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The Goodness of God
Why I Am Not a Christian (Simon and Schuster: 1957), p. 12.
If you are quite sure there is a
difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is
that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's
fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and
wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is
good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you
must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is
independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not good
independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to
say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God
that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their
essence logically anterior to God.
On Natural Theology, Vol. 1 (Robert Carter & Brothers: 1857) pp. 71-3.
The prima facie evidence for a God may
not be enough to decide the question; but it should at least decide
man to entertain the question. To think upon how slight a variation
either in man or in external nature, the whole difference between
physical enjoyment and the most acute and most appalling of physical
agony may turn; to think how delicate the balance is, and yet how
surely and steadfastly it is maintained, so as that the vast majority
of creatures are not only upheld in comfort but often may be seen
disporting themselves in the redundance of gaiety; to think of the
pleasurable sensations wherewith every hour is enlivened, and how much
the most frequent and familiar occasions of life are mixed up with
happiness; to think of the food, and the recreation, and the study, and
the society, and the business, each having an appropriate relish of its
own, so as in fact to season with enjoyment the great bulk of our
existence in the world; to think that, instead of living in the midst
of grievous and incessant annoyance to all our faculties, we should
have awoke upon a world that so harmonized with the various senses of
man, and both gave forth such music to his ear, and to his eye such
manifold loveliness; to think of all these palpable and most precious
adaptations, and yet to care not, whether in this wide universe there
exists a being who has had any hand in them; to riot and regale oneself
to the uttermost in the midst of all this profusion, and yet to send
not one wishful inquiry after that Benevolence which for aught we know
may have laid it at our feet — this, however shaded from our view the
object of the question
may be, is, from its very commencement, a clear outrage against its
ethical proprieties. If that veil of dim transparency, which hides the
Deity from our immediate perceptions, were lifted up; and we should
then spurn from us the manifested God — this were direct and glaring
impiety. But anterior to the lifting of that veil, there may be
impiety. It is impiety to be so immersed as we are, in the busy objects
and gratifications of life; and yet to care not whether there be a
great and a good spirit by whose kindness it is that life is upholden.
It needs not that this great spirit should reveal Himself in characters
that force our attention to Him, ere the guilt of our impiety has
begun. But ours is the guilt of impiety, in not lifting our attention
towards God, in not seeking after Him if haply we may find Him.
"The Self-Emptying of Love" in The Incarnation: A Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O'Collins, eds. (Oxford: 2004), p. 249.
The first and most powerful source of the appeal of a kenotic theory is the great religious power and meaning that is intrinsic to the idea of a God who sacrifices and suffers with and on behalf of his creatures. If I am caught up in terrible suffering it is one thing to be assured of the love and kindness of another person. It is quite another thing for that other person to give the assurance by entering into my situation and suffering with me or even for me. A God who empties himself out of love for human beings, who recklessly as it were gives up divine privileges to endure all the hard realities of human life, is a God whose love is credible and inspires love in return.
William Lane Craig and Chad Meister, eds. (Intervarsity: Nov. 30, 2009), 272 pages.
The days have passed when the goodness of God — indeed, the reality of God itself — could reasonably be called a consensus opinion. God's reputation has come under considerable review in recent days, with some going so far as to say that it's not we who've made a mess of things. Instead whatever it is we call God is to blame. But is such an opinion really a fair assessment? In this magisterial collection, the contemporary complaints against belief in God are addressed with intellectual passion and rigor by some of the most astute theological and philosophical minds of the day: J. P. Moreland, Paul Moser, John Polkinghorne, Michael Behe, Michael J. Murray, Alister McGrath, Paul Copan, Jerry Walls, Charles Taliaferro, Scot McKnight, Gary Habermas, Mark Mittelberg, Chad Meister, and William Lane Craig. Includes an interview by Gary Habermas with noted convert to theism Antony Flew, and a direct critical response to Richard Dawkins's God Delusion by Alvin Plantinga, God Is Great, God Is Good offers convincing and compelling reassurance that though the world has changed, God has not.
"Battlestar Galactica Episodes 421-423 Commentary" (March 23, 2009: 1:27:00)
And this is the key moment of the finale, [Baltar] realizing the connections. Baltar is the man who has been thinking about and talking about God from the very beginning. Since the moment that Caprica Six said "God is Love" and Baltar dismissed her belief and mocked her belief. There is a direct connection between that moment and here where Baltar in the finale realizes, truly realizes, there is a different, there is another hand at work here, that there is something else going on, that there is a greater truth, that there is really something to this idea of destiny, that there is really something to this notion that he is a player in a grander play, and that he has to fill that role. I was really intrigued by that and I really wanted that to be a part of what happened at the end...
Is God a Delusion? A Reply to Religion's Cultured Despisers (Wiley-Blackwell: Dec. 3, 2008), p. 49.
