he is god so it is necessary that he does. But there is no necessity in him relieving individuals from their burdens. They all walk journeys, they all have places to go, and the obstacles in their lives, unpleasant as they may be, are regarded as future occurences that with the knowledge of free will in the back of the mind, could've been avoided. For god this is impossible, there is no avoiding anything and he knows it. And so Boethius' forges the link between divine providence and human free will, where God's all-knowingness means the plan he has made is set, including all the consequences that seem bad. But they fit into his plan, and his plan is necessarily good, for God is good.

So there is no reason to remove things like plagues and diseases from our world for they too are good insofar as they are diseases and plagues. That we might think that they are unnecessary obstacles in our lives is logical, because we live in present realities that are inherently limited in scope.

It's pretty much a very elaborate version of "god works in mysterious ways", but there you have it. This thinking proved to be dominant throughout the following centuries.

[SigniferOne]

I believe this question was addressed somewhat earlier, but here is what I'd say again:

All that people would call evil is divided into two categories -- what we could call natural evils, and moral evils. Moral evils you've addressed before, they are the result of men's actions. Natural evils, however, are not evils. The more accurate term for them is miseries, something that happens to you that you're unhappy about. Surely not everything that you're unhappy about is an evil, and evil is a moral term, and thus it applies to moral evils and to nothing else. Thus something like a tsunami is just a natural 'evil', a misery that results from the natural mechanical workings of the world, and it furthermore does not permanently kill anyone in the Christian premise.

[Helm]

It's probably better to be permanently killed than to end up in a permanent hell. The Christian premise is great if you happen to be a Christian yourself.

[Amorphos]

The Dude

For the spectator on top of the mountain, who sees all three travellers at the same time, all their journeys occur in the present. This is the position of god, who sees all and knows all, and he must because afterall he is god so it is necessary that he does. But there is no necessity in him relieving individuals from their burdens. They all walk journeys, they all have places to go, and the obstacles in their lives, unpleasant as they may be, are regarded as future occurences that with the knowledge of free will in the back of the mind, could've been avoided. For god this is impossible, there is no avoiding anything and he knows it. And so Boethius' forges the link between divine providence and human free will, where God's all-knowingness changes means the plan he has made is set, including all the consequences that seem bad. But they fit into his plan, and his plan is necessarily good, for God is good.

Interesting, thank you for that post.

So the for the journey he is evil, because he doesn’t step in and do anything even though he is omnipotent ~ which is evil. The ultimate plan may be good for the good ~ which is questionable if much of this is not due to causal and environmental circumstances.

Surely most of the greater Christian ethics is to do good unto others? And yet god doesn’t believe in this himself?

I don’t see how diseases and plagues are in any way good in and of themselves, though we could say that the respect for life we glean from them is good. Having said that we learn that from general sufferings and death, my word is the death of relatives and friends not enough!

Ok how about this; if you were god surely you would deliver us from such evils if you could, if you were even a doctor you would right. Moreover if a person didn’t help where they could what would you think of them! Would they be ‘moral’ ~ I cannot emphasze enough on that term, we are not talking about being detached to a supposed greater good, we are talking about being moral and good!


Sig

Natural evils, however, are not evils.

I can accept that god created the universe and everything from there on is causal [evolution etc], so I can excuse also natural evils. Yet due to the idea that he has ‘stepped in’ and changed things [he is omnipotent after all] before [in the bible], one has to question why he doesn’t do it anymore. If he felt it was right to change things before then we cannot excuse him from intervening thereafter nor in the future.

[Amorphos]

Louis XI

Well I agree of course that "good" and "evil" are an anthropomorphic illusion, but here I am imagining an anthropomorphic deity as the original cause of all things which would deny its fallibility and illusion.

As far as I'm concerned, murder is not an anathema. Killing your grandma might be undesirable, uncalled, and tremendously unpleasant and demeaning - yet murdering people to defend your home, your posessions, your family and your country is a honourable enterprise.

Sure but the higher ethic is to not kill ~ because people whom deny the ethic are the ones trying to destroy you and yours.

Equally I do believe that by not entering into that contract, that alone denies the antithesis to the ethic. Its hard to pinpoint but in my experience there have been times when I felt I should if I had any honour strike out, but I did not and the situations resolved themselves. If I had struck out then my nemesis would have continued to attack by whatever means, and the duality be continued, as it was we are now friends again. Does that make sense?

