Does all good come from God? Question for Theists.?

Question

If you believe in Christian Morals, you believe that all morals come from God.

However do you believe what is moral is commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?

If you believe the former would that not mean that morals are independent of God.

If you believe the latter would it not imply that what is good is arbitrary? i.e. could God not create a world where say murder and rape were moral.

Answer 1

"...human life, physical, mental, moral and spiritual, is an ordinary natural event attributable in all respects to the ordinary operations of nature; and that man's ethical values, compulsions, activities, and restraints can be justified on natural grounds, without recourse to supernatural sanctions, and his highest good pursued and attained under natural conditions, without expectation of a supernatural destiny. "-- B.A.G.F.

Sorry, I thought your Q said "atheists." But I'm leaving this up for comparison.

Answer 2

No.

Our society (if based on the United States) is based on the typical Christian values. Despite our government not favoring any religion over another, America was pretty much founded on Christian values because those were the ones escaping from the British at the time.

Your morals don't come from God, whatever that means. Usually, if you feel that you have a sense of right and wrong, it comes from what's best for society.

That's pretty much why we can all agree that child molesters suck and murderers need to serve time in jail.

Answer 3

There are two different types of commands of God; 1. that which we must do under any possible circumstances which could exist, such as thou (you) shall not kill (murder).  And those particular commands in such cases as when God is communicating with a person directly and tells them as with Jonah, go to Ninevah and preach to the people, Jonah was afraid and fled somewhere else.  Particular commands may be viewed as arbitrary but not universal commands.

So you must distinguish between universal and particular commands.  Universal commands are necessary universally under God's perfect justice.  When God told Israel to destroy the Canaanites that is a particular command.

God is perfect and thus would not change any universal law.

To fully answer this question you would have to know more about the nature of truth  

Answer 4

Nice question in philosophy.  Either moral standards are arbitrary, or moral standards exist with or without God---which is the case?  Let's analyze this one a bit:

It is possible for God to create a world where life is vastly different from the kind we're familiar with---suppose he can create a world where "life" is some wierd mineral abstraction, where there is no love, no hate, no vice nor virtue.  Then "moral standards" in this case wouldn't compare to the kind we're familiar with.  If there would be any "moral standards" in such a bizzare world, they would be associated with that kind of world, and not ours.  Hence, one could argue that "moral standards" comes along with the kind of world being created.  Other than that, since many kinds of different worlds can be theoretically created, there are many kinds of Platonic concepts of moral standards---but only as Platonic ideals.  

Since God has created THIS world that we now live in, he has effectively decreed the appropriate moral standards for this world. It's kind of like buying a computer that already comes loaded with an operating system software.  God has CHOSEN this world along with the appropriate moral standards that come with this one.  

Answer 5

Everything comes from God.  Good or bad.  It is sanctioned by Him.

It's just that He gives these goods and bads according to our previous activities.

get it?? o_o

I'm not a Christian so I may not have understood your question clearly.

Answer 6

All evil simply comes from man and Satan.

Answer 7

In the Christian paradigm, the answer can only be that morals are completely arbitrary.  After all, there are really very, very few moral rules that the Christian god has not at some point demanded his followers violate.  He has ordered slaughter of innocents to make a political point (murder and terrorism, Deuteronomy 13).  He has instructed men in need of wives to hide on the side of the road and sieze women who wander by for that purpose (kidnapping and rape, Judges 21).  And that's just for starters.  Further, when he ordered these things, they became sacred duties... you would be wrong NOT to do them.

Answer 8

unless you define "god" as 'goodness itself' or 'absolutely everything' it could not possibly be responsible for all good. if it's good then obvoiusly yes -  if it's everything then yes but as 'everything' it is also repsonsible for all Evil.  

I'll assume you're of christian theology -  that does not equate to goodness and certainly people manage quality with no belief in that "God".  

The morality purported by the bible i have compared to a moral metaphysics and found christian morals to be basic, severely lacking in coherency  and unstratified without any formal organisation into a whole. the word of god is sloppily written and his morality not cohesive.

"Morality created god" seems less tenacious a statement than putting it the other way round - Religion's dogma is designed to engender basic social responses. thus the need for one to instill a socio biological moral code in people.

