Can God Commit Evil?

[Kafir]

If the preferences of the creator are arbitrary, why should I care?

Because He has the power to create and destroy. And He said He would reward those who adhere to the rules and punish those who don't.

Current basketball rules matter because, like you said, there is a consensus that observes them. That consensus creates attention, money, opportunity; in essence, real effects in the physical world.

God, on His own, is the ultimate consensus force. Even if everyone else in the universe disagrees, His opinion determines the ultimate physical outcome.

If you wanted to propose that God's moral authority comes from his ability to create consensus, there would be the difficulty that there is no universal consensus on moral questions. Morality-as-consensus leads either to amorality--because there is no consensus--or more plausibly to relativism, where things are good or bad only insofar as a particular community views them as good or bad. You are not a relativist, though.

Your position seems to rest not on consensus but on God's power to reward or punish. This is a purely functional, self-interested picture of morality: what is good is whatever gets you ahead; what is evil is whatever makes you worse off.

And God's tastes are purely arbitrary: he punishes things because he feels like punishing them, not because they are evil. They are evil, in fact, because they are punished. In this case (to return to the original question) it is meaningless to say that God does good or evil, unless he rewards or punishes himself for his own actions.

You are right that I should care about God's preferences, then--but only in the same sense that I should care about the preferences of a mugger or hijacker who points a gun at me. This doesn't suggest that I should admire those who submit to God's arbitrary demands, or that I should be at all proud to succumb to His duress myself.

[ggeezz]

Your position seems to rest not on consensus but on God's power to reward or punish.

That's what I meant (though apparently didn't express well). But it's not my position.

And God's tastes are purely arbitrary

My position is that every taste is arbitrary. There's no such thing as an objective morality. But God's morality is the closest thing we have. He preexisted the universe. He is also the most intelligent and most wise being.

If I were to tell God where His morality is lacking, I might as well teach Kasparov how to play chess.

[Grog]

[Kafir]

My position is that every taste is arbitrary. There's no such thing as an objective morality. But God's morality is the closest thing we have. He preexisted the universe. He is also the most intelligent and most wise being.

These are non sequiturs.

Preexistence would be relevant if there were some objective law providing that temporal precedence confers moral authority. But you say that there is no such law.

Intelligence would be relevant if there were some underlying morality which God's mental superiority gave him the capacity to discern. But you say that there is none.

You could have added that God can speak very loud, and is fluent in Hebrew. Those characteristics would be relevant to God's moral authority only if you also established some connection between volume or linguistic talent and morality.

But given that you say that morality consists of purely arbitrary tastes, it is difficult to imagine how you could establish a meaningful connection between those tastes and any other characteristic.

Your argument takes the form:
Gary is the world's greatest chess player.
Gary does not like cilantro.
Therefore, cilantro is a moral evil.

There is a missing premise.

[ggeezz]

My position is that every taste is arbitrary. There's no such thing as an objective morality. But God's morality is the closest thing we have. He preexisted the universe. He is also the most intelligent and most wise being.

These are non sequiturs.

Preexistence would be relevant if there were some objective law providing that temporal precedence confers moral authority. But you say that there is no such law.

Intelligence would be relevant if there were some underlying morality which God's mental superiority gave him the capacity to discern. But you say that there is none.

You could have added that God can speak very loud, and is fluent in Hebrew. Those characteristics would be relevant to God's moral authority only if you also established some connection between volume or linguistic talent and morality.

But given that you say that morality consists of purely arbitrary tastes, it is difficult to imagine how you could establish a meaningful connection between those tastes and any other characteristic.

Your argument takes the form:
Gary is the world's greatest chess player.
Gary does not like cilantro.
Therefore, cilantro is a moral evil.

There is a missing premise.

I realize it is a non sequitur in the strict sense. That's why I said we don't have an object morality, but God's is the closest.

It's similar to saying that the best tasting wine is subjective. But the closest thing we have to an objective standard is John who has an incredible palate and has spent his life studying wine. It's still not objective but most everyone would value his opinion over mine and it would be futile for me to argue with him. All I can say is "I like this one better."

Similarly God knows more than anyone else about humanity. You may not like what He does. But He has more insight and more reasoning capabilities than you.

[Grog]

By the way, I figure I owe an accounting for dropping out of the discussion. Frankly, the direction this conversation has turned since the original question doesn't interest me and I clearly don't have very well-formed opinions on the subject.

[Kafir]

I realize it is a non sequitur in the strict sense. That's why I said we don't have an object morality, but God's is the closest.

It's similar to saying that the best tasting wine is subjective. But the closest thing we have to an objective standard is John who has an incredible palate and has spent his life studying wine. It's still not objective but most everyone would value his opinion over mine and it would be futile for me to argue with him. All I can say is "I like this one better."

Similarly God knows more than anyone else about humanity. You may not like what He does. But He has more insight and more reasoning capabilities than you.

All right. So God is not the source of morality; His only authority is as an informed ethical connoisseur. And the fact that He created the universe is not strictly relevant, except to the extent that it might contribute to his knowledge of humanity.

In that case, since there are ultimately no right answers, I would amend your simile: arguing with God about morality is less like arguing with Kasparov about chess, and more like arguing with Ebert about movies. Which does not seem so preposterous to me.

One corollary is that if I do not share God's tastes, there is no reason, apart from the fear of punishment, that I should follow them. If the experts recommend Kurosawa films and monogamy, and I find that I prefer Michael Bay movies and fornication, my tastes may be unsophisticated, but they are my own.

Further, God does not punish "evil" because it is "right" to do so; He punishes because He likes to. This is a vision of God as a cross between Robert Parker and Stalin: He issues proclamations on his own tastes, then punishes those who fail to take his recommendations. This does not seem good to me--but that is only my opinion.

I'm picking at it, but I actually like your parallel between ethics and aesthetics. I sometimes find myself agreeing with it. But it does surprise me, coming from a Christian: it's closer to Nietzsche than to Augustine.

[Kafir]

Another thought: in aesthetics, at least, consensus has a major role in what we mean by good. If we want to say that a wine is good, in some quasi-objective sense beyond "I like it", one of the things that we mean will be that among people with a broad experience of wine, many of them would enjoy drinking it.

(We might also mean that the wine is distinctive and difficult to produce--but a wine could be distinctive, difficult to produce, and thoroughly unpalatable; broad approval is essential.)

And the personal tastes of experts are not seen as normative when they depart from the larger consensus: Lester Bangs knew as much about rock and/or roll as anyone, but if he thought that Metal Machine Music was the greatest album of all time, and everyone else found it unlistenable, the usual conclusion would not be that it was in fact the greatest album of all time, but that Lester Bangs (his depth of knowledge notwithstanding) had eccentric tastes.

So, if morality and goodness are ultimately matters of taste, and we want to say that something is good with something close to objectivity, we will have to mean something like, "Many observers with a broad knowledge of possible actions would approve of this action."

In that case God would be the author of morality, in the indirect sense that he created human nature, but if His moral views departed from human tastes (or if human tastes departed from his views), there would be no reason to consider his judgments normative.


Sorry about taking over your topic, osarusan.

[ggeezz]

Another thought: in aesthetics, at least, consensus has a major role in what we mean by good. If we want to say that a wine is good, in some quasi-objective sense beyond "I like it", one of the things that we mean will be that among people with a broad experience of wine, many of them would enjoy drinking it.

(We might also mean that the wine is distinctive and difficult to produce--but a wine could be distinctive, difficult to produce, and thoroughly unpalatable; broad approval is essential.)

And the personal tastes of experts are not seen as normative when they depart from the larger consensus: Lester Bangs knew as much about rock and/or roll as anyone, but if he thought that Metal Machine Music was the greatest album of all time, and everyone else found it unlistenable, the usual conclusion would not be that it was in fact the greatest album of all time, but that Lester Bangs (his depth of knowledge notwithstanding) had eccentric tastes.

So, if morality and goodness are ultimately matters of taste, and we want to say that something is good with something close to objectivity, we will have to mean something like, "Many observers with a broad knowledge of possible actions would approve of this action."

In that case God would be the author of morality, in the indirect sense that he created human nature, but if His moral views departed from human tastes (or if human tastes departed from his views), there would be no reason to consider his judgments normative.

No, they wouldn't be normative, since normative is by definition related to consensus. But his judgments would still be more sophisticated, based on more knowledge and more reasoning. On the other side of Lester Bangs is Brittany Spears. Popularity means popularity, nothing else. Objectivity applies to anyone. Subjectivity applies only to one person. Popularity is merely the plural of subjectivity.

Here's the distinction I would make of God. Since He is ultimately sophisticated, it is likely that as a person becomes more sophisticated there opinion will align more with God's. If your knowledge of Rock n' Roll got close to that of Lester's it's likely you'd appreciate MMM more.

It's not objective. But it's more informed. There's a reason we pay attention to the subjective likes of those who are more informed.

On the flip side of my argument is the fact sometimes the most informed have divergent views. But my guess is statistically you'd find that more information leads to conformity of opinion.