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Are you a good person?
« on: 2003-05-07 20:27:51 » |
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The Right Frame of Mind
Are You a Good Person?
Source: http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/5/afa/22003mc.asp
Authors: Rev. Mark H. Creech [Associated with the infamous AFA]
Dated: 2003-05-03
Are you a good person? Some contend that it's possible to be good without religion. The premise is absurd, but many would agree. [Hermit notes that this assertion is baseless as religious people cannot validly claim to act ethically without reason to accept that their gods are instructing them to do ethical things. Thus they require an ethical standard external of their gods to make such a claim. Refer [ Hermit, Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics, 2002-03-06 ] ]. People say, "Oh, he was such a good man. He wasn't spiritual. He didn't attend church, read the Bible, or pray. But he had high moral standards." [Hermit notes that 'Morals are “inherited”, ethics are considered.' Refer [ Hermit, Virian Ethics: The Soul in the Machine and the Question of Virian Ethics, 2002-03-05 ] .]
It is true that some people who are irreligious can live seemingly decent lives, but when they do, they merely borrow from Christian ethics. [Hermit: Not bloody likely. Refer e.g. Violence - Matthew 10:34 "Think not that I am come to bring peace on earth. I came not to bring peace, but a sword." Matthew 10:35 "For I come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." Merciless - Luke 19:27 "But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." Matthew 10:33 "But whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." Matthew 15:4 "He that curseth his father or mother, let him die the death." Rude and insulting - to his mother no less - John 2:4 "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" Confused - Matthew 5:16 "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father in heaven." Matthew 6:1 "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them. For otherwise ye have no reward of your Father in heaven." Divorce (highest rate in the US is in the bible belt) - Matthew 5:32 Jesus says, "Whosoever shall put away (divorce) his wife, saving for the cause of fornication, causeth her to commit adultery: and whosoever shall marry her that is divorced committeth adultery." Slavery - Ephesians 6:5 "Slaves, be obedient to those who are your earthly masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of heart, as to Christ" 1 Timothy 6:1 "Let all who are under the yoke slavery regard their masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be defamed. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brethren; rather they must serve all the better since those that benefit by their service are believers and beloved." Bigots -Mark 7:25-29 Your daughter is a dog. 1 Corinthians 7:4 "For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does" Timothy 2:11 "Let a woman learn in silence with all submissiveness. I permit no woman to teach or have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor." Stupidity Mark 11:12 "On the following day, when they came from Bethany, he (Jesus) was hungry. And seeing in the distance a fig tree in leaf, he went to see if he could find anything on it. When he came to it, he found nothing but leaves, for it was not the season for figs. And he said to it, 'May no one ever eat fruit from you again.'" Liars - Romans 3:7 "But if through my falsehood God's truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being condemned as a sinner?" Theft - Luke 19:29-34 "[Jesus] sent two of his disciples, Saying, Go ye into the village . . . ye shall find a colt tied, whereon yet never man sat: loose him, and bring him hither. And if any man ask you, Why do ye loose him? thus shall ye say unto him, Because the Lord hath need of him" Also Matthew 21:19-20, Mark 5:12-13 etc.] Moreover, the Bible teaches that the "Lord seeth not as a man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" (I Sam. 16:7). [Hermit: And looking at this list above, this is clear. Yet I think I - and any Virian living through reason, empathy and vision - are vastly superior to the primitive, ignorant tribal deities here extolled].
What constitutes genuine goodness? John Stuart Mill's famous definition was "that which does the greatest good to the greatest number." This is called utilitarianism. [Hermit: And this is certainly not a complete exposition of utilitarianism, nor is utilitarianism the only alternative to conventional "religious morality"]But then, Hitler was a utilitarian. [Hermit: And also a Christian. Refer [ Hermit, FAQ: Hitler the "Good Christian", 2002-03-14 ] .] Certainly he thought Nazism was providing the greatest good to the greatest number. Others say, "Good is whatever is right for me." The problem with this philosophy, however, is whatever may seem good for the individual may not be good for another. Without a point of reference for morality, we are constantly pitted against each other in an effort to determine whose values will ultimately prevail. [Hermit: This is an incorrect assertion, based on multiple assumptions as invalid as they are unstated e.g. life is a zero-sum game, "morality" (largely 'inherited' rules of thumb) is equivalent to ethical (considered stances) behaviour. Refer also [ Hermit, Virian Ethics: The End of God Referenced Ethics, 2002-03-06 ] ].
