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Originally Posted by Stu Pidasso
You need to justify the assumption that the term 'good' is only meaningful insofar as the action as it describes furthers human wellbeing....but whatever...we can use that for the sake of argument.
Given your assumption it would be "good" to go back in time and kill Hitler when he was a baby. Suppose you lived when Hitler was a baby and observed that act. From your prespective would that time traveler be doing a "good" act or an "evil" one? Unless you somehow knew what the time traveler knew, you'd probably judge his actions to be evil.
The point is in order to judge God accurately you have to have a prespective that is reasonabily close to His otherwise it's just silly. Saying you and God have equal prespective on humanity is absurd don't you think? But thats exactly what you do when you judge Him.
How else would you define 'good'? If you start from the assumption that suffering is bad, it follows that we ought not to take actions that cause suffering.
Your example is completely irrelevant and seems to be aimed at your own argument more than mine. Obviously the time traveler would be performing an evil act, since he would have no way of knowing what Hitler would grow up to do; God, being omniscient and omnipotent, knows the consequences of every possible action and can initiate/prevent any action, and so is directly responsible for whatever suffering is in the world. You criticise me for making definitive claims about God, but that's exactly what you're doing when you dismiss any objection to God's behaviour on the grounds that he is perfectly moral. Where's your evidence for that assumption (hint: 'The Bible' is not a valid answer)?