[First Published on Facebook on 28/3/2014]
So. You’re all observant people. You’ve probably noticed my recent tendency to create that most maligned of internet banes: the argument thread. Sorry about that. You’ve also probably registered that my arguments recently have always had a tendency to lean towards the Holy Grail of Unhelpful Argument Topics – no, not The Incarnations of the Doctor Ordered by Quality (although, for reference, it’s something along the lines of 4, 10, 5, 2, 11, 3, 7, 1, 9, 6, 8). I speak of course, of Religion.
Naturally, as is usually the case with religion-based arguments, none of them went anywhere, because two differently-minded people or groups were coming at the same pool of evidence from wildly-different angles and starting points. But they did seem to expose one central issue that seems to have largely been the root cause of the difference in starting points present, and it occurred to me to record an exact rundown of my personal stance on the issue, if only for posterity’s sake.
So, preamble aside, the issue itself: Does God only do things if they’re good? Or are things only good if God does them?
The idea that God is good is pretty-much universal throughout Christianity, but less consistent is the word on whether that statement is prescriptive or descriptive. Is “good” a word which is used to describe an objective concept which, to our good fortune, God happens to be? Or is “good” a concept which can’t exist separate from God, to be effectively defined as nothing more than “similar to God in one’s actions or outlook”? Is the goal of life to be good, with following God’s example being the best way to do so, or is the goal of life to emulate God, with “good” being an otherwise-meaningless word to refer to the act of doing so? Should we be on Team Compassion, or Team Sanctimony?
Personally, I go compassion. I cannot envisage an existence without morality – it’s a self-contradictory statement as far as I’m concerned. I cannot envisage an existence without morality any more than I can envisage an existence without EXISTENCE ITSELF. Even if nobody adhered to morality, I believe it would still be THERE. I believe that God has always existed, and therefore there has always been morality. God has always had the CHOICE to be either good or evil – both of them concepts that would mean the same thing as they do now regardless of which choice he made. It was lucky for the universe that God has always been the kind of guy who would choose good over evil. God doesn’t dictate what good means any more than He dictates what “powerful” means. The words mean what they mean, and God is just the most perfect example of both. Nothing more, nothing less.
“But Calum!” cries the nonexistent voice of my imaginary audience (I should really get that checked by a psychologist). “Your stance here seems very intuitive, abstract and instinctual! Are you not… a SCIENTIST?” Yes, Nonexistent Voice – whom, for the purposes of this discussion, I shall name ‘Barry’. Yes, Barry, I suppose I am. And therefore I suppose I should demonstrate the actual process of logic which led to my conclusion here. All right. This could take a while. I hope you brought snacks, Barry. Assuming you actually eat.
Firstly, if there is no definition of “good” other than “whatever God says”, then Jesus’s death was GOD’s fault, at least as much as ours. Follow the logic with me. If there is no objective good or evil, then “sin” doesn’t mean anything beyond “stuff God decided not to like”. If that sounds oddly arbitrary, it’s because it IS. Without the existence of good and evil, God could not possibly have BASED his likes and dislikes on anything. So when He says He doesn’t like something, the only possible explanation is that either He is irrationally prejudiced against random things or he arbitrarily decided to start opposing random things out of – I don’t know, boredom? If there is no objective definition of good, then the Biblical assertion that the wages of sin are death is no longer a tragic but inevitable consequence of attempting to harmfully cheat the objective system of cosmic justice; it’s just one almighty paranoid bigot threatening to execute people for being different. Which means that when Christ took the punishment for our sins, it was an arbitrary punishment that didn’t have to happen. If there is no objective “good” which God feels morally obligated to stick to, then He had no reason not to just change his mind about all that stuff being sinful. If God INVENTED goodness, then He had no reason not to make it easier to achieve. Jesus’s death was therefore unnecessary. If there is no definition of “good” other than “whatever God says”, then it logically follows that God unnecessarily murdered His own son. And that… that’s MONSTROUS. I feel that in a hypothetical system without such a thing as objective good, objective good would spontaneously come into existence at the point of wilful, unnecessary, premeditated infanticide, JUST SO THERE COULD BE SOMETHING WHICH WAS THE OPPOSITE OF WHAT JUST HAPPENED.
Secondly, if there is no objective “good”, then there’s no reason to side with God over Satan other than cowardice or personal preference. If God simply decided one day that a certain way of living would henceforth be called “good”, and Satan rebelled against that… well, we don’t have a Hero vs Villain dynamic there. We’ve got a dynamic of arbitrary, meaningless opposition. Satan’s only crime is not BEING EVIL. It’s just DISAGREEING, on something with no objective correct answer. The two entities’ actions and motives have no definition beyond “different to the other guy’s”. Who would you support, if you had to choose between Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth? How does one choose between one amoral lump of rock and another? There are ways, of course. I could side with Cthulhu because he looks cooler. I could side with Yog-Sothoth because he’s more like to win. But in the kind of Lovecraftian world you create when you remove the concept of objective morality, that’s all you can really base your decision on. Suddenly, Voldemort becomes the only sane man in the entire Harry Potter narrative, with his belief that “there is no good or evil; only power and those too weak to acquire it”. When someone takes that option in a schoolyard feud or an international skirmish – sides with one group not because they believe that group is morally preferable but because that group is stronger and/or has promised to make it more worth their while – we call them a coward. A deserter. A quisling. A fairweather friend. The idea is so repulsive that even the words we use to describe it sound nasty, like a spit or a sneer. Fairweather. Quisling. Deserter. Coward.
