do we need God to be good?

[cacian]

or goodness if from within?

[osho]

Do we need God to be good? It is a philosophical question and it asks of us a great amunt of meditation. In fact God is a symbol of goodness, kindness, generosity and the like but paradoxically things happen and many unpleasant things do happen in the name of God. Hitler wanted to please his own God and so do the people in the middle east. Recently 36 people died in the Khumb Mela in India and all of them were pilgrims and they wanted to please their Gods collectively and they have gone there with the hope that they can redeem themselves from their sins. Faith is very strong. We all want God to be kind but this is not always so and when God becomes wrathful things do not turn up the way we do want. We often pray God thinking that God will punish us and more often than not we pray God out of fear more often than out of love and compassion. Love must be an epitome of love and kindness but taking into things happening all over the world we feel that things go just the opposite.

[kasie]

Cacian, do you mean 'Should the God we worship be an entity of Good?' Or 'Can we be good ourselves only if we worship a God?'

[Calidore]

People may use God as a reason or excuse for their good or bad actions, but in the end they're acting according to their natures.

[cacian]

People may use God as a reason or excuse for their good or bad actions, but in the end they're acting according to their natures.

So must we assume we ought to be good because it is in our nature? Religion worship and prayers have nothing to do with it. In other words I do not need a god or religion to tell me my right from wrong.

[cacian]

Cacian, do you mean 'Should the God we worship be an entity of Good?' Or 'Can we be good ourselves only if we worship a God?'

Interesting. I must assume god is good to start with and if he or she is then I must follow suit otherwise we are letting ourselves down. I do not think that the worship of any god leads to goodness.

[jayat]

Do we need to know how the car has been designed and their multiple pieces assembled with the aim to drive it? No, I don't, almost me. In this kind of matters I've been personally trying not to laugh and respect peoples' believes. Who knows. Maybe after the Dark Lady's scythe cutting the Third Eye is waiting for us...God buy you....

P.S. I'm not English native. Is it okey the proposition "Maybe after the Dark Lady's scythe cutting (...)". Does it sounds good to you? else and Without changing a word, how would have you expressed it? Thousand thanks in advanced.

[osho]

God is a sumbol of goodness and if one is naturally good or does things in the interests of people he does not need to go to the temple or pray since his very act or Karma is a form of worship. I do not believe in idolizing persons. Today we have so many People who are presenting themselves as Gods and these godheads are enjoying or becoming corrupt. The common man does not know truth from falsity.
Everyone has naturally goodness inherently ingrained in him and he does not have to follow any particular religious ideology at all.

[MadCow]

It is not necessary to believe in any kind of god to be good - one's own moral values determine that.

[MadCow]

Do we need to know how the car has been designed and their multiple pieces assembled with the aim to drive it? No, I don't, almost me. In this kind of matters I've been personally trying not to laugh and respect peoples' believes. Who knows. Maybe after the Dark Lady's scythe cutting the Third Eye is waiting for us...God buy you....

P.S. I'm not English native. Is it okey the proposition "Maybe after the Dark Lady's scythe cutting (...)". Does it sounds good to you? else and Without changing a word, how would have you expressed it? Thousand thanks in advanced.

Do you mean 'After death enlightenment may come?'

[DocHeart]

We need God to set the spell checker on some people's computers to default.

[cafolini]

I don't think we need God at all. Needing God would be trying to enslave God to not do as He pleases. We need to recognize our absolute ignorance in this matter and accept that it is an absolute mystery. Then we may pray that God be on our side, and that's it. In God we trust.

[cacian]

We need God to set the spell checker on some people's computers to default.

I don't know the fun begins when spelling does it own will as far as I am concerned. I see words as images and the less conformist in their appearance and the more visual magnificence. Poetry offers that beautifully.

[cacian]

I don't think we need God at all. Needing God would be trying to enslave God to not do as He pleases. We need to recognize our absolute ignorance in this matter and accept that it is an absolute mystery. Then we may pray that God be on our side, and that's it. In God we trust.

Needing is reformist and absolute. God does not need us and so needing him back would be silly. God I would imagine wish us to perform at our best and thus sees us as free spirit behaving in an absolute manner. Prayers may go a long way but won't change a thing. Reality needs more then few words and prayers. It needs us to use our brain.

[jayat]

Do you mean 'After death enlightenment may come?'

Yes I see it makes sense. Does It sound stupid the combination "Dark Lady's scythe cutting" to an English speaker? Just to check my competence in your very euphonic language.

