There is a critic that proposed an interesting, but thoughtful question to me: how do we know that God is good? There are a number of ways I could present such a case. I could've do so Biblically since the Bible is filled with references to God's goodness (Mk. 10:18; Rom. 12:2, 13:4; 2 Cor. 9:8; Phil. 2:13; 1 Tim. 4:4; 1 Pet. 2:20, 3:17; 1 Jn. 1:5, 1:7; and 3 Jn. 1:11). I could've also relayed God's goodness from personal experiences. Although experiences can be a powerful tool to relate something to someone, unfortunately it comes off "subjective" whenever you're trying to persuade someone else to the truth of something. Instead, I decided to prove it transcendentally by showing the logical impossibility of the contrary. My argument is as follows:
Premise 1: God is the ultimate standard for objective morality;
Premise 2: God's existence is required for us to even know, discern, and apply objective morality;
Premise 3: Morality is the opposite of objective evil, thus to know evil, one must be able to know good;
Premise 4: God is the highest of all possible good;
Conclusion: Therefore, God is good.
This argument is what we call a deductive argument. In a deductive argument you argue from generalities to specifics, thus, the conclusion, if valid (logically following from the premises), and if the premises are true, the argument must be true. The conclusion does follow logically from the premises. If God is the ultimate standard of morality, and morality is the opposite of evil, then it follows that God is the highest of all possible good, and it would, then, further follow that God is good. An "evil Christian God", as I told him, would be an oxymoron, and, thus, be a contradiction in terms.
Since my argument was valid and logically sound, and bc it was a deductive argument, the critic was forced to challenge either the validity or factuality of my premises instead. First, the critic attacked Premise #4 by flipping the script and committing a strawman argument. Claiming that he gets the idea, that if God exist (his words), that he could see why I would think that God determines what constitutes evil, but this wasn't my argument. My argument wasn't that God, Himself, sets the bar or standard for objective morality, but that God is the standard for objective morality. Any commands from God flow from His holy nature. God just doesn't only sets the standard, but he is the standard by which objective morality is justified and grounded.
Trying to flip the switch on my argument, he argued that it could be possible that God is the greatest of all possible evil. He then presented his own argument whereby he thought God was an "evil God." However, his argument did not work. Premise 4 followed logically from Premise 3. Morality is the opposite of evil, thus it would not follow logically for God to be "the highest of all possible evil" sense that would, also, mean that God could not be the ultimate standard for objective morality, which would make any "rulings" of morals senseless and unjustified. This would make "good" and "evil" unjustified and, therefore, left these words meaningless, and make the idea of an "evil God" who is (as he tried to argue) not the highest possible standard for both good and evil. It would, ultimately, flow into absolute absurdity and self-contradiction. There is no denying his argument's self-refuting nature.
I'm not sure if, there at the end, he finally got what I was saying or not. He just stopped replying to my responses. I do not think he was really trying to debate with me. I just got the feeling he just really wanted to know how I responded to this. His YouTube handle wasn't even a name, so he didn't seem like an adamant YouTuber.
Strangely enough, he never tried to challenge rather objective morality exist or not, or rather objective morality required a justification to ground it in reality. These are the areas that I thought he would challenge, but he did not. Instead he went after Premise 4 of my argument. However, my argument was logically sound. In the end, once he was able to properly understand it, he knew he could offer no rational response. Objective morality is grounded in the nature of God, who is the highest of all possible good, and, therefore, God is good.
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