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god's ethics? if you think about xtian theology for a second, and link it back to what asaris said earlier about free will, it'd kinda follow that all the ethical problems that will derives from epicurus (who wasn't talking about this in the way you think, but rather was talking about the idea of a god who would judge you after you died or an afterlife) can be resolved pretty easily--the ethical decision would have to have been free will. everything follows from it. if there is an omnipotent god, she could just as easily made us all meat puppets as not. we could have no agency at all and everything presumably would be hunky dory--but that aint the case, that that it can't be the case is the point of all those stories of the Fall.
so in a sense, free will is only possible if we are fucked.
augustine gets pretty worked up about this in city of god, but mostly because he thinks that jesus gets us off the hook for the consequences of free will--but he can't reverse the fact of free will, so we're still fucked. but we can choose, the story goes, not to be fucked--which is, i suppose, the only consistent story one can have if you start from a premise of an omnipotent god and want to work in some element of free will for us meat puppets.
but within this framework, everything is ethically consistent insofar as free will is among the highest values. what folk do with that free will is secondary, really. but according to this particular fable, you can't make the claim that because bad things happen that god is x or y. to try it is to negate free will.
if this god character does not exist, then we are responsible for the evil in the world and there's no point whining about it all being the fault of some god, or proof of anything except that alot of people are selfish and stupid in general, and within that set alot of people are selfish stupid and armed and that's not good. but it's the fault of the selfish stupid and armed people, what happens.
personally, i don't know or care if there is a god character operating on some logical level far beyond the limits of finite understanding---if it's the case, it doesn't matter, and if it's not the case, everything is the same as it already is.
i don't think pascal was saying anything when he tried to lay this case out and say that you had to choose to believe or not believe anyway, even though you cannot know anything at all---so figure the odds, place your bet and then pretend that you believe because if you pretend long enough you'll become stupider and stupider and eventually will forget that you don't believe.
the part i don't think says anything is the part about having to choose.
i think he was right about people making themselves stupider by performing rituals that assume they're stupid long enough and that eventually they'll forget they aren't stupid.
maybe in an oblique way that's the underlying problem, not whether there is or is not some god.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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