Being, Good, and Evil

[polytropos]

Goodness and being are really the same. They differ only coneptually. The goodness of something consists in its being desirable. Hence Aristotle’s dictum that ‘good is what everything desires’. But desirability evidently follows upon perfection, for things always desire their perfection. And the perfection of a thing depends on the extent to which it has achieved actuality. So, something is obviously good inasmuch as it is a being . . . So, good clearly does not really differ from being, though the word ‘good’ expresses a notion of desirability not expressed by the word ‘being’. (S.T. Ia5.1)

There has been a lot of discussion lately about the problem of evil, God’s existence, and God’s goodness. For Catholics at least, these issues must be understood in terms of the convertibility of the transcendentals, the privation view of evil, and the doctrine of analogy, all of which are so often notoriously misunderstood (probably because they are so often inadequately explained). However, I think that properly understood, these doctrines make a lot of sense and are eminently defensible. Here I largely draw from the work of analytical Thomists Peter Geach and Brian Davies, who, of course, have drawn from the work of the Angelic Doctor himself. I will phrase everything in as accessible a manner as I can, but I am indebted to the aforementioned authors for these ideas.

First we’ll consider what we mean when we say that something is good. Consider a few propositions:
The house is red.
The cat is grey.

The house is small.
The cat is big.
When we say that one thing is red and another thing is grey, we know something intrinsic to each of the things we are talking about, even if we don’t know what the objects are. If I say “A is red” and “B is grey,” you know something particular about A and B. When we say one thing is small and another thing is big, however, we do not know something intrinsic to each of the things we are talking about unless we know what the objects are, since a small house is still bigger than a big cat. Simply knowing what is predicated of the object does not tell us anything about the object. We mean that the house is small for a house and the cat is big for a cat. Saying “A is small” and “B is big” does not tell me whether B is bigger than A, but saying “A is red” and “B is grey” does allow me to distinguish A and B with respect to color.

The same is true when we predicate “good” of an object. To say something is good does not tell us anything about the object if we do not know what the object is. A good house is said to be good for different reasons than a good cat is said to be good. A good house might be well-insulated, functional, and aesthetically appealing. A good cat might be healthy and agile. A thing is said to be good inasumuch as it fulfills its purpose: a house would be worse if it were poorly insulated or lacked a kitchen, and a cat would be worse if it got sick or broke its leg, but a house cannot get sick or break its leg, and it is certainly no detraction from a cat to say that it lacks a kitchen. Brian Davies notes, “To call something good, regardless of how we go on to justify our judgment, is to commend it for having what we are looking for in things of that kind.”

Conversely, to say that something is bad (or evil) is to say that it lacks what we are looking for in things of its kind. A cat is bad inasmuch as it lacks what it takes to be a cat (say, a healthy and functioning body). This is what it means to take a privation view of evil: badness occurs in things only as they lack what is proper to them. It is bad for a person to have cancer in the respect that it prevents the person from being what we expect a person to be (even though a tumor is a physical addition to a person’s body). There is nothing inherently bad about a hurricane (it is even good, on this view, for a hurricane to do what a hurricane tends to do), but it is an evil for a hurricane to destroy crops and lead to the starvation of a community. To quote Davies again, “On this account, ‘badness’ (or ‘evil’) is a word we use to signifiy a gap between what is actually there and what could be there (and should be there) but is not.”

This is a good starting point to think about the three doctrines I wanted to address.

 

[polytropos]

The convertibility of good and being
To say that good and being are convertible is not to say that they are synonymous. Something is not good simply because it exists. Good is defined as the aspect of being as desirable. It is not different from being but is another way of looking at being. A cat is good if its being is in such a way that it is desirable. A house is good if its being is in such a way that it is desirable (even though that “such a way” would be different for the house than for the cat). As such, one might note, that good is conceptual and intellectual, and one would be right: since good is just another way of looking at being, it only “exists” when being is looked at or considered as an aspect (or another way of looking at) being, and is a distinction drawn only by and in the mind.

