Bertrand Russell

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PadraigPearce

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When I was a teenager I read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian”, and it seriously blew my mind. That book was one of the major factors in turning me into an atheist for a few years. I picked it up again the other day, for the first time in about ten years, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least. One of his arguments does have me puzzled, though. I’ll just quote from the book for clarity:

“If you are quite sure that there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or not?If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, then you must say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”

Anybody want to help me out on this one, or point me towards a good book on the subject?

Pat
 
Pat,

I had the same experience you did with Bertrand Russell: overwhelmed in my rebellious teens, underwhelmed in later life.

In that essay Russell showed that he had not really achieved emotional maturity in dealing with the subject of God. He was still the fifteen year old he was when he first repudiated Christianity, and his willingness to let down his logical defenses (for which he was supposed to be so famous) shows up in this essay perhaps more than in any other I’ve read by him.

The passage you cite is truly muddled. Russell does not even seem to have a handle on what he is trying to get at. The last sentence in particular shows that Russell would never have had any gift for theology.

“If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”

Since God by definition is good, wrong cannot be anterior to God. God did not create wrong, yet He knew in advance and allowed that wrong would emerge in His creations. Anything less than God must by definition be capable of more or less degrees of perfection. Adam and Eve were created innocent, but brought guilt upon themselves. They were not created perfect, but they were not created wrong either.

This is basic Bible theology. Russell had no grasp of it because, by his own admission, he left the Bible behind at the age of fifteen.
 
PadraigPearce said:
When I was a teenager I read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian”, and it seriously blew my mind. That book was one of the major factors in turning me into an atheist for a few years. I picked it up again the other day, for the first time in about ten years, and I was underwhelmed, to say the least. One of his arguments does have me puzzled, though. I’ll just quote from the book for clarity:

“If you are quite sure that there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or not?If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, then you must say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”

Anybody want to help me out on this one, or point me towards a good book on the subject?

Pat
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The answer to Bertrand’s question would traditionally seem to be yes and no; God’s essence is goodness. In one sense God says yes by allowing free-will and indirectly allowing evil. In another sense since God’s essence is goodness, it’s not God’s fiat but his very own being.

It’s amazing that such a smart man didn’t come across this; maybe he did and ignored it.

As to a good book on the subject, I don’t know. But getting into the Summa Theologica would give you a wealth of tools to pick apart such a problem.

peace,
Michael
 
PadraigPearce said:
“If you are quite sure that there is a difference between right and wrong, then you are in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or not?If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, then you must say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God.”
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Hmmm… it appears that he is trying to force the idea of God into a corner there but does a pretty bad job at it. The way I always looked at it was that God defined “good”… you went to heaven after you died and everything there is good. However, that doesn’t mean that there can’t be evil here… God didn’t create the evil, he created the world and then us, and we created the evil, but that hardly makes him responsible for it. Anyway, I think too many atheists try to nail down and “prove” there is no god, which is more of a fool’s errand in my humble opinion.
 
This Ruddell quote is basically Plato’s Eurythro Dilemma.

Is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good?

If the first is true then God’s will is arbitrary. God could make rape good just by saying so.

If the second is true then God appeals to a higher authority to discern right and wrong and morality would exist without him.
Shike said:
The answer to Bertrand’s question would traditionally seem to be yes and no; God’s essence is goodness. In one sense God says yes by allowing free-will and indirectly allowing evil. In another sense since God’s essence is goodness, it’s not God’s fiat but his very own being.
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That seems to work but it is really just a rhetorical move for trying to get people to drop the question. To get past it and back on point we just have to ask, is goodness essential to God’s nature because it is good, or is goodness good because it is essential to God’s nature? As you can see, we are back where we started.
 
Leela said:
That seems to work but it is really just a rhetorical move for trying to get people to drop the question. To get past it and back on point we just have to ask, is goodness essential to God’s nature because it is good, or is goodness good because it is essential to God’s nature? As you can see, we are back where we started.
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If you conceive of God as something equivalent to Plato’s forms, this isn’t really a problem. God is the Platonic form of goodness, so it’s irrelevant whether God is good or goodness is holy – they are the same.

