Muad’dib
Tell that to a guy who happily kills,tortures and lies for fun.
And than happily contradicts himself to annoy a good half the planet.
Muad’Dib I would like very much to see what Saint Thomas Aquinas had to say (found a good cite yet?)
RexDart I think if God created the Universe, it was done for a reason. I doubt we shall ever come to find out this reason whilst alive. So even if God is Evil we owe our existance to him, and we should use our existance in the way we see as right. Though we have not the power to oppose God, if we believe it is right to do so we should oppose an Evil God. Avoiding his wrath would be folly (omniscience would render your deepest feelings open to him), better to oppose Evil God fully and wholeheartedly. The act of resistance may alter Evil Gods plans, or may dissrupt Evil Gods reason for the Universe, or maybe just what Evil God wants. We cannot know, so we must choose what we believe to be the righteous path.
Cheers, Bippy
Bong – who’s that guy? (I assume you weren’t speaking of yourself! :))
If you were speaking of God, contemplate the difference between what He’s alleged to really be and what some reports about Him might say. (I’m a liberal Democrat Christian; the majority of people who know me on the boards or in real life think I’m a fairly decent person, but I can point you to reports about how evil “those Christians” or “those liberals” or “those Democrats” are.)
insert ignorant about christianity disclaimer here
how can anyone be good (as we understand it) if he subjects anyone to eternal torment, whatever the reason was? 
eternity is such a long time…
Well, just don’t tell Jack Chick. I don’t think he believes that such an animal exists.
Depends entirely on your concept of ‘God’ and ‘good’. Most Christians seem to believe that unless you follow Jesus and worship him, you will go to hell. But then again, Muslims tell us that if we worship Jesus and not Allah, then we will also go to hell. So according to more than half of the Earth’s population, committing ‘good deeds’ on earth is fruitless unless you have the correct beliefs anyway.
So Beastal suppose the supreme ruler of Earth decides that three quaters of the world population shall be tortured for the rest of eternity, and one quatert gets to have an eternity of leasure and pleasure.
Would it be best to
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Suck up to the supreme leader as much as possible, to get into the 1/4.
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Try to oppose the supreme leader, as he/she is either Evil, Mad, or completely amoral.
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Assume you can never understand the supreme leader as he/she is far greater than you, and choose to believe what he/she does must be for the best.
What should mankind do in such a system, is man a moral (as opposed to amoral) creature?
Cheerse, Bippy
Well, can the “supreme leader” here be defeated?
Can God be defeated?
Nietzsche said “God is dead”.
God said “Nietzsche is dead”.
Cthulhu.
Or FundaGod
Not much difference.
Why does God = Good?
Because he has to. Those of you who have taken to criticism of the “Judeo-Christian God” have missed the obvious point:
He ain’t your God. Obviously, your God is good. My personal God may not be, to you. If you are an atheist, you take the place of your own God(i.e. you, according to your own standard, are good, or at least ok. If you’re making your own rules and you come out evil in the end, that’s your problem. You can’t go to hell, so it doesn’t matter anyway.)
As the definition of good (Or evil for that matter.) is something thats fits within your own moral code (Outside for evil 
), it stands to reason that your God will see eye to eye with you, hence you extend your belief to that God (Because he’s a good God, right?).
How do you disagree with God? It’s not possible. It’s easy to disagree with someone’s superstitious belief in a non-existant entity(Their God). If you believe in God, if the existance of [your] God is truth, then it must be an absolute truth. In the mind of the faithful, no less a law than gravity. Therefore, that God defines Good and Evil.
I think the most common misconception is that Good and Evil are moral distinctions. They aren’t(For God). For you, yes. God defines (In the case of most religions, defined quite some time ago.) what is good (Acceptable behavior according to God).
Presumably, we all make our own rules and are drawn naturally to a God who also believes that way.
Some people believe that homosexuality is evil, some people can’t agree on when a child is sexually viable(Ask someone from Turkey, Iran, England, America, or France. Ask a child molester. Or go to a country with a lower age of consent than your own and ask anyone.), some people think their race is the best, some people think that everyone else’s God doesn’t exist, or if they all exist then they have no rights to me and mine because I belong to my God by faith.
Interestingly, under the belief that anyone has an equal right(equal to the real God) to decide what’s right and wrong, there is no right and wrong.
Some people think they know what God thinks.
That was a longer post than I thought. That’s what they get for giving me a teeny window with a scroll bar. (It’s as close to an apology as your likely to get.)
Well that’s the problem with supreme leaders, you never know if they can be defeated until you try.
As for God, you cannot beat the omnipotenet, but you also cannot know that a being calling itself God is omnipotent. So if the big guy you meet after you die seems evil to you, you should oppose him, as maybe he isn’t the true God, or maybe he isn’t as omnipotent as the “propoganda” says.
Also we have some Christian evidence that God can change his mind, or at least his methods, re the difference in God between OT and NT , so maybe opposing what seems Evil in the true God may amke said God change his ways again.
Copaesthetic what you say leads to everyone having there own separate God, but that denies the idea of God the creator of the universe (unless we all have our own separate Universes as well?). Are all these God’s omnipotent and omnicient as well, what happens when they argue ;). You seem to be suggesting a system where man makes God from his own morals. But the OP was specifically addressing the standpoint of an existant omnicient, omnipotent God, who created the Universe. Do you contend that such a God has a “different face” for every believer? or something else. I think your point is outside the realms of the OP, or else I am missing some subtlety here. Either way it’s a darned good 16th post, welcome to the boards.
