It’s much harder to achieve the quality of good than evil. For a God to be called good he must do good and only good - you cannot cause willingly and then not even bother to prevent as much murder, rape and torture as God did and be called good. Humans can get away with some insignificant evils (such as stealing a candy bar from a store) and still be called good. Also, it’s important to note different degrees of moral condemnation. If a child stole something from a store we treat it differently and condemn him less than we would an adult had he stolen the same thing - more intelligence and maturity implies more moral responsibility. Consistently with that, God, the most mature and intelligent being in the universe is held to much higher moral standards than humans, so some things that would be forgivable for humans aren’t for God.
An evil person could have still done some good, but if we weigh in the good and evil deeds, the evil deeds stand out more. It’s therefore much harder to morally judge humans than God for the above mentioned reasons.
I think what you are seeing is the failure of binary logic to adequately account for the complexity of God and life. It’s impossible to stick good and evil into two separate mutually exclusive boxes except in very limited cases. Once the actors engage in activities with others, over an extended period of time, things get fuzzy.
You need multi-valued logic to determine whether God is good or evil. And you find that God is evaluated as more good than evil.
On the contrary, the sole point of this thread is to prove that the concept of a good god considering the world we live in contains a contradiction, aka is inconsistent and therefore (logically) impossible.
Yeah, people call god good, but the inconsistency of that shows through when I present my Problem of Evil argument and the specific examples such as Holocaust, Fritzl, smallpox etc.
The argument is really this simple: God doesn’t intervene when Fritzl rapes his children in basement for 20 years, and since everything that god does is for the greatest good, intervening when Fritzl raped his children in basement would have been less moral than not intervening, which is of course against everything we know about morality and what our moral intuition and empathy tell us. God is perfectly good and he didn’t intervene when things we would otherwise deem “bad” happened, so if we want to be perfectly good too we shouldn’t intervene either.
IF a person chooses to intervene and stop Fritzl, they are acting differently from God and their action is either morally inferior or superior to God. If inferior, why do it? If superior, well, how can your own actions be morally superior to that of your God?
Theist is faced with a choice he has to make if he wishes to stay consistent in his beliefs: 1) Abandon any notion of morality in favor of the concept of god, giving way to moral nihilism OR 2) Abandon the concept of a theistic god and leave open the possibility for a moral system.
Yeah, you use multi-valued logic for people - “An evil person could have still done some good, but if we weigh in the good and evil deeds, the evil deeds stand out more.”
But you use binary logic for God - either good in every possible way or evil.
Heck, you can’t lose because there is always some sense in which God can be found to have done something wrong.
You just can’t answer this question - "Can an evil god do good? "
If you do it honestly, then your simplistic logic is revealed. - An evil god turns out to be good but then this good god turns out to be evil but then …
Endless cycle.
Omni means all, all includes logically impossible, sorry. Though that brings under question the usage of such terms by Christians and me in any logical argument. For the sake of discussion I am willing to agree that omnipotent doesn’t entail the logically impossible, but all that is logically possible.
Exactly, that one I agree with, is there something wrong with it? What is 3 billion years to a God? Why are you thinking of God like a human?
Actually, I answered the question. And the reason why I use binary logic when it comes to God and multi-value when it comes to humans is that God has no excuse for moral misconduct. If he truly is what you claim him to be (omnipotent, omniscient), there would be no excuse for him ever doing anything evil.
We can’t judge humans the same way - humans are much more limited, they can wish to do the right thing but not know what exactly it is, they can only be able to do the right thing, the greatest good, by doing a smaller evil - none of these can limit God.
With ultimate power comes ultimate responsibility.
As above as below.
Angels have ‘fallen’.
Heaven has had wars.
According to the bible.
I’ve thought about the problem of evil quite often.
Evil only exists where there is living, weak, sick forms of existence.
An immortal creature that can’t suffer, or be harmed, can survive and thrive even in a negative environment.
Evil is a problem for humans, but for many animals, evil is not a problem, or it is less a problem.