[jayat]

It's a matter of mutual respect ('believe me').

[cacian]

It's a matter of mutual respect ('believe me').

Hi jayat what is?

[kasie]

Yes I see it makes sense. Does It sound stupid the combination "Dark Lady's scythe cutting" to an English speaker? Just to check my competence in your very euphonic language.

Jayat - Death is usually seen as a masculine figure in British/modern Western culture, though he is often portrayed carrying a scythe. I must admit I was a little puzzled by your OP but the scythe gave a clue.

A reference to a Dark Lady makes me think of Shakespeare in the first instance, the mysterious Dark Lady of the Sonnets.

[jayat]

Jayat - Death is usually seen as a masculine figure in British/modern Western culture, though he is often portrayed carrying a scythe. I must admit I was a little puzzled by your OP but the scythe gave a clue.

A reference to a Dark Lady makes me think of Shakespeare in the first instance, the mysterious Dark Lady of the Sonnets.

Okey, thanks.

[jayat]

Well, cacian, the matter is trying not to get angry when religious conversation in on in case you were a non-believer. I wanted call for mutual respect, that's all. Sometimes we usually take something to heart things that either they have no so importance or either they have no human answer, so...Mutual respect, definitely, whatever the position is.

[Sancho]

To the original question, I think some people need god to be good, just as some people need the strong rule of law to keep from stealing their neighbor's car, just as a child can be persuaded with a cookie to do the right thing. Other people, I think, can be good for goodness' sake.

For goodness sake. I got the hippy-hippy shake...
http://youtu.be/PR61UVA3gZk

You know, John Lennon was god-like for some.

[MadCow]

Yes I see it makes sense. Does It sound stupid the combination "Dark Lady's scythe cutting" to an English speaker? Just to check my competence in your very euphonic language.


It sounds more poetic the way you say it but it probably wouldn't be used in ordinary speech.

[jayat]

It sounds more poetic the way you say it but it probably wouldn't be used in ordinary speech.

By saying poetic it doesn't mean the sequence is wrong grammatically, isn't it? that is what interests me in the end. In other words, how would you say it using an "ordinary speech", that is, being idiomatic, without losing any poetic style? Thanks a lot.

[cafolini]

Using the brain to assert whatever about God is like using a toilet without water.

[Paulclem]

Humanists and Buddhists and Agnostics and Atheists are not rampaging around their countries being bad becase they don't believe in God/ a Creator God. So no. you don't need to believe in God to be good.

[islandclimber]

This question assumes that we view ethics from a viewpoint of moral universalism... That's quite the assumption. Who defines good/evil? Who decides that there is some version of ethics that applies universally? Who determines whether we have knowledge of this a priori or only through empiricism?

Myself, as a moral skeptic of sorts, somewhere in that grey area between moral relativism and moral nihilism, I might suggest that a question such as the above is rather besides the point... Meta-narratives cannot exist with regards to such self-referential things as morality, society, etc. When we try to discover these impossibilities, we only create order at the surface level; beneath this, what really remains is paranoid, schizophrenic, insecure. Morality seems to be more likely based upon societal conventions and individual choices, than some universally applied ethic.

[Sancho]

Awe c'mon, man. You know what's right and what's wrong. All Philosophy 101 courses aside, if you don't want it done to you, you probably hadn't ought to be doing it to anybody else. (More or less Confucius' version of the golden rule)

[islandclimber]

That's just silly. Though you did just illustrate my point exactly. I said morality is based upon societal conventions and individual choices ... And you suggest a Confucian version of the golden rule illustrating the relativism of morality. To suggest morality is objective or absolute is a little ridiculous. Giving a "do unto others" type of maxim as a universal ethic is quite silly, besides being entirely subjective person to person, culture to culture. Executions and socially "justified" murders happen every day... The above rule falls apart in the face of any serious issue.

[Sancho]

I stand corrected. I guess you don't know right from wrong.

I'm not putting forth the Golden Rule as a type of maxim for a universal ethic, as you put it. I'm putting it forth as a pretty good rule of thumb for how to solve your ethical dilemmas and, for that matter, as a pretty good guide for how to live your life. Kant struggled with a maxim for a universal ethic. His Categorical Imperative was just a tad shy of examples.

