I think this is a confused argument.

What strikes me first of all is that good and evil are manifest in experience from one’s earliest memories, in the form of pleasure and pain, or joy and sorrow, and the many other pairs of contraries that occur to any being who is born and grows up.

So a natural person will not have any indication of the existence of anything answering to the name of ‘God’, outside what he or she might be told by his/her parents. I suppose you could argue that a particular person might claim have an intuitive knowledge of God, but that doesn't amount to an argument for the existence of God.

To try and reframe the point in terms that might be intelligible to theology, the 'made-up quality' would correspond to a contingent or accidental fact of existence. A color, or some other quality, might be 'made up' or devised by someone. But I very much doubt that the category of 'goodness' would fall under that description. As already said, every human, maybe every sentient being, would have some sense of what is good and what isn't.

Beyond that, I can barely see the point of this OP, so I will leave it to others to interpret.

It does not follow from this that Good and Evil exist.
This is to say, that we cannot infer that God's existence implies the existence of Good and Evil — ClayG

I would say that good and evil exist in the world.

E.g. Hitler was evil, wars are evil as they cause human suffering etc.

The good then are societies where wars (human affairs) do not play a big part.

A good person is a person who gives you cake.

A bad person or evil is one who steals your birthday cake.

All I am saying on this point is that if God exists, we cannot infer from this existence that good exists. There is a definite possibility that good does or doesn't exist, but that is not what I am talking about here.
Here I am simply trying to separate belief in God from belief in good. I only thought of this argument because I was talking to someone and they said that if God exists, then good must surely exist. From this experience, I realized that maybe other people believe such a thing. so, I wanted to put it here as an argument against such a misconception.
I am not stating the possibility or probability of the existence of either God or good (of which there are arguments for and against both.) I am simply stating that the existence of God does not imply the existence of good.
Sorry if I was not clear enough, I will try to make it more clear next time. Thank you for your comment so I could clear that up.

Like I said to wayfarer, I am not arguing that good does or doesn't exist. simply that the existence of God does not imply the existence of good. I am also not claiming that God does or doesn't exist.

Let us, for the sake of argument, simply allow God exists. It does not follow from this that Good and Evil exist. — ClayG

Well good and evil does exist if you look at the world around you or throughout history, plenty examples of good or evil there

You said let’s assume god exists…well god created the world. .. and is there good and bad in the world ? Yes there is, so your argument doesn’t add up

We cannot infer from God’s existence that Good and Evil exist. — ClayG

We cannot infer God's existence from anything.
We do know that good and evil exist as manifestations of human desires, thoughts, schemes and actions. They are products of the human psyche. So are gods, but there is a far wider range and content of god-concepts than concepts of either good or evil.
From which we can infer - at least provisionally - that our notions of good and evil are older, more primal and less sophisticated than our notions of deity. Therefore we may - again, provisionally - attribute the concept of gods, angels, protective spirits; demons, gremlins, ghouls etc. to our categorization of phenomena as good or evil, because the personification of phenomena and human character traits is a very sophisticated mental operation.

if god exists and is good, then everything bad is his/her antithesis (antichrist), opposite of god - the devil etc. Depending on what faith you come from.

Good cannot exist without bad. They are mutual existants. So either God is not fully good, or there is an equal and opposite bad god (devil) that a benevolent God cannot eradicate.

As eradicating all evil is also simultaneously eradicating all good.

:up:

If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is good, then it follows that good exists. But the same holds for any number of things. If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is X, then it follows that X exists. Play the old Mad Libs game, replace X with any adjective, and it is clear just how pointless this is.

If one starts from any assumption, however unfounded or fanciful, everything that follows is equally implausible and fantastic.

:up:

If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is good, then it follows that good exists. But the same holds for any number of things. If one starts from the belief that God exists and that God is X, then it follows that X exists. Play the old Mad Libs game, replace X with any adjective, and it is clear just how pointless this is — Fooloso4

I think here it's important to distinguish "exists" from "real".
Imagination exists and thus the content of all imagination/creativity is possible to exist.

If God exists, not every part of god that exists need be "real" as in detectable in a physical external reality - like materials, heat, motion etc - all the things in physics and chemistry exist and are real (physical), and emotions, beliefs and dreams exist but are not in the same cohort of real things (as they are immaterial existants).

Some people believe that God is the sum of all material and immaterial existants and thus cannot be definitively proven and yet is everywhere/ everything.

Why god might be "good" as oppose to "chair" or "400 horse power" or "that dream I had last night" is somewhat arbitrary if God is all existants.

However a reason to fixate on "Good" is because its vaguely defined and thus liberated/unrestricted and yet includes all good things and is usually associated with morality/ethics and thus is worthy of worshipping. Its an idealogy of paradise or heaven or nirvana.

So its understandably that given all choices to approach or learn about God (reality and consciousness), people tend to start if with what they know and what they want - that which is 'Good'.

...if God is all existants. — Benj96

To go from "if" to "is" is a conjuring act.

To go from "if" to "is" is a conjuring act. — Fooloso4

Of course it is a conjuring act. Because we have "beliefs" in a god(s) . Not facts about God. People's observance of the influence of their gods on the world is on a par with the fact that our mutually agreed belief in the value of a paper note influence the functionality of economies and financial systems.