It also happens that it is possible to look at being wrongly. Davies, quoted above, adds the phrase, “regardless of how we go on to justify our judgment.” One can improperly appraise the good. But that does not change the fact that the good is being as desirable, and to improperly appraise it is to misinterpret what is desirable. Someone might skip mass on Sunday morning because he views it desirable to get more sleep. One only does what one thinks is good; the will tends toward what it views as desirable. However, when one skips mass, one is sinning because it is actually desirable and proper for human beings to attend mass each week. The will (which, in Aristotelianism, proceeds from the intellect) tends toward what it perceives to be good and desirable, whether or not it is actually good and desirable.

It should be clear from the mass example that the relativity of good (a cat is good in a different way than a house is) and the possible epistemic gap (one might misapprehend the good) do not subjectify the good. What is actually desirable (on the Aristotelian-Thomistic view) is that which is determined by the forms of things. Worship is a proper activity of the will, which follows from the intellectual form of human beings, so it is an objective evil to miss mass. Even if it is someone’s opinion that cats are more desirable with three legs than with four legs, cats will still actually be better with four legs, since it is natural for cats to have four legs.

This is what is meant when it is said that good is convertible with being: good is the aspect of being as desirable. A thing is good inasmuch as its being exists in such a way that it is desirable and fulfills what it is supposed to be.

The privation view of evil
I’ve already touched upon the privation view of evil, and it follows, I think, rather clearly from what I’ve said above about the convertibility of good and being, so here I will be brief. If good and being are convertible, then it follows that evil, as the antithesis of good, is convertible with non-being. All evil is a lack of what good is; evil is, one might say, being as undesirable, being which fails to fulfill what it is supposed to be. A human is evil when he sins because it is not proper for a human to sin, given that the intellect is meant to apprehend the proper forms and final causes of things, including oneself. A cat which kills and eats a mouse is not evil, since a cat is a carnivore and needs to eat.

The doctrine of analogy
What we have established above is that, when “good” is predicated on something, we need to know what that something is in order for the word “good” to have specific descriptive power. However, it does not follow that we do not know anything simply by knowing that a thing is good; we know that, inasmuch as the thing is good, the thing lacks any imperfections that would entail that it could potentially be any better than it is.

In each use of the word, there is some meaning preserved, but the word “good” is not always used in the same way. In other words, to speak of various things being good is not univocal (it does not mean the same thing in each case) nor equivocal (it does not mean an entirely different thing in each case), but is analogical. This is true of good things in the world around us, but it would follow that it would also be true of God.

For the purposes of this topic, I won’t prove the existence of God, but we can start from the conclusion of any of the major Thomistic proofs: God is Pure Actuality. It would follow that God lacks any imperfections and is therefore wholly good, having no ability to be better. In what sense, then, can we say “God is good”? As noted previously, we do not exactly know what “good” means if we do not know of what it is being predicated. We cannot know the essence of God directly, so we cannot fully understand what it means for God to be good. As, once again, Brian Davies says, “[God’s perfection] is another piece of negative theology, a reminder of what God cannot be (in this case, imperfect and, therefore, not good).”

Is this all we can know about God’s goodness, that He is in some way good but we can’t say exactly how? Not quite. I think there is a bit more we might infer, even as we are substantially limited in knowing God’s nature. God is the cause of all creaturely good, as the Unmoved Mover and First Efficient Cause. God does not cause evil (since evil is a privation of good and a lack of being, and therefore cannot be caused). All that is good comes from God and could not exist (or be good as such) if not for God’s constant sustaining act. Further, Brian Davies argues that to know what is good is to love, so, granting that God is omniscient, God loves all of creation and Himself.

Hopefully this brief sketch helps to show what is meant by these doctrines. I am heading off to school in a few days and so will probably not commit too much time to defending these views, but hopefully others will and they will serve as a useful reference.

 

[sealoch]

There is still a very large jump from a god exists to he is good. Also just being the creator is not proof that they are good. That would be as if I put together an aquarium. I will even go so far as to say to keep this aquarium going i am continuing the power source for the pump.