What I don’t understand is why God in the Old Testament appears to do things that are morally arbitrary (like harden Pharaoh’s heart in order for the Israelites to suffer all the more) and that seem to violate the principles of God as expressed above.
 
tomarin said:
If you conceive of God as something equivalent to Plato’s forms, this isn’t really a problem. God is the Platonic form of goodness, so it’s irrelevant whether God is good or goodness is holy – they are the same.

What I don’t understand is why God in the Old Testament appears to do things that are morally arbitrary (like harden Pharaoh’s heart in order for the Israelites to suffer all the more) and that seem to violate the principles of God as expressed above.
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Do you understand why it appears or seems so? Could it be that the “appearance” is deceiving? Do we really understand what the writer meant by the phrase “…hardened Pharaoh’s heart…?”
 
tomarin said:
If you conceive of God as something equivalent to Plato’s forms, this isn’t really a problem. God is the Platonic form of goodness, so it’s irrelevant whether God is good or goodness is holy – they are the same.
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Is it really irrelevent? I thought that was the whole question. Is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good? I don’t understand your answer. How could God be one of Plato’s forms?
 
Leela said:
Is it really irrelevent? I thought that was the whole question. Is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good? I don’t understand your answer. How could God be one of Plato’s forms?
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I’m saying, following Aquinas, that God’s nature is like one of Plato’s forms; he’s the ideal version of everything good, noble, just, etc. Whatever we percieve here on earth that has those attributes is a pale shade of what he is, because he is their source.

If you think of God that way then you wouldn’t have to ask, is something good because God commands it or vice versa, because your conception of God would be that he is ultimately the source of all goodness and he would therefore be incapable of “commanding” something that is not good as it would violate his own nature.
 
davidv said:
Do you understand why it appears or seems so?
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No but obviously I’m open to any explanations you may have.
Could it be that the “appearance” is deceiving? Do we really understand what the writer meant by the phrase “…hardened Pharaoh’s heart…?”
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I don’t understand what you’re saying. Do you mean I shouldn’t take the Bible too literally?
 
tomarin said:
I’m saying, following Aquinas, that God’s nature is like one of Plato’s forms; he’s the ideal version of everything good, noble, just, etc. Whatever we percieve here on earth that has those attributes is a pale shade of what he is, because he is their source.

If you think of God that way then you wouldn’t have to ask, is something good because God commands it or vice versa, because your conception of God would be that he is ultimately the source of all goodness and he would therefore be incapable of “commanding” something that is not good as it would violate his own nature.
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Ok, goodness is essential to God’s nature, but that still doesn’t answer the question. Is doing only good things essential to God’s nature because it is good to do good things, or is it good to do good things because it is essential to God’s nature. It’s really the same question when God is not just a Platonic form but actually acts in the world like teh Christian God.

The problem is that you can’t have an omnipotent God who is unable to do evil. You can say that it is against his nature to do evil, but by that you would have to mean that God is capable of doing evil but always chooses good. You can’t say that an omnipotent God is good because he CANnot do evil, you have to say that he is good because he WILL not do evil. But then, how does God recognize what is good so that he can always do it?

You’ve avoided the horn of the dilemma which says that what is good is so because it is commanded by God since that would imply that God could have made anything including rape, or stealing, or dishonoring your father or mother a good thing if he had wanted to.

