T
Tio
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I realize this is a bit long, but I am a bit pressed with time, so I will have to edit it and make it more concise later. See the last paragraph for a summary of my questions. Thanks.
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Hello, I was just wondering if some of you could answer a question I have about God's properties. (I only have a rudimentary knowledge of philosophy, so someone correct me if I make a mistaken assumption). I recently watched the William Lane Craig vs Stephen Law debate, which got me interested in thinking about God's necessary/essential properties. Some theist philosophers, particularly Catholic philosophers, think that God, as the creator of the universe, is necessarily good. Because of this property, God cannot lie nor do anything else harmful to humanity, unless the harm is necessary for more good in the long run. However, I have yet to be convinced by any deductive or inductive argument why we are justified in thinking that God has some metaphysical property of goodness. To start off with, I will say I am completely unconvinced by the versions of the ontological argument that I have seen (although, there are so many versions, it is possible that there is a convincing version I have not seen yet). As Kant noted, there is the question of whether existence is a property. I'm not sure on this one, but I'm leaning towards no. Secondly, I don't see any reason to equivocate "the ability to do anything logically possible," with a non-natural metaphysical property of goodness. Why it is it necessary that a being that is able to do anything logically possible is good; that is has some property of goodness? It seems like a non-sequitor to me to jump from omnipotence to necessary goodness. It also seems to me that theists are making the same type of (equivocation?) mistake as naturalist ethicists, such as Sam Harris. For example, Sam Harris states that the maximization of conscious wellbeing is equivalent with goodness. However, he never explains why we should believe this. What makes the maximization of wellbeing good? Of course, one can define "goodness" any way one wants. I could define goodness as: actions that conform with the attitudes or likes of Justin. And if an action conformed with the attitudes or likes of my friend, Justin, than it would be trivially true that the act is good; because it would be true by definition. But as an error theorist, I think that all definitions of good are *arbitrary* (the divine command theorists, the conseqentialists, etc.)
So even if I believed that there was reason to believe in God's existence and that he is able to do anything logically possible, I don't see why one is warranted in believing that he is necessarily good. I could state that God has a property of goodness, and by definition that all his acts are good. But again, this definition seems as trivial as the aforementioned example of acts conforming with Justin's attitudes. I don't see the contradiction in believing that God is able to do anything logically possible (and/or that he's the most powerful being conceivable) and that he's morally neutral. In fact, if a God does exist that roughly fits the description of mainstream Christian denominations, I would state that there is much better inductive evidence for this God being morally neutral; it better fits our observations. And then, of course, there seem to be other possibilities as well. God could be evil (he has some property of badness/evilness, such that his acts are necessarily bad), or God could be both good and evil. It is also worth noting that I don't see why its logically necessary that evil is the absence of goodness. I think many Christians accept this as a fact, without even thinking about it. I think one could make an inductive argument explaining why evil is the absence of goodness, but I am usually unsatisfied with the intuition pumps and metaphors Christians usually give in support of this.
I have one other question as well. Don't many Christian philosophers (such as Swineburne) reject divine command theory and state that goodness is a property **outside** of God? Of course a Catholic could always say that Swineburne is wrong (and hopefully they have good reasons to do so). But if he is correct, wouldn't that mean that goodness is *not* an essential property of God. That it exists and has always existed outside of God, and what is good does not depend on the attitudes of God. So I think I would currently agree with Swineburne and other philosophers who see no reason to believe why God is necessarily good.
To sum, I am looking for a clear answer, in terms of a deductive or inductive argument as to why God must be (is "necessarily"), or is likely, metaphysically good. All ontological arguments that I have seen up to this point in time have failed to convince me why "greatest being conceivable" = metaphysically good being (as opposed to an all-powerful neutral being or a being that would torture for fun). At the moment, I think that if an omnipotent being did exist, it is morally neutral. Such a being better matches with our experience (i.e. the balance of animal and human suffering and pleasure/good times). I am also looking for an answer that has a small to moderate amount of philosophical jargon. I realize that some be necessary in order to convey an affective argument, but too much can act as a smokescreen for an argument's soundness. Last, I would appreciate any links to concise books (100 -250ish/ 300 pages) that clearly argue for God being necessarily good. I am only interested in this topic at the moment, so no links to books on the resurrection or any other such topic at the moment. :)
You have a lot of knowledge about St. Thomas; I wonder about your background. But, that may be private or personal to you. Anyway, I wanted to say: