Existence of God and Objective Morality

It seems that the greatest criticism to my post about objective morality was the idea of emulating God. God’s existence was questioned consequently the quest to find God was seen as empty. Even assuming we accept God’s existence, how do I see emulating His actions as good? Isn’t nature neutral?

Physicists have been struggling to find the Unified Law of Physics. What makes them think there is one? Maybe they will find out that there is no such thing and they were wasting their time. But they persist. Why? Because the Universe is so elegant that it makes sense that a perfect system should be underlying it. What is more elegant and perfect than one single law for all of physics? That gives the intellectually curious enough impetus to pursue a lifelong search passing the baton from generation to generation of researchers. And as long as no one will prove that such a law cannot exist, man will continue the search.

The search for God is a similar endeavor. It makes sense that our existence which we are trying to understand has a First Cause. I personally think that the argument that there must be a First Cause is irrefutable. I will however concede for argument sake, that at most we cannot prove that there is no First Cause. And as long as that does not happen, and it will not because it cannot, as Stephen Hawking says (in a different context) it is like asking for north of the North Pole, man will continue that search.

The key point is that God is unknowable, He is transcendent. If someone thinks he found Him he can rest assured that his imagination took over and he is looking at a false god. Spinoza thought he found God in nature and we can rest assured that whatever he found is not God.

If ultimately God is unknowable what then is the search for Him all about? It is looking for His traces, His footprints in the universe He caused to exist. The universe has many attributes. It is eternal, it has a built in mechanism that allows it to survive, adjust and flourish. I happen to enjoy the Gaia Hypotheses as an interesting way of looking at things. I am not well informed enough to either criticize it or defend it. It fits though nicely with my idea of how well the universe self regulates. Be it as it may, the universe seems to thrive and is to all appearances eternal. If one assumes that it is the result of God’s original will, one can extrapolate that seeing to it that things that are under our control survive and flourish is equivalent to emulating God and doing His will.

Rambam in MN 3:53 explains the meaning of the three words חםד משפט צדקה in this context.

“In discussing the impropriety of admitting attributes of God we stated that the divine attributes which occur in Scripture are attributes of His actions; thus He is called Hasid," kind," because He created the Universe; Tzaddik," righteous," on account of His mercy with the weak, in providing for every living being according to its powers; and Shofet," judge," on account of the relative good and the great relative evils ( I will discuss this in a separate post – there is much meaning in the word ‘relative” used here – DG) that are decreed by God's justice as directed by His wisdom.”

Objective morality thus is emulating God and acting accordingly. MN 3:54, the penultimate paragraph in the Moreh reads:

“The object of the above passage is therefore to declare, that the perfection, in which man can truly glory, is attained by him when he has acquired-as far as this is possible for man-the knowledge of God, the knowledge of His Providence, and of the manner in which it influences His creatures in their production and continued existence. Having acquired this knowledge he will then be determined always to seek loving-kindness, (Chesed) judgment, (Mishpat) and righteousness, (Tzedakah) and thus to imitate the ways of God”.

Shavuah Tov.