Posted on 01/05/2002 11:44:50 AM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
Can We Be Good Without God J. BUDZISZEWSKI
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ABSTRACT: Now the question "Can we be good without God?" may be taken in two different ways. One way focuses on knowledge, the other on action; one takes the question as meaning "Can we 'know' what's good without 'knowing' God?", the other takes it as meaning "Can we 'do' what's good without 'following' God?" Let's consider both. |
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I’ve been asked to speak today on the question, “Can we be good without God?” To answer, I’m tempted to tell you my own story. Years ago when I rejected God, I also rejected the distinction between good and evil. Then again, I was an extreme case. Someone who asks “Can we be good without God?” isn’t trying to be extreme; he’s looking for a halfway house. So instead of telling you my story, I’ll try to lay out the logic of the matter.
Now the question “Can we be good without God?” may be taken in two different ways. One way focuses on knowledge, the other on action; one takes the question as meaning “Can we ‘know’ what’s good without ‘knowing’ God?”, the other takes it as meaning “Can we ‘do’ what’s good without ‘following’ God?” Let’s consider both.
Can We Know What’s Good?
As to the first — whether we can know what’s good without knowing God — you may think I’m going to say that unless we study the Bible we can’t know anything at all about right or wrong. I’m not, for the Bible itself makes the opposite claim: it says God has written a law on the hearts of all. Everyone has a conscience, and although the outer ring of our conscience may be influenced by culture, the inner core is universal and unchanging.
For instance there isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the good and right of love, and there isn’t a human being alive who doesn’t know the evil and wrong of murder. In the Biblical view, if we are confused about such things as sex, selfishness, abortion and euthanasia, the problem isn’t so much that we don’t know about right and wrong, but that we “suppress what we do” know about them. For we can’t not know the basic outlines of right and wrong.
Perhaps you think, then, that the answer to the question “Can we know good without knowing God?” is “Sure. Didn’t you just say we can?” Not so fast. I’ve said we all “know” something — but I’ve also said we “suppress” that knowledge. Let’s dig a little more deeply into this business of suppressing what we really know.
To begin, let’s ask why we do it. Why do we lie to ourselves about what’s right and wrong? We do it for the simple reason that we have a vested interest in doing so. We may want to know the truth, but the desire to know is not the only desire at work in us. The strong desire “not” to know competes with it, for our knowledge of right and wrong is an inconvenience to us. So we moan about how difficult it is to know what’s right even when we know perfectly well what’s right.
Now I propose to you that one of the things about good that we know perfectly well is the reality and goodness of God. When the Bible says, “The fool says in his heart ‘There is no God’” (Psalm 14:1), it doesn’t call him a fool for “thinking” it, but for “saying” it, even though deep down he knows it isn’t true. From the Biblical point of view, the reason it’s so difficult to argue with an atheist — as I once was — is that he’s not being honest with himself. He knows that there is a God; he only tells himself he doesn’t know.
If this Biblical view is true — you are perfectly within your rights to challenge it, and we can take up such matters in the question-and-answer period — but if this daring, preposterous, Biblical view is true, as I think it is, it changes everything. Why? Because that would show that the real meaning of the question “Can I know good without knowing God?” is “Can I admit one part of my moral knowledge while holding down another?”, or “Can I admit to myself that I know about, say, the goodness of love and the evil of murder, while ‘not’ admitting to myself that I know about the goodness of God and the evil of refusing Him?”
My answer is you certainly can do that, but you will never do it well. To hold down part of your moral knowledge is to lie to yourself. So what? Think. We all know from experience that one lie leads to another. If you tell a big enough lie about something, pretty soon you have to tell a second one about something else just to cover it up. After a while you may find yourself lying about lots of things, and then you start losing track of when you’re lying and when you’re not. Before long you can’t tell at all any more. You’re lost in a maze of your making, unable to see the difference between how things are and how you said they are.