Would this be enough evidence for the fish to conclude that i am good?

 

[ProdglArchitect]

There is still a very large jump from a god exists to he is good. Also just being the creator is not proof that they are good. That would be as if I put together an aquarium. I will even go so far as to say to keep this aquarium going i am continuing the power source for the pump.

Would this be enough evidence for the fish to conclude that i am good?

You didn’t create the fish, you simply gathered them. Creation is an act of love, and goes far beyond the simply act of gathering. We conclude that God is good because we know of the concept of good.

I’ll lay it out as simply as I can, mainly because trying to get detailed will take more time than I have.

I’m beginning this discussion on the assumption of the existence of God.

God was all that existed prior to his act of creation.

God created everything that exists in the physical reality

Therefore, everything we know and understand is a result of God’s creation.

We know that good exists, because we can experience it, as well as its counterpart, evil. Without good, evil could not exist because we would have no base point from which to define if something is good or bad.

Because everything we know comes from God, and because we know of good, it follows that good must come from God.

If good comes from God, then it is necessary that God is good, otherwise he would not have been able to impart on us the concept of good.

God cannot be both “good” and “evil”, that would be a paradox.

Evil ultimately occurs when we reject good, therefore, evil is necessarily a rejection of God, from whom “good” is derived. While God is not directly evil, evil could not exist without Him because without him there would be no good to reject, meaning that there could be no evil to embrace.

Please note that this is nowhere near a complete discussion on the subject, or the reasons for the conclusion that God is good. This is simply my very, very abridge breakdown of one train of logic which could lead to that conclusion, and in no way speaks for the official teachings of the Church.

 

[polytropos]

There is still a very large jump from a god exists to he is good.

How do you mean? It would seem to me that, given the definition of good provided and given that God is Pure Act, we could think of God as nothing but good. The difficulty is probing that conclusion to figure out what it means. Which others, like St. Thomas and Brian Davies, have done more extensively than I have done here; my purpose is to state these doctrines since I think they are widely misunderstood but important.

Also just being the creator is not proof that they are good. That would be as if I put together an aquarium. I will even go so far as to say to keep this aquarium going i am continuing the power source for the pump.

Would this be enough evidence for the fish to conclude that i am good?

You would be good insofar that you are the cause of the goodness of the aquarium (which would be good insofar that it does what an aquarium is supposed to do). But you do not really cause everything that is good in the aquarium; you do not make the fish good fish, for example, at least not in an ultimate sense, although God is the ultimate cause of the fish as good, the water as good, the pump as functional, etc., even if you are a “secondary cause.”

 

[sealoch]

We know that good exists, because we can experience it, as well as its counterpart, evil. Without good, evil could not exist because we would have no base point from which to define if something is good or bad.

Because everything we know comes from God, and because we know of good, it follows that good must come from God.

If good comes from God, then it is necessary that God is good, otherwise he would not have been able to impart on us the concept of good.

God cannot be both “good” and “evil”, that would be a paradox.

Evil ultimately occurs when we reject good, therefore, evil is necessarily a rejection of God, from whom “good” is derived. While God is not directly evil, evil could not exist without Him because without him there would be no good to reject, meaning that there could be no evil to embrace.

.

You are still leaping to god is good. There is no reason a god can’t be neutral or bad as well.

 

[polytropos]

You are still leaping to god is good. There is no reason a god can’t be neutral or bad as well.

Can you clarify? It would be impossible for God (Pure Act) to be bad given a privation view of evil; it would mean that he consists fully of a lack of being, which would mean he would be nothing.

 

[tonyrey]

There is still a very large jump from a god exists to he is good. Also just being the creator is not proof that they are good. That would be as if I put together an aquarium. I will even go so far as to say to keep this aquarium going i am continuing the power source for the pump.

Would this be enough evidence for the fish to conclude that i am good?

To deny that God is good implies that life is not good. Do you believe that?

