Goodness is no substitute for holiness

Willis E. Elliott laments,
"4.....But humanists, being without divine support, actually tend to be especially "good" because it's all they've got: "goodness" is their religion."

of course he says this like it's a BAD thing?! how sinful that atheists invent a religion where the idea is to be GOOD. imagine if THAT horrible idea were to spread! good god, we might have rampant goodness and world peace.... what's that expression - random acts of kindness?

Fortunately for the world, science has successfully undermined the simpleminded religions - the Abrahamic cults, mainly Christianity and Islam.

Christianity and Islam have had a good 2000 year run preying on ignorance and the ignorant. This ended for Christianity in Europe with the development of science. It is now looking for the ignorant and uneducated in Africa and South America.

Islam - a strange combination of ignorance and intolerance - has been picking the lowest lying fruit for a 1000 years as apparent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now is the time for science, logic, and deeper & truer spirituality - not supremacist, intolerant cults like Christianity and Islam that proselytize and force their views on others. This results in conflict, violence, and suffering.

Now is the time for Vedanta & Hinduism. After 1000 years of anti-Hindu propaganda, many are not prepared to hear the wisdom or absorb the deep & complex monistic philosophy which is consistent with science. Now is a good time to start; at least some will benefit.

A new age of rational spirituality is again arriving, and Hinduism and Vedanta will lead the way again.

Hi Reverend Elliot,

Hope you had a happy Halloween! All in fun, this holiday, no? My daughter dressed up as Galileo. She's an interesting child, has ideas of her own, and that, I'm afraid, is that. So off we went, with her telescope in hand. Hope she'll keep gazing at the stars. Hope all our children will!

Farnaz

I'm with compchiro. I may have illusions, but at least I don't have delusions. The tangible here and now is far superior to the pie-in-the-sky. So arrogant, these christians.

If a person who believes in God turns his back on goodness, is he more wicked and guilty of sin, and more deserving of the everlasting punishment in the Lake of Fire than a person who does not believe in God, but who otherwise leads a similar life?

But all we have done is replace one word with another. What is holiness? If good and holy are defined by something other than man, does that mean it is correct? If my holy book says it is holy does that prove anything?

hariaum

Mr. Elliot,

“People who think they are good without God are under at least one, perhaps two, illusions. And people who don't claim to be good, but who claim that some are good who don't believe in God, add one more illusion. “

Actually people who know that there can be good without god are correct. You are the one who is operating under the illusion (delusion) that god is needed (or even exists outside of your own imagination).

“Humanism, which teaches that human beings can and should go off on their own without God, is a commitment against the center of community, which is communion with God.”

Communion with your imagined deity may be the center of YOUR community, but it’s not the center of the greater human community.

“Since "goodness" is community-defined as behavior supportive of community, and the heart of community is communion with God, humanists cannot be "good."

What a load of sanctimonious garbage.

“But humanists, being without divine support, actually tend to be especially "good" because it's all they've got: "goodness" is their religion.”

Actually being human is their religion. And their goodness is not in quotes it is real.

“The OnFaith questioning assumes……… that the point - the point of living - is to be "good"

Actually it asks whether there is goodness without deity or religion It does not presume that the point of living is to be good.

“But the Bible (Judaism and Christianity) teaches that the point is to be "HOLY":”

What some man-made religious text says is of not value or consequence to the world as a whole. It is only of value to those who choose to believe in it.

“Beauty (esthetics, the arts), goodness (ethics), and holiness (religion), are separable in the mind and in human commitments to action; but they are a living continuum: trying to live only one or two of them distorts life and deprives it of its fullness.”

For many, removing religion actually can enrich life and allows one to live it to the fullest.

“The atheist-humanist belief in naturalistic ethics - that an adequate "goodness" is derivable from observation and experiment alone - is illusional.”

It is factual. Religion is illusion/delusional.

“Separating ethics and religion is an instance of "It sounded like a good idea at the time."

Actually it is an instance of realizing that ethics and religion are not inexorably tied together. That ethics existed long before man crated god or religion.

“How tragic either to believe this profound and playful story literally, or not to believe it!”

Since there is no proof of it, to believe in it is what is tragic.