Is God an Excuse?
A thought is midwifed by a quote from Joseph Conrad:
"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness."
…True, but isn’t the reverse true as well? What goodnesses are there, that require a supernatural God to tend to; aren’t people capable of those too?
Some will say "creation" or something similar, because makind cannot do that. But, much as we benefit from the Universe and everything in it, those things are neutral, not good. The formation of planets isn’t any more "good" than tornadoes are "evil"; both are simply part of Nature. (Even if, god forbid, you’re a "creationist", you still can’t argue that the world and the universe around it are natural. Unless, I suppose, you’re a pre-Gallilean, or very very stupid.) A supernatural deity, by definition, is something above and beyond Nature — in fact, one could say the biggest difference between "God" and "Nature" is that God "is good", or has a normative value; whereas Nature simply IS.
Back to the question, then: Why do we need a supernatural source of goodness? Is mankind not capable of love, mercy, understanding, charity, strength of will and sacrifice? Can we not find these traits in men, regardless of their religion or lack of it, if we look well?
And might we not be using the story of an all-good God, in some way, to let ourselves off the hook for being the source of the goodness we want in the world?
There’s no doubt that stories of devilish supernatural entites let us off the hook — both for our own despicable behavior (wars, genocides, ostracizations, cruelties to people we disagree with) and for being the source of the "evil" label ourselves; if it weren’t for the Devil, we might have to admit that the tornado is only evil from our perspective and because we think of it as such. By externalizing evil into an imaginary (supernatural) being, we avoid having to consider what evil really is, where its ambiguity comes from, and what really causes it.
Doesn’t God let us off the hook, too? Doesn’t assuming a supernatural Entity of Good make it easier to ignore the necessity of humans striving to be forgiving, to love everyone regardless of their differences from us, to seek the complete truth and find enlightenment in ourselves? It gives a comforting feeling that even if we fail, there will still be good "out there" — but I think one can argue strongly that this isn’t true; the goodness we want depends entirely on us.
(Jesus especially seems to be tailor-made to be an excuse of this type: He’s a God who’ll come to visit us with all his godliness intact, freeing us from even thinking that we need to be that kind of good because God is elsewhere, doing his own thing, and might not be around to provide good on Earth for us — nope! Jesus did it, and what’s more, he promised to come do it again. So relax! (Anyway, who could be that kind of good — why, look at what a feat it was! What a monumental story! Who of us puny humans could withstand that kind of torture?). Why worry about being like Jesus when you can simply be his follower?)
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What would happen if we admitted that those goodnesses are in us, are our job, and without us would not exist? How on Earth would we justify our next war then?
3 comments
We need a supernatural source for theosis, and theosis is the source of everything good. Humans are not good unless they are deified to some degree. Humans need assistance in becoming gods. “Goodness” is not the highest good that people can attain, theosis is the highest good. Love, mercy, or what have you that is not deified is not good, though cultivating love and mercy is the path to theosis. Theosis is not in us, divinity is not in us, since that would mean the divine is trapped. Theosis is union with God’s energy, and we can’t capture God’s energy by our own will or force. Everything is bathed in God’s energy, but we can’t assimilate it without training on our part. We are ultimately responsible for assimilating God’s energy.
Sounds like equivocation to me — you’ve just arbitrarily redefined the good that people are capable of as coming from God, without providing any evidence at all to support it. Are you saying that people were not good before we had any conception of Deity? That atheists can’t be good people, or that people who have non-theistic beliefs are just deluded and really God is helping them be good after all, or they couldn’t be?
This is actually the core of the most annoying thing about the Narnia books: At the end, when Aslan just goes ahead and takes credit for anything good that’s ever done, whether it was done with the intention to praise him or destroy him; if you’re a good person you’re a worshipper of his whether you want to be or not. How arrogant is that? What right does any faith-group have to claim the goodness of everyone else as support for their own cause? I mean, what if I walked up to you and proceeded to tell you that you’re a de facto member of my cult, because my cult consists of all good people and you seem a decent chap. Wouldn’t you be insulted by that?
“Are you saying that people were not good before we had any conception of Deity?”
Can you show me when the concept of Deity first appeared? I don’t think you will find a historical period without it. I was using Socrates’ definition of good: what is both beautiful and beneficial, not necessarily what a particular individual may hold as good. My idea of good is based on the idea of virtue, actions that make someone better. An atheist can become better according their own moral code without the divine, but their moral code does not have the divine. For someone to transcend their nature—a constant—they need help from a power stronger than nature. An atheist can not raise the dead, and they have no intention of seeking that sort of release from nature. Nature has its course, and thats it. So, you are right, an atheist does not need God to do or achieve what an atheist holds good. But I hold things good that an atheist does not, and you can’t call that any less arbitrary than an atheist’s good. This is all subjective.
I am not looking at the concept of Deity, but the objective reality of Deity. I have evidence of the supernatural, and I am starting from that point. We need an objective definition for good. I love how you can look at ideas, but isn’t an abstract idea of less worth for investigation that an actual reality?
You are also right about groups claiming credit for good that they did not perform. They can’t do that. But, starting from the assumption that deification is the highest good, seeing that deification probably exists, and that deification is impossible without God, then both man and God share credit for good because of their synergy. A human group could never claim credit for any good someone else performs or attains, because they did not participate in that process. But God participates in all acts of deification, and so he gets the credit for his universal role, no?
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