IS IT TRUE THAT WE HAVE NO REAL REASON TO BE JUST AND KIND AND COMPASSIONATE
WITHOUT A GOD WHO LIVES THOSE PRINCIPLES?
Morality is not just about telling us that fairness and love and compassion are good. It warns that they must be responded to with rewards. By default, breaking them means you should be punished. Morality is a law and a law without penalties and rewards is not a law at all. It is nothing important.
Good is default
If there is no God or creation or universe, it is good in the sense that there
is nobody around to suffer. If there is no God or anything to make people, it is
good that there are no people around to suffer. So good is independent of God.
It can exist without God.
Good and morality are not the same thing. There is good up to a point in all
evil actions. Morality means that some action is good overall or has more good
than bad in it. Good and evil would exist even if there is no God. Thus moral
good can exist without God too if moral is defined as being what is the best.
Law also exists by default. Suppose it is not objectively good to feed a baby or
kill it, then it is the law that morality is nonsense. It becomes evil to say
that feeding or killing it is objectively wrong. There is no logical problem
with the notion that the only thing that is objectively wrong is to lay down any
other objective moral judgements.
So it is objectively good to realise that there are no rules except realising
that rules are meaningless. No moral laws are really moral except the rule that
they are nonsense.
So no matter what you do or who you are, you are compelled to have an objective
morality.
It is a default. God has nothing to do with it. He did not make the rule that 1
and 1 is 2. He cannot change that rule. It has nothing to do with him. It
has everything to do with him. Thus God
and objective morality are not connected.
Anyone who does not see this does not understand goodness or law correctly and
faith in God is holding understanding back. Faith in God is intrinsically evil
for it bows to the lie that God is objective morality and the ground of it. It
may feel good but proper good makes you feel even better. Not all things that
are enjoyable are good.
If good can exist without God, then morality when understood as doing the most
good can exist without God. And indeed it does!
The problem of good
What is the problem of good?
Believers in God say that if you argue that evil contradicts the notion of an
all-powerful and all-good God, you are forgetting that the problem of good is
more important. They say that there is no explanation for how good can exist if
there is no God to create it. They call this the problem of good. They say it is
more important than the problem of evil. They say the person who says there is
no such God has a bigger problem than it. The problem of evil then depends on,
is parasitic on, the goodness of God, the reality of good.
This denies that good is an assessment not a force or power or an entity. It is
still good to be alive even if nobody exists and there is no God or universe or
anything.
It is really a plea to dismiss the problem of evil and thus it is evil for even
suggesting that. If that is what you have to do for the sake of this problem of
good then it's not really good.
Please don't dismiss the moral blackmail in the doctrine. "If you find that evil
refutes God you overthrow good and invalidate all the love and goodness in your
life." Yet moral systems say that threats and ultimatums are bullying. It is an
incoherent mess.
The notion that God is the ground of objective morality certainly implies that
to discard the existence of God is to create a problem of good as in objective
moral good. And other kinds of good as well.
The problem is nonsense so God cannot be objective morality. And God is against objective morality. The believers are against it while they shout and campaign in its name.
The hypocrisy
To say that morality is based on God needs clarifying.
It means that you cannot take morality
seriously unless there is a God to punish the sinner and to reward the saint.
That would mean all you care about is the getting a prize and avoiding
punishment. Only a stupid God would be pleased with a mercenary such as you! And
remember if the only reward you want is his approval that is still a reward you
are looking for. You want a crown for how it will make you feel so only wanting
God to be pleased with you is still about the reward you want in a positive
feeling.
Aristotle argued that it did not matter how we got such marvellous bodies but that we should regard anything that brings destruction to others or yourself as immoral. He connected morality to flourishing. In his view, though morality does not literally punish you, it as good as does. It should not be messed with. It is a law like a legislative one but that is an analogy more than anything. But very real.
This view and the God view are compatible. If Aristotle is right, we
don't need a God.
Good is not the same as moral good
Morality is based on there being good and evil. You can be good without being
morally good. For example, if you showed great kindness and had no moral sense
for your brain was damaged you could be better than the best person ever who had
their moral marbles.
A good person might give all they have to an evil person. The
morally good person will consider what people deserve and give to the deserving.
Morality is about what we deserve be it reward or punishment yet the first
person will be praised more than the second. It is incoherent.
The good person is not necessarily the same as a morally good person. The evil
person is not necessarily the same as a morally evil person.
We have seen that if there were nothing
at all, it is good that there is nobody to suffer. See the
point? The cake is good without being relevant to rules about
good and evil.
Good is related to morality but it is not the same. Good is more important than
morality. If morality is impossible you have to be good instead.
If God is good that still does not justify morality for morality is a different
type of good and depends on good.
Religion contends that if we say God creates all and is totally flawlessly good then evil is a problem. And it alleges that if you say evil shows there is no God you end up with a problem of how good can exist if there is no God. If the problem of good bases good on God it does not base moral good on it at all. You need another base for that.
Religion says God is not a moral agent for he cannot do wrong. He is outside time and cannot change.
A moral agent must have the power to do wrong but refuse to. In fact, God being a non-moral agent shows that God has nothing to do with morality at all and cannot be used as a God of the gaps to bolster it up. The moral argument is full of immoral lies!
The God who is not a moral agent cannot
be inspiring for us so it is crazy to say you need him to help you
be moral.
Instrumental or intrinsic or both?
"Good moral qualities such as kindness and compassion and being fair are not
intrinsically good. They are only instrumentally good. For example, if there is
nobody to be fair to in the world then it does not matter if you are unfair.
Fairness is only valuable in an unfair world. Kindness and compassion is only
valuable in a hard cold world. Virtues are only for a universe of hard knocks
and no good in a universe that is all sweetness and light. They are no good in a
Heaven."
There are plenty of people who talk of faith do nothing and think faith is
enough to make them stand out as great and virtuous. There are plenty of people
who cry with pity and don't lift a finger though they can easy help the person
they pity. There are people who act and do good without caring if it is
really good as long as they have some vague good intention. Each
individual doing this is about herself or himself. The stress on good
intention is clearly about self-approval. Those who cause destruction with
their good intentions take comfort in their goodness that has supposedly not
gone wrong but had unexpected adverse results.
To this I say that instrumentally good means intrinsically good. So even if
there is nobody to be fair to then it does matter if you are unfair in your
heart or do not care. An object is good in itself regardless of whether or not
it is used. So it is with our actions.
FINALLY
Attempts to say that love and compassion and justice go with a God who has these values himself fail and end up untruthful. There is no justice or love or compassion if you oppose truth. And you need fairness to be able to do loving things but nobody really knows how to be fair. You cannot control a person's response to punishment for example. A twisted murderer who wants to be in jail cannot be really punished by being sent there. Plus human nature tells so many lies that you never know if the best thing you did really was the best. When we talk about God's love and justice we are talking about our own blurred vision of them. That is making a God out of our dodgy deliberations. And if you are told you need to stand for God belief in order to uphold morality that is pressure. Devotion to God needs to be free and spontaneous. A forced blackmailed morality is not a morality.