I found this quote over at Life & Otherwise….

We can ask, is God good because to be good just is to be whatever God is; or is God good because God has all the properties of goodness?

If we choose the former answer we again find that goodness is arbitrary, since it would be whatever God happened to be, even if God were a sadist. So we must choose the second option: God is good because he has all the properties of goodness.

But this means the properties of goodness can be specified independently of God, and so the idea of goodness does not in any way depend upon the existence of God. Hence there is no reason why a denial of God’s existence would necessarily entail a denial of the existence of goodness.

—Julian Baggini

I have two reactions.

First, if you’ve read the Bible, you know that God is a sadist.

Second, fundies like to say that without God, there can be no morality. Morality is derived from the laws set down by God. This quote argues that goodness is independent of God. By extension, morality is independent of God.

In fact, this is borne out by evidence which suggests that things such as altruism have an evolutionary advantage. Furthermore, societies would not long endure if they tolerated “badness”. Good behavior promotes the survival of the group. Bad behavior tears the group apart. Morality evolved for the benefit of society. Morality is independent of God.

Thanks to the Primordial Blog, who pointed me to Ebola World. They’ve got some funny cartoons. Be sure to watch the “Unbelievably Messed-Up Bible Stories”.

Here is an undoctored, unretouched photograph from Reuters. It shows Apple CEO Steve Jobs and EMI Group CEO Eric Nicoli at their press conference on Monday.

What really jumped out at me was the similarity to medieval art, specifically this motif:

Notice that the halo is not portrayed as a ring hovering over the head; rather, it is a disk that surrounds the head. This was a common way of showing divinity in paintings of the period.

I don’t know if the photographer thought it would be funny to frame the picture that way, or if it just happened. If the picture is accidental, then maybe Steve Jobs’ massive ego is justified. He really is the Savior of Computing (and the rest of the world)! Of course Nicoli also has a halo around him. Maybe that just means that he has been absorbed into Jobs’ famous reality distortion field.