God Contradicts Morality and Cannot be Good

1. Theistic Assumption: God is Good
2. A Perfectly Moral God Cannot Have Free Will
3. The Euthyphro Dilemma: The Creator Of Morality Cannot Itself Be Moral
4. Conclusions

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1. Theistic Assumption: God is Good

If God exists, it does not mean that God is automatically a "good" God. God could be morally neutral (amoral) or immoral (evil).

"If God exists, it could be neutral or have a morality completely different to our own. Stating that it is "good" from our point of view is a matter of assumption, defining God as "good" is something we cannot extrapolate simply from the belief that God exists."

"Assumptions that Theists Make" by Vexen, 2002 Sep

2. A Perfectly Moral God Cannot Have Free Will

"God, as the ultimate creator, created goodness. God is also said to be a perfectly good benevolent God. This means that God fulfils every possibility of the goodness it has created. It is the be-all and end-all of goodness, perfectly good and unerringly good. If God was not 100 percent perfectly moral, God would not be perfect. This results in a complete lack of free will for God.

God knows the nuances and complexities of every situation. God knows which actions are optimal, it knows which actions are perfectly good. Only God, I would guess, is capable of performing actions that are perfectly good. And it does so unerringly, constantly, because it itself is perfectly good and never errs. It is all-knowing and perfectly good. But, the problem is for free will, in any situation, of all the possible things God could do, God does the perfectly morally right one. It never chooses an inferior course of action because it is perfect. If it acted imperfectly, it would not be perfect.

So, in any situation, a perfectly moral God has no choice: It must carry out what action is most good. God, in creating goodness, and being perfectly good, is completely limited to only a set, predetermined series of actions. In any situation, at any point in time or out of time, God has no free will: It must robotically and automatically carry out the precise action that is perfectly good.

But herein lies contradiction: How can a God that has no choice be described as "moral"? A computer, for example, is amoral because it cannot make moral choices; its programming defines its actions accurately. Likewise, God accurately has to follow the optimally most perfect and moral path. God's morality is the same as a computers: It makes no truly moral choices. This contradiction shows up a fundamental flaw in the English used to describe God... it cannot be perfectly moral and moral. In short, God must be amoral (with no free will) or imperfect."

"God Has No Free Will" by Vexen, 2001 Dec 31

3. The Euthyphro Dilemma: The Creator Of Morality Cannot Itself Be Moral

Some theists will answer that God is the basis for Ethics and Absolute Moral Good. Everything that contains God is Good, and vica versa, because God is pure good. Therefore, a person who rejects God will immediately reject goodness and therefore have evil, or suffering, appear in its place.

"One problem with this approach has been called the Euthyphro dilemma (from the discussion under that name in Plato's Dialogues). In brief, this puts forward two alternative positions that a religious person might take: either what God commands is right simply because God commands it, or God commands what is right because it is right. The first of these alternative, what might be called the fundamentalist position, seems to imply that God's command sets an arbitrary standard which we have no moral reason for following; we may indeed only follow it out of fear of the consequences of failing to do so. The second alternative is equally troubling for the religious person. It seems to imply that the divine command is irrelevant to ethics and that ethical standards are established independent of religious considerations. It also sets limits on divine omnipotence by suggesting that God is compelled to act in a certain way because that is what is ethical"

"The Phenomenon of Religion: A Thematic Approach" by Momen, 1999
p339. More quotes from this book

"Kant, as I say, invented a new moral argument for the existence of God, and that in varying forms was extremely popular during the nineteenth century.. It has all sorts of forms. One form is to say that there would be no right or wrong unless God existed... [...]

If you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in the situation: is that difference due to God's fiat or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for god Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that god is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiat's are good and not bad independent of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God."

Bertand Russell, "Why I am not a Christian", p19; 'The Moral Arguments for Deity'

God wills us to do good acts
Without God, a person can perform no good acts: All good acts are attributed to God but all bad acts are due to our rejection of God. However this is an inconsistency and is devoid of meaning when we think about the nature of a "good act". God wills us to do good acts. This must mean one of these two things,

1. If God wills it, then it is good.
2. Good acts are not defined by God.

Obviously if God is the basis of Good acts then we must select the first option, because the second would imply the existence of another Creator, a Creator of Absolute Morals and Good acts which would contradict the single-Creator clause of monotheism:

This leaves us with the original statement plus point One from above:

God wills us to do what is good.

If God wills it, then it is good.

Unfortunately for the theist these statements destroy each other and can be deflated to "God wills us to do what God wills us to do", which is not ethical and refutes the notion that God defines morals because indeed, He does not. If there are absolute morals then they must have been defined outside of God.

Robin Le Poidevin, "Arguing for Atheism", pp75-76

1. If theism is true then 'God is good' is morally significant.
2. If theism is true then God plays an explanatory role in ethics.
3. If 'God is good' is morally significant, then moral goodness must be independent of God.
4. If God plays an explanatory role in ethics, moral goodness must be dependent on God.

Therefore: Theism is false.
{he continues...}
Theism in other words, is self contradictory and hence false. We can construct an exactly parallel argument substituting "God wills us to do what is good" with "God is Good" and by doing this we capture the challenge to theism posed by Plato's dilemma.

I will expand of the "God is good" comment. In order for God to be Good then someone other than God must explain and define what Goodness is. Otherwise the word "good" would be devoid.

God cannot be the basis for Goodness, the statement "God is good" is meaningless, "God wills us to do what is good" is therefore not true as "good" in this context is empty. The result is that if God exists, He does not define morality or goodness, it must come from a different source. If it comes from a different source then God did not create it.

The Bible cannot be true in its assertion that God is good and that all good acts are attributable to God and therefore, the Bible contains a clausal and significant contradiction. If the Bible was divinely inspired God contains a paradox and does not exist, or if it was divinely inspired God is not the basis for good acts or moral absolutes.

Either one of these possibilities deals with Christianity, and any other religion that asserts that a single benevolent creator is the basis for morals or ethics.

4. Conclusions

That "God is Good" is an assumption. God could exist and be neutral (amoral) or immoral. But it cannot be "morally good". It if it perfectly good then it always makes the most perfect choices and therefore has no free will. A being with no free will cannot be morally good as it makes no moral choices; it can only be morally neutral like a robot. Also, if God's actions are automatically good then its morality is arbitrary and we ourselves have no moral reason to follow it, and may do so only out of fear of the consequences or selfish want of reward. It seems that morality and God are contradictory. God cannot be the author of morality nor can it itself be moral.

You cannot be moral without making choices
In addition to the underlying belief being separate from the issue of having morals, following pre-set systems is also separate:

"Simply obeying rules, tradition and dogmatic answers to moral questions do not make a person moral. Morality requires choices, and the more that a person relies on a "text book of morality" or dogmatic pre-laid rules, the less they are acting as a moral person. Obeying rules because you think you should is not the same as making moral choices, therefore at best such people are morally neutral, amoral."

"Confused Religious Ethics" by Vexen, 1999 May