That leaves you with the second horn which says that God does not command that something is good but rather recognizes it as such. What is the standard that God uses in this judgment? If God is not the standard of goodness himself, but applies some superior definition of righteousness, then God could not be the ultimate authority as inherently claimed. INother words, if God’s character is righteous because it adheres to some independent standard of goodness, then humanity could judge evil by that standard independently of whether God exists or not, which demonstrates that ethics are not founded upon God.
 
tomarin said:
What I don’t understand is why God in the Old Testament appears to do things that are morally arbitrary (like harden Pharaoh’s heart in order for the Israelites to suffer all the more) and that seem to violate the principles of God as expressed above.
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There is a very simple and obvious (to me) answer the question of why so much of the morality exhibited by God in the Bible seems so capricious and unenlightened and unworthy of Him and why there are so many contradictions and discrepancies. It is because the Bible is an ordinary book written by flawed human beings rather than a magic book written by God.
 
*There is a very simple and obvious (to me) answer the question of why so much of the morality exhibited by God in the Bible seems so capricious and unenlightened and unworthy of Him *

… unworthy of you?
 
Charlemagne_II said:
*There is a very simple and obvious (to me) answer the question of why so much of the morality exhibited by God in the Bible seems so capricious and unenlightened and unworthy of Him *

… unworthy of you?
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Of me? No, of God. If there were a God it would be inconceivable that he would be as petty as the one in the OT.
 
Leela said:
Ok, goodness is essential to God’s nature, but that still doesn’t answer the question.
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I think that’s because the question relies on an artificial distinction between God and goodness. If God is goodness (as well as morality, etc) in its purest form then the question dissovles entirely.

You’re asking if there is an objective standard of goodness outside of God, because if there were then God would be in trouble. We could start asking where this standard came from if it stands above and outside God – maybe another, greater God than God made it (and if so why don’t we just pray to him?) I think the world Phillip Pullman created for his His Dark Materials series works something like that.

Anyway, following Plato and Aquinas, there is no objective standard of goodness outside God, because God himself is the standard. Things are good in this universe because they reflect the Platonic form of goodness in a universe that transcends ours, which is another way of describing God.
The problem is that you can’t have an omnipotent God who is unable to do evil.
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I think you can if you believe that evil is not an active force (as the Manicheans believed) but rather the absence of God, and a by-product of our free will. Therefore it’s not God’s fault that we do evil things, but rather because of our fallen humanity. For God to do evil would be against his nature, as you stated.
 
Leela said:
There is a very simple and obvious (to me) answer the question of why so much of the morality exhibited by God in the Bible seems so capricious and unenlightened and unworthy of Him and why there are so many contradictions and discrepancies. It is because the Bible is an ordinary book written by flawed human beings rather than a magic book written by God.
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Actually, we believe that the Bible was written by ordinary human beings who were inspired by God. It’s the Muslims who believe that their scripture, the Qur’an, was actually written by God.
 
tomarin said:
No but obviously I’m open to any explanations you may have.

I don’t understand what you’re saying. Do you mean I shouldn’t take the Bible too literally?
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In the post I was responding to, you drew a conclusion that God did something “morally arbitrary”, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by a direct action of God. You also stated that you drew these conclusions from “appearances” and what “seemed” to be. So, it seems to me that this conclusion was reached without considering all of the evidence.

I believe that it was Pharaoh’s own actions/thinking that hardened his heart in response to God’s presence.
 
Leela said:
You’ve avoided the horn of the dilemma which says that what is good is so because it is commanded by God since that would imply that God could have made anything including rape, or stealing, or dishonoring your father or mother a good thing if he had wanted to.

That leaves you with the second horn which says that God does not command that something is good but rather recognizes it as such. What is the standard that God uses in this judgment? If God is not the standard of goodness himself, but applies some superior definition of righteousness, then God could not be the ultimate authority as inherently claimed. INother words, if God’s character is righteous because it adheres to some independent standard of goodness, then humanity could judge evil by that standard independently of whether God exists or not, which demonstrates that ethics are not founded upon God.
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No, I don’t make any distinction between God and goodness, so I think I’ve avoided both horns. Everything that is good is a reflection of him.
 
Leela

Of me? No, of God. If there were a God it would be inconceivable that he would be as petty as the one in the OT.

And as petty as the God of the NT? They are the same God!
 
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