God as the standard of good: some thoughts

Attempting to refute some arguments against the notion of God as the standard of good, and the demand for an epistemic verification of said standard.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Goodness
• Veritas
• 48
• ProfMTH
• Bittbutter
• God
• Morals
• Gnosisandlight
• epistemology
• John
• Armstrong
• Standard
• of
• Good
• Christianity
• secularism
• Atheism

[psymon208]

You invoke the infinite regress when you posit "Ultimate" standards. We ask you what they ARE. So far, what I've heard about these Ultimate standards comes packaged with a lot of bullshit about "moral hierarchies" (seriously, "compromise" is a better word to describe it). All of which are simply restating or outright contradicting the proposition.

All we're doing when we ask you subsequent questions is pointing out to you that God does NOT terminate a logical infinite regress.

[gnosisandlight]

the question is one of verification, there is nothing beyond an ultimate standard to give said verification. I am afraid that first things are in a position to be able only to mete out verification, not receive it.

[psymon208]

I know poop rolls downhill, I already watched your video. You didn't actually even say anything in response to what I said.

You say "God is the ultimate standard of goodness. He decides what is good, blah blah blah". But this is vague. "Good" is an adjective, not a noun, so when you say "God is good" understand that there must be SOMETHING by which logic associates a given amount of other qualities with God to give the statement meaning.

[gnosisandlight]

You said nothing worth responding to outside of my response. What part of your mini diatribe were you wanting a response to? Good is both an adjective and a noun. It can be used as a description of actions "that was a good game" but that description is only as meaningful as the standard being appealed to. Whenever you invoke good as an adjective you are explicitly comparing the action or noun to a standard, be it personal, societal, or ultimate. You have no leg to stand on.

[UNFFwildcard]

This reminded me of something I learned about the universe. Look at the cosmos. Where's up, and where's down? There's no way to tell, because you need a reference point relative to the universe. What is above and below the universe is a meaningless concept if the universe does not have an exterior reference point.  Likewise, morality on an objective basis is a meaningless concept unless there exists a reference point exterior to us. Good vid.

[ProfMTH]

So, after 10 minutes and 48 seconds it really just comes down to two things: 1) one can merely define one's god as good itself and, in the process, end the inquiry; 2) the Bible and what is purported to be private revelation are sources of knowledge -- at least for believers -- that identify the biblical god as good itself. The first is, of course, just a restatement of the circular argument you were making in comments under Veritas's video. However, I was struck by your concern about...

[Jorbz150]

@psymon208

Surely you understand that we are all slaves to something.

If I recall correctly, the apostle Paul writes about this in one of his letters.

If you will really take any interest in this matter, perhaps you ought to read it....

Romans 6:13-19

[Philos2006]

If god is the standard of good, why are believers in that god not noticeably better than non-believers ?

If god exists, who really knows what he/she is like ? How can somebody unknown, never seen, never heard, be a standard for good ?

[WeszWesWesley]

It doesn't matter if god is the standard for good since we can't verify what god is or what good is...

Did I get the message right... Or...

Did I miss something?

[gnosisandlight]

It is meaningful for two reasons. 1 logic is meaningless drivel if your demands hold any water at all, hence any demand or critique derived of logic (as I suppose you believe that yours is) is dismissible out of hand (self defeating as I said before). 2. It shows how duplicitous you are, in that you apparently know my argument well enough to dismiss logic from its dues. As some one once said "What can be asserted without evidence is going to be dismissed without evidence" (Self Refuting)????

[psymon208]

Cool. God is the ultimate standard of good. Now how does that help, again? Of what importance is an ultimate standard now? Theodicy? Morality?

"Oh, I want to be good! But I need someone else to vindicate my goodness!"

Hopelessly slavish, and what a waste of time. Have fun shuffling, though.

[gnosisandlight]

Very well then. You say logic is logical without the very same evidence and then use logic to demand evidence from me. Self defeating? This conversation should be a short one indeed your entire position is helplessly incoherent. Your method can't even engender the evidence it requires of mine.

[psymon208]

What can be asserted without evidence is going to be dismissed without evidence. You say "God is the Standard" by fiat. To hell with it, then, I say by fiat that he's not. Forget it, this entire issue should be a very short conversation.