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Why Morality cannot come from God

Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being. Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.
 

Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being. Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.

Amoral - b : being neither moral nor immoral; specifically : lying outside the sphere to which moral judgments apply

So I don't see a problem accepting God as being outside the sphere to which moral judgements apply.
 

ronandcarol

Member
Premium Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being. Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.
You are desperately trying to figure out something that is totally beyond your reasoning! And I don't specifically mean your reasoning as in 'you', but any human mind. We don't have and cannot have the foggiest ideas of how much God is of anything. Everything exists from and starts from God. If you want to try and guess if God is moral and good you cannot fathom it. God has taken the wisest of scholars and made them ignorant to His basic knowledge. There is the truth of His words that show Him to be the starting point of knowledge, the starting point of truth, the starting point of moral values, the starting point of logic.....you could go on and on, He is the beginning of everything. He is also our sustainer for every breadth we take and every beat of our hearts. We cannot put Him in a box that fits what our mere minds think Him to be.
ronandcarol
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard.
What if god defines "good," and a person looking at that definition sees that it applies to god and says "God is good"? Would not god's own conception of good be a characteristic inside of him? Thus, God would be the arbiter of morals,

If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being.
Why? You seem to going from one concept to another here: from "good" to "morals" to "moral goodness," none of which, as you appear to regard them, are the same.

Since "Good" is defined by his actions,
And this is a good example. You say that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions," and also that "Good" is defined by his actions." Are you talking about different things here or simply the same thing with different names?

Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral.
But why can't bad also be defined by his actions? Just because you say that god is good doesn't imply that he can't also be bad---just like a child. After all, in the Bible he has been described as wrathful and angry, characteristics one doesn't associate with goodness. However, if in your very first sentence where you said "God is good" you meant he is always good, that might be a different thing, but you didn't. So what is it you mean?

.
 
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InChrist

Free4ever
When believers say, or more importantly the scriptures, say that God is Good, it means that goodness is an innate aspect of His Being and essence. God is the origin and source of goodness.
 

naj Khan

New Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being. Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The Baha'i Faith believes in the evolving nature of Spiritual Laws by Revelation over the millennia. The concept of Objective versus Subjective Morality is an anachronism of an old view of what is objective and subjective in terms of a supposed 'Objective Morality' based being from God, but unfortunately no one has been able to define this Objective Morality in human terms, and it remains a useless nebulous concept.

Morality by Definition is neither objective nor subjective but remains the the very human social and cultural morals and ethics that evolve over time. They may or may not reflect the Spiritual Laws and teachings from God, but may reflect in some ways the evolving nature of the 'Spiritual Laws' from Revelation,
 

Curious George

Veteran Member
The Baha'i Faith believes in the evolving nature of Spiritual Laws by Revelation over the millennia. The concept of Objective versus Subjective Morality is an anachronism of an old view of what is objective and subjective in terms of a supposed 'Objective Morality' based being from God, but unfortunately no one has been able to define this Objective Morality in human terms, and it remains a useless nebulous concept.

Morality by Definition is neither objective nor subjective but remains the the very human social and cultural morals and ethics that evolve over time. They may or may not reflect the Spiritual Laws and teachings from God, but may reflect in some ways the evolving nature of the 'Spiritual Laws' from Revelation,
And you do not see how you are just asserting a flavor of subjective or objective morality? Subjective and objective are not anachronisms. Morality is either objective or subjective. While you seem to assert that morality is relative to cultural, social, and temporal factors the subjective vs. objective question does not dissolve.
 

Samantha Rinne

Resident Genderfluid Writer/Artist
Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.

You are correct. And yet morality is important for finding God.

I want to impress upon you one Bible section. Genesis 3.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?”

2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

4 “You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. 5 “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. 7 Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”

10 He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.”

11 And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

12 The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.”

13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?”

The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

14 So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this,

“Cursed are you above all livestock
and all wild animals!
You will crawl on your belly
and you will eat dust
all the days of your life.
15 And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.”

16 To the woman he said,

“I will make your pains in childbearing very severe;
with painful labor you will give birth to children.
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you.”

17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat from it,’

“Cursed is the ground because of you;
through painful toil you will eat food from it
all the days of your life.
18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you,
and you will eat the plants of the field.
19 By the sweat of your brow
you will eat your food
until you return to the ground,
since from it you were taken;
for dust you are
and to dust you will return.”

20 Adam named his wife Eve because she would become the mother of all the living.

21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them. 22 And the Lord God said, “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” 23 So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden to work the ground from which he had been taken. 24 After he drove the man out, he placed on the east side of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword flashing back and forth to guard the way to the tree of life.

On the surface, this sounds like a parent saying "Don't eat after midnight" or "never go out in direct sunlight" or "don't get too close to water" (props to people who understand this reference).

But hold up.

Adam and Eve were told to do this BEFORE they had morality. That's right. "Don't eat the fruit, because it's wrong." While people need the fruit to tell right from wrong.

This is God being a massive troll.

There is something going on in this story below the surface, and I'm gonna recommend a reread.

Possible theories:

1. The crime may have been a failure to trust God. As in, the tree itself was okay because it contained knowledge from God, but they simply were not yet ready to receive it. So because they did not trust God's time for giving it on his own, that was the actual sin.
2. Eve was convinced of the fruit's goodness before she even ate. This implies that good/evil is less an object to be eaten, and more a dualistic way of thinking. Before this, Eden was monist in regard to reality.
3. What good/evil really is, is the ability to make a judgement call. In other words, it is very much like a person who is convinced they will be fired, and is so demoralized from that point on that their work sucks. That is, God didn't actually drive them out of Eden at all. If it is to be believed that God is not subject to our morals, the best was of understanding God is as a sort of mirror to us. When we hate ourselves, God seems angry to us.
 

