Goodness and God
We cannot infer from Gods existence that Good and Evil exist. Let us, for the sake of argument, simply allow God exists. It does not follow from this that Good and Evil exist.
This is to say, that we cannot infer that God's existence implies the existence of Good and Evil. Gods existence simply implies itself, His own existence. It is perfectly reasonable to assume that God could exist without Good or Evil. To be an infinite being, God simply has to be maximal in all existent qualities, but if a quality is made up, then God does not have to be maximal in that quality since it does not exist. Something cannot be, to any degree, something that does not exist. Gods existence simply implies a being that is maximal in all existing qualities.
For God to be maximally good, good would first have to exist. An example of this would be if one were to say that if John is wearing the made-up color tily, then tily exists. We cannot infer from this that the existence of John himself implies the existence of tily, only if John is wearing tily. In this same way, we cannot assume that Good and Evil exist from the existence of God. That is, if God is good, then Good exists, but if God exists that does not mean that Good exists.
However, I have heard the argument that God is Good and what is Good is Godly or like God. So to be closer to God would be to be Good. But, at that point, why not simply use the word Godly instead of Good? That is, the word good becomes trivial since another word more accurately portrays its own meaning.
Therefore, it is entirely possible that God exists Himself without the existence of Good, since His existence does not imply the existence of Good or Evil.
Comments (24)
What strikes me first of all is that good and evil are manifest in experience from ones earliest memories, in the form of pleasure and pain, or joy and sorrow, and the many other pairs of contraries that occur to any being who is born and grows up.
So a natural person will not have any indication of the existence of anything answering to the name of God, outside what he or she might be told by his/her parents. I suppose you could argue that a particular person might claim have an intuitive knowledge of God, but that doesn't amount to an argument for the existence of God.
To try and reframe the point in terms that might be intelligible to theology, the 'made-up quality' would correspond to a contingent or accidental fact of existence. A color, or some other quality, might be 'made up' or devised by someone. But I very much doubt that the category of 'goodness' would fall under that description. As already said, every human, maybe every sentient being, would have some sense of what is good and what isn't.
Beyond that, I can barely see the point of this OP, so I will leave it to others to interpret.
I would say that good and evil exist in the world.
E.g. Hitler was evil, wars are evil as they cause human suffering etc.
The good then are societies where wars (human affairs) do not play a big part.
A good person is a person who gives you cake.
A bad person or evil is one who steals your birthday cake.
Here I am simply trying to separate belief in God from belief in good. I only thought of this argument because I was talking to someone and they said that if God exists, then good must surely exist. From this experience, I realized that maybe other people believe such a thing. so, I wanted to put it here as an argument against such a misconception.
I am not stating the possibility or probability of the existence of either God or good (of which there are arguments for and against both.) I am simply stating that the existence of God does not imply the existence of good.
Sorry if I was not clear enough, I will try to make it more clear next time. Thank you for your comment so I could clear that up.
Well good and evil does exist if you look at the world around you or throughout history, plenty examples of good or evil there
You said lets assume god exists well god created the world. .. and is there good and bad in the world ? Yes there is, so your argument doesnt add up
We cannot infer God's existence from anything.
We do know that good and evil exist as manifestations of human desires, thoughts, schemes and actions. They are products of the human psyche. So are gods, but there is a far wider range and content of god-concepts than concepts of either good or evil.
From which we can infer - at least provisionally - that our notions of good and evil are older, more primal and less sophisticated than our notions of deity. Therefore we may - again, provisionally - attribute the concept of gods, angels, protective spirits; demons, gremlins, ghouls etc. to our categorization of phenomena as good or evil, because the personification of phenomena and human character traits is a very sophisticated mental operation.
Good cannot exist without bad. They are mutual existants. So either God is not fully good, or there is an equal and opposite bad god (devil) that a benevolent God cannot eradicate.
As eradicating all evil is also simultaneously eradicating all good.
I think here it's important to distinguish "exists" from "real".
Imagination exists and thus the content of all imagination/creativity is possible to exist.
If God exists, not every part of god that exists need be "real" as in detectable in a physical external reality - like materials, heat, motion etc - all the things in physics and chemistry exist and are real (physical), and emotions, beliefs and dreams exist but are not in the same cohort of real things (as they are immaterial existants).
Some people believe that God is the sum of all material and immaterial existants and thus cannot be definitively proven and yet is everywhere/ everything.
Why god might be "good" as oppose to "chair" or "400 horse power" or "that dream I had last night" is somewhat arbitrary if God is all existants.