If he doesn’t know something, pretty sure he doesn’t qualify as omniscient. It’s not like it’s logically impossible for him to know that, it just requires Godlike intelligence, knowledge and deductive skills
Would you refer to a person who lets a granny get hit by a bus omnibenevolent?
You do realize that unless you hold God to be at least powerful and knowledgeable enough to intervene on earth, my argument doesn’t apply to you?
Dan, problem of evil (and of morality generally) is a problem for anybody with the capacity for moral reasoning and the power to affect the world.
Sorry about the late response, under the weather lately.
So by your above statements you’re agreeing that a good god by definition does not do evil because it would be logically inconsistent for a good god to do evil. It is a good god’s nature to do good, and not do evil.
We have already agreed that by definition a good good does not do evil, and a good god does not do things that are logically inconsistent (and things that are mutually exclusive are logically inconsistent).
“By definition” means - by its very nature; intrinsically
The point of defining a good god is to describe and establish what the nature of a good god is. It establishes intrinsically what a good god is.
That’s exactly what your following statement is confirming about the relationship between a good god and evil is.
It is both against a good god’s nature and illogical for a good god to do evil. The same applies to god doing anything else illogical, it is against god’s nature to do things that are illogical.
The laws of logic are not laws to god, they are a description of god’s nature… how god’s mind functions…logically (the same as not doing evil is a good god’s nature). Therefore they are neither arbitrarily willed by god, nor is he subservient to them; rather they are grounded in his nature. They are who he is by nature…by definition if you will.
If I claim that 2+2=5 then I have made a logical error…I have made a mistake…it doesn’t mean I’m omnipotent because I just made 2+2=5. My nature is to make mistakes, it is against god’s nature to make mistakes.
Pending your being able to prove that the human mind is completely deterministic, the following remains a logical possibility:
A good god does not do evil
A good god does not do things that are logically inconsistent
A good god is not good if he doesn’t achieve the greatest possible good by definition.
It is logically possible that preventing X, prevents Y (X and Y are logically mutually exclusive), and Y being necessary for the greatest good, prevents the greatest possible good.
Therefore, god by allowing X is still good, omnipotent, and omniscient.
Whether good god is logically consistent concept with the outside world or not depends on your definition of good. Could you then answer some of the examples I gave or provide some of your own so I get the idea of what constitutes “good” according to you?
I’m not really willing to argue that seriously, just a thought that occurred to me. But it does make sense that the greatest being shouldn’t be limited by anything, and laws of logic are a limitation. Perhaps the truly greatest being would be capable of bringing itself into and out of existence at will, bending time and space and the laws of logic itself, such a being would be greater than your God, wouldn’t you agree? Still, that takes our discussion beyond the limits of logic and reason so it’s pointless to seriously try and go there.
Christ, Emmanuel, God with us, died and rose Himself from the dead by the power of His Father, who was essentially He Himself.
I don’t know how much more illogical and transcendent of time and space you really need Him to be.
“For those He foreknew he did also predestinate to be conformed to the image of Christ.”
There’s no sense talking about religion if you are going to balk at such things. And life, in my view, is full of the reality of such things. Since childhood I have been mystified by the issue that my incorporeal conscious will SEEMS to move my physical body around. It is at the very least impossible for me to deny that there is some relationship between my incorporeal state of being conscious and my physical body, and no amount of chemistry stands to explain just precisely why such experience should exist at all.
As for objective good, despite a lot of religious claims to the contrary, I don’t think that it is supported by Biblical texts. What is “good” Biblically is very clearly a matter of opinion. It’s just that in the end God’s opinion matters most. I’d also like to point out that, for the most part, the old saw about treating others as you would prefer to be treated makes its appearance worldwide in ethical and moral discourses, but tends to break down when opinions about the very foundations of what might be preferable begin to be called into question. Consensus is a wonderful thing when you can get it, but sadly not always all that easy to come by. And then there is the problem of people who purposefully create confusion for their own purposes.
