Yerbut, not only is God supposed to know what is good perfectly, he's also supposed to be perfectly good, which I think means doing what is good. We don't do what is good, even if we know it, as any Christian could tell you.
if we believed that it was worth it in the long run.
That'd be an argument that there was some greater good served by the amount of Bad Things that go on. But theists can't quite say what it is, and usually end up saying that the mere possibility it exists is sufficient to retain their faith. That seems to be getting into the "God is inscrutable" territory, to me.
if God's morality is different to ours, this is also ok - because God's told us what our part is in upholding God's morality
That's not quite what that side of the argument is about (having said Amos's post was clear, I think that bit could have been clearer). The moral argument for God rests on stuff "everyone knows" (that there are moral absolutes, say). But if you're on the other prong of the fork, by hypothesis, what everyone knows is wrong. But if we allow that what "everyone knows" can be wrong, then the moral argument fails too.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-08-28 09:22 am (UTC)Yerbut, not only is God supposed to know what is good perfectly, he's also supposed to be perfectly good, which I think means doing what is good. We don't do what is good, even if we know it, as any Christian could tell you.
if we believed that it was worth it in the long run.
That'd be an argument that there was some greater good served by the amount of Bad Things that go on. But theists can't quite say what it is, and usually end up saying that the mere possibility it exists is sufficient to retain their faith. That seems to be getting into the "God is inscrutable" territory, to me.
if God's morality is different to ours, this is also ok - because God's told us what our part is in upholding God's morality
That's not quite what that side of the argument is about (having said Amos's post was clear, I think that bit could have been clearer). The moral argument for God rests on stuff "everyone knows" (that there are moral absolutes, say). But if you're on the other prong of the fork, by hypothesis, what everyone knows is wrong. But if we allow that what "everyone knows" can be wrong, then the moral argument fails too.