Immanuel Kant is a famous philosopher dude who said famously that ‘ought implies can.’ What this means is that in order for something to be a moral imperative, one must be able to perform that action in the first place. For example, a person in Canada is not responsible for the actions of a foreign government, whereas we are responsible for our own government due to the ability we possess to elect, petition, and remove that government. Another example could be that if a person is being crushed by a large boulder, we are not morally responsible if we can’t lift that boulder, and it crushes them to death. To misquote Uncle Ben, “Little power prevents relevant responsibility.”
This can also be measured in degrees. If, for example, a train ticket costs $1, and one person has $10 000 to their name and another has $2, both in theory are able to afford that train ticket. However, if they both hop the turnstile, we would condemn more harshly the individual with $10 000. This person is significantly more able to follow the moral imperative, and therefore they become more responsible to adhere to it. I guess Uncle Ben would have been more appropriate here, but I’ve already used that reference, and I like it better as a misquotation.
God, being infinitely powerful, would have infinite ability to act in every circumstance. The largest inequity imaginable in our temporal framework would still be less than a trifle. This means that every instance of immoral behaviour that does occur is the result of infinite neglect. The moral repugnance of His allowing evil to flourish becomes universal in scale. Now if you’re thinking, “What is evil?” like some kind of nerdy philosopher, remember that both God and Kant are duty-oriented ethicists.
“He works in mysterious ways” is the desperate attempt by apologists to skirt around the magnitude of God’s moral failing. We prefer naive confusion over the stark reality, avoiding with every effort the cognitive dissonance that’s sheer weight would crush any inkling of a just or benevolent deity. Infinite neglect. Not the scale of $10 000 over $2; beyond the pecuniary, beyond every measurement, on an infinite level.
If ought implies can, then the being with infinite ability is infinitely responsible. Or in this case, infinitely irresponsible.
If I read this right does this mean that God being infinitely powerful and not stopping the bad “evil” things happening… makes him immoral for not stopping them? My Catholic brain is doing backflips.
If God is infinitely capable, but is derelict in moral duties, then He is infinitely neglectful. Imagine if you were tied to a conveyor belt, slowly moving toward a table saw, and God is sitting in a chair next to the off switch, fully capable of flicking that switch, but He chooses not to. That, but on an infinite scale. So yes, He would be an immoral God. Infinitely immoral.
Dunno if “stopping the bad things happening” is how I would necessarily phrase it (barring my current example), since that sounds a bit interventionist which has some reasonable arguments against it. I would rather a God that planned the world a bit better, with more sustainable resources, fewer natural disasters and diseases, less tribalism ingrained in human nature, that kind of thing. Restructuring rather than individual tweaking.
The “problem of evil” is my biggest concern with religion, and much of ‘spirituality’ too.