I'll be the first to admit that every rule has its exceptions and I think we agree that finding a universal ethic is probably a fool's errand. But I'm also convinced that humans are more alike than they are different. I hate to use the expression, but the human condition trumps societal conventions every time. Parents love their children. Murder and violence are abhorred. Honesty and hard work is admired. This is pretty basic stuff. I've spent my life traveling, sometimes to some pretty awful places, and I've yet to find a culture where robbing and raping and cutting off babies heads is culturally okay.

So anyway, it may be a little homespun and hokey, and probably not taken seriously by deep-thinking philosophers, but the Golden Rule has been with us a long long time, has spanned many cultures, and will get you pretty far in this world.

Also, saying something is silly doesn't make it so. Although I freely admit that my first sentence in this post is, by design, silly. But, you know, silly used to mean something like pious back in Middle English.

[Paulclem]

I'm with you on this Sancho. I agree that people know good and bad, and what constitutes good and bad. Silly it is not.

[cafolini]

I also have to go with Sancho on this one, although there are some awfully sick people, exceptionally, that can't use the rule because they have lost touch with good and bad.

[islandclimber]

I'll be the first to admit that every rule has its exceptions and I think we agree that finding a universal ethic is probably a fool's errand. But I'm also convinced that humans are more alike than they are different. I hate to use the expression, but the human condition trumps societal conventions every time. Parents love their children. Murder and violence are abhorred. Honesty and hard work is admired. This is pretty basic stuff. I've spent my life traveling, sometimes to some pretty awful places, and I've yet to find a culture where robbing and raping and cutting off babies heads is culturally okay.

The Holocaust? Rwanda? Armenia?

Just three examples (out of the countless number), invalidate the above statement.

Stating that morality is anything but a socio-cultural notion or individual choice is still wrong. Ethics cannot be universal. We may be similar, if we are raised in similar environments with similar socio-cultural norms, yet if we are raised in disparate environments we are also very different. The Hitler Youth were a primary example of this. To say that "the human condition trumps societal conventions every time" fails to take into account that societal conventions almost entirely overwhelmed the human condition in 1930s-1940s Germany; in 1990s Rwanda; in 1910s Armenia...

[cafolini]

The Holocaust? Rwanda? Armenia?

Just three examples (out of the countless number), invalidate the above statement.

Stating that morality is anything but a socio-cultural notion or individual choice is still wrong. Ethics cannot be universal. We may be similar, if we are raised in similar environments with similar socio-cultural norms, yet if we are raised in disparate environments we are also very different. The Hitler Youth were a primary example of this. To say that "the human condition trumps societal conventions every time" fails to take into account that societal conventions almost entirely overwhelmed the human condition in 1930s-1940s Germany; in 1990s Rwanda; in 1910s Armenia...

Where did they all end? You are missing the point. Where will they all end?

[Sancho]

Yes. Exactly like that. And I think you did a fine job picking out several periods in history when we can look back and say: those people were wrong and they should have known better. The American South during the 19th century is another good example – those people were wrong about slavery and they should have known better. And some people of those times did look at those events and they did say you are wrong and this is wrong we are going to change it – and they did – and it wasn’t pretty, but the human condition prevailed. (there I go again with human condition thing)

You know, I wrote that somewhat-baiting post this morning from Stuttgart right before hopping on a plane and flying back to the ATL. I’d spent the past couple days hanging around that town, and I gotta say, I didn’t see a lot of Hitler Youth there. The Germans are good people, just like all other people are good people, by and large. One of the tougher towns I’ve been to lately was Lagos. Life is hard there. Conditions are unimaginable to your average North American. If I had to live there, I’d be pissed off all the time. And yet the people are some of the friendliest people I’ve ever met. Mothers love and care for their babies. The people abhor murder and violence.

Here’s an original Sancho theory: I think the Golden Rule may have been a force in the evolution of the species (yep us). I mean, we are who we are because that is an ethic that goes way back with humans. Sociopaths were shunned. Psychopathic killers were generally culled out of the gene pool. And huge waves societal insanity were corrected.

Here’s the rub, though: It’s easy for us to look at the Nazis or Southern slave drivers and say – they were wrong and they should have known better. But when we do that, we owe it to ourselves to look at ourselves and ask – what will future generations say about us? What are we doing now that future generations will look at and say – they really should have known better? I’ve got a couple of ideas.

[islandclimber]

Where did they all end? You are missing the point. Where will they all end?

I think this misses the point. The fact these things continue to occur with a certain degree of regularity (over a dozen examples in the 20th century alone), means they don't really end, they continue. Always. The human condition doesn't correct them, the human condition is as close to a constant status of warfare, oppression, atrocity, as it is to any status of peace or harmony or love.

