It’s still up to you to decide
Steven Weinberg on living without God.
Around 1100, the Sufi philosopher Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali argued against the very idea of laws of nature, on the grounds that any such law would put God’s hands in chains. According to al-Ghazzali, a piece of cotton placed in a flame does not darken and smolder because of the heat of the flame, but because God wants it to darken and smolder.
Not a very curiosity-inspiring way to think about things. Whatever happens happens because God wants it to. Ho hum. What’s for dinner?
I do not think we have to worry that giving up religion will lead to a moral decline. There are plenty of people without religious faith who live exemplary moral lives (as for example, me), and though religion has sometimes inspired admirable ethical standards, it has also often fostered the most hideous crimes. Anyway, belief in an omnipotent omniscient creator of the world does not in itself have any moral implications—it’s still up to you to decide whether it is right to obey His commands.
Quite. This is what all the futile squabbles about what is or isn’t in the Koran or the Bible miss: it doesn’t matter what is or isn’t in the Koran or the Bible, all that matters is whether the rule in question is good or (as is all too often the case) jaw-droppingly horrible. If it’s the latter, then don’t obey it; that’s all.
I don’t know, it inspires my curiosity. WHY does God want this stuff to happen? What could s/he possibly gain from it?
Seriously, I’d like to know how theists would answer that.
Weinberg’s point was brought up by no less an apologist for Christianity than C.S. Lewis. It’s quite bothersome that so many of the devout ignore it completely.
I actually had a discussion with a very conservative evangelical Christian who said, in all seriousness, that we can’t possibly decide if God’s dictates are good or bad because God is the only one with the authority to define what “good” is. And that any human attempt to define “right” or “moral” is completely without basis, and inherently involves that human setting herself up as a “god” of some kind. If you’re not religious, your only logical recourse is to be a nihilist, according to this guy. Luckily, this person is the only Christian I have encountered who voiced that opinion. But it’s still staggering.
Jenavir: “Luckily, this person is the only Christian I have encountered who voiced that opinion.”
It’s my impression from internet discussions that this response in various forms is quite common when atheists point out some moral barbarity in the Old Testament as evidence of divine imperfection.
Such people seem entirely impervious to the Euthyphro dilemma and unworried by a dearth of evidence of conspicuous atheist immorality.
Steve Weinberg leads an exemplary moral life? Personally I think modesty is a moral virtue, but clearly he doesn’t. Ho hum.
Steve Weinberg leads an exemplary moral life? Personally I think modesty is a moral virtue, but clearly he doesn’t. Ho hum.
Well, I think there was just a touch of irony in that parenthesis.
I know that infinite goodness must be goodness, and that what is not consistent with goodness, is not consistent with infinite goodness. If in ascribing goodness to God I do not mean what I mean by goodness; if I do not mean the goodness of which I have some knowledge, but an incomprehensible attribute of an incomprehensible substance, which for aught I know may be a totally different quality from that which I love and venerate—and even must, if Mr. Mansel is to be believed, be in some important particulars opposed to this—what do I mean by calling it goodness? and what reason have I for venerating it? If I know nothing about what the attribute is, I cannot tell that it is a proper object of veneration. To say that God’s goodness may be different in kind from man’s goodness, what is it but saying, with a slight change of phraseology, that God may possibly not be good? To assert in words what we do not think in meaning, is as suitable a definition as can be given of a moral falsehood. Besides, suppose that certain unknown attributes are ascribed to the Deity in a religion the external evidences of which are so conclusive to my mind, as effectually to convince me that it comes from God. Unless I believe God to possess the same moral attributes which I find, in however inferior a degree, in a good man, what ground of assurance have I of God’s veracity? All trust in a Revelation presupposes a conviction that God’s attributes are the same, in all but degree, with the best human attributes.
If, instead of the “glad tidings” that there exists a Being in whom all the excellences which the highest human mind can conceive, exist in a degree inconceivable to us, I am informed that the world is ruled by a being whose attributes are infinite, but what they are we cannot learn, not what are the principles of his government, except that “the highest human morality which we are capable of conceiving” does not sanction them; convince me of it, and I will bear my fate as I may. But when I am told that I must believe this, and at the same time call this being by the names which express and affirm the highest human morality, I say in plain terms that I will not. Whatever power such a being may have over me, there is one thing which he shall not do: he shall not compel me to worship him. I will call no being good, who is not what I mean when I apply that epithet to my fellow-creatures; and if such a being can sentence me to hell for not so calling him, to hell I will go. (J.S. Mill, Examination of Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy.)