There are a couple of ways to determine what is good. The first way is to determine whether the act is sanctioned or commanded by God. [Hermit: Like the list above. Or worse. e.g. the righteous (2 Peter 2:7-8 ) Lot offered his virgin daughters to a mob for a gang-bang (Genesis 19:3-9)? (Fortunately the crowd was more sensible than daddy, temporarily preserving their "innocence" so Lot could free them of this burden himself.) Child sacrifice throughout the Old Testament (e.g. Judges 11:29-40)? The commandments and supposed assistance by a bloodthirsty, bigoted god to kill and enslave (e.g. Joshua 10)? Besides this, the arbitrary dietary prohibitions on foodstuffs based on frequently blatantly incorrect information can be ignored as simply farcical.] Down through the centuries various religions have claimed certain works are pleasing to God. But it doesn't matter how zealous or how sincere a work, if God hasn't commanded it, then it isn't good. All that is good must be conformable to divine law. [Hermit: But which "gods"? The Christian's? If so, given the vast number of luminous liars through the years, how exactly this divination will be established is, like most of the assertions made here, left unclear.]
God's Holy Word tells us what He expects of us. Of course, someone will respond, "Oh, you Christians -- you're all alike! You're so dogmatic. You think you alone are right and everyone else is wrong. How can you possibly be certain what the Bible says is true?" Well, I could answer that question by discussing the remarkable historical, scientific, and prophetical accuracy of the Scriptures. [Hermit: Yet he could not follow up with a single proof. If Mark H. Creech proves anything with this screed, it is that he knows little or nothing on any of these scores.] I could talk about its amazing unity, indestructibility and universal appeal. [Hermit: Evidently bunk. Or does Mark H. Creech assume the crusades are figment of the imagination]. These factors led the great archaeologist, W.F. Albright, to conclude: "The Bible towers in content above all earlier religious literature; and it towers just as impressively over all subsequent literature in the direct simplicity of its message and the catholicity of its appeal to men of all lands and times." No other book has such credentials. The Bible is God's Word and it contains the only transcript of the immutable will of God. Without it, we cannot know or do what is good. [Hermit: While the wild ad populam claims made here have no apparent support, the author of this screed might make a better case for himself had he chosen a better source for his wildly incorrect slew of assertions. Albright was not so much an archeologist, as an apologist. Refering to himself as a "biblical archaeologist", Albright teamed with adamant conservative apologist Melvin Kyle to argue that the geological evidence for the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was in "exact agreement with the Biblical record" (M. G. Kyle and W. F. Albright, "Results of the Archaeological Survey of the Ghor in Search of the Cities of the Plain," Bibliotheca Sacra, 1924, 81:276-91 on p 290), wrote in the forums of bible believers, such as Christianity Today (William F. Albright, "Archaeological Discovery and the Scriptures," Christianity Today, 1968, 12:19:915-17), as well as writing introductions for highly suspect pseudo-scholarly works(Introduction by Albright to James Kelso, Archaeology and Our Old Testament Contemporaries, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1966). Let me quote a "real" archeologist. "Persons of the Jewish and Christian faiths find themselves between a rock and a hard place. The Bible speaks of a God who is active in the history of certain supposedly actual persons, places, and events. The archaeologist, then, ought to be able to find evidence not that God was at work in these times and places but that supports the reality of these events. However, archaeology finds no trace of many biblical events and finds evidence that clearly contradicts others. If the persons, places, and events are not real, then how can God be active in them? How trustworthy is the biblical claim that God is present in this history when the narrated events are not factually accurate, or appear not to have taken place, or have left no trace and therefore cannot be determined to have been events at all? The believer is caught between the rock of the biblical claim and the hard place of the archaeological contradiction" (W. Waite Willis Jr. , "The Archaeology of Palestine and the Archaeology of Faith: Between a Rock and a Hard Place." In J. H. Charlesworth and W. P. Weaver, editors, What Has Archaeology to Do with Faith?, Philadelphia: Trinity Press International., pp. 75-111 specifically p 77).]
