How do you define good? There seems to be something that we all agree on: that human life has value. That we not only exist, but also should exist. And that anyone who thinks otherwise is evil, crazy or both.
But why? If our existence is an accident, something that just happened to have happened, why should it make any meaningful difference if we are or are not? Why, indeed, is the word "meaningful" in our vocabulary? If there is no purpose to our existence, why is "suicidal depression" an illness?Atheists, too, believe in G-d -- they just call Him something else Atheists, too, believe in G-d -- they just call Him something else. They believe that human life is purposeful -- that there is something beyond our existence which our existence serves. Rationally, a person may reject this truth, but his every instinct affirms it. And when it doesn't, the race will unanimously label him "not normal."
Good means that which furthers G-d's purpose. Therefore, we must logically conclude that G-d is good. That is the definition of G-d. The question is why does G-d allow bad things to happen if that's not what He wants? G-d specifically said not to kill, so why does He allow people to kill each other? He could just stop them from going against Him.
The answer is that G-d also wants people to have free will. He doesn't want people to be good just because He forced them to. He wants them to learn to be good by themselves.
Post #87 Ilya
Why doesn't G-d make himself "not want" these things?
Post #88 David
Rambler,
"Good means that which furthers G-d's purpose. Therefore, we must logically conclude that G-d is good. That is the definition of G-d."
OK, but that's just redefining 'good' to be whatever G-d wants, assuming G-d wants anything. It gives us zero ability to judge whether G-d is actually good as far as humanity is concerned. Maybe G-d's 'good' is for humanity to suffer.
"The question is why does G-d allow bad things to happen if that's not what He wants? G-d specifically said not to kill, so why does He allow people to kill each other?"
Why? What's wrong with killing each other? If it's G-d's will then it must be, by definition, good! The REAL question is if it's obvious that God wants people to kill each other, since He allows it
everyday, why do we have a record saying that He said not to kill?
Post #89 Michael
"Atheists, too, believe in G-d -- they just call Him something else. They believe that human life is purposeful -- that there is something beyond our existence which our existence serves. Rationally, a person may reject this truth, but his every instinct affirms it. And when it doesn't, the race will unanimously label him "not normal."
Sorry, are you saying that you think that atheists are monotheistic? I'm sorry Rambler, but that's the dumbest and most intentionally ignorant statement I've ever heard.
From Wikipedia:
Atheism, in the broadest sense, is the absence of belief in the existence of gods or deities. Other definitions combine this absence of belief with belief in the nonexistence of God, or simply with the conscious rejection of theism.
From Dictionary.com
—Synonyms atheist, agnostic, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
From MSN Encarta
unbeliever in God or deities: somebody who does not believe in God or deitiesSo no. Atheists don't believe in the existence your God, or any god for that matter.
Post #112 Rambler
Allow me to try to clarify my point.
In order to ask the question 'Why do bad things happen?' you have to first define bad and good. Good has no meaning without G-d. If there isn't a higher power who made the world with a purpose, then it makes no difference what happens. Why is death and destruction bad? Because that goes against the purpose for which G-d made the world. The belief in good and bad implies the belief in G-d. People who claim to believe in good but not in G-d only say that because they picture some absurd childish concept of G-d. This they reject. But the concept of a higher power that gives meaning to existence they must believe in if they believe in good and bad.
Post #113 Ilya
"Good has no meaning without G-d. If there isn't a higher power who made the world with a purpose, then it makes no difference what happens. Why is death and destruction bad?"
"Good" is what I like. "Bad" is what I don't. Death and destruction is bad because I don't like it. Now if a personal God existed, was omnipotent, and omni-benevolent (s)he would not do things that I don't like.
Post #120 David
Rambler,
"If there isn't a higher power who made the world with a purpose, then it makes no difference what happens."
It would certainly matter to me! Even if there is no God, I still hold value in a good number of things that would still exist and I would still care about what happens to them. Clearly the values would be subjective, but so what? For example, in a godless universe you cannot conceive how a person might still love and care about their family?
"Why is death and destruction bad? Because that goes against the purpose for which G-d made the world."
How do you know? You know God's purpose? You and George Bush.
Post #173 Rambler replied to Ilya's post
Why do we care? Why does it disturb us when tens of thousands of people are killed by an earthquake in Turkey? Why are we outraged when a crazed gunman mows down a flock of children in a schoolyard? Why are we pained by the sight of a homeless man dying a slow in a doorway?There seems to be something that we all -- male and female, rich and poor, religious and secular, hippie and yuppie -- agree on: that human life has value. That we not only exist, but also should exist. And that anyone who thinks otherwise is evil, crazy or both (remember the "crazed gunman"?)
But why? If our existence is an , something that just happened to have happened, why should it make any meaningful difference if we are or are not? Why, indeed, is the word "meaningful" in our vocabulary? If there is no purpose to our existence, why is "suicidal depression" an illness?
Atheists, too, believe in G-d -- they just call Him something else Atheists, too, believe in G-d -- they just call Him something else. They believe that human life is purposeful -- that there is something beyond our existence which our existence serves. Rationally, a person may reject this truth, but his every instinct affirms it. And when it doesn't, the race will unanimously label him "not normal."
Take a look at today's headlines: "Heroic 30-Hour Effort by Surgeon to Save Mom's Life" "Tragedy on Mountainface: Mudslide Buries Four" "Outlook Good for Burn Victim." These are news items, supposedly devoid of any moral or religious value judgements. So why do they presume that their readers will agree that the doctor's efforts are heroic, the mudslide tragic, and the possibility that the burn victim will survive "good"?
Why do we care? Because in the beginning G-d created the heavens and the earth.
Post #206 Rambler
We need to trace this question back to it's root if we are to get anywhere. How do you define moral good? Is it whatever is popular at the time? This would be a very wishy-washy moral system. One day you would be standing up against what you see as immoral and the next day the popular view would change and it would suddenly be acceptable to you. Either something is right or not, and it doesn't depend on what other people think. What gives anything in life significance in the first place? What makes anything of moral value at all?
Post #207 Ilya
"What gives anything in life significance in the first place? What makes anything of moral value at all?"
I do.
Post #208 Zachary replied to Ilya's post
What if I disagree with you? Are you gonna then tell me I don't exist?
Post #209 Michael
"One day you would be standing up against what you see as immoral and the next day the popular view would change and it would suddenly be acceptable to you."
And this is wrong because? If I don't see anything wrong with something, I'm not going to oppose it because some other people did long ago.
Post #210 Rambler
"If I don't see anything wrong with something,I'm not going to oppose it because some other people did long ago."
This is exactly the point. Either something is right or it is wrong. It doesn't change. Either the opinion of the past is right or the present one is right, but they can't both be right. Why do you decide that the prevailing opinion now is right but not the prevailing opinion then? You need to find a more unchanging basis for moral conviction. The truth is not open to a vote. It needs to be based on reason.
Post #211 Rambler
Ilya, how is what you value any more significant than that which you don't value? Just because you claim that something has significance does not make it so.
Post #212 Ilya
It makes is more *significant to me.* Since I can't really get into anyone else's head this is what I mean when I say significant.
Post #213 Michael
Wrong Rambler, things can change based on the perspective that they are seen in.
Especially something as subjective as morals.
Post #218 Rambler
According to the answers given here, the question "why do bad things happen to good people" is meaningless, since good and bad are entirely subjective. Why shouldn't bad things happen to good people if these are only arbitrary terms anyways? The question is based on the supposition of an objective good and bad which could then be seen to be in conflict.
I think that something can only be said to be good or bad in the context of a specific purpose. Something which furthers the purpose is good and something which detracts from it is bad. When we say that something is good for the United States, we mean that it enhances the welfare of the people of that country. When we say that something is bad for the environment, we mean that it detracts from the welfare of the environment. When we say that something is just plain good or bad, in the context of what purpose, who's purpose, do we mean?
