Hoops wrote:No. We can predict what God will due because He has told us...
That's circular. It's instinctive for people to ground the predictability of God's behavior in his good nature. But since you've said goodness is contingent on God's will, that means the assertion that God has a good nature is empty of content. Whatever God does is good by definition. And that could just as easily include lying to you. It's hard to imagine who you even build a case for a history of honest behavior from God, but even assuming you did, it doesn't preclude a long con without some a priori predictability to how God acts. People tend to intuitively do this by humanizing God, but only in an ad hoc, implausible way as God needs to be dehumanized the second it becomes necessary to not judge him in the way we'd judge a human. But this all moot here if you merely assert the tautology that God will behave how God behaves.
No. it's not that anything God declares is good, it's that anything that is good is the very nature of God. big difference.
It may be a big difference. If whatever God's nature happens to be is good by definition, then you are in the exact same problem. In other words, if it could be in God's nature to be a liar and then that would be our standard of goodness, then you've resolved nothing. God could still be a liar and that be good. The problem is whether there is a necessary moral standard logically prior to God or whether moral standards are contingent on the nature of God. Saying "goodness is part of God's nature" doesn't resolve that.
So if you want to instead argue that there is some independent standard by which we know lying is wrong and God comes off well according to that standard so we know God won't lie, you've rescued yourself from my problem. But, at the same time, you've rendered your earlier position in this thread: "In fact, the attributes we consider good, decent, holy are defined by God, not the other way around," completely wrong. So your going to abandon one of the positions you are taking here.