Brrr.
Thirdly, if God merely decides what is good rather than adhering to an objective concept of goodness, then it ruins the whole parenthood analogy. The Bible keeps on talking of God as a parent. Usually a father, although a couple of times He gets compared to a mother, too, because I guess gender doesn’t matter much when you’re a transcendent entity. Now, I am not myself a parent, and I am very unlikely to ever become one. But I know parents, and I HAVE parents, and I’ve read the odd article about parenting, and when you do parenting right, it always seems to go more-or-less the same way: You spend the first few years teaching your child to be obedient, so that they can be protected and guided during the formative years when they haven’t wrapped their head around the concepts of right and wrong yet. Then, once they’re old enough to understand, you spend the rest of their life encouraging them to think for themselves, so that they may use the moral viewpoints they saw in you as a springboard to discover and explore morality for themselves. If you pull it off right, they eventually become a morally-conscious, free-thinking, compassionate, open-minded individual, at which point they are ready to be entrusted with the future of the world.
If you assume that there is an objective good to which God adheres and wishes others to adhere, then the Bible follows this narrative perfectly. He starts off teaching his kids to be obedient, even if His requests don’t make sense to them (“Adam, don’t eat this apple. Abraham, prepare to sacrifice this child. Israelites, sew four tassles onto the corners of your robe.”). Then, once they have reached the point where they are capable of understanding more complex morality as a species, He begins encouraging them to think for themselves (“Here is a parable about love. Here is a parable about the Golden Rule. Here is a parable about Heaven. Here is a parable about brotherhood.”). If, by contrast, you assume that there is no such thing as good beyond “whatever God says”, then the image of God as a father stops making any sense. Suddenly, He’s not encouraging us to think for ourselves, He’s just ordering us around and demanding that we never ask why. Suddenly, He’s not RAISING us, He’s GROOMING us. And if there’s a powerful cosmic man insisting I play out his own arbitrary fantasies without question and demanding that I call him ‘Daddy’, well, uh, I think I need an adult and a hotline to Child Protection Services.
Fourthly, well, the way I read it, the Bible SAYS that God only does things if they are good. Right from the very start of the Bible, God is looking at things and seeing that they are good. It says “seeing”. He’s not deciding that they are good. He’s not claiming that they are good. He is seeing it. With his eyes. It is objectively true, and God – ever the scientist – is making an official note of his observations, to be published later. That, combined with such delightful gems as “I know the plans I have for you – plans to comfort you and not to hurt you” and Jesus’s assertion that – far from being arbitrary – the entirety of the Law and the Prophets is just one long-winded way of leading people to the conclusion “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, plus the fact that, rather than leave us all to the death we deserved, the Big Guy WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO FIND A BETTER SOLUTION, imply that God knows about an objective “good” to which, being omnibenevolent, he adheres, even when it requires some degree of effort or thought. And if God knows about something, it probably exists. That’s how I like to think of it, anyway.
As in all things, I cannot guarantee that there is not some grievous flaw in my logic that I have not yet noticed. I cannot guarantee that I am not wrong about all of this. But, perhaps uniquely on this issue, I do not think that it matters. If I am right, and God is putting in the effort to be a good person, then God is the kind of guy I want to live in eternity with, and as such I’m glad I’m on the right side. If I am wrong, and God is just arbitrarily outlawing things because He feels like it, then an eternity in His strangely-sanctimonious, amoral presence sounds like the kind of thing I used to have nightmares about when I was ill and had been reading too much Ayn Rand, and as such I’m glad I’m on the “wrong” side, because at least we seem to stand for SOMETHING.
I can’t envisage any way in which it would be possible for God to be on Team Sanctimony. But even if there were such a way, I’d still never dream of aspiring to anything other than Team Compassion myself. If objective goodness exists, then I want to be good. If objective goodness doesn’t exist, then the least I can do for the poor wretches stuck in such a miserable existence is be nice to them. I reckon God understands that. And, presumptuous as this last thought of mine undoubtedly is, I think maybe that’s how God would feel, if you took away the Omniscience but left behind the Omnibenevolence. Maybe. It’s not my place to make sure-thing statements about the mind of the Almighty.
I think that’s the full extent of my thoughts on the matter, and so yes, Barry, you may go. I leave you with my thanks, and my encouragement to try and be good, whatever you believe in. I’ll let God worry about the rest of it.
The Court of Ranternal Affairs 