Arguments Against God

Tree of Life said:

@InterestedAtheist You've already said that it's possible that God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting evil. It's also possible that we don't know what this reason is, since we are not omniscient.

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Yes. But saying "I don't know the answer because I'm not omniscienct" does not excuse you from the consequences of not knowing the answer.

Tree of Life said:

If God has a morally sufficient reason for permitting evil, then premise (1) of the argument is false. There is no gratuitous evil. All evil that God permits is justified because he has some reason or explanation that is morally sufficient.

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Agreed.

Tree of Life said:

This is all true if God does in fact have a morally sufficient reason, but so far we have agreed that it is merely possible that he does. The question now is whether or not we know God's reasons and whether or not he actually has them.

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The important word there is "if".

Tree of Life said:

I admit that I might not know all of God's reasons for permitting mankind to fall into sin.

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This is a very important admission on your part.

Tree of Life said:

You say that I therefore do not know that God is good.

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Good, keep going...

Tree of Life said:

I think I know that God is good for other reasons, but we will leave those aside for now.

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An admission that you immediately try to backtrack on. This could be because you see how saying you do not know all of God's reasons for permitting evil sabotages your own religion.

Tree of Life said:

But let's accept what you're saying here. If I do not know that God is good

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Good! Now, let's see where this takes us.

Tree of Life said:

then neither do you know that a good God cannot exist. The Problem of Evil still fails because it does not establish that a good God does not or cannot exist. At best, it establishes that a good God might not exist, and this is not a very profound conclusion. We could have arrived at that without any argument at all.

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And yet you seem to have missed the enormous significance of what you are saying.
Let me explain.
In defending God against the Argument from Evil, you have sacrificed your entire religion for the sake of winning a logical puzzle.
Yes, I am happy to agree that you have overcome the challenge stated in the Argument from Evil, as you stated it.
The problem is, in order to overcome it, you have given up on the principle tenet of your religion. You have been forced to admit that you do not know that God is good; indeed, that it is possible that God is evil. You tried to go back on this by saying that you think you know that God is good for other reasons, but you have already said that you "might not know all of God's reasons for allowing mankind to fall into sin."
Therefore, you are saying that it is possible that God is evil; you just don't know.
And that, coming from a Christian, is an incredibly important admission.
So: the Argument from Evil, as I see it, is an excellent argument. In order to defeat it, Christians need to concede that they do not know whether or not God is good. And how can anyone call themselves a Christian if they doubt God's goodness?

You can solve this problem. All you have to do is explain why God let evil into the world.

Paradoxically, this is what the argument from evil is all about: a good God would not have allowed evil to exist. Therefore, you have not solved the Argument from Evil yet, as the most important question remains unanswered, and unless you an answer it, you cannot claim that God is good.

Tree of Life said:

When we say that God - or anything - is evil or good, we are implying or presupposing that there is some moral norm. We are implying that there is some measure of good and evil whereby we are making our judgment. So when we say that God is evil, we imply that there is some measure of good and evil that is not God whereby we are measuring God. But this is absurd. Showing its absurdity would take us into an entirely different argument, but a moral standard outside of God either does not make any sense or would be God itself. So to say that God is evil makes about as much logical sense as to say that good is evil or that a circle is a square.

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Tell me, are you familiar with Euthyphro's Dilemma?

Tree of Life said:

Yes. I think it is easily solved. God’s commands issue from his own character. He commands to love because God is love. He could not command otherwise so his commands are not arbitrary. Yet the standard of goodness is not outside of God because it’s rooted in God’s character.

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I admire your confidence in facing up to one of the most difficult philosophical problems in history.

Can I take it, from your answer, that when faced with the Dilemma, "Does God call things good because they are, or are things good because God calls them so?" you would take the second option - good is what God says it is - and then qualify your answer by saying that God's nature is goodness itself, so any answer flows from His nature?
Would that be an accurate representation of your views?

If so, I have a follow-up question. What does it mean to say that God's character is good, or goodness? Do you judge God's character by some external standard and, if so, where does your external standard come from?
Or, if not, how do you judge that God's character is in fact good? It would seem to be a meaningless tautology to say that "God's character is goodness because goodness is God's character."

Tree of Life said:

Yes. I think it is easily solved. God’s commands issue from his own character. He commands to love because God is love. He could not command otherwise so his commands are not arbitrary. Yet the standard of goodness is not outside of God because it’s rooted in God’s character.

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If "God is love" then how can God be a person? That's like saying "My dog, Spot, is generosity".

Tree of Life said:

He is tri-personal.

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Why not just say "God is a loving community of persons" then. "God is love" is confusing an abstract concept with a concrete reality. Unless you don't really believe God has a concrete existence?

Tree of Life said:

Goodness is that which resembles God or is in line with his will.

