If "good" for God means something different than "good" does for humans, how can we base our morality on such a being?

Thanks Singwell for response.

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by buttman on May 15th, 2008

The idea that there's a God who tolerates, or even Himself commands some people to perpetrate acts which are perceived and
understood by our human cognition as barbaric and evil, but He still is a "good" God, doesn't harmoniously relates to or tally with our only judging criterion of what is good. The idea seems to bear all the characteristics of a deluding idealism.

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by buttman on May 15th, 2008

Not at all. During WW2, very moral leaders were called upon to sacrifice human lives for a greater cause. I am not talking about the war itself. eg in the London tube, hundreds of thousands of people were sheltering when a bomb broke through the banks of the Thames. Water began entering the Tube system. The choice was. Block off certain areas or let the whole system go under. If, however, certain areas were blocked off, thousands would drown. Were the leaders immoral for making the decision? I think not. There was no choice.

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by singwell-is off researching a lot on May 15th, 2008

singwell-is, that's a very good example you have presented and a very good analogy; but you're, somewhat, off target as it relates
to my point. For example, is the God really a good God, based on our conceptual understanding of such a term, or is "good" a concept that bounces around within relativity?. This is confusing for too many people. In society, and throughout the Bible, we're
constantly asked to be "good", and we're rewarded or punished accordingly. So "good" must be what we think it is. And "good", we're also told, is the likeness of our Creator.

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by buttman on May 16th, 2008

So within our human capacity to conceive, it's impossible to think
of such a concept anything different than what we think this concept is. In DEUTERONOMY 2:31-36, the God of Moses ordered him to "utterly destroy the men, women, and little ones of every city". We can say that this God is "good" all we want to but we cannot prove it; nor can we use our human judging criterion of what we understand as "good" to concede that this God's action measure up to this criterion, for if we did, we then would see the actions of this God as barbaric and deminical.

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by buttman on May 16th, 2008

Unless, as I stated before, the "goodness" of this God extends beyond human idealogy and transcends our human capacity to comprehend that the carnage this God encouraged Moses to commit is
also another way of this God being "good". But such an idea-even as a mere possibility-is not an idea most people are confortable with. For even if there might be, presumably, a "good and noble divine plan" deeply embedded in the evil for which such a God might be justified to incite Himself or brook, this is not something which can be intelligibly explained and fully understood.

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by buttman on May 16th, 2008

Any analogy will always be limited in its scope and not cover all aspects of the character of God. Christians, knowing God personally, have trust in Him that, even with the things they do not understand, that His ultimate plan will be carried out and that it will be for the good of humanity.

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by singwell-is off researching a lot on May 16th, 2008

Thanks Admiral Sir John. It's always a pleasure to hear from you.

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by buttman on May 15th, 2008

You're welcome.

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by Anonymous on May 15th, 2008