In response to my last post, my good friend Dan asked:
“Chuck, I understand your metaphysical frustration with the absolute moral authority bit. But why include it as necessary part of your definition? If there were an omniscient and omnipotent being without this moral authority (that is, a being subject to the first part of Socrates’ disjunctive rather than the second), would you reject it as a god based on these definitional requirements?”
The short answer is “Yes,” so let’s address why I wouldn’t really think such a being was god.
The definition of god is generally a ultimate  power, a supreme being, etc. As a matter of course, this being is omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent and omnibenevolent. It is a being of utter goodness. Now, I don’t think that’s how the Hebrews felt about Yahweh when the Old Testament was written (those ideas come later, with folks like Hillel), but that is how modern people think about god.
But let me examine the idea of a god who has absolute knowledge but cannot dictate morality, even though he may demand it and seek justice on its behalf.
Twenty Questions for God
Christopher Hitchens wrote a book titled God Is Not Great. If I wrote a book on the subject, it might be titled What’s So Great about God? And this ties into my definition of a god. A god who observes and possibly enforces morality in the afterlife might be handy to have around, but how much of a “god” is he really?
If I posit for a moment that there is a God who created the universe, I don’t have an immediate reason to be impressed, although I would love to meet him. Firstly, it only creates the bigger question – “Where did you come from, God?” Second, I’m not sure what to think of this act of “Creation.” Was it a ton of effort (so much that he had to rest on the seventh day)? If so, what kind of a god gets tired? That seems odd to me.
Getting more serious, though, I would be meeting an extremely powerful entity, but one that is ultimately subject to things outside of his control. He would be beholden to some morality that defined his goodness because he could not simple create goodness from evil, as we see it. That just makes more questions than answers, especially about a lack of intercession from a benevolent, moral god.
Can God Make a Post So Long Even He Won’t Read It?
As I make more and more posts about these god topics, I will be saying a lot about any given god’s existential relevance – both existential in his sense and in our sense as our life and time as we understand it.
I think most gods that we can posit as possible are irrelevant. If praying to god doesn’t work, how is he relevant to our existence? If god doesn’t clearly prescribe a code of morals and ethics and give us tools for any quandry, then how is his morality relevant? If god reveals himself to some but not others, then why would anyone expect worship from those who are unenlightened by him?
Of course, I don’t believe there’s a single iota of evidence to believe in a god, so it’s all quite irrelevant to me! Still, I try to be somewhat conciliatory when making these arguments. I know people come at the issue of god from different angles, and I want to cover as many angles as I can.
A being of immense power who created this universe (and by extension, me) would be an amazing find, and would shatter much about how we view the world. And if this being would tell us about morality, then that might be a big help.
But if this being came to earth and told us all, “Yep, homosexuality is immoral,” would we all buy that? If he told us, “Abortion is fine. You can even kill a baby up until it says its first word!” would we buy that? I don’t think so. He would, at the very least, have to give us some evidence we don’t have right now. This is why I said, early on, that he would be impotent in a metaphysical sense. He’d have to prove that the morality he “knew” was the right one.
On the other hand, if he can come down, tell us that abortion is amoral and magic it up so that I just feel how wrong it is, and I can’t even consider why I thought it was circumstantially acceptable, then that’s a god.
Why Do Bad Things Happen to… Well, Everybody?
And the real kick in the pants is – god is believed by many to be so mysterious and ninja-esque in his mannerisms that he would never ever reveal any of this in so obvious a way. Thus, believers are left in a lurch – someone out there is judging you, but let’s face it, you can’t possibly understand the criteria.
On top of that, his behavior is not the model – do as he says, not as he does. After all, if you can save a life, you’re expected to do so. But, assuming god can stop a deadly hurricane, he certainly won’t.
God must somehow be morally relevant. Otherwise, he simply isn’t a god – he’s just a super-alien. Yet, clearly, I can’t see a way where god is morally relevant.
Of course, whether god can dictate morality or not, we still have to use our own moral sensibility to ensure the messages we’re receiving are not the trickery of a demon… or a psychic super-alien or what-have-you.
Let’s Talk about Worship, Baby
As an aside, if this example god created the universe that created me, I wouldn’t feel any particular debt to him. I love my parents not because they biologically spawned me but because they raised me, taught me well and took very good care of me. On the other hand, I would have no evidence that this imagined god had anything to do with my life thus far except its existence. For that, I would have no real thanks to give.
I’ll have a lot to say about worship as this blog goes on, but I’ll save that for now.
Hopefully, this answered Dan’s question in a verbose way. Really, I’m willing to accept many definitions of god for the sake of argument, but this definition is my own personal one, and one thing I mean when I say, “I don’t believe in any gods.”