For the purposes of this thread, I am only interested in discussing this with people who believe in God. In particular, I’m interested in discussing this with Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Other religious folk are invited to join in, but I’m most interested in the line of thinking that seems to prevail in these three monotheistic religions.
We start with the premise that God is good. If this is the case, does God decide what the definition of “good” is, or does he simply fit that description?
For example, let’s give a really extreme example…
‘In the beginning, God created man. From man he created woman, who raised up two children from her womb. God then saw Cain, one of the two children, murder his brother, Abel. God saw this murder, and saw that it was good. And God said, “Let all people in My kingdom murder at least one person in their lifetime.” And people began to murder each other, and God saw this, and said that it was good.’
Would murder then be “good,” or would it still be wrong, with would Jews and Christians then be worshiping an non-good god?
Nay, God cannot be all good. For then he would have no Knowledge of evil; and thus would not be all knowing…
God is not Mr. Rogers, God is a tyrant. God can be good, for he is not all that bad; God is the Wringer of Justice within this Universe. God is malevolent.
Yes. Goodness is the law that is higher than God. As C. S. Lewis said, if there were a being more good than God, He would worship it. What is most good in God’s eyes is the love of a free moral agent. God is not bound by goodness; He chooses to be good of His own free will. He knows about evil, and what we see from our temporal reference frame is the process of Him destroying it. From His eternal reference frame, of course, the process is already finished. Thus in reality, evil does not exist because from the absolute perspective it has already been destroyed.
I think this is essentially Plato’s Euthyphro Dilemma (google it). Except that is only a dilemma if implicity accept that God can’t just say ‘go forth and kill people’ and then that becomes right.
Personally, I think that if God killed a lot of people for no good reason that’d be wrong, but many Christians are horrified that I might think my moral sense was better than God’s. I often say, “well, my moral sense is the only one I have access to, isn’t it?”
I do find a lot (but by no means all) of the christians I’ve asked seem to have no idea, but simply parrot ‘God is good.’ (Not that most non-christians don’t have similar faults)
I agree with Meatros. Good and evil are human terms defined within a particular culture. “Communism” is considered good in some cultures and evil in others. Likewise “Capitalism.”
Both definitions (good and evil) depend on the existence of an opposite condition, just as light and dark do. There can be no good without a corresponding evil, just as there can be no positive charge without a negative.
The existence or lack thereof of a god doesn’t change that. If there was a god that could be defined as exclusively “good” there would likely be an equal god that could be defined as exclusively “evil.” Lucifer doesn’t qualify because according to the myths he is one of god’s creations, not it’s equal.
Rather Lucifer is potentially good but chooses a course of action that fits the accepted terms of “evil.”
Of course, in some cases so does God, though some people would argue that if God does it, it isn’t evil, just necessary. A necessary evil?
This is exactly at what I was trying to get. For example, during the Exodus, when Moses parted the Red Sea (with God’s help, of course) and then brought it down on all the Egyptians who were trying to follow them for purposes of recapture, couldn’t that be called a “necessary evil?”
But it’s all good, because it’s part of God’s plan, right?
No, not in my opinion. I think that is simplistic to a fault because it implies that God’s plan involved ending life, when in fact there is no life in rotting meat. I can understand losing focus from this temporal frame of reference, but it is important, when inquiring about God, to view Him from His own reference frame, one where life is spiritual and eternal and no one dies except those who choose death. All God did was move those men from one reference frame to another. I know it can be kind of hard to see, but so can anything else from the wrong frame of mind.
But if there is any law that is higher than God, where did that law come from? And if a being submits to any higher power, whether by choice or its own sheer nature, can that being be called indeed God?
I don’t think there is any law that necessarily applies to God. God is, for lack of a better definition, good. I’m about to go off on a tangent that might confuse even me, so bear that in mind; God can not do evil per se, but he can “appear” evil to mankind (who doesn’t have the benefit of his vast knowledge). It is what God would not do, that is evil and that is Satan. Satan turned away from God’s path, knowledge, mission (or whatever) and as a result he was damned. The reason Satan’s sin was so horrendous is because Satan had the knowledge of precisely what is Godly and what is not, first hand knowledge to.
Mankind does not have this benefit, which is why I think we can be forgiven.
Sorry about the tangent, I hope it isn’t too confusing…
So Meatros, you suggest that the reason that angels are incapable of forgiveness (like in the case of Lucifer and his followers) is that they have knowledge of the future consequences of their actions?
If this is the case, then why would Lucifer have done what he did? If he is supposed to have knowledge of the future, then he would know he was supposed to lose, right?
God transcends good and evil and since we don’t know what that means we try and imagine him as good, which is to us the better of the two. To answer this question we would have to understand what transcending good and evil means; we can’t and therefore we end up talking about things that don’t really have anything to do with the answer.
Lord Ashtar-Actaully I don’t think that the angels (and Satan) have knowledge of the future. Only God does, because he is omnipotent. Angels on the other hand “witness” what is good, by watching (and speaking) to God. I know this is a lot of presumptions and all, my point though with it is that only God knows it all-only he is omnipotent.
So for example; God makes it known that to disagree with him is a sin worthy of expulsion from heaven. And lets just say that God has a specific plan for the universe, that doesn’t SEEM to make perfect sense (for whatever reason). Satan questions this point to God (Satan isn’t omnipotent and therefore can not see why God’s plan will work). Satan believing that he is superior to God (after all God’s plan seems imperfect) is cast down, or out, into hell.