It isn’t clear from your post how the existence of God relates to the world being moral. It could be:
God decides what is moral, and only god’s decisions on the matter count, either because of some inherent property of divinity or your definition of morality or because of consequences God imposes
God has no choice in what is or isn’t moral, god’s nature or the definition of morality predetermine that, but god somehow makes it real, or meaningful, or existent in the world
God created a world in accordance with whatever morality is, and a non-god-created world wouldn’t have been , and so would be vanishingly unlikely to have moral value
I’ve mostly come across the first line of thinking in the past, not exclusively, but enough that I’ll assume it here. Let’s try a least-convenient-possible-world thought experiment. As you requested, let’s assume there exists exactly one God. This weekend, a joyful chorus rings out from the sky, and a beam of light shines down onto each and every human, young and old, and an angel appears before each of us and pronounces that God wants to reveal the true divine commandments to the people of Earth, which we have forgotten. (If you want to add more conditions to make the evidence more convincing that this experience is genuine and not aliens or delusions or drugs or something, be my guest). Actually, God says, the Aztecs were the people that originally received the true revelation, the world was made through divine sacrifice, human sacrifice is needed to pay the debt, and we have a lot of accrued debt we haven’t been paying off, so make with the pyramid-building and heart-removing and live-flaying. God gives no details on the afterlife, if any, or on what happens if we fail to carry out these orders.
What’s your next move?
If you believe such a scenario is impossible, that God couldn’t do such a thing, then God lacks the freedom to choose the moral law. How, then, could that law depend on God’s existence?
If you believe God simply wouldn’t do such a thing, why not? I don’t know of any religion whose gods don’t demand some form of unpleasant sacrifice from their followers, so what precludes this one, given that God has freedom of choice?
If you experienced this and did believe God had made such a revelation, and so did everyone else, would you obey? Would you expect and want others to obey? Is that the world you want to live in?
My own opinion is that in this world, I would have a moral duty to defy this order, and if possible, overthrow and replace God, because this one isn’t worthy of my worship or obedience. But I can only say that because I reject the premise that whatever is moral has no dependance on what any particular God wants.
In that world, my first instinct would be to rebel too, but on second thought, I guess this deity’s appearance would be a pretty strong point towards human sacrifice. After all, it is extremely strong evidence that everything I thought before was bullshit. I should however consider whether “following God’s edicts” was part of the bullshit.
The very fact that I consider rebelling however shows that my belief in morality is not grounded in that deity’s edicts...
If I did believe that human sacrifices were demanded by God, then I would reluctantly do it (or find unconvincing reasons to procrastinate, as I already do). At least, I would try to live by God’s edict.
I don’t want to live in that world, since it does not include the real God but if I did, I expect I would want to : if in that world I was presented with the offer of living in ours, I would refuse with much less hesitation than I refuse to go there.
From that reaction I deduce that I am less motivated by morality than by personal comfort, but that’s not new to me. I am already keenly aware of my failings to uphold my personal standards. (*)
I don’t think the concept of capability applies to God (as in the theological distinction between action and potential) because God is all in action.
I’m 95% sure God wouldn’t do such a thing by taking into account His previous behavior and what I know of morality.
Of the three options you propose as corresponding to my current belief, I reject the third, because it would imply morality precedes God.
I’m not sure about what morality is in the second case. If it’s external to God’s being, and transcends our world then I don’t think I can accept it unless there’s some weird fluff about what you call God in the first place (example : morality was the Holy Spirit all along).
I embrace the first, given that God and morality go hand in hand. I’m not exactly sure about the specifics that your description imply, but it sounds coherent with what I have in mind.
(*) I assume it would be much easier to generally agree with such direct commands than seeking good. Also, it seems much more comfortable to know how it ends (heartless atop a pyramid) and how to get there than trying constantly to be better.
There are like, two millenia of God not killing Egyptian firstborns since then.
I estimate the probability of God wanting me to kill Egyptian newborns as much lower than the probability of God wanting me to do whatever the Church says.