Everything we care about — and, more significantly, everything we should care about — is something the universe of "blind physical forces" just doesn't care about. A materialist view of reality turns morality and goodness into the idiosyncratic concerns of a single species that might never have existed (and if we hadn't, the universe wouldn't have cared a whit). When we are gone (as we will be), the universe will once again just be a world of meaningless facts and events. The world of things without life, without personality, without a capacity to care — this, according to the scientific picture endorsed by Dawkins and Stenger and others, is the ultimate reality. ¶ Juxtaposed against this picture, there is the hope that the essence of the universe is characterized by something else — what Martin Luther King called "a loving purpose." It is the hope that there is something fundamental that eludes empirical investigation and which is essentially on the side of goodness. In such a universe, the moral agent who cares about the good is in tune with the fundamental truth about the universe in a way that the sociopath is not.
Steven Nadier (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux: Oct 28, 2008), 320 pages.
In the spring of 1672, the German philosopher and mathematician
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz arrived in Paris on a furtive
diplomatic mission. That project was abandoned quickly, but Leibniz
remained in Paris with a singular goal: to get the most out of the
city’s intellectual and cultural riches. He benefited, above all, from
his friendships with France’s two greatest philosopher-theologians of
the period, Antoine Arnauld and Nicolas de Malebranche. The
interactions of these three men would prove of great consequence not
only for Leibniz’s own philosophy but for the development of modern
philosophical and religious thought. Despite their wildly different
views and personalities, the three philosophers shared a single,
passionate concern: resolving the problem of evil. Why is it that, in a
world created by an allpowerful, all-wise, and infinitely just God,
there is sin and suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people,
and good things to bad people? This is the story of a clash between
radically divergent worldviews. But it is also a very personal story.
At its heart are the dramatic—and often turbulent—relationships between
three brilliant and resolute individuals. In this lively and engaging
book, Steven Nadler brings to life a debate that obsessed its
participants, captivated European intellectuals, and continues to
inform our ways of thinking about God, morality, and the world.
Robert Garcia and Nathan King, eds. (Rowman & Littlefield, Inc. : July 30, 2008), 224 pages.
Morality and religion: intimately wed, violently opposed, or something else? Discussion of this issue appears in pop culture, the academy, and the media — often generating radically opposed views. At one end of the spectrum are those who think that unless God exists, ethics is unfounded and the moral life is unmotivated. At the other end are those who think that religious belief is unnecessary for — and even a threat to — ethical knowledge and the moral life. This volume provides an accessible, charitable discussion that represents a range of views along this spectrum. The book begins with a lively debate between Paul Kurtz and William Lane Craig on the question, Is goodness without God good enough? Kurtz defends the affirmative position and Craig the negative. Following the debate are new essays by prominent scholars. These essays comment on the debate and advance the broader discussion of religion and morality. The book closes with final responses from Kurtz and Craig.
A number of recent books making the case against God have hit the best-seller list, most notably Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything and Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. If you follow the argument closely, you'll notice that the gravamen of the case against God is their judgment that God, and specifically the Christian God, as he is commonly understood, is not good after all. Whatever its status as a logical proof against theism, the argument is existentially forceful because we meet a God in their arguments that is deserving of their unmistakable disdain. The argument against the goodness of God usually advances on three fronts:
- God cannot be good because the world is rife with evil and suffering;
- The God we meet in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, is repugnant to our moral sensibilities; and,
- Those who claim to follow this God are responsible for epic evils like the Inquisition, the Crusades, and the "troubles" in Northern Ireland as well as for more quotidian evils like intolerance, anti-intellectualism, and being bores.
The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 63.
We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life,
and that he is full of joy. ¶ We pay a lot of money to get a tank with
a few tropical fish in it and never tire of looking at their brilliant
iridescence and marvelous forms and movements. But God has seas full of
them, which he constantly enjoys. ¶ Human beings can lose themselves in
card games or electric trains and think they are fortunate. But to God
there is available, in the language of one reporter, "Towering clouds
of gases trillions of miles high, backlit by nuclear fires in newly
forming stars, galaxies cart wheeling into collision and sending
explosive shock waves boiling through millions of light-years of time
and space." These things are all before him, along with numberless
unfolding rosebuds, souls, and songs, and immeasurably more of which
we know nothing.
Ric Ergenbright (Tyndale House: Oct 1, 1999), 160 pages.
Renowned landscape photographer Ric Ergenbright here turns his attention to the holiness reflected in the beauty of the natural world. Combining scriptural passages with photographic and scientific observations relating to the elements of nature, Ergenbright uses his dramatic, often astonishing photographs as a testament to the power and perfection of God. Though he recognizes that "if all Scripture were lost, we could still know something of [God's] character by carefully studying the works of his hands," Ergenbright uses the book to emphasize how God's Word can illuminate the world around us. This beautiful coffee-table book is a wonderful addition to any nature-lover's collection, and the detailed notes throughout are an education to any aspiring photographer.