Now the same thing is true when you lie to yourself. Here too one lie leads to another. This is especially true with the biggest self-deception of all, when you lie to yourself about God, because that knowledge is connected to the knowledge of everything else. Let me illustrate with something I mentioned earlier — the knowledge of the good of love and the wrong of murder. You may try to hold onto your knowledge of the good of love — but if you lie to yourself about the God whose very being is love, then your understanding of all love will be defective. That’s why we do such awful things in love’s name. Or you may try to hold onto your knowledge of the evil of murdering your neighbor — but if you lie to yourself about the God in whose image your neighbor is made, then you will find it difficult to recognize your neighbor when you see him. That’s why we do such terrible things to those who have the greatest claim on our protection.
Can We Do What’s Good?
I said at the beginning that the question “Can we be good without God?” may be taken in two different ways. We’ve just considered the first way. Can we “know” what’s good without “knowing” God? What we’ve seen is that in a superficial way the answer is “Yes,” but in a deeper the answer is “No.” Now let’s consider the second way. Can we “do” what’s good without “following” God? The answer this time is the same as before: Yes and no, but mostly no.
The “Yes” side is that as everyone knows, a person who doesn’t follow God can sometimes do the right thing. He can sometimes tell the truth, he can sometimes show compassion, he can sometimes set aside his own interests for someone else. The problem is that this isn’t enough. God is absolutely holy. We’re not. When Moses asked to see God face to face, God said no, because it would kill him. When the great prophet Isaiah caught just a glimpse of the glory of God, He said “Woe is me! I am undone.” When the glory of God filled the ancient temple, strong men fell down. These were what we call good people, but as St. Paul says, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
Once one of my students asked if he could talk about God with me. I said okay. He told me he didn’t see why he couldn’t be good without God. I asked him why he didn’t. He said, “Because I think I’m a decent person.” I replied, “If you think your decency is high enough for God, your idea of God must be pretty low.” At first he was shocked. But then I asked him whether he thought he could go a week without selfishness, without resentment, without lust. I asked whether he thought he could go a day, an hour, ten minutes. He got the point, because he knew he couldn’t. By myself, neither can I.
You see, trying to do without God has ruined us inwardly. Yes, by His mercy, there are still some good things in us, but not one of those good things is in its original healthy state. Not only are we broken, but we can’t repair ourselves. Could you perform surgery on your own eyes, or treat yourself for madness? Suppose you tore off both arms; without your hands, could you sew them back on? Our sin-sickness is something like that. We may long to love purely, but our desires have become idols that control us. We may long to be holy, but our righteousness has become self-righteousness that rules us. We may long to be reconciled with God, but we can’t stop wanting to be the center of the universe ourselves.
Because the law of right and wrong is written on the heart of all, many philosophies and religions teach about right and wrong with pretty fair accuracy. What they can’t do is heal the sin-sickness. However true, no mere doctrine can do that. Our cancer requires more than a doctrine. What it requires is the divine surgeon, God Himself, and the name of His surgery is Jesus Christ.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
J. Budziszewski "Can We Be Good Without God." Boundless (December 6, 2001).
Reprinted with permission of J. Budziszewski.
THE AUTHOR
J. Budziszewski (Boojee-shefski) J. Budziszewski is Associate Professor of Government and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a specialist in ethical and political philosophy and the author of Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law, How to Stay Christian in College: An Interactive Guide to Keeping the Faith, and The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man. He writes a monthly column for Boundless. J. Budziszewski is on the Advisory Board of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center.
Copyright © 2001 J. Budziszewski. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.
I am not claim that philosophical demonstration in metaphysical matters amounts to proof. It does not amount to proof as the term is commonly used- philosophical proof is held to a different standard. One must deal with the level of accuracy that is attainable within a specific subject matter. We will not obtain the same accuracy in matters of metaphysics as in physics. However that does not mean that all such arguments are false or that they can be 'proven false.' In fact to assert their falsity is to also to make a metaphysical assertion. In fact one cannot avoid making metaphysical commitments.
That said, I think the strongest metaphysical argument is for the existence of God.
