Thought Experiment: Good God
This is something not in relation with the last one. But this one is quite interesting.
And the Lord spake unto the philosopher, 'I am the Lord thy God, and I am the source of all that is good. Why does thy secular moral philosophy ignore me?'
And the philosopher spake unto the Lord, 'To answer I must first ask you some questions. You command us to do what is good. But is it good because you command it, or do you command it because it is good?'
'Ur,' said the Lord. 'It is good because I command it?'
'The wrong answer, surely, your mightiness! If the good is only good because you say it is so, then you could, if you wished, make it so that torturing infants was good. But that would be absurd, wouldn't it?'
'Of course!' replieth the Lord. 'I tested thee and thou hast made me pleased. What was the other choice again?'
'You chose what is good because it is good. But that shows quite clearly that goodness does not depend on you at all. So we don't need to study God to study the good.'
'Even so,' spake the Lord, 'you have got to admit I've written some pretty good textbooks on the subject...'
Source: Euthyphro by Plato (380BCE)
Taken from "The Pig that wants to be Eaten" by Julian Baggini
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2 comments:
"...and thus the Lord smote him, and He saw that it was good."
Since God is the source of good, it logically follows that any command from God must be good.
And what we value as "goodness" depends on our morals, which is to say, derived indirectly in some way or another, to God. Conversely, anything we consider "evil" or "bad" stems from doing something contravening to the word of God.
For the record, challenging the authority of God is not recommended. See first quote.
hi justin,
thx for dropping by my outdated blog...i think its all about canada, just so lazy to blog than in hk...= nothing to talk about here in canada ...lol!
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