Good = The Will of God?

This is an adaptation and extension of an argument by Plato, in the dialogue Euthyphro.

Let us say, as many do, that the definition of The Good is nothing more and nothing less than the Will of God. That would mean that whatever world God creates would be, by definition, perfectly good. Our world, then, is not the best world God could have created – any world must, by definition, be perfectly good. That means that a world far more miserable than ours, e.g., one where suffering is not justified, one in which there is no prospect of salvation, must be equally good as ours, if God were to decide to create such a world. Equally, for those who believe that all morality requires God as moral arbiter, then whatever morality God decides is objectively moral, even if it were the opposite of justice and morality in our world, even if it would promote dishonesty, selfishness, unjust privelege and liability, etc.

In such a case, though we may be beholden to God and subject to His reward and punishment, there is nothing “good” about the world or about moral behavior as dictated by the command of God. That is to say, though perhaps we would be grateful that God created us at all, we should not be grateful that He created a world for us that is good. Any world God would create is good by definition.

But the faithful believe that not only is God the creator, not only does He write the rules of the game, but that the rules are fair, just, and good.

Conclusion: There is a criterion for what counts as good independent of God and God’s will. Thus, if God is truly good, He is good according to a criterion He does not Himself create.

Does God Really Care About Me?

This essay is a response to the faulty argument that the universe is so vast and the human being so small, his action so inconsequential, that God would not devote much attention to him.



Aristotle argued thus: We explain phenomena by referring to other phenomena. For example, we explain the rain by reference to clouds, the clouds by reference to temperature, temperature by reference to particle movement, and so on. If so, then the explanation has to end somewhere, because if not, either the series of explanations goes in a circle or goes on forever, in either which case we understand nothing. For Aristotle, this somewhere is God. But this God is very different from the God of the Theistic religions.

The word “God”– and it is only a word – has developed connotations consistent with its use. In a Western world with Christianity as the dominant world religion, people think of God (vis. God the Father) as an invisible tough-loving bearded man in the sky. The more philosophically minded tend to think of God as a more abstract kind of being, one unsusceptible to such simple, or perhaps any, description. This abstracting is a depersonalizing of God, and it places Him at a distance from human consciousness and concern. But the Theist, even the philosophical Theist, will insist that in some sense God cares about human beings, their welfare and their behavior.

The atmosphere in which modern science finds its roots, in 16^th century Europe, was one deeply entrenched in religious thinking. For the masses, God was the invisible Superman; for the well educated, God was the abstract, incomprehensible super-unity of Maimonides and Aquinas. The Being of God was “known” from philosophy, His Nature “known” by revelation. When the first modern scientists began their work, the assumption was that God certainly exists, and that He is eminently rational. Therefore the universe, the physical world, is rationally constructed, and susceptible to understanding by way of rationality. Though we may never understand God, we might understand something of His “mind” by understanding his creation.

Without the conviction that there is a unitary basis for reality, the task of science would never have gotten started, because if we don't assume that the world is rational, then the quest for rational understanding of the world is a misbegotten one.

Scientists don't typically think they are seeking "God", because they are not seeking the invisible man in the sky. They do typically seek the God of Aristotle, though, even though they call Him by a different name: The “Grand Unified Theory” (GUT). Science, (and the quest for understanding generally) seeks that one principle that is not explained in terms of other principles, and which stands as the ground for all the rest. The reasoning process demands the assumption of a unity on the far end of it. In Big-Bang cosmology, we seek to apprehend to conditions of a world absolutely unified in a superdense chunk of matter, and to extrapolate from those conditions the unfolding of the world to the state we find it today, in all its variety.

But, consistent with the standard position of scientific inquiry today, scientists only consider the physical component of reality. They seek to explain the material conditions and physical laws of today by understanding a unified material body and its unified physical law. All the physical matter, its configuration and behavior, all is included in the primordial and prime matter. But there is more to reality than materiality alone; at very least there is consciousness. The GUT, which proposes to explain everything, a law which is supposed to contain within it every other law, is not complete until it integrates into itself the ideas of psychology as well.

God is the physical law that contains within It every physical law, indeed, every physical event. But God is also the consciousness that contains within it every consciousness. One pithy way of putting it is, every thought in every mind is also a thought in God's mind.

And one of the phenomena of consciousness that must be included in the principle that contains all consciousness is concern for the self. In my first consciousness, I am the most important thing in the world. My survival, my well being, my satisfaction in life, my conscience, these things are very important to me. These same thoughts and feelings - with their same intensity - are also thought and felt by God.

If the argument stands, I am in God's auspices, the most important person in the world, and so are you and so is everyone else.

The Vomiting Mystic

Last night, drunk off my ass, kneeling before the toilet waiting for the opposite of eating to occur, I had a mystical experience.

Being nauseous is awful, but consummating the nausea is, to me, pretty much the worst thing in the world. Even if I fully expect it to make me feel better, I cannot put my finger in my throat. Now, sometimes even those that live a healthy lifestyle will puke, but when I find myself praying to the porcelain god it is usually my own fault. Rabbi Noach Weinberg has said that “pain is the price you pay for pleasure”, and indulgence in drink certainly has its price.

Last night, drunk of my ass, I wondered what Hell must be like.

The way I understand it, the pain our souls may suffer in the hereafter (whatever the correct way of looking at it is) is not “punishment”, per se. Punishment is external to the crimes which warrant it. Fair punishment is proportional to the crime, but that is a quantitative, not a qualitative, judgment. If I cheat in business, it may be fair to lock me up in jail. If I spray graffiti, it may be appropriate to strike my arse with a cane. But there is a logical gap, a human – and therefore somewhat arbitrary – decision lying between the crime and its punishment. But if I put my hand in a fire and I get burned, the question of fair or not doesn’t even come it. The “punishment” and the act are the same.

