| | "For God's perfect wisdom and goodness determine his eternal will to fix upon a single plan for creation, such that, if God were able to change the future, it would follow that God would be able to alter his eternal will, which is impossible."
I just noticed something. Leibniz defines God as having perfect wisdom and goodness, but goodness depends on a standard that exists independently of the person or action being evaluated. If whatever God decides is good because he decides it, then he himself cannot be evaluated as good. He is above morality.
In the Old Testament, God commits a number of atrocities. He orders Moses to stone a man to death for working on the Sabbath. He orders the Israelites to slaughter millions of defenseless men, women and children in the conquest of Canaan. He kills every firstborn child in Egypt. He orders King Saul to butcher thousands of children and babies in the genocide of the Amalakites. He orders the Israelites to capture and mass-rape 32,000 young girls of the Midianite tribe after killing their families. He strikes dead 50,000 innocent people at Beshemish for merely looking into the ark of the covenant, and, during the flood of Noah, he drowns nearly every man, woman, child and animal on the face of the earth.
Are these atrocities immoral? Not if whatever God decides is right, because he decides it. But if God's actions are above morality and cannot be evaluated as evil, then they cannot be evaluated as good.
Of course, by any objective, common-sense standard of morality, such actions dramatically contradict Leibniz's characterization of God as a being of perfect wisdom and goodness. If God is to be evaluated morally, he can only be judged as supremely evil.
- Bill
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