[Amorphos]

Col. Tartleton, helm

Quite correct. The main driving force of evolution is the effect of stress on the reproductive process. All good is derived from the combat of that which is not good. Without Evil what is Good? How can you appreciate the power of a kind word on the worst day of your life when everyone always say nice things and each day is sweeter than the last?

I agree that chaos is part of the natural process and maybe that good and evil are comparative, yet we are talking about a god who can intervene and has chosen to do so many times in the bible. We can learn the comparatives without disease and cancer.

[The Dude]

Interesting, thank you for that post.

You're welcome

So the for the journey he is evil, because he doesn’t step in and do anything even though he is omnipotent ~ which is evil. The ultimate plan may be good for the good ~ which is questionable if much of this is not due to causal and environmental circumstances.

Well, it's not exactly like that. Consider the following: if God intervened, his plan would not be perfect, right? Since the plan is perfect from the outset, there is no necessity of him intervening. The plan does contain those elements that we as humans consider to be evil, but only because our perspective is temporally limited whereas his is not bound up in time at all.

This is also one of the things that Heidegger argued across his works, but I believe specifically in the Question Concerning Technology. He is of the opinion that the true value of something is often only revealed, brought forth is the term he uses (implying an active aspect), much later than the creation of whatever this value inherits in. In his case, the value of technology is being discussed and he will argue that it is not until much later that a power plant, which may have appeared to be good at first, actually reveals itself to be detrimental. Vice versa the same can be true in other cases. It's a tricky way of thinking that he employs though and I can't claim to do any justice to it having only read the Question once.

I'm not sure if he argues this from a religious standpoint, there's nothing pointing to it anyway, but the point I'm trying to make is that it is possible for human beings to understand that a thing may appear to be negative or morally corrupt at first and then have positive long term consequences. This is the perfection of the divine plan, according to Boethius.

Surely most of the greater Christian ethics is to do good unto others? And yet god doesn’t believe in this himself?

Well, God doesn't believe. He knows. Essential difference. Christian ethics apply to men, not to God, since it's us that aspire to go to heaven, ie be reunited with him at his side.

I don’t see how diseases and plagues are in any way good in and of themselves, though we could say that the respect for life we glean from them is good. Having said that we learn that from general sufferings and death, my word is the death of relatives and friends not enough!

Well, there are two ways of which they can be good:
1) They can be good insofar as they exist, since god wouldn't have made them otherwise
2) They can be good insofar as they fulfill the purpose they were made for. And this is where Boethius and then later Heidegger come into play with their theories. It is often difficult to tell what something is made for. A thing's nature may at first be apparent, but then later reveal itself to be something else entirely. This is what a christian will argue in defense of the divine plan.

Ok how about this; if you were god surely you would deliver us from such evils if you could, if you were even a doctor you would right. Moreover if a person didn’t help where they could what would you think of them! Would they be ‘moral’ ~ I cannot emphasze enough on that term, we are not talking about being detached to a supposed greater good, we are talking about being moral and good!

Well, if I was god then I would have full realisation that first, these aren't evils. Second, that if I were a doctor I would not be god and would therefore act upon my time-limited perspective and not my divine foresight, third that I am therefore not to be judged according to the standards of a person and that fourth, if we are talking about being as it is traditionally understood, I am exempt from that definition. Many christian theologists will agree that the way in which Being is understood in our world is vastly different from the way Being is understood in the divine sense.

I hope that clarifies things. The way I'm setting all this out makes it sounds as if I'm a christian myself, rofl. Mind you, I am not, I'm an atheist. And I don't necessarily agree with what's being said here. But this is the line of reasoning employed.

[Amorphos]

why dont Selfridges, sell fridges ~ I just heard that on tv so I thought I would share
erm it doesnt sound funny now

Hmm in antithesis to the thread basis; we could say that god is continually intervening, as I have said before sir Paul McCartney had one night a vague idea of a song, he woke up the next morning with the song and line; ‘yesterday, all my troubles seam so far away’…etc. now how many times do we and get inspired ideas, discoveries and inventions that in truth we have no idea where they came from?