One of the “punishments” for drinking too much is the tortuous ordeal of nausea. And last night, kneeling before the toilet, the best I could do was look to God, take responsibility for my actions, and accept my “punishment” gracefully. Rising from my slump posture, I kneeled with certitude, with a complete understanding of why I was undergoing this ordeal.

Imagine vomiting for an eternity in the hereafter. Wrongful overindulgence doesn’t only have a physical price, but a spiritual one as well. Just as the pleasure of being drunk involves a certain freedom of the spirit, and just as the vice is a lack of spiritual steadfastness and discipline, the pain that attends it is also spiritual in nature. Sometimes God is merciful enough to let us purge our crimes during this life, and that is what I was counting on last night. What if I don’t get this opportunity in life and I have to purge myself after my earthly tenure? How long would that take? How awful would that be? How I wanted to purge, to puke, to pay.

But I would still not stick my finger in my throat. That would be akin to self-flagellation, that practice of some zealous and misguided religious people of inflicting corporeal punishment on themselves in order to willingly pay God for their sins. Mortification of the flesh. That is not my style at all. If God chooses to punish me, I want to take it gracefully. But I don’t think God wants me to punish myself, only to learn from my errors and from the messages he sends me.

I want to live better, and I know God is helping me. I need to try harder.

Thursday, May 03, 2007 Polytheism for Jews?

Thursday, May 03, 2007
Polytheism for Jews?  

I would sooner be a polytheist than an atheist. Of course (not of course) I am a monotheist. I believe this to be the most rational position of all: That there is a spiritual power underlying all reality and that this power is essentially One. This principle of unity is considered rational in empirical science as well, indeed it is held by many to be the determinant of rationality, that, although we perceive the world as subject to a multiplicity of theories, there is/ought to be a unified theory underlying them all, if only we can discover and understand it. But we do perceive a multiple world.


We do not, however, perceive a world empty of spiritual power as atheists insist. I can defend this view, but not for the purposes of this exploration.


Monotheistic religions tend also to acknowledge a multiplicity of spiritual powers subordinate to God -- the angels. According to a Jewish tradition (cited in the Midrash) for every blade of grass, there is an angel standing over it urging it to grow. If this is granted as true (if only for the sake of argument,) then it is also true that each tree has its angel, and then, every leaf, and then every forest, and then, perhaps, plant life in general. If so, then animal life ought also to have its own angel. If so, the weather should have its own angel, volcanoes, the sun and moon, music, love, fertility, etc. Another tradition holds that each nation has its own guardian angel, If so, then within each nation, sub-societies should have their own angels as well, and each family, and each trade, and international corporations, etc.


I used to think the doctrines of angels to be silly, and opposed to the principle of unity from which monotheism derives its rationality. Yes, we perceive a world wherein God works through multiple channels, but that is a limitation in our perspective; in the final analysis, all is One. When I discovered the following argument, I had to change my position on the matter: Reflect on Descartes' famous argument: I think, therefore I am. Self-consciousness is proof of the existence of the being who is conscious. Therefore, if angels are self-conscious, then even if they are really modifications of God, they have real existence in the same degree as we do. Though I can't prove that angels exist on such an argument, just as I cannot prove you exist as a consciousness, the angel can prove its own existence to itself, just like as can prove your own existence. Therefore, it is not my place to outright deny that the angel, or any other consciousness, exists. It's not merely a question of definition.


According to polytheistic systems with which I am most familiar, which are African and Hindu religions, aside from the vast multiplicity of gods posited, there is also posited a One Supreme Being, of which all these other gods are merely modifications. The theological difference between monotheism which includes angels and such polytheisms is not in the existence of the entities in question, because what monotheisms call God can be identified with the Supreme Being and the angels can be identified with the multiple gods. Neither is it the choice of which gods or angels exist: I don't believe it to be of serious theological significance how we decide to split up God's tasks; we can always split them up differently to explain different things (much in the same way we can draw the lines between different scientific disciplines differently, for example, the domains of biology, chemistry, geology and ecology may overlap or separate depending on the problem we attend). And I think that polytheistic systems typically agree, as, for example, the Romans at the height of their empire had lists of over a million gods from all over its territories, and did not care which gods people worshipped. The divine, like any comprehensive phenomenon, can be split up in lots of different ways. Just like we can split the angels up in lots of different ways, if the angels are the gods, then they too can be split up in lots of different ways.


The difference between polytheism and monotheism thus construed is not in the ontology of the matter, not in what reality is thought to exist, but rather in the nature of the way humans ought to relate to that reality. Monotheism does not bar the existence of very powerful created spirits. But they are thought to be irrelevant to human devotion - or more, that human devotion to such spirits is inappropriate..


With this as background, here is my problem. I am a customer in a restaurant. I know intellectually that the source of the food I am being served is the owner of the restaurant, (and following the chain, the farmers, or the capitalists, or the chefs of the past who invented the recipes –again, there is a measure of arbitrariness in how we split it up. Ultimately, the end of the chain would be God. But for the illustration we'll pretend the restaurant owner is the end of the chain). So I should really be thanking the owner for the food. This may be true enough. But does that mean that I should not also thank the waiter that is serving me now? Similarly, if I am eating an apple, I know I should ask God for and thank Him for the apple. But should I not also thank the tree or the spirit of the tree, or pray to the tree spirits and weather spirits etc? Why should a relationship to the One Supreme God exclude relationships – real relationships – to other spiritual beings?