I agree that the mere fact that God is said to have killed the Egyptian firstborns is strong evidence against His existence (as you already pointed out).
I would add to pay close attention to the part about God hardening Pharoah’s heart in order to ensure that he will refuse to let Moses’ people go. God deliberately ensures the course of events that leads to the genocide of the newborns.
Also, the story of the fall from Eden starts from the premise that before the fall, man was incapable of knowing good from evil. Which, if God decides which is which, means man was incapable of knowing he was supposed to obey God. Then man disobeys god, and all humanity forever must suffer for it, because God said so. This isn’t a God that wants people not to suffer, it is one who sets things up so that great suffering is inevitable.
I think the whole point is that by your worldview, what you think and feel and claim to know are irrelevant. You have no agency in choosing what to believe about what is good, should God choose to tell you. You talk about “the real God,” but every Abrahamic religions agrees that God is ineffable and unknowable in almost all ways no matter how much gets revealed through prophets and messiahs and saints and miracles.
The Bible gives plenty of examples of God lying, deceiving, betting, changing his mind. I don’t know how much you’re coming at this from a fundamentalist viewpoint (Bible as literally God’s words, as opposed to human interpretation of divine revelation). But if the Bible is literally God’s words, then since it is internally inconsistent, it cannot be used as a reliable source of moral rules (as Shakespeare said, the devil can quote scripture to suit his purposes), only best guesses. If it is human interpretation, then we should assign its passages as much credibility as we assign any other interpretation of weird phenomena experienced by the ancients: not much, since we readily discount their views on almost everything else regarding the nature of this universe. Either way, we’re left in a world where even if he does decide it, God hasn’t actually given us a way to know what is or isn’t good. We have to guess, and be rewarded or damned forever in response to the quality of our guesses, but we have to do it while deliberately not using the faculties we use to determine everything else in life about what is true.
Indeed, that is what I believe, but my estimate of that being true is not that high.
Hearing reasons why this is false is precisely the point of my post.
It isn’t clear from your post how the existence of God relates to the world being moral. It could be:
God decides what is moral, and only god’s decisions on the matter count, either because of some inherent property of divinity or your definition of morality or because of consequences God imposes
God has no choice in what is or isn’t moral, god’s nature or the definition of morality predetermine that, but god somehow makes it real, or meaningful, or existent in the world
God created a world in accordance with whatever morality is, and a non-god-created world wouldn’t have been , and so would be vanishingly unlikely to have moral value
I’ve mostly come across the first line of thinking in the past, not exclusively, but enough that I’ll assume it here. Let’s try a least-convenient-possible-world thought experiment. As you requested, let’s assume there exists exactly one God. This weekend, a joyful chorus rings out from the sky, and a beam of light shines down onto each and every human, young and old, and an angel appears before each of us and pronounces that God wants to reveal the true divine commandments to the people of Earth, which we have forgotten. (If you want to add more conditions to make the evidence more convincing that this experience is genuine and not aliens or delusions or drugs or something, be my guest). Actually, God says, the Aztecs were the people that originally received the true revelation, the world was made through divine sacrifice, human sacrifice is needed to pay the debt, and we have a lot of accrued debt we haven’t been paying off, so make with the pyramid-building and heart-removing and live-flaying. God gives no details on the afterlife, if any, or on what happens if we fail to carry out these orders.
What’s your next move?
If you believe such a scenario is impossible, that God couldn’t do such a thing, then God lacks the freedom to choose the moral law. How, then, could that law depend on God’s existence?
If you believe God simply wouldn’t do such a thing, why not? I don’t know of any religion whose gods don’t demand some form of unpleasant sacrifice from their followers, so what precludes this one, given that God has freedom of choice?
If you experienced this and did believe God had made such a revelation, and so did everyone else, would you obey? Would you expect and want others to obey? Is that the world you want to live in?
My own opinion is that in this world, I would have a moral duty to defy this order, and if possible, overthrow and replace God, because this one isn’t worthy of my worship or obedience. But I can only say that because I reject the premise that whatever is moral has no dependance on what any particular God wants.