 

[Portofino]

Some terse initial comments (bracketed, in bold; essentially my “notes”, but also raising some questions):

we’ll consider what we mean when we say that something is good. Consider a few :
The house is red.** **
The cat is grey.** **

The house is small.** [proportion - relative quantity]**
The cat is big. [proportion - a relative quantity]
When we say that one thing is red and another thing is grey, we know something intrinsic to each of the things we are talking about, even if we don’t know what the objects are. If I say “A is red” and “B is grey,” you know something particular about A and B. When we say one thing is small and another thing is big, however, we do not know something intrinsic to each of the things we are talking about unless we know what the objects are, since a small house is still bigger than a big cat. Simply knowing what is predicated of the object does not tell us anything about the object. We mean that the house is small for a house and the cat is big for a cat. Saying “A is small” and “B is big” does not tell me whether B is bigger than A, but saying “A is red” and “B is grey” does allow me to distinguish A and B with respect to color.

The same is true when we predicate “good” of an object [good in the sense of “excellent”, not necessarily morally good]. To say something is good does not tell us anything about the object if we do not know what the object is. A good house is said to be good for different reasons than a good cat is said to be good. A good house might be well-insulated, functional, and aesthetically appealing. A good cat might be healthy and agile. A thing is said to be good inasumuch as it fulfills its purpose [prove that natural objects, as opposed to man-made objects, have purpose in the sense of intentionality, an intended purpose – or are we anthropomorphizing?]: a house would be worse if it were poorly insulated or lacked a kitchen, and a cat would be worse if it got sick or broke its leg, but a house cannot get sick or break its leg, and it is certainly no detraction from a cat to say that it lacks a kitchen [a predator is more good than a prey? This raises the question of whether there is an amoral signification of good in this context, closer in meaning to ‘strong’ versus ‘weak’, perfection resulting in strength, imperfection resulting in weakness]. Brian Davies notes, “To call something good, regardless of how we go on to justify our judgment, is to commend it for having what we are looking for in things of that kind.”

Conversely, to say that something is bad (or evil) is to say that it lacks what we are looking for in things of its kind. A cat is bad inasmuch as it lacks what it takes to be a cat (say, a healthy and functioning body). This is what it means to take a privation view of evil: badness occurs in things only as they lack what is proper to them [from one way of looking at it, but it’s also what they have – the presence of a fifth leg; an extra row of teeth; extra chromosomes; the presence of a virus, possessing mass, and taking up space]. It is bad for a person to have cancer in the respect that it prevents the person from being what we expect a person to be (even though a tumor is a physical addition to a person’s body [is the absence of something sufficient to constitute the presence of something, in natural terms, or must something be present as well; is the absence of love the quality of hatred, or rather indifference?]). There is nothing inherently bad about a hurricane (it is even good, on this view, for a hurricane to do what a hurricane tends to do), but it is an evil for a hurricane to destroy crops and lead to the starvation of a community [from the perspective of what humans desire, but not proven to be objectively bad; in natural terms, what is bad for the hen (the breaking those eggs it was nesting on, its potential offspring) is good for the fox, who eats them); likewise, if a coyote destroys a rancher’s livestock, that is good for the coyote – who survives another day – but bad for the rancher, so ‘good’ and ‘evil’ become relative to the observer and something can be both good and evil at once, depending on one’s frame of reference]. To quote Davies again, “On this account, ‘badness’ (or ‘evil’) is a word we use to signifiy a gap between what is actually there and what could be there (and should be there) but is not.”

This is a good starting point to think about the three doctrines I wanted to address…__________________

 

[Qoeleth]

You are still leaping to god is good. There is no reason a god can’t be neutral or bad as well.

“God is good” is an analytical truth, I contend, being true by definition. We call something ‘good’ (as has been pointed out) because it is good at being what it is.

For example, a good dog would qualify as a ‘bad cat’, since it is good at being a dog, but bad at being a cat. A ‘good murder’ would be a ‘bad moral act’.

