Note: For purposes of this discussion, let’s assume that God–by which I mean a supernatural, immortal creator more powerful than the rest of the universe combined–actually exists. We’re not assuming that God is omnipotent in the sense of “able to accomplish anything that canbe described in words”, because as many have pointed out ere this, that notion is inherently self-contradictory. Nor are we necessarily attributing any sort of “infinity” to this deity; just supreme power and knowledge. If you cannot make that imaginative leap–well, I can’t actually prevent you from posting in the thread, but I’m mystified as to why you would bother.
In some branches of Christianity there is a doctrine known as Total Depravity. Briefly, TD means that humans are so spiritually blind and twisted as a result of the Fall of Man that, absent God’s grace, we are not only capable of consistently doing good, but in fact lack the capacity to comprehend good. God’s white is our black; much, if not all, of what we consider moral and right is in fact unutterably wicked and vile, and we are incapable of understanding why without first surrendering our moral and spiritual autonomy to the Deity.
I say this notion is incoherent. For if Man is incapable of making any reliable judgment, then there is no reason for us to choose God over His Adversary except for fear fo the consequences. In a C.S. Lewis apology I am too lazy to look up, he puts it something like “we might as well obey an omnipotent fiend.” I think Lewis is basically correct here. If God exists, and wishes us to follow his moral precepts because of the rightness fo the precepts themselves, then He must create us with the capacity to understand Him and his precepts, at least in part.
If I recall correctly, Lewis sort of partially agrees with you. One of his positions was that knowledge of and direct consideration of a God isn’t strictly necessary in order to lead a moral or worthy life; if one acts in a good way, then those acts serve a good God even if they aren’t done explicitly or even knowingly in that God’s name. So in that sense, I think his answer to the question might well be that we don’t have to understand God; understanding and doing what is moral is enough.
So what does this mean for morality? Does God simply know what is moral (ie, morality does not depend on him)? Or is what God decree’s is moral (which is necessarily subjective)?
Is it that we can’t comprehend good or that we can do not good? The reason I ask is that because if it’s the former, we could accidentally do good I suppose…
I agree with your reasoning - although I’d say that if we are TD it would even mess with our fear of consequences. Why would we know it’s a good think not to be damned?
I think we can weaken your requirement. Instead of God being totally comprehensible, why not have only that subset of God which interacts with us be comprehensible? No matter how the full god works, if the moral directive we see is inconsistent and self-contradictory, then we have no moral guidance to speak of.
The simple example is God being against murder while at the same time directing some of his people to slaughter their enemies. It doesn’t matter if this is explicable in an unknowable god - for us it means we have so many exceptions to rules that we can do as we wish. Now, God could give us detailed rules governing every possibility. (“The road is clear - it is okay to speed” appearing on your windshield in letters of fire) but this has little to do with moral authority or free moral will.
That’s rather what I meant. I don’t demand the hypothetical God be ENTIRELY comprehensible to mortals; but if God is so different from us that we cannot possibly fathom the reasoning behind the notion that rape, murder, and theft being considered immoral, then there is no reason other than fear for us to obey God; and, as the Lesser Perfersser opined, “we might as well worship an omnipotent fiend.”
“Good”, as identified by some external authority (whether it be God or Church or State or Wise Guru), cannot be embraced by me as the Good if I do not comprehend it to be so; otherwise I’m accepting this external authority as the Good-by-proxy, and to believe that doing so is, itself, a good idea means I must make my own assessment of authority’s own goodness (and wisdom and so on). Or else punt and accept the claim made by Authority 2 that Authority 1 is good and wise and should be obeyed / believed / followed, and that doesn’t get me anywhere because I need a basis for accepting the word of Authority 2.
Within what time frame should we be able to comprehend?
I might suggest that mankinds quest and redefining of things like justice, human rights, equality etc indicates we are on our way to comprehending moreover, are drawn toward that comprehension in such a way that we are constantly, although slowly, improving the human condition.
Comprehensible: Yes
Fully comprehensible: Not.
He must show us at least the highlight-reel of what we should do adn some way to get some extra data.
Comprehensible does not mean fully provable by science.
I’ll try to rephrase it, perhaps incorrectly. (Ever since I read That Hideous Strength C. S. Lewis has been incomprehensible to me.
