Can We Make Moral Judgements of God?

I was reading a web page at Christian Thinktank. One of the claims on the page (about 10% of the way down) is that people are just not morally fit to judge God:

We must note that, in the first question, we (somewhat insignificant 'carbon-based life forms') are presuming to judge God's morality and character on the basis of our own! For a human being, with the incredible paucity of data we have about the universe, morality, reality, and complexity, to decide that God is less kind, less noble, less compassionate, less moral, less 'humane' than they, seems quite bizarre, in my opinion.

The author considers two cases:

In the latter case, we have a God that somehow creates a derivative, "smaller" creature (i.e., human) with a superior morality and better heart! So, when a person says "I refuse to worship such a heartless god" we have the absurdly strange situation in which the "effect" is somehow greater than/superior to the "cause". (If you haven't read Aristotle recently, perhaps now is a good time to read his discussion on causality, to see what problems this might include (sardonic smile).) This is pure and naïve presumption...(Notice that the analog of this--"I have a greater intelligence than the absolute source of all intelligence" makes the absurdity even clearer.)

The question here is whether an immoral or amoral entity could create humans with a superior morality.

The author's position is that it is absurd to claim that "the "effect" is somehow greater than/superior to the "cause"." If we take that to be true, then his conclusion follows, but is that a reasonable claim? I think not!

I have to hold my hand up and admit I have not read Aristotle recently. I did find this web page about Aristotle and causality, and found nothing to support the author's claim, but maybe others can. Then again, perhaps the author should read up on the Butterfly Effect!

Mankind has built computers able to do calculations faster and more accurately than their creator, he has built machines that are stronger, buildings that are taller, cars that are faster, aeroplanes that can go higher, submarines that go deeper. There are plenty of examples in which the created may exceed the creator.

Is this only true for morality? If you want to argue that, then please go ahead. However, please note that the author of this web page is claiming this is a general law, and applying that law to the specific case of morality.

Then there is his supposed analogy; "I have a greater intelligence than the absolute source of all intelligence". For the Christian, of course this is absurd. God, the absolute source of all intelligence, is infinitely intelligent. But this presupposes the very thing the author is hoping to prove! The issue is whether God really is a superior morality or not (in the analogy, the question would be whether absolute source of all intelligence is itself super-intelligent).

The author's argument seems to come down to labelling it "pure and naïve presumption"; ironic given the presumptions with which he was arguing.

The author then looks at the situation for materialism. Along the way he slips in a few barbs about Darwinism that really do not help his argument if he is hoping to convince skeptics - maybe he is really just "preaching to the converted"?

... we have a creature that has climbed from the slime to some kind of superiority (i.e., "top of the food chain"!) by wholesale application of 'survival of the fittest' (read: "extinguishing" or "subjugating" others) Vast amounts of human evil--the responsibility for which is borne in this scenario solely by the human, since there are no other agents to pin this on or share the blame with--have been perpetrated and are inexorably justified, under the evolutionary leveling of all to 'self-interest'. The elimination of countless species of life in this evolutionary, ceaseless, and random struggle; the very atrocities that are used as examples of 'the problem of evil'(!);...

That this has happened is a historical fact. Mankind has a long history of extinguishing other species (with numerous other endangered). Within the human race, numerous groups have sought to achieve superiority through wars, with entire races occasionally wiped out (the Bible even documents some instances). The author asserts that mankind must take full responsibility in the material view; given he has made this distinction, and he is not a materialist, does the author believe that God is partly culpable for these atrocities? Or is he using Satan as a scapegoat here? Personally, I will stick with the materialists, who accept mankind's responsibilities for mankind's actions.

... and the wholesale failure of the human race to produce anything in the area of human rights at all but the most insignificant scale,...

Human morality is evolving. A few centuries ago, slavery was consider acceptable. Now it is not. Gradually the area of human rights is improving. This is what we would expect for a species that is having to work it out for itself.

... makes me question the 'moral superiority' of such a creature...

I guess the author has to decide for himself if he is capable of making moral judgements.

Indeed, since his moral judgments will eventually reduce to thinly-disguised but cosmetically-complex positions of 'self-interest', why should they be taken as 'objective' in any sense?

Hmm, sounds like he is deciding that he is not capable of making moral judgements. I think most people can. I would accept that our judgements are often biased towards our own self-interest, but we can, say, consider hypothetical cases in which we are not ourselves involved. Sure, it might be in my interests to steal that money, but in the general case, is it morally right for person A to steal from person B?

There is a large body of philosophy that revolves around this area.

Despite Herculean efforts to construct systems of evolutionary ethics to account for altruism, cooperation, and "animal rights" type of oddities, while attempting to avoid the racist and biological supremacist implications of the early Darwinian exponents, we are stuck with our own bloody and shameful history of action. [Recent studies on advanced forms of cooperation in higher primates(cf. PH:GN) only pushes the problem 'down' and 'early' a little further.]

Just for the record, racists and supremacism predated Darwin by thousands of years, and plenty of Christians are among them.

And we are all stuck with that bloody and shameful history of action. How on Earth does that weaken the materialist position?

To agree that a "mudball, with hair and teeth, red in tooth and fang" can transcend this history to the point of making authoritative statements about morality and character, is well beyond my skeptical limits... 

So this is what it comes down to; an argument from incredulity. Well I find the claim that God exists is well beyond my skeptical limits.

The very fact that I believe that I can make moral judgements about my actions and the actions of others, presuppose that my source of origin has at least as good an ethical standard as I.

Why is that? When I try to determine if something is right or wrong, I go though a mental process - I think about it (for example, I might relate it to a similar situation, I might consider the consequences on the people involved, I might remember what my parents taught me). This does not come from some mystical external source, it comes from my ability to think (the author might believe my ability to think comes from God, but that is not what he is arguing here).

For me to believe that I can make objective moral judgments, and then take the position that my ontological source of ethical abilities is inferior to me, borders on the self-stultifying.

Fortunately, the materialist does not suffer from this handicap.

Now, strictly speaking, the skeptic is certainly warranted in raising the question of God's character--on the basis of his individual exegetical and theological construction--I would not fault him in the least for this. We often do this; something strikes us morally 'odd' about a passage or a doctrine, and it forces us to examine it more closely and more carefully and more open-mindedly. Often in the this process we discover our 'hidden baggage' that we bring to the text. In the skeptic's case, however, instead of having an independent basis (such as a warm personal experience of God or a careful and informed understanding of the life and character of Jesus Christ) for giving God the "benefit of the doubt" and suspending judgment until he has time to turn all the possible understandings over, he instead hits the "Finish" button and arrives at the conclusion.

This highlights the problem in the discussion. The Christian starts from the believe that God is perfectly good, and will therefore interprete the Bible from that point of view. The Christian cannot find anything immoral about what God does in the Bible; he starts from the presupposition that there is not, and works from there.

The main problem is one of sequence. The skeptic foregoes deciding about the more 'objective' issues such as "was prophecy fulfilled beyond reasonable plausibility?" or "did the resurrection really occur?", or "how did Jesus feel about this God?", and instead starts the process with a subjective moral judgement of God's character, based on his fundamentalist-like understanding of Genesis and some of the other texts (some of the stranger texts in the bible, I might add). In normal life, one generally tries to move in the opposite direction--from the more-sure to the more-questionable...

Who is it that gets to decide which the "stranger" texts are?

Other than that, he makes a good point. The Christian is so sure that God is perfectly good that anything in the Bible must be read in that light. The skeptic starts from a whole different set of foundations (what is actually written in the Bible, the existence of so much natural and man-made Evil in the world, etc.).