The morality of God
Dislaimer: I am not an atheist, and this is not going to be one of those atheistic threads that do Paint The Hero Black on the biblical God or say that all religions are a Religion Of Evil.
Instead, this is a pretty religion-neutral thread about the concept of God as a supreme power over the universe.
The main reason, as I see it, that we have morality is that we are social animals who are all interdependent. Not one of us is strong or smart enough to survive and meet our goals on our own, so we need a code of conduct with each other that allows us to do so, and this is morality. In a solipsistic universe, there would be no morality.
But this is the sort of universe God is living in. Nothing is as powerful or even by some conceptions as real as God. Depending on how you see it, everything in the universe is God, or everything in the universe is an emanation of God, meaning that from God's perspective, the universe is pretty solipsistic. God is not interdependent with anything, meaning that God has no need of a society.
In that case, is morality even the sort of thing God can have? This is not a claim that God is evil, rather wondering how God would even have a concept of good or evil that was applicable to Godself. Of course, it doesn't rule out God having a concept of good and evil that is applicable to humans, since God is omniscient and knows that humans are, by nature, interdependent.
I really hope I'm wrong here, so counterarguments are very welcome.
Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Comments
While there are all kinds of ideas regarding the "realness" of ethics, I think it's fair to say that one should be kind, even if you benefit nothing, and avoid cruelty, even when you could gain. In other words, be good for goodness sake.
Anyway, that is one of the biggest problems I have with the concept of God. Without a standard of good that does not come from God, just how do we know that God is good?
Ok, first of all, you're using the word "morality" the way Glaucon uses "justice" in The Republic. We each benefit from the existence of society, but we also benefit from breaking its rules as long as we don't get caught (hence the ring of invisibility thought experiment). But if there's a sufficiently powerful being who just is Good, people who try to be good will be rewarded with closeness to the Good, and cheaters won't.
Also, "everything in the universe is God" is not a position that I think makes ontological or ethical sense. Better to say that everything is a creation or emanation, because distinct things cannot have all their properties in common. Evil is just the lack of a good, and if God made something with the utmost of every good, that would be... God. By creating or emanating, God is not in a solipsistic universe, and evil comes along.
That's an weird way to look at existentialism.
The Euthyphro Dilemma applies to gods, not to the Good. "Without a standard of good that does not come from the Good, just how do we know the Good is good?" is not a logical question.
^ Which particular being claiming to be God?
In any case, "Being" is also a being. So the question is whether the Good even is a particular being, or the same as Being (the latter position is called "convertibility of the transcendentals").
Well for one, "redness" is a wavelength of light, a sensible thing, while "good" is a transcendental (assuming you're a realist!)
If Good is not synonymous with Being, but just an emanation, then calling the Good "God" would be committing the fallacy of equivication. The truth could be something more like Zurvanism, which taught that the One emanated Good and Evil.