I see the problem of evil as a good question and I also think that whether or not a good god is logically consistent depends on if allowing evil is possibility and I see this as being a question of whether or not something ultimately far better is achieved by allowing evil than preventing it. I see this as possible but as to all the reasons why I think it’s possible is not something that I could possibly adequately address in a format like this, volumes of books have been written on the subject and I am certainly not introducing any new ideas on the subject.
No I don’t think god being logical by nature is any more of a limitation than god being good by nature. Being good doesn’t in my mind qualify as being a limitation. After all your logical argument would no longer make any sense, because if god can be illogical then god can be both good, and evil, at the same time without contradiction. It would also lead to absurd situations such as god making 2+2=6 and then a mere mortal like myself could then logically prove that god was wrong, or else god would have to have made me illogical also so I couldn’t prove god wrong.
Hmmm. If being good isn’t a limitation, then God wouldn’t really be limiting our free will in any way by designing us to be good, right? So there’s no justification for him designing some people to be evil.
I do think being good is a limitation, in the sense that in order to be good one must limit one’s actions to exclusively those actions consistent with the idea of good, however just because it is a limitation I don’t immediately view it as something negative, there are many limitations which are desirable and positive, such as limiting one’s intake of food, limiting a child’s access to the balcony on the 10th floor of a building etc.
No logical argument at all would make any sense, not just my, since God would be this entity beyond logic that can just change the state of things in a whim, you couldn’t prove God wrong and you could at the same time, all that made possible because God would be beyond logic, not limited by it.
Being good isn’t any more of a limitation than being evil is, it’s merely a choice. If I choose to do good rather than evil then it’s a choice. I’m not limited to doing good or evil, I’m choosing to do good. I guess you can call it self limitation but that’s very different than someone else “designing” me to do good. I would disagree that god has designed some people to be evil. ALL people choose to do both good and evil, therefore I don’t think anyone has been designed to do good or evil.
You also seem to be implying that a being that is forced to do good is better than a being that can choose. I disagree. Let’s look at three examples of possible beings.
Being A - Always chooses to do good, never does evil.
Being B - Sometimes chooses to do good, sometimes chooses to do evil.
Being C - Always does good but has no choice in any matter. Makes no independent decisions, is basically a robot.
I think that we would both agree that Being A is the greatest of the three. But why is Being A greater than Being C? Both Being A and Being C do nothing but good. Being A is greater than Being C because Being C can do nothing that is morally praise worthy because Being C has no choice. Being B can do things that are morally praise worthy because when Being B does something good, it is by choice. In addition, Being C is completely incapable of love, courage, compassion, faithfulness, or any other positive character traits because it is a robot, it does only what it is pre-programmed to do.
Because Being B can do things that are morally praise worthy, it is closer to being like Being A than Being C is. In addition, Being A and B can self limit, Being C cannot.
Self limitation being the important distinction. If I limit myself then that is synonymous to me with choice. If I have no choice then there is nothing morally praise worthy in anything you mentioned.
Agreed, things would be complete insanity, therefore god limits himself to “good” and to that which is “logical”.
Heh, I guess it all depends on whether determinism is true or not.
Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with being designed to be good. Don’t us humans do the same thing and call it moral? Wouldn’t we call it immoral if we intentionally designed something with the capacity for evil (for example, a housemaid robot which can also randomly “choose” to kill family members)? Wouldn’t we consider such a designer immoral for giving the robot a choice?
Or, let’s take the example of living beings, let’s say that all women (or men) on earth become infertile and the only way to continue the human race is to genetically modify DNA and grow babies in incubators simulating the womb. Wouldn’t you think it would be evil for scientists to make some babies be born psychopaths, or blind, or without limbs or born with horrible, painful diseases and disorders, sometimes making them die during/shortly after birth? Wouldn’t you deem such scientists to be monsters if they chose to design people like that when they could design them to be good and considerate and have a choice between good and evil but always lean on the side of good due to empathy and reasoned arguments?
I never argued against choice, what I argued against is the idea that choice is independent of natural laws, genetics, environmental and peer pressure etc.
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