In that world, my first instinct would be to rebel too, but on second thought, I guess this deity’s appearance would be a pretty strong point towards human sacrifice. After all, it is extremely strong evidence that everything I thought before was bullshit. I should however consider whether “following God’s edicts” was part of the bullshit. The very fact that I consider rebelling however shows that my belief in morality is not grounded in that deity’s edicts...
If I did believe that human sacrifices were demanded by God, then I would reluctantly do it (or find unconvincing reasons to procrastinate, as I already do). At least, I would try to live by God’s edict. I don’t want to live in that world, since it does not include the real God but if I did, I expect I would want to : if in that world I was presented with the offer of living in ours, I would refuse with much less hesitation than I refuse to go there. From that reaction I deduce that I am less motivated by morality than by personal comfort, but that’s not new to me. I am already keenly aware of my failings to uphold my personal standards. (*)
I don’t think the concept of capability applies to God (as in the theological distinction between action and potential) because God is all in action. I’m 95% sure God wouldn’t do such a thing by taking into account His previous behavior and what I know of morality.
Of the three options you propose as corresponding to my current belief, I reject the third, because it would imply morality precedes God. I’m not sure about what morality is in the second case. If it’s external to God’s being, and transcends our world then I don’t think I can accept it unless there’s some weird fluff about what you call God in the first place (example : morality was the Holy Spirit all along). I embrace the first, given that God and morality go hand in hand. I’m not exactly sure about the specifics that your description imply, but it sounds coherent with what I have in mind.
(*) I assume it would be much easier to generally agree with such direct commands than seeking good. Also, it seems much more comfortable to know how it ends (heartless atop a pyramid) and how to get there than trying constantly to be better.
How are actions like killing all firstborn Egyptian children that much different?
There are like, two millenia of God not killing Egyptian firstborns since then. I estimate the probability of God wanting me to kill Egyptian newborns as much lower than the probability of God wanting me to do whatever the Church says.
I agree that the mere fact that God is said to have killed the Egyptian firstborns is strong evidence against His existence (as you already pointed out).
I would add to pay close attention to the part about God hardening Pharoah’s heart in order to ensure that he will refuse to let Moses’ people go. God deliberately ensures the course of events that leads to the genocide of the newborns.
Also, the story of the fall from Eden starts from the premise that before the fall, man was incapable of knowing good from evil. Which, if God decides which is which, means man was incapable of knowing he was supposed to obey God. Then man disobeys god, and all humanity forever must suffer for it, because God said so. This isn’t a God that wants people not to suffer, it is one who sets things up so that great suffering is inevitable.
I think the whole point is that by your worldview, what you think and feel and claim to know are irrelevant. You have no agency in choosing what to believe about what is good, should God choose to tell you. You talk about “the real God,” but every Abrahamic religions agrees that God is ineffable and unknowable in almost all ways no matter how much gets revealed through prophets and messiahs and saints and miracles.
The Bible gives plenty of examples of God lying, deceiving, betting, changing his mind. I don’t know how much you’re coming at this from a fundamentalist viewpoint (Bible as literally God’s words, as opposed to human interpretation of divine revelation). But if the Bible is literally God’s words, then since it is internally inconsistent, it cannot be used as a reliable source of moral rules (as Shakespeare said, the devil can quote scripture to suit his purposes), only best guesses. If it is human interpretation, then we should assign its passages as much credibility as we assign any other interpretation of weird phenomena experienced by the ancients: not much, since we readily discount their views on almost everything else regarding the nature of this universe. Either way, we’re left in a world where even if he does decide it, God hasn’t actually given us a way to know what is or isn’t good. We have to guess, and be rewarded or damned forever in response to the quality of our guesses, but we have to do it while deliberately not using the faculties we use to determine everything else in life about what is true.
If you define morality to be dependent on God, you are deliberately precluding any conception of a godless moral world.
Indeed, that is what I believe, but my estimate of that being true is not that high. Hearing reasons why this is false is precisely the point of my post.