When we say “God” (rather than “a god”) we imply a monotheistic view. Since God is the only God (by definition) He defines and uniquley exemplifies His own category. So, by definition, to a monotheist, God is good (i.e. He perfectly conforms to the category of ‘Godness’, which He also definies). It is kind of circular, really.

The difficulty is though, we sometimes apply a human standard of goodness (which is natural enough), as if to say “If God were a human being, He would be a good human being.” That is not something which necessarily follows logically, unless that standard for human goodness is taken from God Himself (which it is, for Christians, anyway)

 

[belorg]

“God is good” is an analytical truth, I contend, being true by definition. We call something ‘good’ (as has been pointed out) because it is good at being what it is.

So, if God is good at being cruel and selfish, then God is good.

 

[tonyrey]

So, if God is good at being cruel and selfish, then God is good.

“good at” ≠ “good”.

 

[Qoeleth]

“good at” ≠ “good”.

It does, to some degree. Normally we can’t specify something as being good without reference to some paradigm of goodness for that particular class of things, or in relation to a purpose.

For example- if we say, “Apples are good”, we mean, I suppose, good at being apples, for being eaten, etc. But we do not mean that they are good for building houses. So the quality of goodness, in such mundane cases, pertains to some purpose, or to some model. If we say, “Everything is good”, we have made a meaningless statement, because if the quality of ‘goodness’ becomes a universal predicate, it is no longer a meaningful adjective, and the sentence, “Everything is good” becomes redundant, like saying “Everything is somewhere.”

Now, it would be correct to say “God is good at BEING”, insofar as the qualities which seem to be perfections of Being (in the abstract), such as eternity, immutability, etc. are attributed to Him. Such a statement, unfortunately, is bound up with a particular ontology, or with ontology itself, and perhaps better avoided in this day and age.

But, to fall into ontology, can we say Being itself is good? If we say, “Everything (that is) is good”, we have made a meaningless statement, because if the quality of ‘goodness’ becomes a universal predicate, it is no longer a meaningful adjective, and the sentence, “Everything is good” becomes redundant, like saying “Everything is somewhere.”

Interesting, the word “God” and “God” are the same word in Old English. Isidore of Seville would make a lot out of that.

 

[tonyrey]

It does, to some degree. Normally we can’t specify somethings as being good without reference to some paradigm of goodness for that particular class of things, or in relation to a purpose.

For example- apples are good (at being apples, for being eaten, etc.) But they are not good for building houses. So the quality of goodness, in such mundane cases, pertains to some purpose, or to some model.

Now, it would be correct to say “God is good at BEING”, insofar as the qualities which seem to be perfections of Being (in the abstract), such as eternity, immutability, etc. are attributed to Him. Such a statement, unfortunately, is bound up with a particular ontology, or with ontology itself, and perhaps better avoided in this day and age.

Interesting, the word “God” and “God” are the same word in Old English. Isidore of Seville would make a lot out of that.

I think “good at being cruel and selfish” is a form of misplaced expertise rather than a perfection.

 

[belorg]

It does, to some degree. Normally we can’t specify something as being good without reference to some paradigm of goodness for that particular class of things, or in relation to a purpose.

For example- if we say, “Apples are good”, we mean, I suppose, good at being apples, for being eaten, etc. But we do not mean that they are good for building houses. So the quality of goodness, in such mundane cases, pertains to some purpose, or to some model. If we say, “Everything is good”, we have made a meaningless statement, because if the quality of ‘goodness’ becomes a universal predicate, it is no longer a meaningful adjective, and the sentence, “Everything is good” becomes redundant, like saying “Everything is somewhere.”

Now, it would be correct to say “God is good at BEING”, insofar as the qualities which seem to be perfections of Being (in the abstract), such as eternity, immutability, etc. are attributed to Him. Such a statement, unfortunately, is bound up with a particular ontology, or with ontology itself, and perhaps better avoided in this day and age.