I will however argue that my point stands, in that there the seems to be an arbitrariness built into the very nature of the evolutional system. If morality is the product of evolution and evolution will always produce change- is it not merely a matter of time before morality and human nature are altered?
What kind of revelation?
There is no one specific argument I would point to- just as there is no one argument you can point to that God does not exist. I will be glad to debate the issue if you wish. If so, I would also require arguments from you of why you believe God does not exist.
The revelation of Jesus Christ- the Word made flesh. This is, I acknowledge, an object of faith and not reason.
So your argument is entirely based upon your own subjective experience, is it not?
I will grant that I cannot know God would not change the moral order on philosophical grounds. I admit it is an object of faith to hold this. It is not, however, entirely subjective. Faith is rooted in reason, reason is rooted in faith. I am saying that there are reasonable grounds for having faith in a God who would not alter morality arbitrarily.
Furthermore, my indictment of morality as a product of evolution as being inevitably arbitrary still stands. Is it not simply a matter of time before such a morality changes?
But what are these reasonable grounds? Where does reason find a toehold in your argument? I understand your contention about evolutionary morality, and am not arguing with you on that point.
If God does exist as portrayed in the Bible, then hasn't he already altered morality arbitrarily at times?
I will not lay out a laundry list which would consist of an objective/cosmological approach and a subjective/personalistic approach.
To give you something to work with I would start by pointing to our moral sense. We experience morality as something binding. This importance of this binding can be seen in the roots of the word 'religion' which is derived from 'ligare- to bind.' Our conscience does not adapt well to being refashioned- whenever we try to convince ourselves some aspect of traditional morality is not binding the results are harmful on a level which far surpasses the 'wellbeing of the tribe.' I am arguing that reguardless of any societal aspects of morality- there is a 'sickness of the soul' that comes about through immoral action. Even if we act in manners entirely socially acceptable and even laudable- if we engage in personal immorality it does integral damage to the person and who he is at his deepest levels. For instance, I would claim that one who views pornography in the privacy of his home is damaging his self irreparably. These personal sins (even if one acts as a moral paragon in society) are experienced as they truly are- violations of the structure of morality that we did not create. They sense of guilt and shame one feels can either be accepted or discarded- to discard it will lead to a damaged conscience and a damaged person.
Just as the body can get sick, and the intellect can wither, so the soul can shrivel up if one does not cultivate it. In positively cultivating virtue we go far beyond arbitarily generated checks on harmful behavior. A chaste man or woman is viewed as weak rather than strong in the eyes an evolutional morality. Those who submit to being killed rather than quieting their conscience would be considered weak in a evolutionary morality. Evolution is based upon the concept that the strongest survive. Traditional theistic morality is based upon a conception of a soul that flourishes even the body is obliterated. This goes for entire communities as well- how could be to the evolutionary advantage for an entire community to submit to martyrdom?
I'm sorry your God does not exist to offer you eternal life - that's fine for you if you are comfortable with that. I gather from what I read you must also believe Life (or the existence of someone) ends at the physical death of the body - still if that's fine for you - okay. "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he: "
Eat and drink to your own contentment I say - but my heart is not inclined to agree with you....
If God is not eternal and immutable- then I could not intellectually stomach my own faith.
2) If your description of God is based on the Bible (as seems reasonable), then you're loopy. God changes drastically and sometimes quite rapidly in the Bible. The Old and New testaments speak to that.
I believe wholeheartedly in faith and reason. Wherever there is a conflict between the two there is error. Faith cannot contradict reason and reason cannot contradict faith.
I do accept the authority of the Bible- but the Bible is a complex document. While I believe the primary author of the Bible is God- the secondary human authors play a fundamental role in the text. It is not just God's words about man, it is mans words about God.
As such it can only be fully understood through means of literary and historical analysis. One must understand what the author is trying to convey and then put it into context. To try it read the Bible like a modern work will lead to serious distortion of its message.
When God is spoken of as changing and even at times getting emotional (changing his mind)- this is not to be understood literally. It can only be understood anagogically. The words have convey through temporal means what is eternal and unable to be put into words.
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