Post #219 Michael
"According to the answers given here, the question "why do bad things happen to good people" is meaningless, since good and bad are entirely subjective"
I think the better question is, "Why is there suffering?" That removes the 'good' and the 'bad.' Now there's just the question of suffering, which I'll assume everyone has seen or personally experienced in varying degrees, some way at some time in their lives.
There are many millions of people who suffer each day. Countries full of people. If there was a benevolent deity, what possible reason could it possibly have to allow this senseless suffering and death?
The world is not entirely a glorious wondrous place, there are many hazards, and dangers, and natural disasters. Any person can die an infinite different ways at any time. Anyone can suffer from a long, debilitating disease.
Personally, I think that the idea that every sick, dying, suffering individual is responsible for his condition is incorrect. We can't always assume the worst of everyone who's in pain.
Post #221 AJ
Who said we are assuming the worst? We are assuming that they did something to cause their suffering. That doesn't mean they were horrible people, it means they did something wrong that caused them to be punished. Don't forget, technically, every sin is an act of rebellion against God (for this argument I am assuming that God exists). Therefore, any slight deviation from his course is grounds for punishment. The question may be why so much punishment, but we cant say that they have done absolutely nothing to deserve punishment
Post #222 Michael replied to AJ's post
So everyone must suffer greatly for any deviation from God's path.
Well, I'm screwed. :P
Post #223 Rambler
I don't see how changing the question to "why is there suffering" makes it any better than the original question. As long as we say that morality is subjective, then we cannot object to suffering. It is unpleasant but not necessarily bad. According to the Nazi system of morality, the suffering in the concentration camps was a good thing because it was leading to a more racially pure society. According to Machiavellian morality, despoiling other countries for profit is good because it benefits your country. According to Al Qaeda, 9/11 was good because evil westerners were punished for their sins.
The only way you can really object to bad things happening is if you believe that there is some kind of objective universal morality so that an event can be said to be objectively bad.
Post #225 AJ replied to Michael's post
Not "must." I didn't say must. I said that by all rights, any deviation is an act of rebellion, and deserving of punishment. How He decides to dole it out is beyond our comprehension, but certainly you'd concede that, assuming God exists, any violation of his laws is considered a rebellious act, deserving of at least some punishment
Post #226 Michael
Suffering is subjective, yet suffering is suffering. You can not argue that a person who feels that they are suffering is not suffering. You can say that they are suffering less in comparison to someone else, but they are still suffering.
Good and evil however, can be argued.
Post #227 Michael
"Not "must." I didn't say must. I said that by all rights, any deviation is an act of rebellion, and deserving of punishment. How He decides to dole it out is beyond our comprehension, but certainly you'd concede that, assuming God exists, any violation of his laws is considered a rebellious act, deserving of at least some punishment."
No benevolent ruler creates laws and governs them with a system beyond their subjects comprehension. I don't feel that that's fair or just.
Post #228 AJ replied to Michael's post
Your parents created laws and governed them with a system beyond your comprehension when you were 2 years old. "Don't run into the street" was probably beyond your understanding at that young age, as was "don't play with fire" and "eat your vegetables." However, most parents enact those rules, and there are punishments if they see the child violating them. Does the child have any idea why the parents enacted those rules? Do they make sense to the child? Not even close. does that make it unjust?
Post #229 Michael replied to AJ's post
As far as my memory goes my parents usually provided an explanation of why I shouldn't do something, especially if I was about to be punished. Or maybe they just always gave reasons when I asked them. All my parent's rules made sense to me, since I was little.
For example: My parents didn't just say "don't play with fire", they said "you shouldn't play with fire because you will burn yourself.' I guess I just had unusually kind parents.
And yes, punishing people who are completely unable to understand the consequences of their actions is unjust. A just society publishes the consequences for breaking laws.
Post #230 AJ replied to Michael's post
Tell me, when you were 2, did you understand what it means to burn yourself? How about what it means to be hit by a car? Them telling you that was their way of giving a reason, but you still didn't understand the reason for it. Why do you think a lot of kids get hurt for playing with matches? Because their parents never told them not to? Or because they thought they knew better and didn't understand?