But, to fall into ontology, can we say Being itself is good? If we say, “Everything (that is) is good”, we have made a meaningless statement, because if the quality of ‘goodness’ becomes a universal predicate, it is no longer a meaningful adjective, and the sentence, “Everything is good” becomes redundant, like saying “Everything is somewhere.”

Interesting, the word “God” and “God” are the same word in Old English. Isidore of Seville would make a lot out of that.

That the word “Good” and “God” are the same in Old English is just a coincidence. There is no etymological connection between the two words.

 

[belorg]

I think “good at being cruel and selfish” is a form of misplaced expertise rather than a perfection.

Prove it.

 

[belorg]

Can you clarify? It would be impossible for God (Pure Act) to be bad given a privation view of evil; it would mean that he consists fully of a lack of being, which would mean he would be nothing.

Which is exactly why the Problem of Evil is such a powerful argument against God.
I fully agree that Pure Act cannot lack any being, but for the same reason it is absurd that there would be privations anywhere in the creation of this Pure Act.

 

[Qoeleth]

That the word “Good” and “God” are the same in Old English is just a coincidence. There is no etymological connection between the two words.

Hmm…How can you be sure of that? I did not think even the professionals were completely sure. As well as being identical in Anglo-Saxon (the most significantly documented early Germanic language), the words are similar even in Gothic, which is the earliest surviving Germanic language, in Wulfila’s 4th C translation of the Gospel. Moreover, the Gothic for god “godan”, is also used in some Latin documents I can think of as the name for the Germanic God “Godan-Wodan-Odin”.

If you can propose a more convincing alternative etymology, I would be interested

 

[polytropos]

Some terse initial comments

The same is true when we predicate “good” of an object [good in the sense of “excellent”, not necessarily morally good].

Yes, and this is an important point to make. The word “good” does not necessarily entail “morally good.” Consider a “good” human being. A good human being is morally good, and the more morally good he is, the better he is. But moral goodness is not the only thing that contributes to his goodness. A human being with cancer, for instance, is less good in that sense. The cancer is an evil, but not a moral evil. It does not, however, detract from the person’s moral goodness.

This is one of the reasons why we should hesitate to affirm the proposition “God is morally good,” but that is not what I claim to show (and it is something I would not affirm anyway). Certainly, God can cause no evil, but God is not a moral agent with moral obligations and duties and so cannot be thought of as “morally good.”

A good cat might be healthy and agile. A thing is said to be good inasumuch as it fulfills its purpose [prove that natural objects, as opposed to man-made objects, have purpose in the sense of intentionality, an intended purpose – or are we anthropomorphizing?]

This part of the argument actually does not require any sort of intrinsic intentionality. Good is being as desriable. As I note, it is quite possible that we misinterpret what is desirable. People who sin are generally mistaking the good; someone who misses mass is taking extra sleep to be desirable and therefore good. Someone who murders a man to steal his money finds it desirable to do so. In both cases, the person is committing an evil.

I do think there is a sense in which natural objects have more or less “desirable” states; I don’t think we even need to speak of them in terms of final causes or intentionality for the purposes of this argument, although doing so would flesh out the notion in greater detail. For instance, I think one would be hard pressed to say that a cat is better with three or five legs (due to one being sawed off, or due to a mutation) than it is with four. A tree stripped of all its leaves (supposing it’s a season when the tree should have leaves) is less good than a tree with leaves. A gazelle that has just been attacked by a cheetah is less good than a gazelle that has not just been attacked by a cheetah. (The cheetah, meanwhile, is better off for doing so and obtaining a meal.)

Recall, again, that the good is being as desirable. As St. Thomas says, the distinction is conceptual, so it has to do with the way we regard being. A thing is good if it “lives up to expectations,” and is bad inasmuch as it fails to live up to expectations. I think that there are a number of states that are rather evidently more desirable than others, but to show that it is objectively so is not really what is necessary for this topic. I think, on any analysis, for instance, it would be impossible to determine that Pure Act is less than Goodness Itself, having no conceivable lack.