To suggest the American Civil War was about the abolishment of slavery overlooks much of what that war was actually about. This atrocity was corrected to an extent but indirectly. And it still goes on through much of the world. Whether we're are talking more obvious forms such as the sex trade, or just socio-economic slavery.

To suggest that the societal insanity of the Holocaust was deliberately corrected also overlooks the "fact" that next to no one cared about what was being done to the Jews before the Reich started invading nations. The Allied nations were indifferent to this. After the war Nuremberg and subsequent trials were a charade. A glamorous and depressing charade. The allied powers wanted to be sure that the world would greet the "discoveries" of what had gone on in the Reich as a surprise, as though no one could have known what went on in the camps before the judge's gavel hammered and the testimony began. A sad and cruel joke played on mankind as a whole. No, worse... a disgraceful decision taken by mankind as a whole. Our history is a history of disgraceful decisions taken one after the other from time ab aeterno.

If you see sociopaths/psychopaths being shunned, I see them being promoted to positions of power. Hitler, Stalin, Hussein, Milosevic, Pol Pot, Mao, Charles Taylor, Ceausescu, The Shah. This list could be endless. Society shuns them after the fact, after we have supported them. After we have idolized them. Many of these figures still have personality cults to this day.

Sure, I have ideas of right and wrong. And I even live by an ethic that would probably conform by and large to what you are suggesting. It's all relative though. I am certain I would not have the same ethic if I grew up in a situation where of necessity I had to steal, to assault, to murder in order to survive, to suggest an extreme example. First and foremost humans want to survive. I would suggest that most would do anything to survive regardless of good and evil. We are conditioned from birth to societal concepts of morality, but as Pavlov's experiments upon dogs noted, in times of intense trauma (ie. war, disease, famine, natural disaster, "apocalypse") conditioning vanishes.

What's more telling, is that for the most part people only care about what goes on in their own backyard. Few cared about the Jews being exterminated, or the Tutsis being massacred by the machete. It's not that the Germans were bad people, or that the Hutus are evil. It's beyond such simplistic ideas. The human condition is neither good nor evil exclusively, it oscillates wildly between these two poles, dependent largely on environment and socio-cultural contexts (with exceptions of course). Therefore I prefer to reject universal notions of good and evil. They don't stand against the human experience. Instead I prefer the localized narrative with regards to ethics and morality. Meta-narratives just don't hold water.

I think what I was suggesting in my original reply to the thread's question, was that only in a society with the superficiality of order at the surface do we even ask such questions as "do we need God to be good?" It's an absurd question.

[Paulclem]

Your examples refer to ascendant criminal societies, which we all agree have skewed moralities propounded by interested factions for the purposes of power. I think the situations in those societies are survival situations, and rather more difficult to hold up as examples of personal morality.

[Sancho]

Now see, Island, knew you'd come around to my way of thinking.

Joking, joking.

I do think you and I agree on more things than we disagree on. I just seem to have a slightly rosier view of human nature than do you. And I think Paulclem is spot on, the people you mentioned, Pol Pot, Charles Taylor, et al, are not representative of the human condition. In fact they are so far out to one side of the bell curve that they are more of a statistical anomaly than any sort of representation of the rest of us. Besides, anybody who'd seek that kind of power, or for that matter anybody who'd aspire to be a national leader at all, is already freakishly arrogant compared to the rest of us. But, as you mentioned, those people have cut a wide swath in human history, which is why it is so important to shift the power to those of us who reside squarely under the bell curve. I think countries in the west have figured out a form of government that does just that. Throw the bums out, eh? Power to the people, baby, power to the people.

Concerning people in truly desperate situations, sure, survival instinct takes over. I read a scientific research paper a while back (more likely I just read the abstract) where the scientist had determined that there is a very specific point along a relative scale of malnutrition at which mothers will quit feeding their babies - are unable to feed their babies - and that point was much closer to starvation than I would have predicted it to be. But supposing basic survival needs are filled, I think people everywhere want more or less the same things. They want their family around them; they want their kids to have a safe environment in which to thrive; they want a certain level of personal freedom; and I don't think people want these things at the expense of their neighbors, but rather along with their neighbors.

Also, make no doubt about it, all revisionist views of history aside, the American Civil War was about slavery.

[jayat]

Any ideas to reorganised "Dark Lady Scythe cutting" ? All is welcome. Be nice, please, is free.?