Welcome to Religious Forums @Ash Wright , and thank you for agreeing to this discussion.
This debate will be centered on the best index for good. When a moral decision is to be made, what is the best measure by which one can come to the good. If a moral dilemma is present, for example the famous Trolley Problem, wherein an unstoppable trolley is on a path to kill multiple people and you stand by a switch that can send it to kill one, by what methodology do we, or should we, come to the good decision. The decision that ought to be made.
God is the ultimate index for good. God is the alpha index and the omega index, He is the culmination of all legitimate indices of good. And multiple true indices for the good do exist, among them the utilitarian maximal eudaimonia, the reasoned categorical imperative, virtue, the glory of God, and the ineffable way. Common to the human experience, without regard to the ethical framework being operated under, is the understanding that these ethical frameworks can and should be applied broadly to society and the individuals therein. We have an instinctual drive to promote good and suppress evil, that there are heinous behaviors which demand action to prevent and/or punish them. I argue that this commonality in human understanding points towards a fundamental truth of a real and objective good that rests outside of the human subjective experience. A metaphysical force that pushes existence towards a specific state that we call ‘what ought to be’ "this person ought not have been murdered", "this river ought to be clean" etc. This metaphysical underpinning of the notion of good is what we refer to as God. I’d go further and argue that a creator God is the only possible source of an ought state for existence.
Materialistic observation has only, and can only, provide insight into what is and says nothing about what should be. Even an impersonal truth, such as that found in Buddhism, cannot account for directive power, with no steering hand there is only the way of the things as they are. Only a personality can aim, and only a personal God can aim all of existence.
This debate will be centered on the best index for good. When a moral decision is to be made, what is the best measure by which one can come to the good. If a moral dilemma is present, for example the famous Trolley Problem, wherein an unstoppable trolley is on a path to kill multiple people and you stand by a switch that can send it to kill one, by what methodology do we, or should we, come to the good decision. The decision that ought to be made.
God is the ultimate index for good. God is the alpha index and the omega index, He is the culmination of all legitimate indices of good. And multiple true indices for the good do exist, among them the utilitarian maximal eudaimonia, the reasoned categorical imperative, virtue, the glory of God, and the ineffable way. Common to the human experience, without regard to the ethical framework being operated under, is the understanding that these ethical frameworks can and should be applied broadly to society and the individuals therein. We have an instinctual drive to promote good and suppress evil, that there are heinous behaviors which demand action to prevent and/or punish them. I argue that this commonality in human understanding points towards a fundamental truth of a real and objective good that rests outside of the human subjective experience. A metaphysical force that pushes existence towards a specific state that we call ‘what ought to be’ "this person ought not have been murdered", "this river ought to be clean" etc. This metaphysical underpinning of the notion of good is what we refer to as God. I’d go further and argue that a creator God is the only possible source of an ought state for existence.
Materialistic observation has only, and can only, provide insight into what is and says nothing about what should be. Even an impersonal truth, such as that found in Buddhism, cannot account for directive power, with no steering hand there is only the way of the things as they are. Only a personality can aim, and only a personal God can aim all of existence.
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