[is the absence of something sufficient to constitute the presence of something, in natural terms, or must something be present as well; is the absence of love the quality of hatred, or rather indifference?]

I am having a bit of trouble understanding what you are asking here. The privation view does not insist that everything bad is a physical lack (or that every lack reflects a particular evil rather than another evil). Knowing that there is an absence of good does not really tell me much; going back to the human being example, a human being could be worse for having cancer or worse for having committed a sin. The fact that he is worse, alone, doesn’t tell me which. So hatred and indifference might both be an absence of love, but knowing just that there was an absence of love, I could not necessarily distinguish between the two.

[from the perspective of what humans desire, but not proven to be objectively bad; in natural terms, what is bad for the hen (the breaking those eggs it was nesting on, its potential offspring) is good for the fox, who eats them); likewise, if a coyote destroys a rancher’s livestock, that is good for the coyote – who survives another day – but bad for the rancher, so ‘good’ and ‘evil’ become relative to the observer and something can be both good and evil at once, depending on one’s frame of reference]

You are spot on with respect to the hen, the fox, the coyote, and the rancher. Good for one thing could be bad for another. Brian Davies actually notes, what is bad for the man with cancer is good for his tumor.

Good is, again, the aspect being as desirable, another way of looking at being. It is, again, a conceptual distinction. So it does have to do with what a rational observer perceives, in some sense, and there might be some error (as is often the case with sin). However, it is probably fair to say that it is bad for the hen’s eggs to break and good for a fox to eat, regardless of any human observer. So prima facie there are certainly some, or indeed many, objective goods and evils. A natural law theorist, committed to Aristotelian final and formal causes, is probably more readily to jump into assessing moral goods and evils as they pertain to humans, but for the purpose of proving that God is good, that does not seem to be necessary.

 

[Portofino]

Hmm…How can you be sure of that? I did not think even the professionals were completely sure. As well as being identical in Anglo-Saxon (the most significantly documented early Germanic language), the words are similar even in Gothic, which is the earliest surviving Germanic language, in Wulfila’s 4th C translation of the Gospel. Moreover, the Gothic for god “godan”, is also used in some Latin documents I can think of as the name for the Germanic God “Godan-Wodan-Odin”.

If you can propose a more convincing alternative etymology, I would be interested

etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=God&searchmode=none

God:

"Old English god “supreme being, deity; the Christian God; image of a god; godlike person,” from Proto-Germanic *guthan (cf. Old Saxon, Old Frisian, Dutch god, Old High German got, German Gott, Old Norse guð, Gothic guþ), from PIE *ghut- “that which is invoked” (cf. Old Church Slavonic zovo “to call,” Sanskrit huta- “invoked,” an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- “to call, invoke.”

But some trace it to PIE *ghu-to- “poured,” from root *gheu- “to pour, pour a libation” (source of Greek khein “to pour,” also in the phrase khute gaia “poured earth,” referring to a burial mound; see found (v.2)). “Given the Greek facts, the Germanic form may have referred in the first instance to the spirit immanent in a burial mound” [Watkins]. Cf. also Zeus.

Not related to good. Originally a neuter noun in Germanic, the gender shifted to masculine after the coming of Christianity. Old English god probably was closer in sense to Latin numen. A better word to translate deus might have been Proto-Germanic *ansuz, but this was used only of the highest deities in the Germanic religion, and not of foreign gods, and it was never used of the Christian God. It survives in English mainly in the personal names beginning in Os-. "

Good:

"Old English god (with a long “o”) “virtuous; desirable; valid; considerable,” probably originally “having the right or desirable quality,” from Proto-Germanic *gothaz (cf. Old Norse goðr, Dutch goed, Old High German guot, German gut, Gothic goþs), originally “fit, adequate, belonging together,” from PIE root *ghedh- “to unite, be associated, suitable” (cf. Old Church Slavonic godu “pleasing time,” Russian godnyi “fit, suitable,” Old English gædrian “to gather, to take up together”). As an expression of satisfaction, from early 15c.; of children, “well-behaved,” by 1690s. "