Skwim

Veteran Member
You are desperately trying to figure out something that is totally beyond your reasoning! And I don't specifically mean your reasoning as in 'you', but any human mind. We don't have and cannot have the foggiest ideas of how much God is of anything.
Yet Christians have absolutely no problem characterizing god as this, that, and the other thing.

"all-powerful"
"ever-present"
"all-knowing"
"sovereign"
"holy"
"absolute truth"
"righteous"
"just"
"love"
"merciful"
"faithful"
"unchanging"
[source for the 12 above]​
and
"wise"
"infinite"
"trinity"
"self=existing"
"self-sufficient"
"eternal"
"good"
"gracious"
[ source for the last 8]
If you want to try and guess if God is moral and good you cannot fathom it.
This makes no sense.

God has taken the wisest of scholars and made them ignorant to His basic knowledge.
And you know this to be a fact because _____________________________________________ .

There is the truth of His words that show Him to be the starting point of knowledge, the starting point of truth, the starting point of moral values, the starting point of logic.....
Hmm . . . more characteristics to add to the above list. Care to tells where you got this information?

you could go on and on, He is the beginning of everything.
I believe the more accurate expression would be "I could go on and on."

He is also our sustainer for every breadth we take and every beat of our hearts. We cannot put Him in a box that fits what our mere minds think Him to be.
ronandcarol
Yet you have no difficulty in thinking him to be the starting point of knowledge, the starting point of truth, the starting point of moral values, and the starting point of logic. None of which I believe one would find in the Bible.

.

.
 
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Paradox22

I'm only Hume ian
There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being.


you should be careful before you say there are only two choices. It sounds like you are talking about the the Euthyphro Dilemma. "Is something good because the gods love it, or do the gods love it because it is good. The question is:
If something is good merely because the gods like it, then goodness is arbitrary. If the gods like something for its goodness, then goodness is a property that exists indepently of the gods.
(Euthyphro was a polytheist)

It has been argued that this is a false dilemma. One explanation I have heard goes as follows:
God demands things that are good, but the reason they are good is because they reflect God's own nature. The goodness does not ultimately come from God's commandments, but from His nature, which then results in good commandments.
 
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74x12

Well-Known Member
There is a serious logical problem with theistic objective morality. Suppose one states that "God is good." There are only two possibilities implied by this statement. Either the person stating that "God is good" is appealing to "good" as a characteristic outside of God, and thus, the person is effectively asserting that a higher standard of morality exists outside of God, and is judging God by that standard. Thus, God is not the arbiter of morals, rather, his actions are being evaluated as being moral based on a moral standard outside of him. If, on the other hand (and this is the only other possibility), the person stating "God is good" means that "moral goodness" is defined by God's actions, then God is an entirely amoral being. Since "Good" is defined by his actions, then by definition, everything he does must be good, and, therefore, he can do anything, and it will always be good, thus he has no choice between right and wrong, and, hence, he is amoral. In either of the two cases, we have a serious logical problem for theists who state that morality comes from God.
No. Morality is ultimately based off of love. We know what is right or wrong because we know how to love. The only people who don't know right from wrong or sociopaths who can't empathize.

God is love.
 

Paradox22

I'm only Hume ian
No. Morality is ultimately based off of love. We know what is right or wrong because we know how to love. The only people who don't know right from wrong or sociopaths who can't empathize.

God is love.

That's pretty limited. Take two issues: Death penalty and Abortion
  • How does love provide an answer to whether the Death penalty is morally sound?
  • How does love draw the line between when it is morally acceptable to have an abortion?
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
And you do not see how you are just asserting a flavor of subjective or objective morality? Subjective and objective are not anachronisms. Morality is either objective or subjective. While you seem to assert that morality is relative to cultural, social, and temporal factors the subjective vs. objective question does not dissolve.

Morality has subjective and objective attributes, and is natural to the society and culture that the code of ethics and morality has. The evidence is that they evolve over time. You have to give a better argument than above that there is a distinct definable difference between 'objective and subjective' morality to be meaningful. Cultural, social, and temporal factors dominate through the history of humanity.

In scripture whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Baha'i or whatever there is no mention of any such thing as objective nor subjective morality. There are spiritual laws, principles, and attributes of God.

Consider slavery over the history of humanity. It is not forbidden in Jewish, Christian, nor Islamic scripture. In these scriptures it is variably regulated, allowed and tolerated. In the Baha'i spiritual laws it is forbidden in all forms. I consider it an evolved standard of spiritual base don the spiritual maturity of humanity in different ages of Revelation.

How could you describe slavery in terms of 'objective morality?'
 
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74x12

Well-Known Member
That's pretty limited. Take two issues: Death penalty and Abortion
  • How does love provide an answer to whether the Death penalty is morally sound?
  • How does love draw the line between when it is morally acceptable to have an abortion?
As for the death penalty. Many people don't like the idea of killing even murderers, but it's a deterrent to other would be murderers. Basically the death penalty is there to deter murder and ultimately save innocent people's lives.

As for when love draws the line on an issue like abortion. I don't know exactly because I'm not "love" in other words I'm not God. I do believe we should love the unborn child(fetus whatever) also. Now do we place the same worth on it as the mother?
 

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
As for the death penalty. Many people don't like the idea of killing even murderers, but it's a deterrent to other would be murderers. Basically the death penalty is there to deter murder and ultimately save innocent people's lives.

The evidence clearly indicates that the death penalty has not deterred nor decreased the murder rate, but over the millennia many people have been wrongfully executed for a crime they did not commit, and many more did not receive a balanced trial that resulted in the death penalty, because of race, religion or ethnicity.
 
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