The God Idea challenges the fact that you are a good person

Is good good because God says it is good or is it good no matter what God thinks? It is either one or the other. It's not half and half. To say it is half and half creates the following problem. If something is half good good in itself at all, it will not need a God to command it to make it better. Commanding something has nothing to do with making it good.

Saying things like, "Whatever God commands is just and right and good just because he says so," is disturbing. It is making an affirmation that even child-torture for no reason would be good if God commands it. It empowers the forces that create paedophilia and says our only objection to it is not that it hurts but that it is against God's will. To say God makes actions good or bad like this is really heinous. It is to tell yourself that religion has the right to oppress you and that it is great to be oppressed when it is the will of God.

Religion says that God will not command you to torture babies but that is not the point. It is the principle. If he endorses bad principles then can we be sure that he doesn't want us to use live babies for target practice? Religion saying he will not ask you to hurt babies is really an insult to the babies of the world.

Saying things like, "We can't believe that torturing babies is wrong unless there is a God to forbid it," is to claim that we are so bad and useless that we can't accept that it is right in itself to make babies happy unless there is a God. It is to blaspheme the goodness in us which makes us see that it is right to care for babies and wrong to hurt them. It denies that hurting babies is wrong just because it brings them pain.

The Christians and the Muslims say that morality or goodness means to build up and help. They say and God's nature is to help - he cannot do any different. Goodness then is his character and he has the right to command us to do good with authority. They say something is good because God commands it and it is good because God is a good God. They say God does not invent morality in this view. That is to say, morality is not arbitrary with God in this view. This teaches that God does invent morality but he doesn't command or do anything that is unhelpful. But to say God invents helpfulness is as absurd as saying he invents the rule that the whole is better than the part. So God being unable to command vicious things is not a solution. Say I cannot arbitrarily use green paint for a mural. Does that mean I am not being arbitrary when I use red? Morality is still being invented by this God. He is still telling us to lie to ourselves that what he commands is really good. God would only be good if that could be worked out by some standard independent of him. We mean that if it is good of him to send medicine to a sick baby, sending it would still be good if there is no God. Just because God is helpful does not mean he is good. Just because God may make us happy does not mean he is good or doing what is really good for us. Maybe there is another being who will punish us for being happy. Even if God is good, that does not mean God has the right to order us to do good. To say he has that right is to say things are only good because he says so and for no other reason.

And how do we know if God's character is good? Just because he has it does not make it good. Just because it seems to build up does not mean it is good. Satan could build a person up to a heroic level of virtue so that they will have a terrible fall. It is more evil to desecrate good than to make something evil to begin with. Then it shows that the good is freely and knowingly rejected. The Christians and the Muslim are just pretending that the problem: "Is good really good or is it just good because God says so?" doesn't exist. They are unable to deal with it but are only able to do conjuring tricks to make it look as if they can vanish it away like a stain.

And if we accept the view that the problem: is goodness only goodness because God says so or is goodness goodness whether there is a God or not, is solved that way then we must hold that good is good by OUR authority - because our characters are good. In other words, we believe what the believers believe but differ with them about what this goodness is manifested in. They say God and we say us.

Belief in God has nothing to do with believing that hurting innocent people is wrong. In fact, it undermines that belief. It is not right to try and base love for people on God when you can simply just love. Using God as a crutch to help you love is not love. It makes a good and convincing counterfeit of love but it is not love.

The irrelevance of God as a moral enforcer or authority is fact. It is the most important question of all in relation to God and theistic religion. It is fundamental. It fails to support religion. It tells us to be our own gods and not to be looking for a god outside of our own hearts and minds.

Good is good regardless of whether God does good or not. Good is not good because the divine commands it. Good would still be good if there were no such being. The divine cannot order us to believe what is good and what is not. We have to learn that for ourselves.

I must be my own God and perceive what is good for myself. Even if I claim to be taking my moral beliefs and direction from divine authority, the fact remains that I am judging God good. I am still judging for myself but pretending I am not. I must not pretend I have a monopoly on judging right just because I am religious. I cannot object to people doing that without reference to God.