God has published the consequences of breaking the law. now, you may say that its unclear it was written by God, or that not everyone has access to it. However, they are published, and even in the most just societies, ignorance of the law is no excuse.
Post #232 Michael replied to AJ's post
I'm fairly sure that I knew that lighting myself on fire was not in my best personal interest by the time I was two.
Ignorance of a law isn't excuse, if the law and penalty are publicly available. Everyone should have access to the that information and if they don't, then there is a problem.
Post #233 David
Rambler,
The point isn't about "good or bad," which may be terms of limited use if subjectivity alone is presumed to found them. The point is about justice. People are harmed when they apparently don't deserve punishment which would be inconsistent with a just God.
Theodicy is the way in which you justify apparent injustice, not some nebulous concepts of good or bad.
Post #234 AJ replied to Michael's post
Well, perhaps you were a child genius, but I'm fairly certain that this is something that happens all the time. Kids play with fire. Their parents could have told them it was dangerous, but they don't really understand. That is why some parents will light a match and put the childs hand close to it, so they feel the flame and realize the danger. But not all do, and I'm guessing yours didn't. So no, I dont think you really did know what lighting yourself on fire would do to you.
I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a place where the bible is not available to people
Post #235 Rodrigo replied to Michael's post
That´s why not everyone is judged in the same way. For example, a rabbi who violates shabat is a lot worse than you or me violating it. As the well known story says: When G-d will judge you he will not ask you "why weren´t you like moshe rabeinu?" He will ask you "why weren´t you the best YOU that you could be."
Post #236 Michael replied to AJ's post
"I think youd be hard-pressed to find a place where the Bible is not available to people."
It doesn't explain why a just G-d could allow seemingly innocent people to suffer terribly.
Post #237 Rambler
The question "why do people suffer" is meaningless unless you see it as wrong. Otherwise the answer is obvious. People suffer because something caused them suffering. If someone sticks their hand into a fire and it hurts, we don't wonder why did they suffer. They suffered because they put their hand into a fire. We only have a question when it seems unjust, when it seems that someone suffered wrongly. That brings you back to the question of how to define wrong.
Substituting the word justice for right and wrong doesn't clarify the question any more than substituting the word suffering. Ultimately, they are all talking about the same thing. Justice is an ideal in which people get what they deserve. That means that people who do good are rewarded and people who do bad are punished. You still need to define good and bad first.
I am still unsatisfied with the subjective definition of morality that has been offered. If I read a fictitious book about people being hurt, I don't like it. If I read a newspaper article about people being hurt, I don't like it. And yet I think you would agree that the events in the book are insignificant, while the events described in the newspaper article are morally wrong, and demand action to remedy the situation. If the reason why something is bad is because I don't like it, then why is the latter worse than the former if I dislike both equally? It seems that real events have their own moral value independent of the observer. Something which fiction obviously lacks. It seems that morality is a fact, not an opinion.
Post #239 David
Rambler,
"Substituting the word justice for right and wrong doesn't clarify the question any more than substituting the word suffering. Ultimately, they are all talking about the same thing. Justice is an ideal in which people get what they deserve. That means that people who do good are rewarded and people who do bad are punished. You still need to define good and bad first."
Do you enjoy being evasive? If we're talking about the God of the Bible then for all purposes of this discussion that is all defined already. If we're not talking about the God of the Bible then no rules apply and we don't even need to suppose that God is just.
Post #251 Rambler
David, I'm not trying to be evasive. I made my point at the very beginning ( see my previous posts) but it seems that no one got it. Now I'm trying to understand where they are coming from. They don't seem to think that without G-d no rules apply. They said that morality is subjective. That's what I'm trying to understand.
Post #253 David
Rambler,
"Now I'm trying to understand where they are coming from. They don't seem to think that without G-d no rules apply. They said that morality is subjective. That's what I'm trying to understand."
Does it matter? These are two completely different discussions.Finding an objective basis for morality is a tricky philosophical subject that has yet to find a fully satisfactory solution even after thousands of years of effort. This is true even from within a divine command theory for ethics given the Euthyphro dillemma. Are God's commands moral because they come from God or does God command them because they are moral? You get stuck between an arbitrary morality or an independent morality above God, to which God must answer.