If everyone tomorrow stopped believing money had any value, it wouldnt have any value.
I wouldn't underestimate the power of beliefs in impacting real life.

If every single person was convinced in a belief that there is a God, then god would be considered fact. If only one person believes in a god, its delusional.

People's observance of the influence of their gods on the world is on a par with the fact that our mutually agreed belief in the value of a paper note influence the functionality of economies and financial systems. — Benj96

An agreed upon practice and something about which there is no agreement about anything is not on a par.

It may be so that we cannot infer God's existence from anything. And the argument you make about the existence of morality is most likely a correct one. But that was not at all what I was saying in my post. I was simply arguing against an argument I heard from a theist that if God exists, then good and evil exist.
I don't believe one could possibly draw from the existence of God (which could or could not be true) the existence of good and evil (which could also be true or not true.) as in, it is not from the existence of God from which we draw evidence for the existence of good and evil.

Yes, good and evil obviously exist, but we can easily imagine a world where it doesn't.
This has nothing to do with my argument, all I am saying is that God does not imply the existence of good and evil since there could be a world where God exists, but good and evil do not.

Yes, good and evil obviously exist, but we can easily imagine a world where it doesn't. — ClayG

You can? What would that be like, then? A world where nothing is ever born or dies, is subject to illness or injury. I can't see how this can be 'easy to imagine'.

No, but we can imagine a world where those things are not evil. If a snail gets sick, do we call that evil or just a moment in the natural order of things? From that, we can imagine a world of just snails. In the snail world, there is no evil, just moments that naturally occur devoid of morals.

I was simply arguing against an argument I heard from a theist that if God exists, then good and evil exist. — ClayG

Of course, you are correct. And you were debating a question of logic with a theist? Why?

You can? What would that be like, then? A world where nothing is ever born or dies, is subject to illness or injury. I can't see how this can be 'easy to imagine'. — Wayfarer

All bad and unfortunate and sad things that can happen are not evil. Evil is a specific kind of bad: malevolence, deliberate destructiveness, consciously intended harm.
Being born is not evil - indeed most people are glad they were born and most parents, too. Forcing women - or any creature - to reproduce against their will, rape and bondage, puppy farms and cattle breeding are evil.
Death is not evil - we can even choose our time and means. Cold-blooded killing and war-mongering are evil.
Mistakes and misjudgment are not evil, even though they can have undesirable consequences.
and dying are not evil.
We know that we all have the capacity for evil (We may even have a monopoly on it), but we don't have to bring it into the world.

Fair point. But it's still a stretch to say you can imagine a world without good and evil - perhaps an uninhabited planet might fit the bill, but then, so what?

I think the philosophical point is that the capacity for evil - both to experience it and to cause it - is an integral part of self-conscious being. It may be true that earthquakes and natural catastrophes aren't evil, and that a world inhabited only by snails would be devoid of evil - but again, so what?

But it's still a stretch to say you can imagine a world without good and evil - perhaps an uninhabited planet might fit the bill, but then, so what? — Wayfarer

I didn't say that. But, in fact, I can imagine a world without evil - as I understand and defined evil. It would just have to be slightly less evolved. Say, stopped before the chimpanzee.

OTOH, I can't imagine a world without good or bad. That's the appropriate pairing, as both good and bad can be unintentional, unconscious; just a subjective interpretation of reality. The opposite of evil would be something like benevolence.

think the philosophical point is that the capacity for evil - both to experience it and to cause it - is an integral part of self-conscious being. — Wayfarer

A human trait, a human concept. Though it's possible some of the other intelligent species are capable of evil on some very childish level, I'm not convinced of it.
Good things and bad things happen*; evil is done.

for the benefit of potential nitpickers: * This does not rule out their being also brought about by human agency, but does preclude evil from simply happening by chance.

but again, so what? — Wayfarer

My contention was that we can conceive of a world in which we don't need to be snails in order to refrain from acting out our evil impulses. Most people do this routinely, every day.
So, nothing, I guess; just lining up the ideas presented. Fire at will.

For the sake of argument, it appears like you're laying out something like:
1. If God exists, then good and evil must exist.
2. God exists.
3. Therefore, good and evil must exist. (MP 1,2)

If we are granting premise 2 here, then premise 1 is the only thing to object to, and is where lots of discussions revolve. Many thiests would respond to this sort of argument by saying God only has positive properties. (strong, smart, good, etc.) These thiests would describe the "lack" of being evil as part of them being maximally good. (Since it wouldn't make sense to say someone is both the most good, and the most evil person) This mostly overcomes the problem because then there's no longer any issue about God being maximally everything because they assert that he's not maximally everything, just maximally everything good/positive. Those "bad" traits are claimed to be weaknesses rather than maximalities. If a theist wanted to claim God is maximally everything, then I'm not sure if there's a strong response there.

Responding to the part about imagining a world with no evil, my thinking is similar to what's been said above; that good and evil are used in perspective. Even if I think of the most evil thing imaginable, one could still hold a consequentialist view and say that that "evil" actually could manifest into a far greater good. There is no way to disprove that possibility.

If we were to live in a world without evil, as you describe, the "lesser" evils we experience today would become our "maximal" evils today. For example, if murder and all other extreme evils were eliminated, we would all say that stubbing your toe is the most evil. Being that good and evil are concepts we do to describe our perceptions, I'm not sure that it would even be possible to fully eliminate them.