Whence Goodness?

Ever since Plato (or even before; cavemen and cavewomen could have discussed this also) people have recognized two possible fundamental sources for the standards of what is good and what is evil.

One of these standards is God. God defines what is good. God does whatever he likes, and so goodness is whatever God does and likes. God says love is good, therefore it is. He could just as easily and arbitrarily have said that hatred, genocide, and slavery are good, but he didn’t. This is the doctrinal position of most monotheists today.

The problem with this argument is that the only way we can know what God thinks is good is to have somebody tell us. The heavens themselves are silent. Most monotheists tell us that scripture (Torah, Bible, Koran) tell us what God thinks is good. But we find, in these sources, no consistent statement about what is good. God tells Joshua to commit genocide against the indigenous people of Palestine, even killing all of the children. The Old Testament also approves of slavery. It places limits on slavery, but makes it very clear that, to the slave owner, “the slave is his money.” But the Bible also exalts love as the ultimate good (God is love). So how would we, today, decide what is good in any given circumstance? Well, you have to believe what the self-appointed preachers tell you to believe. They tell you that genocide is bad when the people of whom they do not approve do it (Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.) but is good when the people of whom they approve do it (Columbus, etc.). So the standard of what is good and what is evil ultimately rests on what the preachers—many of whom are not well educated, even in Biblical scholarship—tell us.

The second argument is to say that the standards of good and evil are fundamental to the universe, to all possible universes, and that God is good because he is the embodiment and force of these standards. This means, of course, that there is something higher than God, to which God must conform. Therefore, argue atheists, God is not a necessary hypothesis.

We are no closer to a resolution of this problem than were thinkers in the days of Plato. Moreover, maybe these two arguments are the same. If God is not an independent person with whims and emotions, then God and the universal standards may be one and the same thing. Many religious people, though not fundamentalists, accept this solution, which isn’t really a solution but it, at least, gives us something to live by.

Actually, evolutionary science gives us an explanation. Love (as expressed through the emotion of empathy and the behavior of altruism) is the ultimate good in our species, though of course there are countless exceptions. Love is our instinct (except in psychopaths), though often not our behavior. But maybe in the Klingon universe the opposite is true? Evolutionary science indicates that this is impossible. Any sentient species that loves hatred will drive itself into extinction. They would all fight each other until the last one died alone. Simple as that. That’s why there are no animal species on Earth that do not at least have rudimentary altruism. Heck, even bacteria have a little bit of it.

This would mean that God is unnecessary as the ground of goodness. Of course, how can I know? I am trapped inside my theistic brain. When I look at the beautiful world this morning, as my wife and I take a walk, I see God. Illusion? Reality? It’s not like I can, with my animal brain, tell the difference.