Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
Basically, yes. I feel guilty enough knowing how many live in absolute misery around the world, and not devoting literally every speck of energy I have to improving things. Imagine how guilty I'd feel if I were omnipotent. We're taught by pretty much all religions (as discussed earlier) that we are to be kind to others and treat them as we would ourselves, but we have a terrible role model in our holy father.

The idea that god is sitting back and viewing us as lab rats in an experiment -- or watching us try to work our own way through a brutish natural life -- is abhorrent to me. As you say, this is abhorrent to me. I can conceive it, it's just a combination of abhorrent and unconvicing.
First, extending your own feelings onto a god is irrational. Omnipotence does not imply omnibenevolence.

'If I were omnipotent...' as a counterfactual clause doesn't really make sense to me. If you were omnipotent, you wouldn't be you. Omnipotence is so far removed from your current attributes that it's highly questionable whether your thought processes would apply. It's sort of like 'if I were a bat...'


Second, consider that a benevolent god may have proper justification for the misery, suffering, injustice, etc. in the world.

  • If God mitigates misery, people behave differently. They may lose the magnitude of any empathy, happiness, etc. that they can feel.
  • Let's say God removes all serious misery above a certain threshold. Maybe people then suffer from minor [first world] problems a lot more, to the extent that overall misery reverts back to what it used to be. Then God has to reduce this misery too, and so on. Maybe this cycle never ends, and people become progressively more immature/spoiled and begin suffering from things that used to make them happy. In this scenario, God cannot change the levels of misery in the world as they always fall back to equilibrium.
  • Alternatively, the cycle does end and God has removed all misery. How does this work logistically? What happens if I decide to become a criminal/tyrant? Does God plan out a series of events that ensures my failure? Does he try to talk me out of it? Does he impede on any free will I may have? Do I not suffer when he stops me from causing misery to others? The logistics aren't important, but how can I decide whether I would rather live in a world where this sort of thing happens?
  • The morality [of God] may have no principle that tells him to mitigate misery. If God is an egoist, he can easily be omnibenevolent.
  • From the long-term and large-scale perspective of God, who is possibly looking over multiple planets worth of life forms, maybe the amount of misery on Earth really isn't that ubiquitous—nothing that humans can't/won't eventually solve for themselves. Maybe God doesn't solve it for us because the good of doing it ourselves will outweigh the relatively negligible misery.
  • Maybe God already has mitigated a ton of misery in ways we can't detect: We observe 1 million good people have cancer, but God has already prevented cancer for 1 billion good people.


Literature on the problem of evil should provide better reasoning than my thoughts here.

Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
My only answer is that, logical or not, we need morality to survive as a species and improve the world.
When you say 'need', do you mean survival and improvement are impossible without morality, or just highly unlikely? We have reasons other than morality to sign a social contract, abide by laws, and be nice to each other. It's conceivable, albeit unlikely, that we develop into a secular, amoral society that thrives.

Suppose moral nihilism is true. Since many people are dumb or lazy, it's hard to teach them why, and they could easily interpret it wrong and start being selfish bastards. Would you suggest that we teach them common sense morality* as a lie, for the greater good?

*Common sense morality is expressed by yrogerg123 in post #153.

Quote Originally Posted by gwahir View Post
When I say I KNOW certain things about morality, I can break that down into two points:

1) Morality is a concept relating to improving the wellbeing of any creatures capable of having "wellbeing"
2) Certain actions and teachings contribute towards or harm the wellbeing of those creatures.

These both seem eminently true. It is the definition of the word -- or at least the only one that I think matters. If there is such a thing as morality, it is that which concerns the actions we make towards or against the wellbeing of all, er, beings.
Morality is about right/wrong/good/bad. It's not necessarily about wellbeing. Some moral theories hold that good = wellbeing and right = actions that improve wellbeing; others don't.

Morality isn't necessarily about actions either. Some moral theories say right = intention, duty, or character...