Questions of Divine Command Theory

[sw85]

Well, I’m not going to try reasoning with you if you’re (a) openly ignorant about the topics under discussion and (b) openly unwilling to rectify that ignorance by reading a relatively short book such as Feser’s Aquinas. So consider me bowed out of this utterly worthless conversation.

 

[shoe]

If God is good, does not not necessitate that there is a standard of goodness external to God?

No. When we say that God is “good,” we are saying that “goodness” is one of God’s attributes; therefore, goodness is a fundamental part of God’s nature. Goodness reflects and proceeds from God’s nature into the hearts of human beings: “Who shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them, and their thoughts between themselves accusing, or also defending one another” (Romans 2:15).

Also, if you are able to find a way to meaningful say that the nature of a moral agent is goodness, can you explain what causes the nature of a moral agent to be goodness? Why is one moral agent’s nature goodness, and not anthers? What is the difference between God and myself, such that his nature is goodness where as mine isn’t? This seems incredibly arbitrary.

I believe that Bertrand Russell was asked once how he was able to discern between good and bad, and he replied that he made the distinction between them based on his feelings. But according to that way of thinking, though, people making a decision to either show kindness to their neighbors or to beat them up would be basing their decision only on their subjective feelings, or perhaps subjective preferences.

But when human beings are made aware in the very real sense that God’s moral character is the ultimate standard of moral goodness, they also at the same time are made aware of a moral law that is objective to their own personal feelings: a moral law that does not come from within them, or from within a society, or from a world consensus. For example, if all the world believed that stealing, lying, and cheating were morally right, that would not change the moral reality of God’s divine nature that says stealing, lying, and cheating are always morally wrong

Objective morality is not only the basis for the idea that right and wrong things are right and wrong (whether or not we choose to believe them to be so), but also objective morality is the foundation upon which makes it possible for mankind to discern between what is good and what is evil. An objective moral law presupposes the existence of a moral lawgiver as the founder of that law. If human beings choose not to believe in the existence of a moral lawgiver, then they cannot believe in the reality of a moral law, and if human beings do not believe in the reality of a moral law, then they can only conclude, erroneously, that the standard of “good” can only originate from within individuals, which, in reality, is a standard based solely on what feels “good” to them at the time.

 

[Gorgias]

Look I said that it’s logically possible for God to do things that we would consider evil, not that it’s logically possible for God to do evil.

Hmm… I’m not seeing how this helps your case. If something appears evil to a human (with limited intellect and perspective), but this thing isn’t, in fact, evil (in an absolute sense, and as perceived by God), then all we’re dealing with is a mistake on the part of the human, right? How does that help you?

Your case is apparently that our perspective on evil trumps God’s, such that if God were to do something “that we all believe are evil”, then this thing would become, de facto, not evil (if we held God, by definition, to be good). I would counter that the limited perspective that we have, by virtue of our nature, must yield to God’s unlimited perspective. In other words, things that appear evil to us are not in fact so, when considered in toto, from God’s perspective; we are unable to see the way in which they are not evil, in the particular cases in which you are constructing.

As an example: people would generally concede that the Nazis of WWII committed evil acts, and that the efforts to thwart them were not evil. (Yeah, I know – Godwin’s Law and all that. Humor me, though.) Now, let’s suppose that we came upon a battlefield, and saw Allied planes strafing Axis trains. Without proper perspective, we’d say, “hey! it’s evil to use military might in that way, killing people like that!”. However, if we had a complete grasp of perspective, and recognized that this strafing run was in support of battles that would lead to the defeat of the Nazi forces, then we would admit that the action that, at first glance, appeared to be immoral and evil, was in fact not evil.

Of course if God raped people for the fun of it, on your conception of good, rape would be good.

No, you’re reaching the wrong conclusion – if “God raped people for the fun of it”, then it’s not the case that “rape would be good”; rather, the conclusion is that “God wouldn’t be God”. (As a reductio ad absurdium, then, we would conclude that the premise is faulty – and so we’d have to throw out the premise of “God raping people for the fun of it” as logically untenable.)

I do not have to make any such assumption.

It was not appropriate ever to kill someone for having gay sex, not at that time and not at this time. If you believe there was any point in history where it was alright to kill someone for having gay sex, then quite frankly I would consider you delusional with respect to moral truths.

LOL… However, you’re making an invalid assertion: God didn’t ever command that “homosexuals (should) be killed just for being gay”, as you said initially. You’ve changed your tune, however: now you’re asking the question of whether an action (as opposed to an orientation) can be imputed moral content, and as such, has consequences. Which is it? You can’t have it both ways – you need to decide which case you’re making, and then I’ll respond to it.

I never said any such thing. I said it was logically possible for God to preform actions which we all agree are evil. You may quote me to demonstrate where I might have said otherwise. Furthermore I never said that evil acts are good. I said that what is evil, on your view, could possibly be good if only God started doing it.

OK, then. If you’re not equivocating, then it seems that you’re misusing the notion of perspective as it applies to limited human beings vis-a-vis an infinite being. I’ll concede “equivocation” in favor of “logical inconsistency”. Is there a third alternative?

Ah well this is interesting. So there is nothing about being a creator, or being a designer, or having any other godlike qualities that makes God’s nature the standard of goodness. If he did not exist, but other gods did, there still would not be any standard of goodness. I didn’t realize you were trying to say this before. Now your conception of God has gotten a whole lot heavier as it’s taken on a new and very weighty quality. I have absolutely no idea how you could support the existence of such an entity. If this is what you conceive God to be, why do you even believe God exists?

Hold on – this part of our discussion was about the definition of ‘evil’; this definition is highly relevant to your case. You replied that your definition of evil was irrelevant, and instead, asked if a baby-killing Moloch could ever be defined as ‘good’. I replied ‘no’.

We’ve gotten too far afield on this issue. We still can’t get anywhere if you make claims about evil behavior but refuse to define ‘evil’, can we? You ask for my definition of evil: it’s the privation of good. Now, can we pick up where we left off? Can we talk about how the appearance of the privation of good (to human observers) might affect the nature of God?

Well no, I don’t think actions are meaningful in the sense I was getting at. Concepts are meaningful, or in other words coherent. That is what I was talking about.

And no I do not believe the “meaningfulness” of an action (what ever that means) stems from the judgements of the actions. And I do not believe that God is the standard or source of goodness.

So, are you saying that there’s no meaning that can be ascribed to an action?

If so, how can you proceed in your argument, which posits meanings of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ to actions performed by God?

I’m not sure that your appeal to ‘concepts’ is particularly helpful; can’t we just reduce the notion of the ‘concept’ of a thing to the action which instantiates that concept? And in doing so, we’re back to the question of who judges the ‘meaningfulness’ of an action, and what the fact of the notion of judgment brings to the game…?