The Divine Conspiracy (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1998), p. 61.
Jesus' good news about the kingdom can be an effective guide for our lives only if we share his view of the world in which we live. To his eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God's direct knowledge and control — though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices. Until our thoughts of God have found every visible thing and event glorious with his presence, the word of Jesus has not yet fully seized us.
Judith Hayes on God said...
In God We Trust: But Which One? (Madison, WI: FFRF, 1997)
Life can be beautiful, profound, and awe-inspiring, even without an irate god threatening us with eternal torment.
R. Douglas Geivett on Design said...
"Is Jesus the Only Way?" in Jesus Under Fire, eds. Michael J. Wilkins and JP Moreland (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1995), 192.
If the condition in our universe were not what they are, within a very small margin of flexibility, no life of any kind would be found in this universe. Thus, while the present universe is a fit habitat for human and other life form of life, the initial probability of there being such a universe is quite small. The confluence of so-called "cosmic constants" is improbable enough on the assumption that the universe is uncaused and undesigned; it is even more improbable on the supposition that we owe our existence to Creator who has it in for us. If, on the other hand, our lives are special, and if what makes our lives special has anything to do with the physical condition in which we come to have our lives, then the good of human life depends upon the Creator as well. This is cause for considerable comfort, for it offers an important clue concerning the Creator's good intentions for humans. Our bodies locate us in a physical world of astonishing complexity, apparently ordered by its Creator to the goal our physical well-being.
The Ragamuffin Gospel (Questar Publishers, 1993).
This chapter began with a paean of praise of the power of God
manifested in the works of creation. The gospel of grace ends any
apparent dichotomy between God's power and his love. The God who
flung from his fingertips this universe filled with galaxies and stars,
penguins and puffins, gulls and gannets, Pomeranians and poodles,
elephants and evergreens, parrots and potato bugs, peaches and pears,
and a world full of children made in his own image, is the God who
loves with magnificent monotony.
The Ragamuffin Gospel (Questar Publishers, 1993).
This is the God of the gospel of grace. A God who out of love for us,
sent the only Son he ever had wrapped in our skin. He learned how to
walk stumbled and fell, cried for his milk, sweated blood in the night,
was lashed with a whip and showered with spit, was fixed to a cross and
died whispering forgiveness on us all. The God of the legalistic
Christian, on the other hand, is often unpredictable, erratic, and
capable of all manner of prejudices. When we view God this way, we feel
compelled to engage in some sort of magic to appease him. Sunday
worship becomes a superstitious insurance policy against his whims.
This God expects people to be perfect and to be in perpetual control of
their feelings and thoughts. When broken people with this concept of
God fail — as inevitably they must — they usually expect
punishment. So, they persevere in religious practices as they struggle
to maintain a hollow image of a perfect self. The struggle itself is
exhausting. The legalists can never live up to the expectations they
project on God.
"Why I Am Not a Christian" in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 62.
Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and
millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce
nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascist, and Mr. Winston
Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say:
"Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been
design in the universe." I am not very impressed by the splendor of
those people. Therefore I think that this argument of design is really
a very poor argument indeed. Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws
of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on
this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the
pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage
of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth
which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in
the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of
thing to which the earth is tending — something dead, cold, and
lifeless.
David Basinger (perhaps) in International Philosophical Quarterly 20 (1980), 34.
Is God obligated to do all within his power to maximize the quality of
life for each individual in our world? Let us consider the following
principle: (P1) A necessary condition for the actualization of any possible world
containing sentient, self-determining beings is that God do all he can
within the legitimate constraints inherent in this world to maximize
the quality of life for such beings. Since many, if not most, versions of the problem of evil are based
on the contention that a perfectly good God would do more to rid our
world of pain and suffering, all parties agree that P1 is a very
important principle, perhaps the most important of its type. It might
be argued initially that P1 stipulates an impossible task for God. Just
as there can be no 'best' actualizable world, someone might maintain,
there can be no maximal state of existence for any given individual
since for every state of existence we might identify as such, there
would, in principle, always be another state of existence with even
higher quality that God could (or attempt to) produce.
Antony Flew on Hell said...
The Presumption of Atheism: God, Freedom, and Immortality, (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1984), p. 84.
Now, if anything at all can be known to be wrong, it seems to me to be
unshakably certain that it would be wrong to make any sentient being
suffer eternally for any offence whatever.
In saying, therefore, that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary? Where will be his justice and his wisdom if he has only a certain despotic power, if arbitrary will takes the place of reasonableness, and if in accord with the definition of tyrants, justice consists in that which is pleasing to the most powerful?