Personally, I like Copaesthetic’s post a great deal – if that’s a sample of what we’re in for, you’re one of the greatest assets this board has picked up in quite a long time! 
Bippy, as I read Copa’s post, he’s arguing that everyone’s perception of God (whatever the objective referent for the term may be or not be) is good, by their standards. And one of the most enormous problems we’ve had on this board is trying to get an objective standard for what this “God” we’re discussing is supposed to be. (To give you an idea of what the problem is, my concept of God is, I claim, the same God as zev steinhart believes in – we hold the Tanakh in common as describing Him – but Zev says that my God is not the God he worships, manifesting as He does in Three Persons, an idea anathema (literally!) to Zev. His4Ever believes in the same three-person God as I do, but agrees with Zev on several issues about Him and His will that I take a quite different view on. And all three of us are dead-set against a “God” who is quite real to another poster but is effectively the Universe taken as a coherent entity.)
If I’m not mistaken, Copa’s post does not even try to address the objective reality of God but rather probingly pinpoints the concept that each person’s concept of God is different. “There were six men of Indostan…”
Yes we all tend to view God as good by our own standards of good and evil. But if there is one singular God what standards of good and evil does the God subscribe too. And what should a Human do if there views of Good and Evil strongly diverge from God’s views?
Does God’s own standards of good and evil define an absolute standard of good and evil, or are these terms as relitive to God as they are to us humans?
Thanks for all your insites. Cheers, Bippy
Yes, my post was directed in the direction (Redundant?) that Polycarp has suggested. For some reason college graduates write posts in essay format out of habit(Off topic).
When I get to the Pearly Gates and what I see is a highly seperate issue from what I think here.
Pearly Gates time is reality. If I died and showed up at the happy hunting grounds, I don’t know what I’d do. I guess I’d go with the flow, because that would be reality. I don’t disagree with the streets I walk on, or scream at the sun for producing light. I might, given the right circumstances, even take pause with consideration to my own moral values.
By that same token, my faith here and now is my perception. It’s my opinion of an undefined area of reality. However, like the theory of relativity and Einstein, I hold firm in my theory. I could argue the reality of my beliefs with anyone, but I don’t see this topic as being belief specific.
Take the proposed war in Iraq. If a given person (A) who believes in a given God (A+ by name) disagrees with a given person (B), who also believes in the same God (A+ by name), then person B’s God is not really A+ but B+, if they disagree based on their belief.
Same God by name and faith, different God by understanding. Both believe the other is wrong based on their faith in their God. Both presumably believe that their God is good, and agrees with them. Neither would blame the argument on their God.
I would disagree with the concept that there is an inherent accepted Good and Evil around the world. Isn’t there enough disagreement here in the U.S. to prove that isn’t so? Racism, abortion, war(Any and all, or each individually.), anti-semitism, making a right hand turn from the left hand lane, homosexuality, child abuse/spanking, guns, drugs(Any and all, or each individually), sex(With adults, kids, dogs and cats, with two partners, oral, anal, married, condoms, leather and lace), man[<][=][>]woman, I can go on. The bottom line is that odds are your higher power agrees with you.
Whether my God exists or not is entirely beside the point. People can, of course, ‘believe’ in a God, and disagree with them, but I would say that the God = Good argument, when it is used, is speaking of the God you follow.
That can be anything from nature(As you see it of course.) to your own personal judgement. So, while an atheist can disagree with God if they die and there is one, they certainly can’t down here(That would be ridiculous).
Let me provide some relevence to my post in relation to the OP.
The OP states, in summation the following idea:
If there were an omnicient, all powerful God, who held a system opposed to mine in some way, would his system still be good(i.e.the good of goods) or would my idea of good hold true, or would I change my idea to suit the Almighty?
My posts were a bit off topic, but here’s why:
The King of Kings and Creator of All the universe, omnicient and all powerful, does define what is good. Presumably if I disagreed with said God he would simply change my mind.
Second, say this God were, for example, Saddam Hussein. He would still define what was good. Can I disagree? Yes, but I would be wrong. Why? Because if Saddam created the universe and defined the nature of all things then he has also defined what is good, and that is an absolute truth, like gravity. I can disagree with gravity, that doesn’t make me right. Lacking the ability to define matter and time as I do, I would also be unable to define Good and Evil. In other words, whether I agree or not makes a difference only to me, and might perhaps be considered a personal victory(Which I would celebrate with my own little party for eternity wherever Saddam chooses to put me.).
In short, in the reality of what comes next, Good is a law of physics, set by the same entity that set all other such laws in motion. The OP assumes such an entity exists.
That much is obvious. My previous posts were more related to why God = Good here and now, in the sense that God here is what you believe in, and God there just is.
Well put sir,
So good = law of physics, makes a lot of sense lets see…
Bippy standing on ground, looks round, “I can see the world is flat, therefore I believe flatness is the correct state for the world”
God hit’s Bippy with a thunderbolt
BANG
Bippy drifts up to heaven (hopefully)
God: “Now you see Bippy the world is a sphere”
Bippy: “Doh!”
… like the image
I wonder if like, physics, we can explore Good and Bad and through time discover more and more accurately what is Good according to God.
Great posts Copaesthetic, you could be Polycarp’s young padawan