God is not a human. Why would the moral duties of humans be applicable to God?
Edit: unless you meant “God is evil by those moral standards that govern human behaviour”. In which case I agree. It’s not a very useful statement though. An omnipotent and omniscient being who is a creator of everything has more moral freedom to do to his creation as he pleases. For example, he gave us life (unlike our parents, he is the ultimate creator of it), so he also has the right to take it away.
An omnipotent and omniscient being who is a creator of everything has more moral freedom to do to his creation as he pleases.
Let’s consider two very simple forms of natural death: death by starvation and death by being burned alive (e.g. in a forest fire). You say that an omnipotent creator has the right to allow these things to happen, over and over. I can only imagine this is to be justified because “it’s all for the best in the end”, and the creator knows this because of its omniscience?
“It’s all for the best in the end” is not a good argument, no. Such things are justified because the kind of world that serves the purposes God had in mind when creating it (for example, world in which moral agents exist and in which their choices are meaningful, i.e. make a practical difference) requires regular and predictable natural laws, and these (again, in the presence of meaningfully moral agents) have the side-effect of causing suffering from time to time. People have the option of committing good or committing evil, and these options are open to them only because certain actions lead to consequences that are considered good or evil: for example, if I hit my brother with a stone, I know that he might die. Thus if I want to kill my brother, I have the option of hitting him with a stone. This is so because of the presence of natural laws that connect my action to the desired effect. These natural laws also imply that a stone might fall on my brother’s head by accident, not thrown by anyone in particular, and he might die.
A world with meaningfully moral agents is an immensely good world, much better than a world without free agents. It is good that a person has the power to decide on the path the world (or part of it) would take, for it confers on them a creative function, a good in itself. The so-called natural evils(*) are an unfortunate side effect of us being such agents.
(*) The expression natural evil doesn’t really sit right with me, because the concept of evil presupposes an agent causing it. Nothing that is inert can be good or evil. It can cause happiness or suffering, but it’s not good or evil, strictly speaking.
Of course the above account is not consistent with utilitarian ethics, but utilitarian ethics is rejected by the Bible anyway, so that’s not a problem.
For more along these lines I recommend Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God.
The expression natural evil doesn’t really sit right with me, because the concept of evil presupposes an agent causing it.
According to your philosophy, an agent did cause it - God! God chose to create a world containing abundant physical and moral evil, because the existence of decision-making beings is the best thing ever, and the existence of physical and moral evil is a necessary side effect of that.
the existence of decision-making beings is the best thing ever
I didn’t say it’s the best thing ever. Why are you misrepresenting what I said?
Effects caused by natural laws aren’t “caused by God”. They are caused by natural laws. It’s not the same thing. God did create natural laws, but they serve a number of good purposes as I began to outline above.
Exaggerating it only a little, out of exasperation at its inanity.
If God thinks as you described, then the best of humans are more ethical than God, because they wouldn’t set in motion thousands of years of wars and famine, and millions of years of ruthless natural selection, for the sake of—I don’t even know what. The eventual existence of “meaningfully moral agents”?
All these theodical problems arise for well-understood reasons—you insist on believing, despite appearances, that God is both all-powerful and good. Maybe you’d be better off with some process metaphysics in which good is scarcely present at the beginning, but can improve with time. I’m not particularly endorsing it, there are numerous metaphysical possibilities, but at least it would make more sense.
God is not a human. Why would the moral duties of humans be applicable to God?
Edit: unless you meant “God is evil by those moral standards that govern human behaviour”. In which case I agree. It’s not a very useful statement though. An omnipotent and omniscient being who is a creator of everything has more moral freedom to do to his creation as he pleases. For example, he gave us life (unlike our parents, he is the ultimate creator of it), so he also has the right to take it away.
Let’s consider two very simple forms of natural death: death by starvation and death by being burned alive (e.g. in a forest fire). You say that an omnipotent creator has the right to allow these things to happen, over and over. I can only imagine this is to be justified because “it’s all for the best in the end”, and the creator knows this because of its omniscience?
“It’s all for the best in the end” is not a good argument, no. Such things are justified because the kind of world that serves the purposes God had in mind when creating it (for example, world in which moral agents exist and in which their choices are meaningful, i.e. make a practical difference) requires regular and predictable natural laws, and these (again, in the presence of meaningfully moral agents) have the side-effect of causing suffering from time to time. People have the option of committing good or committing evil, and these options are open to them only because certain actions lead to consequences that are considered good or evil: for example, if I hit my brother with a stone, I know that he might die. Thus if I want to kill my brother, I have the option of hitting him with a stone. This is so because of the presence of natural laws that connect my action to the desired effect. These natural laws also imply that a stone might fall on my brother’s head by accident, not thrown by anyone in particular, and he might die.
A world with meaningfully moral agents is an immensely good world, much better than a world without free agents. It is good that a person has the power to decide on the path the world (or part of it) would take, for it confers on them a creative function, a good in itself. The so-called natural evils(*) are an unfortunate side effect of us being such agents.
(*) The expression natural evil doesn’t really sit right with me, because the concept of evil presupposes an agent causing it. Nothing that is inert can be good or evil. It can cause happiness or suffering, but it’s not good or evil, strictly speaking.
Of course the above account is not consistent with utilitarian ethics, but utilitarian ethics is rejected by the Bible anyway, so that’s not a problem.
For more along these lines I recommend Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God.
According to your philosophy, an agent did cause it - God! God chose to create a world containing abundant physical and moral evil, because the existence of decision-making beings is the best thing ever, and the existence of physical and moral evil is a necessary side effect of that.
I didn’t say it’s the best thing ever. Why are you misrepresenting what I said?
Effects caused by natural laws aren’t “caused by God”. They are caused by natural laws. It’s not the same thing. God did create natural laws, but they serve a number of good purposes as I began to outline above.
Exaggerating it only a little, out of exasperation at its inanity.
If God thinks as you described, then the best of humans are more ethical than God, because they wouldn’t set in motion thousands of years of wars and famine, and millions of years of ruthless natural selection, for the sake of—I don’t even know what. The eventual existence of “meaningfully moral agents”?
All these theodical problems arise for well-understood reasons—you insist on believing, despite appearances, that God is both all-powerful and good. Maybe you’d be better off with some process metaphysics in which good is scarcely present at the beginning, but can improve with time. I’m not particularly endorsing it, there are numerous metaphysical possibilities, but at least it would make more sense.