We could argue that the brain is just a fantastic computer and that the ‘dumb soul’ inhabiting the human form thinks the vague ideas and the brain finishes it off. Not sure if I am buying that though.

--------------------

Louis XI

Well that's like arguing we should base ourselves on the notion that a potato god exists.

Not really though I see the point, if the basis is that god is anthropomorphic then good and evil [human traits] come within that. Obviously we have to first agree that there is a god and he is human, which neither of us would, but upon the basis that he is the argument seams to follow suit.

It makes little sense to discuss morality without a higher meaning attached to it. Do I want to go to Heaven? That's why I'm moral. Do I want an ascesis? That's why I follow ethical and moral principles. Now divorced from any meaning themselves, ethics and morality have no value whatsoever... I could see how the Christian God could be essentially free from the bounds of morality, since He has invented them to his subjects and thus is above them, and because the premises which they contain - namely, righteousness and strict adherence to God's will, are obviously illogical if they are applied to God Himself. Thus God can kill, and still be exempt from any moral judgment - his "Goodness" comes from the fact he has still given every man the premise of eternal bliss irregardless of whatever happens to them in the physical world.

Does being above the human world deny the ethics that the god had considered correct for humans? There may be some greater meaning but surely it has to include the ethic given to us or they seam irreverent and indeed irrelevant.

If there's anything better than doing act x, why should we even perform act x in the first place?

Indeed, but surely that is the basis of the ethic? ‘Though shalt not kill’ is the higher ethic, not the human and territorial/possession etc one.

The Dude

if God intervened, his plan would not be perfect, right?

The bible!

We live in the now and that is where evil occurs, I don’t see how a better future can change that reality.

In his case, the value of technology is being discussed and he will argue that it is not until much later that a power plant, which may have appeared to be good at first, actually reveals itself to be detrimental

For sure, I totally get that argument, yet it is not the same for people suffering from cancer, they die their relatives weep, it’s a truly terrible and painful sufferance. So hey they get to go to heaven, how does that take away the fact that they have suffered while god looks on?

Well, God doesn't believe. He knows. Essential difference

So he teaches us to do good but he doesn’t believe in doing good = is not moral, right?

Well, there are two ways of which they can be good:
1) They can be good insofar as they exist, since god wouldn't have made them otherwise
2) They can be good insofar as they fulfill the purpose they were made for. And this is where Boethius and then later Heidegger come into play with their theories. It is often difficult to tell what something is made for. A thing's nature may at first be apparent, but then later reveal itself to be something else entirely. This is what a christian will argue in defense of the divine plan

1. God didn’t make a ‘good’ universe, he just made a universe. It isn’t good just because god made it, it is only moral when it is moral.
2. that’s the naturalist argument. I don’t see how death and cancer arrive at goodness, though I can see how biology begins with germs etc. again it’s the ‘I’m not gonna do anything about it’ argument, god can intervene and has done so before.

I hope that clarifies things. The way I'm setting all this out makes it sounds as if I'm a christian myself, rofl. Mind you, I am not, I'm an atheist. And I don't necessarily agree with what's being said here. But this is the line of reasoning employed.

Ah I see, funny how atheists often make the best arguments. Well I don’t believe in god myself so we are in the same boat, except I believe in a whole load of other shizzle .

[Amorphos]

Sig

Oh I don’t believe god is evil, just that he is not moral in our terms ~ or to us. As an infinite being he may actually not be omnipotent, nor have the ability to help us, in which case he is not to be blamed. If he is, then why wouldn’t you help someone in pain. We may be alright in the end but I think morals are relevant to the journey hence the ten commandments etc.

Not sure about the Egyptian thing, I don’t think they were evil nor to be blamed because their religion occurred prior to Christ.

[SigniferOne]

if God intervened, his plan would not be perfect, right? Since the plan is perfect from the outset, there is no necessity of him intervening.

This would be only true if humans were just another machine. Since they have an uncaused causal factor -- will, interventions are needed with respect to human beings. But natural phenomena, the orbits, the crashing of planets and whole galaxies, that's been ordained from the first time.

Even if you don't believe in God, the first moment instant of the Big Bang had 'ordained' all of the planetary and galaxy collisions billions of years into the future. I just don't have my self-respect connected with the notion of having to reject God in order to maintain it, so I'm free to posit the hypothesis where appropriate, while if an atheist does have his self-conceit mixed into the equation, he isn't.

