The morality standard needs ad infinitum support?
The believers think God is the law of right and wrong or good and evil not some
law outside of him. They deny that God has to keep up to a standard he does not
make. They say it is God's nature to be good. But why should God's nature be
considered to be good just because it is God's? Why not say that Zeus's nature
is good just because it is his? And though they say God does not have to keep a
standard he does not make, they say then that he does not make the values he
has. He is kindness he does not make it. Thus if God could be unkind he is
entitled to be!
Few believers care to admit that they believe in a God who makes cruelty kind by
merely commanding it. It is too nasty and absurd of a doctrine. It suggests
morality is not real but merely invented by God.
Believers say that if we suppose that there is a law of right and wrong that
even God must obey then we must ask, is what is good commanded by this law
because it is good or is there another law that decides that? Those of them that
say that God's goodness is about his good character not about the rules he makes
have the same question to deal with except it will be phrased: Is God's
character good because it is God's or God's nature or is there some other
standard that even God's character has to match to be good? (page 159, The
Future of Atheism, Alister McGrath and Daniel Dennett, SPCK, London, 2008).
Suppose God can't be good unless his goodness matches some standard. It does not
matter what the standard is. If he is the standard or if something else
is, that is immaterial. A standard is a standard.
What about the standard? How do we know it is good? Obviously we would need to apply another standard to it to see. What about this new standard? Well we need a standard then for it too to tell us. Perhaps there needs to be yet another. And another. And another and so on and on to infinity.
Remember religion says God has infinite power and wisdom and may be hiding that strange idea in its doctrine.
Where do we stop? Where does something actually tell us when the standard of good and evil is present? If you need a series of standards to work out that good and evil mean anything then none of them really means anything.
The believers say there is a need to stop somewhere. They say
they choose God as their stopping point - but they admit given their reasoning
that this is arbitrary (ibid page 160). Again, we see them left with the problem
that if a moral authority is decided arbitrarily and chosen arbitrarily then the
morality itself is no better than invention. Again, they are back to the idea of
a God that invents morality after all. They want to accuse disbelievers in God
of being arbitrary while they are arbitrary themselves.
