People seldom do what’s right. They do what’s convenient, then repent. [Robert Zimmerman]
"As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone.” Mark 10:17-18
Isn’t that the same argument as “Jesus did X. Jesus is a good person. Therefore X is good.”? Is it not the christian philosophy that virtue is doing what God does, and sin is doing what the devil does?
There are no “basically good people”. No, not one.
Ask most Americans about salvation and the “good person” heresy comes to the front quite quickly—Catholics often add in something about purgatory.
“I don’t know if Joe believed in Christ, but he was a good person, so God wouldn’t send him to Hell. (He may have to just spend some time in purgatory.)”
This is the root “split” of worldviews.
“basically good” is the humanist worldview,
“inherently sinful” is the Judeo-Christian worldview.
Some believe that men are basically good and with enough laws, rules, threats, love, compassion, etc. etc. that we can create a heaven on earth without God.
Other believe that man is basically no good and that the inevitable fate of mankind will be destruction. There will be no heaven on earth until Christ returns to set the world straight.
An equivalent argument is:
Y believed in X. Y was an evil person. Therefore, X is evil.
Often used with Hitler or Stalin as Y, atheism or evolution as X.
There’s what I call the “Dog-and-a-Picket-Fence” argument. It goes something like this: “I mean, we have a dog and a picket fence.”
The core of the classical curriculum was grammar, logic and rhetoric. Yes, the curriculum of the benighted Middle Ages.
Look how far we’ve come.
Denial of original sin like Pelagius.
You certainly see a lot of this mindset in politics, i.e. Y supports liberal policy X. Y is a "conservative" Republican. Therefore X must be OK as long as Y is doing it.
Fortunately, people are starting to wake up from this lazy mode of thinking, i.e. "Y is OK, therefore his policies are always OK."
Somebody does me.
I'm okay.
Hurray!
-- x
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Seriously, though, when people say some one is "basically good" they don't mean that person is without sin or vices.
They're saying "So far as I see or can tell, so-and-so doesn't seem to be evil or malicious."
And they're not making that claim about humanity as a whole, just about somebody they've personally met or seen.