However a reason to fixate on "Good" is because its vaguely defined and thus liberated/unrestricted and yet includes all good things and is usually associated with morality/ethics and thus is worthy of worshipping. Its an idealogy of paradise or heaven or nirvana.
So its understandably that given all choices to approach or learn about God (reality and consciousness), people tend to start if with what they know and what they want - that which is 'Good'.
To go from "if" to "is" is a conjuring act.
Of course it is a conjuring act. Because we have "beliefs" in a god(s) . Not facts about God. People's observance of the influence of their gods on the world is on a par with the fact that our mutually agreed belief in the value of a paper note influence the functionality of economies and financial systems.
If everyone tomorrow stopped believing money had any value, it wouldnt have any value.
I wouldn't underestimate the power of beliefs in impacting real life.
If every single person was convinced in a belief that there is a God, then god would be considered fact. If only one person believes in a god, its delusional.
An agreed upon practice and something about which there is no agreement about anything is not on a par.
I don't believe one could possibly draw from the existence of God (which could or could not be true) the existence of good and evil (which could also be true or not true.) as in, it is not from the existence of God from which we draw evidence for the existence of good and evil.
This has nothing to do with my argument, all I am saying is that God does not imply the existence of good and evil since there could be a world where God exists, but good and evil do not.
You can? What would that be like, then? A world where nothing is ever born or dies, is subject to illness or injury. I can't see how this can be 'easy to imagine'.
Of course, you are correct. And you were debating a question of logic with a theist? Why?
All bad and unfortunate and sad things that can happen are not evil. Evil is a specific kind of bad: malevolence, deliberate destructiveness, consciously intended harm.
Being born is not evil - indeed most people are glad they were born and most parents, too. Forcing women - or any creature - to reproduce against their will, rape and bondage, puppy farms and cattle breeding are evil.
Death is not evil - we can even choose our time and means. Cold-blooded killing and war-mongering are evil.
Mistakes and misjudgment are not evil, even though they can have undesirable consequences.
and dying are not evil.
We know that we all have the capacity for evil (We may even have a monopoly on it), but we don't have to bring it into the world.
I think the philosophical point is that the capacity for evil - both to experience it and to cause it - is an integral part of self-conscious being. It may be true that earthquakes and natural catastrophes aren't evil, and that a world inhabited only by snails would be devoid of evil - but again, so what?
I didn't say that. But, in fact, I can imagine a world without evil - as I understand and defined evil. It would just have to be slightly less evolved. Say, stopped before the chimpanzee.
OTOH, I can't imagine a world without good or bad. That's the appropriate pairing, as both good and bad can be unintentional, unconscious; just a subjective interpretation of reality. The opposite of evil would be something like benevolence.
Quoting Wayfarer
A human trait, a human concept. Though it's possible some of the other intelligent species are capable of evil on some very childish level, I'm not convinced of it.
Good things and bad things happen*; evil is done.
for the benefit of potential nitpickers: * This does not rule out their being also brought about by human agency, but does preclude evil from simply happening by chance.
Quoting Wayfarer
My contention was that we can conceive of a world in which we don't need to be snails in order to refrain from acting out our evil impulses. Most people do this routinely, every day.
So, nothing, I guess; just lining up the ideas presented. Fire at will.
For the sake of argument, it appears like you're laying out something like:
1. If God exists, then good and evil must exist.
2. God exists.
3. Therefore, good and evil must exist. (MP 1,2)
If we are granting premise 2 here, then premise 1 is the only thing to object to, and is where lots of discussions revolve. Many thiests would respond to this sort of argument by saying God only has positive properties. (strong, smart, good, etc.) These thiests would describe the "lack" of being evil as part of them being maximally good. (Since it wouldn't make sense to say someone is both the most good, and the most evil person) This mostly overcomes the problem because then there's no longer any issue about God being maximally everything because they assert that he's not maximally everything, just maximally everything good/positive. Those "bad" traits are claimed to be weaknesses rather than maximalities. If a theist wanted to claim God is maximally everything, then I'm not sure if there's a strong response there.
Responding to the part about imagining a world with no evil, my thinking is similar to what's been said above; that good and evil are used in perspective. Even if I think of the most evil thing imaginable, one could still hold a consequentialist view and say that that "evil" actually could manifest into a far greater good. There is no way to disprove that possibility.
If we were to live in a world without evil, as you describe, the "lesser" evils we experience today would become our "maximal" evils today. For example, if murder and all other extreme evils were eliminated, we would all say that stubbing your toe is the most evil. Being that good and evil are concepts we do to describe our perceptions, I'm not sure that it would even be possible to fully eliminate them.