Good is a concept created by humans. The universe itself is devoid of any type of objective good or evil. Rather, they are moral ideas humans use to help understand and define the things that happen to us.
*which* "God"? God(under which line of Christianity?)? YHWH? Allah? Zeus? The Moral Law? The Übermensch? Odin? Tupã?
I was thinking of any one god who is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent... I guess it doesn't really matter, you can consider all of them and say which one fits and which doesn't. In this thread it everyone is saying god is irrelevant anyway so it doesn't really matter which god. I guess you can say that the idea of a god depends on morality, Good is good at the time people make up god so they made up a god that says Good is good because Good is good.
Morality is just the structuring of the social conventions of human society. They aren't good or evil they are just what that society thought was best for it. Gods are just the enforcements methods that developed when witch-doctors and magicians morphed into priests. They are the tools used by the phyiscally weak men used to gain power. Today they have become politicians. Now God is just a hangover of that development. Virtually nobody believes in Magic eventually virtually nobody will believe in God and something else will take it's place. However mortiality will still exist and so will the concept of good and evil. The Bear.
Actually, I'd say the idea of god(s) depends more on small-minded belief in outdated worldviews, but that's just me.
If you cannot believe in yourself you need something to believe in. Never liked the idea of something "lording" it over me. regards koyo
To address the original question (you guys have quickly turned it into a "God is non-existent" rant); I tend to think that good is good because God says so, rather than God saying so because it is. I say this because if good was simply good and bad was simply bad, it would be this way with or without God - but there are some things in pretty much any religion that are considered wrong, that without a God you probably have no reason for considering them wrong. NOTE: I'd appreciate it if those who don't believe in God would resist sidetracking the thread... The TS's question pre-supposes some sort of god, so this thread was not meant to be a debate between theists and atheists, but rather a debate on the nature of good for those who believe.
good's a matter of perspective and scenario. What may be good to one person may not be to someone else or in a different scenario. Extreme example: punching a woman isn't regarded as good, punching a woman who's beating a child i would then see as a good thing. Okay bad example but thats my view on it
Could you be a bit more specific? Are you just asking me to list some things God has decreed are wrong? Surely you're familiar with some of the biblical commands such as don't blaspheme, don't commit adultery, etc.?
Ok so anything could be good because God says so? If that's the case, wouldn't morality actually be an arbitrary thing?
technically it is. in religious terms, if it is decreed by god, since he, you know, created pretty much everything, then yeah, it's arbitrary to his wishes since he is theoretically incomprehensible. in secular terms, morality is personal, so arbitrary, while ethics are the common unspoken morality of a collective society, thus a little less arbitrary.
The strange thing is though, most theists, especially the ones that adhere to the Abrahamic religions, would argue that everything has a purpose and nothing is arbitrary.