Yet due to the idea that he has ‘stepped in’ and changed things [he is omnipotent after all] before [in the bible], one has to question why he doesn’t do it anymore. If he felt it was right to change things before then we cannot excuse him from intervening thereafter nor in the future.

First, now this is a different question than the question of evil, so I just thought that needed to be pointed out. I hope we've cleared up the 'problem of evil' question.

On the question of interventions, I would say that God intervenes whenever it is necessary to accomplish his will. If accomplishing his will does not call for a literal intervention, it won't need to happen; if it does, it will. But either way, whether those interventions are emphatically visible or not, I believe that he intervenes in our lives all the time, via the natural means. So they are not supernatural interventions, but natural interventions that happen in such a way as to have no necessary prior explanation.

I believe, just from experience of the world, that God acts in natural ways pretty much all the time. This is noticed even in the Bible; God doesn't open a black hole vortex in the middle of Egypt, but the plagues occur, plagues for which scientists have recently found solid natural causes. So in other words, there was no supernatural event with regard to Egypt; it just so happened that a volcano went off which set off just the specific ramifications, at just the time that the Jews needed it, and which produced just the right impressions in the minds of the onlookers, Egyptian and Jewish alike.

That's how God intervenes in the world, and it is much more intelligent and awestriking than the bland fundamentalist would imagine, and more profound and mystifying than an atheist could accept.

[Khassaki]

Is god moral?

To stand by and watch people suffer when you you can do something about it without risk to yourself is contemptable.

To standby and watch ants killing and dismembering a month is facinating, but for the moths to pray to the observer is ridiculous.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

Strictly speaking, the notion of "good" and "evil" is an antropomorphic illusion. More often than not it rests upon ethical mythologies which diverge on everything except for the most basic precepts: thus to kill a man is still rather universally evil (depending on who that man is), yet when it comes to eating pork or praying on Friday, not two people can agree between themselves, even if they are speaking from the purely profane standpoint of utilitarian ethics.

As far as I'm concerned, murder is not an anathema. Killing your grandma might be undesirable, uncalled, and tremendously unpleasant and demeaning - yet murdering people to defend your home, your posessions, your family and your country is a honourable enterprise.

God does not need to be "moral". To attribute conditioned circumstances to the maximum entity is to misunderstand it - God is not "good" nor "evil". God does not need morality, as he does not need to "achieve" neither "be" anything.

[Helm]

yet murdering people to defend your home, your posessions, your family and your country is a honourable enterprise.

But that wouldn't be murder.

[Marie Louise von Preussen]

But that wouldn't be murder.

"Murder" is a moralistic designation for the 'unwarranted' act of homicide. Fact is that homicide is still homicide, be it against your granny or a thief. We need not to cloud it with "moral" designations merely for the sake of themselves - depending on what you achieve through that, homicide is either noble, or ignoble.

[Helm]

"Murder" is a moralistic designation for the 'unwarranted' act of homicide. Fact is that homicide is still homicide, be it against your granny or a thief. We need not to cloud it with "moral" designations merely for the sake of themselves - depending on what you achieve through that, homicide is either noble, or ignoble.

It's only murder if it's an unlawful killing, though we're talking about human laws I don't know what God would think about it.

[Helm]

If we had a planet that was 100% geologically stable in a perfectly stble solar system it's likely that life wouldn't have evolved beyond the single cel stage and we wouldn't be here, you probably need a certain level of chaos in the system.

[Col. Tartleton]

^
Quite correct. The main driving force of evolution is the effect of stress on the reproductive process. All good is derived from the combat of that which is not good. Without Evil what is Good? How can you appreciate the power of a kind word on the worst day of your life when everyone always say nice things and each day is sweeter than the last?

However:

"And don't tell me God works in mysterious ways," Yossarian continued. … "There's nothing mysterious about it, He's not working at all. He's playing. Or else He's forgotten all about us. That's the kind of God you people talk about, a country bumpkin, a clumsy, bungling, brainless, conceited, uncouth hayseed. Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include such phenomena as phlegm and tooth decay in His divine system of Creation? What in the world was running through that warped, evil, scatological mind of His when He robbed old people of the power to control their bowel movements? Why in the world did He ever create pain?"