I hope each and every religious person's leap of faith only allows them to go as far as to believe because making a leap of faith that defers all moral decisions to God becasue he is flawless have great ramifications... YOU ARE ON THE EDGE OF AN IMPORTANT POINT with your  -  'what if the morality purported by a religion said it is right to murder'  - which would you follow the external authority of the word of god telling you to kill or an internal authority which told you killing was wrong? if one believe that an internal authority that could challenge the external authority of god could even validly exist one would have to assert god is not reponsible for all good.  

interpretations of God's word have led to the most extreme of murders and even most recently that is true - trusts acquired through the word of god could engender poor actions if you don't have that internal authority to challenge the word of god.

But religions don't support any kind of internal authority it's counter prodcutive to acquiring followers the words of the bible contain no stratified morality and thus are open to subjective analyses of the morality contained within, these subjective analyses still have the force of "the word of god" despite their subjectivity - such beliefs could be far far more hyperreal than the words themselves and the words themselves are pretty dammned hyperreal to start with.

The religious trust god none would say they don't trust god.



That is why External authorities like "religious morality " are potentially very very dangerous.

may you do great good in the name of your god.

your spiritual atheist friend

Buff

Answer 9

Being that they are opposites, good and bad are directly related to each other. Thou shalt not kill, but look at what God did to Sodom & Gammorah.

Answer 10

Dont confuse urself.

All Good is Good. and all bad is BAD.

Everything is god gifted, so no problems.

Answer 11

Yes, I believe in morals but I also recognize the limitation in believing they are absolute.  Although a decent way to live in which God may be 'pleased', morals, I believe, do not come from God, but humans.

Good and evil, right and wrong are definitely in the eye of the beholder.  A world where murder and rape are considered moral is not a result of God but rather the point of view from human perspective.  God just is, (actually beyond being) and it is humans who ascribe limitation to It.

Answer 12

As a Christian theist, I believe that the standard of goodness is derived from God's own character - that this standard is thus dependent, and not independent.

Because of this, good cannot be arbitrary.  Regardless of the shape of the world - how messed up it is - the STANDARD of goodness would remain fixed in God (who according to the Bible is constrained by his own character, e.g. 2 Tim 2:13, Titus 1:2).

Answer 13

There are, as one might expect, a variety of responses to this dilemma. One might (like Richard Swinburne for example) simply say

that there are two distinct compartments of morality: some rights and wrongs are the results of divine command, and are thus contingent. Others, though, are the results of logical necessity.

In other words, there are acts that would be right or wrong in any possible world. Then there are some that are right because of the world God actually created. God is in the position of a legislator trying to decide whether to mandate that in his (His) country, cars should drive on the right or on the left side of the road. Driving reckless, i.e. weaving in such a way as to hog the whole road, is wrong in any possible system of traffic regulation. Driving on the left side of the road is wrong if and only if the legislature makes the opposite choice.

Is it possible, then, to live with the arbitrariness of a command

morality if one compartmentalizes it?

Answer 14

All Comes from that what we know as God.

And... all is good.

God does not and has no reason to judge something as moral or immoral. Its our individual perception that makes anything moral or immoral and/or what is good or bad. Interestingly, when one is in touch with what he/she peceives as God then it is not possible for him/her to do anything that is immoral in his/her terms.

And we human beings as a society have laid down certain standards of morality (though every individual perceives the same from his/her unique perspective). So we have standards that we as a species have decided to define as moral limits and then we at individual levels also evolve to perceive things as moral or immoral. Thats the fun of it. We all have the right to have our own unique undestanding of all of this. And when we walk our unique paths that we consider as the path laid down by what we perceive as God... then there is no way we can do anything that we consider immoral.

For then... there is only being love and only seeing love. :-)

Answer 15

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you....I think that pretty well sums up my point to morals...

If someone felt that stealing (for example) was okay then they should be prepared to have the same thing happen to them without argument - because after all - they felt this act was okay....

Obviously, even people who do this know it is wrong because they flee! These types of people also usually guard their precious belongings as well....

I hope that made sense,...I also feel that God is all knowing because He is part of us all and everything else in the universe....we have the ability to perceive what is right and what is wrong...it's only a matter of being true to ourselves so that we may be true to others as well! (this does, however, exclude people with mental handicaps who cannot distinguish the differences for what ever reason)......

Answer 16

in fact Christian Morals derive partly from the Old Testament ...BUT mostly from Greek Philosophy (Plato/Socrates, above all)

and... what decides Moral Laws is the SOCIETY you live in.

else, how do you explain, the Cultures of former Polynesia or Amazons had not OUR sense of decency? and where does come from, the prohibition of polluting the environment ...of destroying the endangered Species (whales, bears...)  ? and so on