If morality corresponds to God’s wishes, and we don’t know or comprehend God, we are unable to act morally in any consistent way. If we ask ourselves before making an ethical decision what God would want us to do, we can come up with justification for both answers. We are thus thrown back to using the ethical sense we learn from society or have inborn.
An analogy. Say you have a calculator which you want to use as a mathematical authority. If you want to know what 4758494504545 / 34343 is, you type it in. If it is comprehensible, that is follows a set of arithmetic rules, it is a good authority. If it is not comprehensible - perhaps it gives a different answer to the problem depending on variables you don’t understand - relative humidity, temperature, the Dow Jones, it is not an authority - at least until you learn what the rules are.
Isn’t this the basis of most sects of Christianity?
That for possibly these very reasons, or because of other unknown ones, we will fall short of perfect morality, so we need the sacrifice for these sins that Jesus provided in order to be “complete” or to get into heaven.
While, at the same time, we continually strive to attempt to discern what is right/wrong. Others in this thread simply say that “God wouldn’t do it that way” when what they really mean is “If I were God, then I wouldn’t do it that way”.
Well, you aren’t. So, if there is a God that is all knowing and all powerful, he will certainly have a level of understanding that is above our own, no?
Even to the biggest schlub on the planet, or is there some threshold level of human smartness that permits God to be declared comprehensible to us all?
This sounds like a particularly dangerous form of the Argument from Incredulity. It is an admission that they are incapable of distinguishing between good and evil, incorrectly ascribed to the entire population. If such branches exist, they are apparently filled with sociopaths, only held in check by the desires of their leader.
Total Depravity is not talking about good and evil, but orthodoxy and heresy. The beliefs of God are irrelevant as to whether an act is good or not.
I agree. If God’s motives and morality are as incomprehensible as some believers claim, then there’s no real difference between following God and following Cthulhu or Yog-Sothoth. You’re following something you can’t understand, something that is entirely alien to you, and has equally alien goals. In order for something to have moral authority, it needs to be possible to know if its moral or not.
If God made us so that we could never be perfect, then God has no right to condemn us for it. If God made us so that we can avoid sin, but doesn’t tell us what sin is, he also cannot condemn us.
This has nothing to do with how we would design the world. And the guy who designed the calculator has an understanding above those who try to use it. That doesn’t make it a good calculator, and that doesn’t make the Christian world in any way moral or even reasonable.
If various sets of believers disagree if a certain action is good or evil, how is anyone expected to always be able to distinguish this? Don’t confuse being able to solve the easy ethical problems with always being able to figure out what is right.
Is this a form of: is an act pious because the gods love it, or do the gods love an act because it’s pious? Or wasn’t there a philosopher who approached the internal/external question of morality/ethics by positing classes of knowers and super-knowers?
If The Good stems from God–and one accepts that as part of the premise–then I’m not sure comphensibility must be a factor, total or not.
We just had a kid. The Dudeling is less than a year old, so isn’t much to him yet. But shortly, he will be at a stage where he is responsive and toddling about. All of his moral guidance will come from us. At this stage, he will have no intuitive sense of right/wrong and will lack the capacity to understand the rules we’re setting out. All he will be able to comprehend is the reaction (emotional and otherwise) that comes from his parents. The Dudeling has an awareness, has a burgeoning concept of self and self-determination, but is so limited in capacity as to warrant rote following of our ‘rules’.
Isn’t the theistic argument that despite our pretenses at sophistication we cannot truly comprehend our part or interaction with the universe? I believe much of this line of thought transcends traditional religion and is somewhat conceptually shared by Buddhism and other eastern thought traditions.
That we have a sense of morality down here does not make total comprehension a requirement. That all secular moral laws can be derived from purely secular sources suggests the capacity to appreciate the wider picture of morality; it doesn’t supplant it. So basic rules such as don’t kill, don’t steal, etc. don’t need to be divinely comprehensible–they can be in *accord *with divine will, but not necessarily stem *from *it.
But then there are the absurd-seeming theological laws. Don’t bugger thy neighbor. WTF is up with that? Some people like doing that. There is absolutely no ifs ands or butts (heh) about it; from a secular, rational viewpoint, there is no morality involved. Yet following a rule stemming from faith does not require understanding it; just the faith that this particular source of morality has established the morality of an act. Just as I don’t expect the Dudeling to understand every rule we set out for the time being, it is rational to match faith with trust and follow the guidance of what you understand to be the divine lawgiver.
