What stops creators of universes from being twisted sadistic fiends?

Originally posted by bbarr
None of my religious friends infer from "God is the creator" to "God is good". They do tend to infer from "God is the creator" to "God has the right to do as he pleases", but that is a substantially different claim. The latter inference, while it entails that God cannot violate an obligation (since nothing obliges him), is compatible with God failing to meet ...[text shortened]... hey may apply as metaphors or as terms that function to elicit some response in others).

We all have an innate sens of what is "good". Treating other the way you want to be treated is "good" just as Christ explained. So where does this morality come from I wonder? It must be from God if he exists. So any "good" we do comes from this innate sense of "goodness" put there by our Maker. In short, such goodness does not originate from us so why should we be called "good"? Only God is good and we are free to participate in such goodness.

Originally posted by bbarr
None of my religious friends infer from "God is the creator" to "God is good". They do tend to infer from "God is the creator" to "God has the right to do as he pleases", but that is a substantially different claim. The latter inference, while it entails that God cannot violate an obligation (since nothing obliges him), is compatible with God failing to meet ...[text shortened]... hey may apply as metaphors or as terms that function to elicit some response in others).

I wouldn't have any problems taking as implicit the notion that a creator of universes can do as it pleases (and that includes create other universes; testing grounds perhaps). On the otherhand, a number of posters here (and religious friends of my own) hold that the 'goodness' of some creator entity should automatically transcend (in a 'nice' way) every benchmark we humans care to set, simply by decree.

This then forms the basis for many of their other claims.

Originally posted by Agerg
I wouldn't have any problems taking as implicit the notion that a creator of universes can do as it pleases (and that includes create other universes; testing grounds perhaps). On the otherhand, a number of posters here (and religious friends of my own) hold that the 'goodness' of some creator entity should automatically transcend (in a 'nice' way) every bench ...[text shortened]... care to set, simply by decree.

This then forms the basis for many of their other claims.

I think the point is that many believers take god's goodness as a premise. In order to try to answer the Euthyphro Dilemma, they will posit that goodness is part of god's nature.

Also, god can be taken to be the ground of all being and ultimately the source of everything about the world that we hold to be true, and theist moral objectivists, who believe in objective moral facts or properties, take this premise.

In your idea, you keep the other attributes of god constant and simply substitute that god is evil. Despite Freaky's incredulity, I think this is not so easy to dismiss.

A good summary of the argument given by Stephen Law, in which he speculates about a maximally evil god, The God of Eth, can be found here:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/03/god-of-eth.html

No, treating others as you want to be treated is good only if you want to be treated well. If, for some bizarre reason, I want to be treated poorly then I shouldn't treat others as I want to be treated. This was Kant's criticism of the Golden Rule (in a footnote in The Groundwork), and it is exactly right. Suppose what I want, more than anything, is to be left alone by others; to make my own way. Suppose I resent the help of others, and would prefer if people just let me sink or swim. If the Golden Rule is correct, then I should treat people in just this way. But this would be immoral. We should help others who are in need. If I come across someone suffering horribly, who needs me assistance, I should help. This even if I would want not to be helped were our roles reversed.

Originally posted by Agerg
But your response to...

Hate to say it, but the creator is always infallible

applies to all X regardless of the choice one makes. You shouldn't, logically, have a problem with mine (since their is no logical contradiction with assuming that particular X may hypothetically be some creator of the universe, and behaves as described). That is unless, you weren't giving an honest/accurate answer. (Truth be told, I suspected you weren't).

I don't think it's a question of the goodness of any of the alleged creators, I consider it a question of the veracity of the various claims.

Originally posted by Lord Shark
I think the point is that many believers take god's goodness as a premise. In order to try to answer the Euthyphro Dilemma, they will posit that goodness is part of god's nature.

Also, god can be taken to be the ground of all being and ultimately the source of everything about the world that we hold to be true, and theist moral objectivists, who believ ...[text shortened]... d, The God of Eth, can be found here:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/03/god-of-eth.html

A good summary of the argument given by Stephen Law, in which he speculates about a maximally evil god, The God of Eth, can be found here:
http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/2007/03/god-of-eth.html
That was a nice article! Thanks for the link

Originally posted by FreakyKBH
Hate to say it, but the creator is always infallible

applies to all X regardless of the choice one makes. You shouldn't, logically, have a problem with mine (since their is no logical contradiction with assuming that particular X may hypothetically be some creator of the universe, and behaves as described). That is unless, you weren't giving a ny of the alleged creators, I consider it a question of the veracity of the various claims.

I'm not sure what you're getting at...do you claim it is invalid or paradoxical to assume some hypothetical creator entity (excluding your god) could possibly behave as described in my response to you earlier?
If so how is this the case?

Originally posted by Agerg
Before reaching for your holy book, assume I'm talking about someone elses [b]'false' god that you don't actually believe in.

Even if their belief is also sponsored by a "holy book", and it says their [false] God is holy and virtuous, cannot lie, etc... what prevents you from supposing that their god might be nothing like what their scriptures say and might instead be a nasty piece of work you wouldn't want to believe in?

....[/b]

One person's sick and twisted is another person's hero, which is to say that sick and twisted can be in the eye of the beholder.

That said, regardless of books or spirituality, a lot can be said for observing. For the most part, life on earth is not sick and twisted; therefore, the natural inference is that if one is to believe in some sort of creative force then the creation is a reflection of that force. The thing here is that the creation is also a reflection of the created. Neither is a true reflection, or is ever going to be.