Post #271 Nicole replied to the original question:
I was told by a rabbi once that if G-d did let us know why things of this nature happened, if there was a reason that we could conceive, we would in a way cease to be human, we would no longer have compassion, we would forget all those who died, and it would happen again...and again... and again... ( yes i am aware that it has genocide has happened again, but not as massive.)
Post #298 Rambler replied to David's post
The discussion of morality is necessary in order to come to any answer of why bad things happen to good people. If you haven't defined the terms of the question, then you can't try to resolve it. (I think doing this would lead us to an answer close to what Nicole wrote. But let's try it and see.)
The dilemma you pose is easily resolved. G-d's commands are moral because they come from G-d. Something is only good or bad to the degree to which it furthers a purpose. The morality of the world is what furthers the purpose which G-d had in mind when He created it. The world is good when it fulfills it's function. Just as a chair is good when it adequately fulfills it's function. This does not contradict independent morality because G-d is not a subjective observer, He is the very substance of existence.
Post #299 David
Rambler,
"The dilemma you pose is easily resolved. G-d's commands are moral because they come from G-d."
Ok, so it's possible then that God could create a world where, say, murder was virtuous and charity immoral? Indeed, a world where every moral value was reversed?
Post #319 Rambler
G-d could have made the world any way He wanted to. That's what we mean when we say that He is omnipotent. Everything is a certain way for a reason, not just because it always was that way. The basic laws of nature are that way because that's how G-d made them. He could have made them differently. Even mathematics, logic and morality only exist as a result of G-d. That's the very definition of G-d, the prime mover: what was there before there was ANYTHING else.
Post #321 David
Rambler,
"G-d could have made the world any way He wanted to. That's what we mean when we say that He is omnipotent. Everything is a certain way for a reason, not just because it always was that way. The basic laws of nature are that way because that's how G-d made them. He could have made them differently. Even mathematics, logic and morality only exist as a result of G-d. That's the very definition of G-d, the prime mover: what was there before there was ANYTHING else."
And? Does this mean you agree that God could have made a world where mass murder was the epitome of morality?
Post #322 Rambler
Yes, but it would be so different from the world that we inhabit that we can't fathom what it would be like. In our world, it's such a fundemental part of the way things work that if you take it out, then averything would be different.
Post #324 David
Rambler,
Ok, but murder could be good. This makes morality arbitrary - and then so too God's goodness
meaningless.
Post #339 Rambler
"This makes morality arbitrary and then so too G-d's goodness meaningless."
This does not make morality arbitrary. It makes morality a part of G-d, making it a basic part of existence itself. This is as far from arbitrary as you can get. It is built into the very nature of existence. That makes morality and G-d even more profound.
Post #341 David
Rambler,
"This does not make morality arbitrary. It makes morality a part of G-d, making it a basic part of existence itself. This is as far from arbitrary as you can get. It is built into the very nature of existence. That makes morality and G-d even more profound."
Ok, so if morality can take any form, even 180 degrees from what we consider moral, what does it mean to be moral? Nothing in particular. It can mean anything.
Which makes it mean nothing.
Arbitrary.
Post #342 Julia
It was once said to me that "The only things that might explain G-d's actions is that he is either all-powerful or all-good"I do agree with this a lot, although it might not be 100% accurate with the Torah's teachings, it can be applied to many situations in history and daily life. I do agree more with the latter, taht G-d means well for all humans but he cannot control every human's actions and thus bad things happen to "good people." In many ways also, it would make sense that both are true, because who could know what is the best thing for you is besides G-d. If he is the judge of souls then it would make sense that he would know things you don't and so a human may not be able to comprehend why things "happen." In the grand scheme of the world does G-d have the duty to make every single human's life perfect? Does not every human cause many changes in the world through every little decision they make each day? Why is it that we think we have to understand all of G-d's action if indeed "bad things are controled by G-d?
