Is it good because it is God’s nature? or is it God’s nature because it is good?

The Euthyphro Dilemma is a Theology 101 problem, without a satisfactory answer. Posed in Plato’s dialogues, it is often formulated like this: “Does God command something is good because it is good, or is it good because God commands it”. Plato was writing from a polytheistic culture, so this is a variation (and translation) on…

Values and Evidence

In the last post I discussed a spectrum of genres of existence. They went from a physical reality to a conceptual reality unbounded by sense data. I finished talking about the need for evidence when one is talking about the physical reality and existence, and so the appropriate follow up, so far as I see,…

Created in His Image?

One of the claims of the Big Three religions (and many other religions that claim to have a perfect God) is the claim that God made us in His image. That is patently absurd on the basis that God is immaterial and has no image, whereas I do have an image (my Facebook photos prove…

Can God Stop Evil without Ending our Freewill?

The problem of evil is ubiquitous. However, this argument only works against certain definitions of a god. If you believe in a particular God that is incompatible with the nature of suffering then you should throw out the definition of God. Normally this is not what happens. People either cut their definitions of God or…

Questions for Theists.

What follows is 10 questions aimed at theists, along with an explanation as to why the questions are meaningful. The questions are sincere, as they have been the stumbling blocks to many a conversation about religion. What is contained in the explanations that follow the questions is not meant to limit a theist’s response, and…

Ethics by Discussion or by Fiat

According to a commenter on Blogging Theology, violence is the fault of Godlessness. It's a frequent comment and it pervades for two reasons: establishing crime statistics, motives and demographics is not easy, and the accusation seems to stick. The accusation probably sticks because it seems obvious. But obvious is not the same as true. This…

Why is God good?

I have heard many times from apologists and blogosphere theologians that God must be good. I am then given some variety of bad reasoning: circular arguments about God’s nature being good because goodness is defined by God’s nature, brute force arguments about God being either “Perfect” or the Creator and this is therefore just the…

Why do theologians and sceptics talk past each other on the question of God’s “goodness”? And which have a better point?

The question of whether a God character is “good” has continued for thousands of years. Since Epicurus, since Job. The position of the sceptic tends to assume the idea that humans have some idea of what morality is and approximate ways to benchmark it against God’s actions (either in Books or in nature), but the…

Is Science Theologically Neutral?

No. The methods of science may well be theologically neutral. An experiment runs and is either destined to accept or reject the null hypothesis. As these experiments build up and explanations build up along side them, we start to build a body of knowledge. That body of knowledge is not theologically neutral. It has theological…

Religion is Bad

This is an oddly controversial topic, even for my clearly-atheist blog. You can almost smell the qualifications and caveats I’m going to offer as I go. But religion is bad. From the religions which famously teach violence, like Islam, to the religions which teach unwavering peace, like Jainism, religion is bad. It doesn’t matter how…