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But if you say "goodness is that which resembles God or is in line with His will," then goodness is meaningless. To say "God is good" now means, "God is God." This gives us no information at all.

Under your definition of goodness - God's nature - goodness is now completely arbitrary. Goodness could mean anything. How could you object to it? By what standards would you judge God's actions?
If God were to steal, lie or cheat, or encourage others to do so, that would be good. You may say that God would never do those things. But why not? Perhaps they are His will. How could you disagree?

If you say that God is goodness itself, then you have no standard to measure goodness by, and the concept becomes meaningless.

InterestedAtheist said:

But if you say "goodness is that which resembles God or is in line with His will," then goodness is meaningless. To say "God is good" now means, "God is God." This gives us no information at all.

Under your definition of goodness - God's nature - goodness is now completely arbitrary. Goodness could mean anything. How could you object to it? By what standards would you judge God's actions?
If God were to steal, lie or cheat, or encourage others to do so, that would be good. You may say that God would never do those things. But why not? Perhaps they are His will. How could you disagree?

If you say that God is goodness itself, then you have no standard to measure goodness by, and the concept becomes meaningless.

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And the OP also seems to forget that the idea of goodness posited would have to be mind independent to have any absolute power, otherwise it's still subjective and thus arbitrary in the sense that it comes from a mind's deliberation and choices. But it also reifies goodness to the point that when you conflate it with an entity, it creates that same contradiction without realizing it

Why is one meant to take the ideas about what God is seriously if, by the nature of what God is described as in the ontological sense, one can't really make any philosophical claims rooted in falsifiable truth and thus any arguments can never be sound, only valid.

@Tree of Life
You want to talk about good and evil? Let's do it! What is more good: perfect or not perfect?

muichimotsu said:

Why is one meant to take the ideas about what God is seriously if, by the nature of what God is described as in the ontological sense, one can't really make any philosophical claims rooted in falsifiable truth and thus any arguments can never be sound, only valid.

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Could you explain that a little, please? It sounds good, but I'm not sure I get exactly what you mean.

Tree of Life said:

It’s no less meaningless than to say that 2+2=4.

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On the contrary. Saying that 2+2=4 gives you useful information. 4 is one less than 5, and 1 more than 3. On the other hand, saying that God = good tells you nothing at all about what good is. It could be absolutely anything. You have no way of knowing.

Tree of Life said:

It is meaningless to ask whether or not God is good because God is himself the standard of goodness.

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Exactly.

Tree of Life said:

But it is meaningful to ask whether other things are good. We are asking how they relate to God, his character, and will.

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It's not meaningful in the slightest, I'm afraid. Yes, you can compare things to God = good. But since you have no idea what God = good means, this means nothing.

Tree of Life said:

But God’s nature is not arbitrary. It is well defined, unchanging, and eternal. So why would goodness being based on that nature be arbitrary?

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Because goodness can be whatever God decides. If God decides that something is good, it is. That means it is arbitrary. God could have chosen absolutely anything to mean good; why would there be any difference to Him between murdering a baby and caring for it? You have said there is no external standard, so one is as good as the other, for God.

Tree of Life said:

We cannot judge God. He is absolute. There is nothing greater than God whereby he is measured or judged. That’s what it means to be God. If God were anything less than absolute, he would not be God.

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Therefore, anything God does is good. If He were to lie, or cheat or steal, you would have to say that it was good - because, as you have said, you are unable to judge him.

Tree of Life said:

It is inconceivable that God could do these things since they are contrary to his nature. It is similarly inconceivable that God could die or cease to exist, for example.

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Why is it inconceivable that God could lie, steal, cheat or murder? If He did do these things, why would they be wrong? In what way are they contrary to His nature? Do you have some standard you can measure these actions against?

Tree of Life said:

Goodness is not something that needs to be measured. It is the standard itself. It is the ruler that we use to measure everything else.

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But before you use a ruler, you need to make sure it is an accurate one. What you have is a ruler that could be any length, marked with any interval, and you have also said that whatever type of ruler it is is the right length.

InterestedAtheist said:

Could you explain that a little, please? It sounds good, but I'm not sure I get exactly what you mean.

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If God is supernatural, it's beyond really any meaningful description, I guess is part of the basic objection. For me, I've been concerned primarily with God's cogency as a concept versus the somewhat secondary issue of evidence, because if one can't find any agreement on what God is, then the idea of finding evidence for it doesn't logically follow as something to be concerned about, because the very concept is in question of being coherent, cogent, or consistent. Call it my apatheism and/or igtheism

That's true. What exactly is God? Christian attempts to move beyond the traditional figure and adapt God to the modern world have not been very successful. And this thread is just another example; what does goodness mean? They don't know. They can't say.
It was fine in Biblical times, when God was just an enormously stronger version of a human king, but now that we know we live in a very different world the idea of God becomes incoherent.