God is not inherently Good

The argument

The case that God is not inherently good has been pressed in two distinct ways: one concerning what the idea of God does to human freedom, and one concerning what the scriptural record actually depicts. Mikhail Bakunin, the revolutionary Russian anarchist, wrote in God and the State that "if God really existed, it would be necessary to abolish him". Bakunin argued that, as a "jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition of all that we admire and respect in humanity", the "idea of God" constituted a metaphysical oppression of the idea of human choice. The objection is structural rather than evidential: a being whose will is the final measure of every action leaves no space in which a person's own choice could be the source of anything valuable, so on this view the concept itself subordinates the human liberty that gives moral life its worth. Thomas Paine, the American political philosopher, similarly wrote in The Age of Reason, "Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and torturous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness, with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistent that we called it the word of a demon, than the word of God." He added, "It is a history of wickedness, that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel." Paine's argument runs from the text outward rather than from first principles: judged by the conduct it records instead of by the goodness it asserts, the figure the scriptures describe does not meet the standard claimed for him.

Context

Prominent particularly in certain atheist critiques of the Bible, Dystheism contends that if God did exist, his behaviour cannot be understood as 'Good'.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Even taken entirely on its own terms, this argument supports a different conclusion from the one it is filed under. Bakunin's declaration that God should be 'abolished' and Paine's revulsion at the cruelty he read in scripture are moral objections to a particular conception of God — the claim that such a being would not be good. But a being's failing to be good is no evidence that it does not exist; a morally objectionable or indifferent deity is a coherent possibility that many traditions and philosophers have entertained. So the argument, if sound, would establish anti-theism (God, if real, is not worthy of worship), not atheism (there is no God) — yet it appears under the position 'God does not exist', which it does not actually support. The cited passages, moreover, are rhetorical and evaluative rather than demonstrative: Bakunin argues from a prior commitment to human liberty, and Paine from his reading of the Bible's tone, so both presuppose the moral framework by which they judge scripture. Neither offers a reason bearing on the existence question the position asserts.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P3] Even if the scriptural portrayal were morally objectionable, that a being is not good does not entail that it does not exist; the argument supports a moral objection to a conception of God, not the ontological claim that no God exists. [Rejecting P1] Bakunin's line that God should be 'abolished' expresses a value about human liberty, not evidence bearing on whether God exists.