I will now post the last part of my discussion of ethics in a godless world. I have put this part off because it is quite unoriginal. The criticism goes back to Plato. I will do my best to present it. The easiest way to bring up this point is to ask if there is anything that God can do that is not good, or holy. If God commands genocide (which he does in the Bible), is it good?
If the answer is that there are some things that God could do but are not good, then that means the criteria for good and evil is external to God. If genocide is wrong even if God commands it, then right and wrong must be things that God must follow. He is constrained by something external that we call good, and God is all good because he perfectly matches this thing we call good. In that case, we don’t need the middle man (God). Good exists without god, he is not the author of good.
On the other hand, if whatever God does or says is good by definition, then good is completely arbitrary. If someone claims that God ordered them to kill their children, how could you argue against it? God could change what is good, which seemed to happen, since some things that were law in the old testament are not law in the new testament. The only reason we have to follow God is because he is powerful. God might not have our best interests at heart, his rules might go contrary to nature, he could be a megalomaniac. There is no reason to call it good, other than God said so, so you better listen.
Some people might say that although what God says is good, God’s nature is such that he would only wish what is good for us and wouldn’t order terrible things. Notice the use of the word “good”. What is good for us. In order to say that God wouldn’t do something evil or bad for humans, you again need to have some external definition of what is good, some rules that we know God would not break. You could say that God created us, so he knows what is good for us, or created our nature such that what he says is good, but again you have the same problem.
omeone might claim that good exists external to God and isn’t arbitrary, but only revelation can show us what that good is. This then requires using the Bible as the sole source of ethics. We have seen that is not the case. People don’t say we shouldn’t lie just because the Bible says so. We use reason, which presumably can be used to determine what good is, without the middle man of God.
So at first it seems that God gives us some way to ground ethics. It seems that it removes the subjectivity. But as I have shown in this and other posts, the criticisms that believers love to level at atheism can also be leveled against God. We still must ground ethics in our self interest, or it still could become purely arbitrary. At best, God becomes superfluous. In this case, either ethics are purely arbitrary, or they exist without God.
Tags: ethics
