On the stone god’s blog, I ask
Ark, could you ask your Christians whether a thing is good because God commands it or god commands it because it is good?
Could they give an example of an objective moral and with supporting justification.
and then I get
What is the nature of God. God is good. God is love. Love and goodness are the very essence of God.
God is certainly not arbitrary in His moral actions, nor is God subject to some external standard of morality that governs His decisions…God isn’t arbitrarily deciding what is good and what is evil on a whim. Rather, it is God’s nature to do good, and God never acts contrary to His nature.
…the ground of morality is God’s nature and not some external standard to which God must adhere. God’s sovereignty is preserved as well as an objective standard for morality, i.e., God’s nature.The Scriptures, God’s self-revelation to humanity, illustrates this quite nicely. A sampling of passages that demonstrate that goodness is grounded in God’s nature:
God commands certain actions as good and therefore to be done and forbids certain other actions as evil and therefore not to be done. What is good is not good simply because God commands it. It is good because it is reflective of His divine nature.
My first question is, did he understand my question? My question is about the nature of good. Are things good independent of god or do they get their goodness from god? And if all that is is the handiwork of god, how can anything be bad? IS it conceivable that a good god has through omission let bad exist? Is this fellow willfully ignorant or do we blame it on his upbringing?
The claim god is good is asserted without proof. The author has not demonstrated that god is and that it is good. It is not enough to claim god is good. God’s existence has not been demonstrated. It is quite evident the author of the above comment is ignorant of theologians who have argued god’s nature is unknowable. I propose they settle this small matter first then get back to us.
By saying god doesn’t act contrary to its nature, we must assume the author implies all a god does is good. That must include, in the case of the god of the bible, drowning all that lives, save a few, is good. Cursing the earth is good. Turning out A & E for a minor infraction is good. A further question is how does this fellow know all this about god? And the value judgement of god? Can he tell us what to god is evil? IS it the same with what he considers evil or are they different?
I have deleted the bible references because they are useless in this discussion. So far as I can tell, the theologian has not demonstrated the bible to be the word of a god, any god. On the contrary, most of the bible passages look like the ramblings of a deranged mind. Or maybe, god is deranged and we have been thinking the bible as is, could not come from a god. I think we have been holding god to a high standard without justification.
The god of the bible gave Joshua express orders to kill the Canaanites. The god of the bible is recorded to have drowned the Egyptian army, to have sent bears to kill children. The list of the moral things this god is said to have done have been listed before by others with much patience than yours truly.
It is tiring dealing with people who will not read.
Random thoughts 