xeren

Okay, so I've been discussing more religion with my roommate, and I told him that God sending someone to hell for not believing in Him is not very benevolent of God at all.

He agreed, but added that that is simply my human conception of benevolence, that God is benevolent, but not in the human conception of benevolence. God is not benevolent by human standards, but God is benevolent by god standards. So, he said, whenever a Christian refers to God as being benevolent, they are of course not refering to the human conception of benevolent.

It almost seems that god could get away with doing anything by defining it benevolent. Is there any way I could convince him that because the christian god violates the human standard of benevolence, that he should not be worshipped? Or anything along these lines?

I'm not completely sure how I want to argue a rebuttal to this, so any help would be appreciated!

-xeren

xeren

You know, I've just fully realized how deep the Christian rabbit hole goes... Once you believe that god is real, then god can get away with anything, and then say "who are you to judge me!? I am your creator!"
He could light children on fire for the purposes of gambling, call it benevolent, and Christians would say that we just couldn't possibly understand how an infinite being works, and that though the human conception of benevolence does not include lighting children on fire, the god conception of benevolence does.

philechat

Perhaps you should consult Plato's Eurythro? Plato had made a point that if what God (in ancient Greece, the gods) did was good, is it because it is good itself or it is good because God called it good?

If it is good because God called it good, than good and evil must be arbitrarily determined. If it is good regardless of God's opinion, then goodness must exist independent of God.

Again, you can also point out the "value factor" in determining goodness and knowledge. Note it is possible that God might be deluded of his omniscience. Moreover, morality requires the existence of a valuer. A self-determined "goodness" must be subjective, since it is good according to a valuer, i.e. God.

Fiach

Is a cube ever a sphere? Is killing an innocent person ever good? Is causing unnecessary suffereing ever good? Would even the idea of drowning every man, woman, child, baby in the world but Noah's family a GOOD ACT?????? Was drowning every non-human animal (billions likely) because of an alleged human sin, ever a good act.

God if omnipotent, lets a baby suffer 6 years with an inoperable brain tumour, headeaches, convulsions, paralysis, nausea and vomiting; is that god kind, nice, or even good. If he actually cares but can't help then he is not omnipotent.

If I had the power, I would fix all of the above in my term as God. So if the acts I described are good on their own merit as I say, and not arbitrary to God's mood, then God has problems.

I could then truthfully say that I and most members of this forum excluding the fundies, are kinder and nicer than God. I am not as powerful, but I am morally superior to God.

Even Jeffrey Dahmer can't come close to God's cruelty and evil acts on a grand scale. Hitler comes in a long distance second. Ghengis Kahn, Timur, Oliver Cromwell, Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are just blokes playing God.

Fiach

Jobar

Try this- in the OT God was an 'eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth' sort of deity. All the plagues, wiped-out cities, tribulations laid upon the Israelites for improper worship, etc.

Yet in the NT, Jesus- supposedly God in the flesh- says to do good to those that persecute you.

Not only is God not benevolent, he's downright schizophrenic.

xeren

I wholly agree with you Jobar, but my problem is that my christian friend is basically saying that God doesn't have to play by our rules- just because our conception of right and wrong says that sending someone to hell for eternity is wrong, doesn't mean that it is actually wrong. Why is this the case? Because if God is doing sending people to hell simply for not believing He exists, it must not be wrong, because God doesn't do wrong things.
It seems as if I've hit a dead end. If this is what he wants to argue, I feel like there's no way to get through to him, no way to appeal to his most basic notions of right and wrong to show that the god he believes in is a tyrant.

Another, somewhat similar problem I had with the discussion is the Christian defense that we can't use our human brains to fully understand certain concepts, like for example the infinite. When someone tells you, "we just can't fully comprehend god's will" or something similar, what should one say to that? I know that argument is somehow fallacious, but I can't put my finger on it.

philechat

How does he know God is omnibenevolent with his faulty human knowledge? By faith? Without an independent valuer the idea of benevolence is meaningless.

One thing. If we don't know what exactly God's will is, why listen to him? We might have been mistaken about his commandments. This is a logical fallacy called "argument from ignorance".

abe smith

"God" is an else-non-extant HUMAN FICTION. If your opponent/discussant wants to rant-on about what "god" does & doesn't do, tell the person that "god" ISN"T, and ,(if they want to discuss "him") first PROVE "his" existence. Meanwhile you can go out & eat pizza.

Wiploc

If god's goodness is so foreign to our goodness, what is the point of it? In what sense is it really good?

Look at it this way: The less god is like what humans mean by good, the more he is like what we mean by bad.





How would we form the opinion that he doesn't do wrong things if we don't have a reliable sense of right and wrong?

Your friend is two-stepping. He obviously thinks he can judge that god is good, but that you can't judge that god is bad. Ask him why he trusts his judgement of god if he doesn't trust yours.



It's not just wrong. It's the worst possible thing. If hellfire is good then our moral judgement is totally worthless.




The less we can understand god, the less he can understand about god. His position is that he can know that god is really good even though god looks bad. Ask him how he can know this if god isn't understandable.
crc

sandlewood

I don’t think you can even start to discuss something unless you can define terms and agree on the definitions. It seems your friend has chosen to leave the word “benevolent” undefined and therefore he has plenty of wiggle room. He can define “good” as “bad”, “black” as “white”, and “up” as “down”. He just says the meanings are different in God’s world. But if we don’t know the meanings of words, it is senseless to even have a discussion in the first place. Also, if he doesn’t know the meanings of the words, then he doesn’t know exactly what it is he believes in. How can that be right?

I would probably ask your friend what would have to happen for him to not believe God exists. Is there any level of non-benevolence that God could display that would cause him to believe that God was not benevolent? If not, then I wouldn't think there’s any point in discussing it at all.

You might also point out that his arguments in favor of God could also be said about the IPU or any other religion’s god. Why doesn’t he believe in those?