Can the Bible God Support an Absolute Morality? ZT

http://www.infidels.org/library/magazines/tsr/1995/5/5moral95.html

Can the Bible (or Any) God Support an Absolute Morality?
by Tim Gorski, M. D.
The world is in moral decay, say the theists, because of moral relativism. Only a divine power makes possible an absolute standard of right and wrong, they say. And yet, entirely aside from the evil that men (and women) do, there is much that is terrible and unjust in the world, so that if there be a God, we realize, He can not be both all-good and all-powerful. Because if He were, He would put an end to such things.

But I\'m afraid the situation is much, much worse even than that. Four hundred years before Jesus Christ is supposed to have been born, Socrates asked whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods. Socrates also observed that the gods--plural-- argued and disagreed about right and wrong as much as human beings. He got around this by supposing that that which all the gods approved was the good, and that which they all objected to was the evil, and that all else was neither good nor evil. He might just as well have considered the problem of a single god-- like that of the Christian Bible--who\'s inconsistent about what is beloved. But, as we know only too well, there simply is no honest way out of contradictions like that.

So let\'s just consider a strictly theoretical situation. Just for the sake of argument, let\'s suppose there\'s a God, and that He, She, or It is the absolute standard of morality. Is right and wrong then simply no more than this God\'s say-so? Or is what is right loved by this God and what is wrong hated by this God because of what right and wrong are in themselves?

In the first instance, if good and evil are no more than the product of the will of a divine power, and if that will is truly free, then such a God could, with a thought, cause what we consider to be the most repugnant and heinous criminal act to become the highest virtue. Now the further question would arise, of course, as to whether if this happened we would know it. Why? Because of the moral law within us, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, or the work of the law written in our hearts, as Saint Paul acknowledged ( Romans 2: 15). If morality is the say-so of a God, then presumably, like the gravitational effects of a massive body, any change in His (or Her or Its) will would cause our own consciences to be instantaneously altered. I\'ve never heard of this happening, though.

At any rate, if there is a God, and if this God\'s will determines what is right and wrong, then this supposed God\'s being all-good is no more than His (or Her or Its) being all-powerful. Is that an absolute morality? I don\'t think so. Rather, it\'s a morality that\'s completely relative to His (or Her or Its) desire. In a word--well, three actually--it\'s *might makes right*. It\'s another version of the law of the jungle. How\'s that for an admirable system of morality?

The only uncertainty remaining is whether it\'s more or less pathetic than the alternative situation of a God who is Himself (or Herself or Itself) subject to a logically anterior or prior standard of morality. That would be the case in the second instance of things that are good being beloved by God because they\'re good, because, of course, that puts God on the same level with human beings. It makes Him (or Her or It) irrelevant.

Well, we know He--or She or It--is irrelevant. That\'s why we\'re revolted by such Biblical stories as that of Yahweh asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac as a burnt offering--as if an all-good God could be pleased by a criminal act. Did Abraham really think he was flattering Yahweh to agree to do such a thing? It\'s curious that this same God is also supposed to have issued orders of mass extermination, orders that The Good Book tells us were actually carried out with less hesitation than Abraham had in preparing to kill his own son.

Well, so much for theistic absolute morality. It\'s anything but.

(Dr. Gorski practices medicine in Arlington, Texas, and is president of the Dallas/Fort Worth Council Against Health Fraud. He is a founding member and director of the North Texas Church of Freethought and is the editor/publisher of The Freethought Exchange and The Freethought Observer, P. O. Box 202447, Arlington, TX 76006.)