SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itmwu4d wrote on October 24, 2022 at 8:37 PM

Reply to comment by AllanfromWales1 in Lab-grown meat could let humanity ignore a serious moral failing by phileconomicus

Who said I believed in objective morality? If there is an objective morality of the universe then the universe must have a design, right? Then there must be a designer which imbued the universe with that objective moral truth, right? This is the line one would have to argue.

I found the "so is it good because God says so or is God simply the messenger of what is good?" argument to be pretty good at discrediting the objective moral goodness of God until I heard an argument that went something like "Goodness is an essential element of the concept of God" (Craig). I'll paste a quote about this below.

Either way, you don't have to believe in objective morality to recognize that without it morality is not actually "real." It would be up to everyone to decide for themselves, even if that includes rape and murder.

"You state your fundamental question as follows: How do we know that God is good?Now at one level, as I explained in last week’s Question #294, that question is easy to answer: it is conceptually necessary that God be good. That is to say, goodness belongs to the very concept of God, just as being unmarried belongs to the concept of a bachelor. For (i) by definition God is a being worthy of worship, and only a being which is perfectly good would be worthy of worship; and (ii) as the greatest conceivable being God must be morally perfect, since it is better to be morally perfect than morally flawed."

That's from this page: https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/question-answer/on-the-goodness-of-god

AllanfromWales1 t1_itnaoga wrote on October 24, 2022 at 10:10 PM

For what it's worth, that argument only really applies if God is transcendent. If God is purely immanent, it makes little sense.

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itni931 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 11:07 PM

Please, go on. I've not heard this criticism before.

AllanfromWales1 t1_itp0uxd wrote on October 25, 2022 at 7:08 AM

A copypasta (with minor modifications) from elsewhere on Reddit:

>Immanent vs Transcendent Deity

> For me, the key issue is the distinction between a transcendent deity and an immanent deity. YHWH is a transcendent deity - He exists outside of the world, created it, rules over it, and judges us for the extent to which we obey him. For me Deity is immanent rather than transcendent - it is in and of the world, not an external creator, but rather a manifestation of Nature itself. In other words, it doesn't rule over the world, it is the world. It is certainly not judgemental. The only incentive to worship it is the joy and inner peace you can get from being close to nature.

SuperSirVexSmasher t1_itprw47 wrote on October 25, 2022 at 12:42 PM

God is supposed to be the first cause so it should always be transcendent, or it isn't God, but I imagine it's also of this world since it's supposed to be omnipresent.

Explain why the argument doesn't work if it's immanent. Is the idea that if God is all things of reality then God is also in all evil things? I've considered this before. Is this what you mean?

AllanfromWales1 t1_itq1zpt wrote on October 25, 2022 at 2:00 PM

Not a great believer in the good/evil dichotomy. Nature is 'red in tooth and claw', so if my Deity is immanent in nature, it includes that side of things. I don't accept that is evil, though.