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The morality of God

LeighSabioLeighSabio
edited 2013-04-25 16:26:01 in General
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.

Comments

  • TheMightyAnonymTheMightyAnonym
    I wish I could go back in time and slap myself.
    That's a fairly bleak view of morality.

    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.
  • BeholderBeholder
    Heh, I remember thinking that we should all be existentionalists because, if God exists and s/he is good, we should emulateit as close as possible, and God would pretty much have to be an existentionalist since there is nothing and noone above to handle any sort of meaning to him/her. :)

    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?
  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    TheMightyAnonym said:

    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.

    That's the foundation of my entire ethical system in a nutshell, summarised less wordily than I might have done myself. This said, I'm not sure if it answers the question, or if there really is a satisfactory answer to this question.

    The closest answer that I can give to a satisfactory one requires the rejection of an anthropomorphic god entirely in favour of a more pantheistic universalist view: Namely, that God is literally that good within the universe, thus impelling all morality through its presence. But that raises its own quandaries.
  • ★ ~ S U M M E R ✿ S A U S A G E ! ~ ★★ ~ S U M M E R ✿ S A U S A G E ! ~ ★
    CUNTASAURUS REXXX
    God created the purest of the pure and the evilest of the evil. I don't think you can really call that moral but maybe you could call it balanced or something.
  • Obā-sanObā-san

    SirReginaldTheThird said:

    God created the purest of the pure and the evilest of the evil. I don't think you can really call that moral but maybe you could call it balanced or something.

    Do they balance out in the end?
  • ★ ~ S U M M E R ✿ S A U S A G E ! ~ ★★ ~ S U M M E R ✿ S A U S A G E ! ~ ★
    CUNTASAURUS REXXX
    I would suppose so, to some sort of completely neutral cluster of non-morality.

    Maybe that's where morality kicks in, making sure one side doesn't pass the other up.
  • Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy
    "It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
    LeighSabio said:


    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.

    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.

  • Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy
    "It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
    Beholder said:

    Heh, I remember thinking that we should all be existentionalists because, if God exists and s/he is good, we should emulateit as close as possible, and God would pretty much have to be an existentionalist since there is nothing and noone above to handle any sort of meaning to him/her. :)

    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?

    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.

  • BeholderBeholder
    Even if we see God as Good itself, there still remains a question of how do we know that this particular being claiming to be god is good.
  • Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy
    "It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens

    ^ 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").

  • LeighSabioLeighSabio
    Assuming for the sake of argument that a supreme being emanates good, how does that make good any more identical with it than any other universal/form it emanates? Why "God is goodness" and not "God is redness" or "God is cleverness"
  • Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy
    "It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens

    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.

  • Mr. DarcyMr. Darcy
    "It is a matter of grave importance that Fairy tales should be respected.... Whosoever alters them to suit his own opinions, whatever they are, is guilty, to our thinking, of an act of presumption, and appropriates to himself what does not belong to him." -- Charles Dickens
    ... but Being itself is not amoral unless Good and Evil both exist, rather than the latter being mere absence (like how darkness is the absence of photons, not the presence of "darkons"). If a contingent being, the Good would get everything that it is from Being/God.
  • Sredni VashtarSredni Vashtar
    “I'm surprised. Those clothes… but, aren't you…?”
    Mr. Darcy said:

    ... but Being itself is not amoral unless Good and Evil both exist, rather than the latter being mere absence (like how darkness is the absence of photons, not the presence of "darkons"). If a contingent being, the Good would get everything that it is from Being/God.

    Which is the tact I was taking.

    But then again, the pessimist's argument also holds a certain amount of water here: Who says that what we consider an absence of good is not the true presence here? After all, what is pleasure but a positive effect driven by the absence of pain, and what can we call good but the spreading and protection of universal happiness—that is, the amelioration of universal suffering?

    I find both unsatisfactory as absolutes, although both do justify my view of ethics rather nicely.
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