(urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus

[John Watkins]

On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 10:22 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>wrote:

>
> I think the BotNS analog to The Outsider is The Increate. I am not the best
> religious
> philosophy scholar but I think those who deeply consider the question end
> up coming
> to the conclusion that, while we humans are supposed to choose "good", God
> is
> infintely above such conflict. In fact God/The Outsider/Increate uses both
> good
> and evil; pitting them against each other to accomplish His unknowable
> divine goals.
>
>
>
That is one conclusion some people have drawn.  Another is that "good" is a
meaningless concept except insofar as it is identified with God's will.
I.e., the reason murder is wrong is that God disapproves of it, and if God
approves of murder in a particular case it becomes good.  A third is that
God is infinitely good--so good that He has the power to cultivate good from
the seeds of evil.

The first concept, the one you proffered, seems to me to be favored by those
who prefer a deanthropomorphised concept of God.  The second seems to me to
be preferred by those who privilege God's authority, His status as sovereign
of existence.  The third is perhaps preferred by those who take it
that God's *legitimacy *as sovereign must depend on moral authority rather
than sheer power or status as creator.

I will only note here that, as readers of texts which are themselves
created, I think it is true that experientially we prefer the third
alternative to the first.  When Mr. Goodkind instructs me that his hero is
morally justified in all his actions, I do not take Mr. Goodkind's views to
be definitive of the question, even within his fictive universe.  It may be
that this is due solely to the metafictive nature of in-fiction morality,
but maybe there's something else there too.


>
>
>
>
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