Comment of the Week: Judging the Morality of God

When atheists comment negatively on the behaviors which believers ascribe to their god, it's common for believers to respond by insisting that we puny humans can't possibly "judge" their god. After all, their god is so great, so powerful, and so wise that it must know what its doing, know what's best for us, and know what the best course of action is. Even if something seems inappropriate to us, we are supposed to trust that it really is the best possible option. If the premises of this argument are accepted at face value, though, it should invalidate judging that this god is good as well as judging that it is evil.

Tracie writes:

If you can't judge god's moral decisions, choices, actions, commands--on what grounds do you assert "god would never..." tell someone to do something?

Wouldn't that statement in itself require a personal moral judgment about god's morality? If I can't judge god's morality--as a human--then I am incapable of asserting "god is moral." If I say god is moral--am I not making a judgment about god's moral character? (Rhetorical, YES, I AM.)

If we can call god "moral"--then we, clearly, can judge god's morality. And I don't know how else to "judge" whether or not something is moral than to examine the actions of that person(age) and ask the question, "does this demonstrate a moral character?"

Does commanding genocide and mass infanticide (seriously--punishing infants? Of _what_ could infants possibly be guilty that would merit a death sentence? Who could assert such stupidity?) constitute a moral action? When we see genocide and infanticide do we call that moral? No, we do not. And we condemn those who commit such acts as plagues upon humanity who are without moral conscience--animals, beasts, criminals, monsters.

So, if we examine god's actions, and they align with "monstrous"--aren't we forced to judge god as an immoral character? And if we cannot know his reasons and cannot judge his actions--then aren't we saying that we cannot actually say he is moral in that case?

In other words, a judgment must render immoral if we use normal moral standards. And if we say other standards--of which we cannot be privy--must be used...then we cannot judge. We must, at best, say that we cannot make a determination of whether or not god is a moral character. And if that is the case--why would anyone follow god's commands--without anyway of being able to determine they represent moral action?

[original post]

I really don't think that most believers would be willing to give up on being able to call their god "good." Indeed, for many religions it's necessary to describe their god as good. As soon as it is admitted, though, that we are in any position to make such a judgement, the door is opened for at least the possibility of making the opposite judgement. Believers may not accept it, but they cannot insist that it's logically impossible.

Some may object that we aren't "judging" their god as good, but simply accepting that "good" is some aspect of their god's nature or that we have to have faith that god is good, but these objections don't work. Saying that "good" is part of their god's nature is still a judgement if we are comparing a god's nature to what does and does not qualify as "good." Having faith that god is good means abandoning our moral judgment entirely.

It also doesn't work to argue that "good" might mean something different when talking about their god, such that judging this god as "good" doesn't open up the door to judging it as "evil" as we would with a human being. If believers are going to start redefining basic words as soon as their deity is the subject, then the consequence is that we can never know what believers are talking about or what they mean. The very possibility of sensible, meaningful conversation is excluded unless and until believers are forced to explain their every word, which is impractical at best.