<Hermit: massive snip of further biblical babble and pointless allegory, not worth disposing of in detail, as the assertions made are refuted in the works already cited.>
[Hermit] However, one commonly made assertion seen here, is that:
Quote:| People perform a number of so-called "good works" for all sorts of reasons. But unless the act is done out of a heart purified by faith and solely for the glory of God, it doesn't pass the test for what is good. This is why the great cry of the Protestant Reformation was soli deo gloria -- solely for the glory of God. The motive makes all the difference, and the non-Christian doesn't have the spiritual capacity to meet this standard. |
[Hermit] What people like Mark H. Creech should realise, is that they invalidate their own ability to make valid ethical assessements, when they claim that their "moral" capacity comes from a turgid mixture of foolish contradictions, bad behavior and poor writing requiring massive elision and interpretation to be perceived as anything but offensive to even the meanest modern ethicist - or schoolchild - all of whom have eminently more developed ethical senses than the Christian gods - or their apologists. This forces a different conclusion. Christians only behave morally by accident and when they ignore the actual words of their religious works. They are, if Mark H. Creech's central thesis holds any water, incapable of making any "ethical" choices as they are incapable of evaluating the ethics of their gods. Which, given 1,500 or so years of biblically inspired misery, possibly explains quite a lot.
Apropos of something, an earlier list of "god doing evil" (based on the OT so not used here) from a previous post [ Hermit, 2nd Try under a new identity - please ignore if you have received it already - virus: Faith vs Religion, 1999-03-27 ]
includes:
Your bible claims that your god wreaked evil (Exodus 32:14, Joshua 23:15, Judges 9:13, 1 Sam 16:14-16 et ff, 2 Sam. 12:11 et ff, 2 Sam 24:16, 1 Kings 9:9, 1 Kings 14:10, 1 Kings 21:21, 1 Kings 21:29, 1 Kings 22:23, 2 Kings 6:33, 2 Kings 22:16, 2 Kings 22:20, 1 Chronicles 21:15, 2 Chronicles 7:22, 2 Chronicles 18:22, 2 Chronicles 34:24,28, Nehemiah 13:18, Job 2:10, Job 42:11, Jeremiah 4:6, Jeremiah 6:19, Jeremiah 11:11, Jeremiah 19:3, Jeremiah 23:12 et ff, Ezekiel 5:16-17, Ezekiel 6:10, Daniel 9:12-14, Joel 2:13, Amos 3:6, Amos 9:4, Jonah 3:10, Jonah 4:2, Micah 1:12, Micah 2:3, Lamentations 3:38, Isaiah 45:7 and 2 Kings 21:12 the last three are especially noteworthy. Try Malachai 1:8 and while on the page notice that your god can hate a whole people forever (Malachai 1:5). Zephaniah 1:12 is only confusing if you imagine that the Jewish God does not kill and does not do evil. Now these are but a number of the places I could cite your god doing evil. And yet your bible says in Matthew 7:18 "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." (Excuse my quotation here but it makes the point better than I can. I used the KJV and please check for your self that I have provided an adequate "context"). If your bible says that your god can do evil, and if the bible is the word of god, and if according to your bible evil cannot proceed from good, then your god is not good. Matt 12:35 also applies. So where do you get the temerity, the chutzpah to call your god good. After all, your bible warns you against just this, Isaiah 5:20 "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!"
Please don't misquote things about your god that you thought you read in the bible without checking them.
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