Originally posted by Badwater
One person's sick and twisted is another person's hero, which is to say that sick and twisted can be in the eye of the beholder.

That said, regardless of books or spirituality, a lot can be said for observing. For the most part, life on earth is not sick and twisted; therefore, the natural inference is that if one is to believe in some sort of creative f ...[text shortened]... ion is also a reflection of the created. Neither is a true reflection, or is ever going to be.

But it need not be the case that the depravity of some god should be evidentiary to that which it creates (at least not at any time they go search for this evidence). If we assume true that there is a supernatural dimension(s) or even other physical universes, there would then exist much more which is beyond any mortal's potential to observe.
As regards:
"For the most part, life on earth is not sick and twisted; therefore, the natural inference is that if one is to believe in some sort of creative force then the creation is a reflection of that force"
It certainly isn't a natural assumption on my part that, for the most part, life on earth is the polar opposite of 'sick' and 'twisted'.

Moreover I'm merely trying to tease out the logic which allows one to say X is good automatically follows from X creates universes.

Originally posted by Agerg
Before reaching for your holy book, assume I'm talking about someone elses [b]'false' god that you don't actually believe in.

Even if their belief is also sponsored by a "holy book", and it says their [false] God is holy and virtuous, cannot lie, etc... what prevents you from supposing that their god might be nothing like what their scriptures say and ...[text shortened]... faith in these false gods and your own holy book has little bearing on theirs.[/b]

If God was actually a sadistic fiend , how would we know he was a fiend?

We could only make a moral judgement on God if we had some indisputable morality by which we could say he was a fiend. But in order to do this we would need an OMF (objective moral fact) to use against God.

The problem would be that we would need to invoke a bigger or greater God or morality , but then the God we thought was a fiend would actually not be God but a god instead.

Think about it - if there was no such thing as light in the universe , would we complain that it was dark or even know that it was dark?

If fiendishness was the moral standard set by a fiendish God then we would not see it as fiendish , we would see sadism as the norm and compassion as perverted. Even if God disguied himself as nice and turned out to be fiendish , how would we know what fiendishness was?

Something cannot be "twisted" unless you have an idea of what straightness is.

Knightmeister, you sound as though you define goodness as being consistent with anything - genocide, baby rape, etc.

Your idea of goodness is nonstandard. It is scary because using your religious beliefs you can justify ANYTHING! Goodness becomes meaningless in any objective sense; it's all about what you, the individual, thinks God wants. If you think God is Ares, then goodness lies in conquest, bloodshed and quite likely infanticide.

Oops, I guess YHWH approves of those things also going by the Old Testament. I suspect you think infanticide is good if you think God wants it (see Isaac and Abraham).

Your argument accomplishes exactly the opposite of what you claim; it shows you DON'T have any objective moral compass. There is no act that can not be good in your opinion, as long as you think God wants it.

Originally posted by whodey
We all have an innate sens of what is "good". Treating other the way you want to be treated is "good" just as Christ explained. So where does this morality come from I wonder? It must be from God if he exists. So any "good" we do comes from this innate sense of "goodness" put there by our Maker. In short, such goodness does not originate from us so why s ...[text shortened]... e be called "good"? Only God is good and we are free to participate in such goodness.

We all have an innate sense of what is "bad". So where does this morality come from I wonder? It must be from "god", if he exists. So any "bad" we do comes from this innate sense of "badness" put their by our "maker". In short, such badness does not originate from us so why should we be called "bad" ? Only "god" is bad and we are free to participate in such badness.
If your statement is true than mine is also true. But, from my perspective, neither statement is true. Just a silly attempt to evade personal responsibility.

Originally posted by knightmeister
If God was actually a sadistic fiend , how would we know he was a fiend?

We could only make a moral judgement on God if we had some indisputable morality by which we could say he was a fiend. But in order to do this we would need an OMF (objective moral fact) to use against God.

The problem would be that we would need to invoke a bigger or grea ...[text shortened]... shness was?

Something cannot be "twisted" unless you have an idea of what straightness is.

You do like your 'objective moral facts' dontcha, KM. If only such things existed, your arguments would be bulletproof!

Originally posted by knightmeister
If God was actually a sadistic fiend , how would we know he was a fiend?

We could only make a moral judgement on God if we had some indisputable morality by which we could say he was a fiend. But in order to do this we would need an OMF (objective moral fact) to use against God.

The problem would be that we would need to invoke a bigger or grea ...[text shortened]... shness was?

Something cannot be "twisted" unless you have an idea of what straightness is.

First let me draw your attention to the fact that the object of discussion here isn't "God" it is *creators of universes* (of which your god along with an infinite collection of other gods or entities may or may not be one of them). The reason for pointing this out is that it is assumed without question a particular god is morally unimpeachable; if this is valid from the premise it created the universe, then it should also be valid for any other *creator of the universe*.

But that aside Knightmeister...it is *you* who needs to invoke a bigger or greater God or morality because it is *you* who is of the unreasonable conviction that morality needs to be pinned upon some agent. Not *we*

As suggested by AThousandYoung, your position on morality here serves only to cheapen it...heavily!

If God was actually a sadistic fiend , how would we know he was a fiend?
By the same logic, if god were good, how would we know that?