There is goodness

Submitted by jhwierenga on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 09:16

The vast majority of mankind has a fairly strong conception of what goodness is, and apply this conception as a standard which they use categorize moral phenomena as being more or less good. Admittedly, men differ in the results of such categorizations, but we can conceive, at least as a thought experiment, that in a process in which parties that differ learn to understand the context in which the other arrives at his or her judgement, each of them could conclude that they too would make the same categorization, given the same context. In other words, goodness is in essence a shared conception.

Mainstream Christianity has a problem with the notion of goodness. It must choose between two positions, each of which is difficult. Is something good because it comes from God? In that case, goodness is not an external standard which we can apply to God. However, the writers of the Bible do use it as an external standard. Worse, supposing God does something which is contrary to our notion of goodness - for example, consigning people to hell for having the wrong beliefs - then we must conclude that our notion of goodness is erroneous. Or is the notion of goodness something which exists independently of God? In that case, this notion is something that is greater than God.

QO has a simple and profound explanation for the existence of goodness: it is the name we give to the constructive bias of the universe.  This involves no logical contradictions, but follows naturally from QO, and has a relative Occam score of 0000. As God inherents this bias, God is as good is.