I want to close by addressing two groups who will be skeptical of what I have said. First, there are the believers, who take me to be saying that God is not good. This is false; what I am saying is that God is not omnibenevolent, or what may be equivalent, that God is not moral in the way that we understand morality. As near as I can tell, the Biblical proclamations of God’s goodness amount to saying that in the end, God will make things as they are supposed to be. That’s not the same as saying that God respects the autonomy of persons, acts according to their interests, etc. Those are the ethical standards that we require of other people.
There is at least one extremely important thing that this does not imply. We all know that in matters small (justifying a lie) and great (the terrorist attacks of 9/11), there have been and always will be those who believe themselves to be ‘special agents’ of God’s will, as it were. Since God doesn’t adhere to the normal rules of ethics, and they are God’s agents, they are also above the law. I think that this is the definition of - not merely an example of - bad religion. Run away, dont walk away, from such a theology.
But is this not a double-standard? Is it not unjust for God to require things of us that God does not require of God’s self? Yes, of course it is a double-standard; and no, it is not unjust. Aristotle has a definition of justice that may be relevant here: justice is treating equals equally, and non-equals unequally. Using Aristotle’s observation about justice, we might say that since we are not equal to God, God’s justice does not require treating us as equals.
There will be many non-believers, no doubt, who say something like this: “Well, how could you worship a God who is not ethical?” At some level, there really is no conversation to be had here. If you truly believe that God’s way of doing things is unfair or backwards, then you owe it to yourself to walk away; that would be consistent with your belief. But I will simply refer to my point in the previous paragraph: if there is such a being as a Creator and Sustainer of the universe, then it would be arrogant to assume that that being should be held to our standards. I realize that there is a big, if not impossible, ‘if’ for many, but that is not the point here.
Finally, I want to make it clear that the problem of evil is still something that religious believers will always have to deal with; it’s always frustrating to see injustice, and it there will always be those of us who ask ‘why’ when tragedy strikes. But if my argument the last few weeks is accepted, then the problem of evil is not a logical problem, and this is because God is not omnibenevolent.
