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Full Idea
We may wonder whether God can be good since he has not produced more moral goodness than he has. We may wonder whether God is guilty by neglect.
Gist of Idea
Can God be good, if he has not maximised goodness?
Source
Brian Davies (Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion [1982], 3 'Freedom')
Book Ref
Davies,Brian: 'An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion' [OUP 1993], p.46
A Reaction
The orthodox response is that we cannot possibly know what the maximum of moral goodness would look like, so we can't make this judgement. Atheists say that God fails by human standards, which are not particularly high.
| 20773 | The origin of justice can only be in Zeus, and in nature [Chrysippus] |
| 23348 | Both god and the good bring benefits, so their true nature seems to be the same [Epictetus] |
| 5752 | Where does evil come from if there is a god; where does good come from if there isn't? [Boethius] |
| 19344 | God prefers men to lions, but might not exterminate lions to save one man [Leibniz] |
| 6254 | We are asked to follow God's ends because he is our benefactor, but why must we do that? [Hutcheson] |
| 6255 | Why may God not have a superior moral sense very similar to ours? [Hutcheson] |
| 16006 | Either Abraham rises higher than universal ethics, or he is a mere murderer [Kierkegaard] |
| 7158 | Morality kills religion, because a Christian-moral God is unbelievable [Nietzsche] |
| 7199 | It is dishonest to invent a being containing our greatest values, thus ignoring why they exist and are valuable [Nietzsche] |
| 4488 | Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality [Nietzsche] |
| 20701 | Can God be good, if he has not maximised goodness? [Davies,B] |