1.5.3 Goodness and God

Version 1.0 October 2022                             (Previous Version)

Many, if not most, people who believe in God(s) also believe that God, or his messengers such as Moses, Jesus or Mohammed, tell us how to behave, ie, what is good, and this is disclosed in sacred texts, such as the Tanakh, the Bible or the Qu’ran, or the Vedas, Upanishads or the Guru Granth Sahib. 

In this discussion we put aside the question of whether there is a God (see Chapter 1.3 on Theology) so that we can address the belief that many if not most theists have: that God defines what is good, or God issues commands because they are good. 

In fact, as Chapter 1.3 discusses, many people believe in God or some supernatural beings, things or principles mostly because they feel that the material world is devoid of values, yet values (eg good and evil, truth and beauty) are real, so they must come from an immaterial, ie supernatural world.

Traditional theists assume that God is good.  Some say God is supremely good, or omnibenevolent.  God is also, some say, all knowing (omniscient) and all powerful (omnipotent).  Even if God is not all these three things, He/She is pretty close.  So, they say, we can accept that any commandments, rules or instructions God gives us must also be good.  So what God tells us to do is what goodness is.

The problem is that this position involves circular logic.  If goodness is defined by God’s commands, then we cannot say that God is good.  It would be like saying God is what God says.  It is circular.

If we can say that God is good, without referring to God’s commands, then we must have some other way to work out what is good.  There is no need to say Good is only what God commands – because God commands them – because we already have an independent way to work out what is good. 

On a slightly different tack, perhaps God issues commands only because they are good.  But how can we know if this is true?  We still need to be able to work out for ourselves whether individual commands are good, and we still need to work out whether God is good, so we still have to be able to know what is good independently of God and God’s commands.

So we must consider each of the Gods’ commandments and assess for ourselves whether or not they are good.  And many of the commandments from the various sacred texts are NOT good.

Multiple examples of bad commands in religious texts exist in all traditional religions.

An Incomprehensible God

On the other hand, many theists believe that God is so great that He/She is incomprehensible.  This is the God who surpasses all understanding. 

We can't learn anything from something that is incomprehensible, because we don't understand it. 

We can't discern what an incomprehensible thing commands or tells us, much less whether it is good.

An Immanent God

As discussed in Chapter 1.3, theistic world religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, as well as Hindu theists, traditionally treated God(s) as transcendent beings, entities that are separate from the material world.  But some theists, especially contemporary liberal Jews, Christians and Hindus, speak of an immanent God, one that is not transcendent or somehow outside the universe, but within or part of the universe.  Some say that this immanent god is an intrinsic part of the universe, or co-extensive with the universe, ie talk of god and talk of the universe is the same thing. 

Others talk about being, not a Being but being itself, existence itself.  They say that this is what we are (or should be) talking about when we talk about God.  Perhaps God is whatever is good about the world, or whatever it is in the universe that provides meaning. 

Could it be that an immanent god solves the problem of a transcendent God providing value?  The short answer is No.  We do not know whether an immanent God is good, unless we already know what being good is.  The Force might be evil.  (It seems to have been used in the films for evil purposes.)  Perhaps the Force provides a source of power, but that doesn’t mean it is good.  As we explain in Section 1.5.5 being a natural part of the universe does not make anything good.  As we explain in Section 1.5.6 even if the existence of the Force (or some other immanant principle, or the essence of being) did lead to the evolution of altruism or other socially beneficial tendencies in humans, that doesn’t make it intrinsically good. 

The problem with the Force and other such immanent essences is that they are totally mysterious: we don't really know anything about them, what they think (if they think), what they promote (if they promote anything) or how they benefit the world in any way.  So they are ethically useless.

As a final point, in REALigion, a Reasonable Global Way, we believe God does not exist.  So these debates are actually beside the point.  We discuss them only because many people do believe in God.

We summarize the conclusions we can reasonably come to on these issues as follows: