If you can be a good person without God then why need Him?

[Charlemagne_III]

When dealing with someone so dishonest disengaging is the only real option.

Are all of your posts going to be personal insults?

CAN YOU PLEASE STOP THAT?

 

[ready]

The Bible is the infallible Word of God, and thus NOTHING in it is untrue. Catholics really should have learned this elementary fact as children. God bless you.

 

[PRmerger]

The Bible is the infallible Word of God, and thus NOTHING in it is untrue. Catholics really should have learned this elementary fact as children. God bless you.

What is this post in response to?

 

[Kurisu35712]

This is a good point and was raised earlier. Although how anyone reaches agreement on what god ‘really is’ is a matter for debate. And quite often passionate debate even among members of the same denomination of the same faith.

Very true. One thing I’ve learned reading these forums is how bad catechesis really is among so many Catholics, though I can’t speak for any other denominations (or religions). Everyone has so many different opinions, even within Catholicism, it’s almost necessary to fact check everything yourself. I’ve been trying to get as much information as I can, partially so that I can correct (kindly) other Catholics I know if and when they start telling people something that the Church doesn’t actually teach.

This argument won’t hold much water, seeing as it comes with the presupposition that God exists, but my personal response to who God is would be something along the lines of only God really knows for sure. In my experience, Catholicism seems to have some of the most verifiable claims to being true versus other belief systems, but as that’s based on my own experiences, it’s not really something I can use to convince other people.

One of the biggest reasons I do believe what I do so strongly is because of the Saints. Quite a few of them, in fact. To me, the fact that their faith remained so strong despite most of them having pretty unfortunate lives, and that they lived their lives with such attitudes of joy and peace is more than enough evidence that God is real and Catholicism has it right. Likewise, given how compellingly insightful so many Saints were, and many being very well-educated, it doesn’t make sense to me that they would remain Catholic unless it were actually true.

I will admit that it is certainly possible that all of them got that part wrong, and were just wonderful and strong people who also believed in a religion, like so many people we never hear about. Regardless, I choose to believe they got religion right too.

 

[Kurisu35712]

The Bible is the infallible Word of God, and thus NOTHING in it is untrue. Catholics really should have learned this elementary fact as children. God bless you.

Some Catholics, however, would argue that Jesus is the infallible Word of God, and that the Bible contains the Word of God, since it is, in it’s entirety, about Him and His love for us.

 

[ChainBreaker]

There are many good people who are atheists and agnostics. Some of them are better than Catholics and Christians I have known personally. I just always wonder if you can control your own selfish or evil impulses and you truly love your neighbor as yourself, why would you need God or religion? When I think people who need God, I think those with issues like alcoholism, promiscuity, poor self-esteem, poor, etc. If you are kind, well-put together person, why would you need to believe in God? What difference would it make in your life anyways? Some people can find peace within themselves, they are very independent and self-reliant and kind. Why need God? If we have full control over our decisions, why do we often to choose to sin? Why can’t people simply stop sinning, why do we need Jesus’s redemption or forgiveness at all if it is our own choice? Or are humans so helpless they honestly cannot stop sinning?

Good has no real meaning without God. There is only that which is practically good relative to whatever personal agenda anyone happens to have; social contracts etc…

 

[oldcelt]

Good has no real meaning without God. There is only that which is practically good relative to whatever personal agenda anyone happens to have; social contracts etc…

Good is relative to time, culture, resources and so on. It is a notion invented by man to establish order. The only place that we differ is the need for a god. We are quite capable on our own.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Good is relative to time, culture, resources and so on. It is a notion invented by man to establish order. The only place that we differ is the need for a god. We are quite capable on our own.

“Capable of” does not mean actually doing, though, does it?

We are also capable of committing atrocities and we seem to actually do so, quite consistently - the past hundred years are clear evidence of what we are capable of and actually carry out.

We are also capable of thinking that we are getting morally better every day on our own, despite that the “facts” keep smacking us upside the head to remind us that we aren’t.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Good is relative to time, culture, resources and so on. It is a notion invented by man to establish order. The only place that we differ is the need for a god. We are quite capable on our own.

You also seem to be equivocating on the word “capable.”

I am quite “capable” of waking up in the morning in the weak sense of setting an alarm, getting dressed, etc., but that is a far cry from being “capable” of waking up in the strong sense of becoming alive and conscious in the morning. That sense of “capable” assumes that whatever enables my capability has permitted my option to wake up by underwriting it. In that strong sense of “capable,” I am capable of nothing since none of the underwriting is in my purview.

So, yes, we are “capable” in the weak sense of going about business on our own, but we are totally incapable of doing so in the strong sense since we have no idea what that involves at all. In that sense, we need God, whether we choose to admit it or not.

 

[Winterwolf00]

The Bible is the infallible Word of God, and thus NOTHING in it is untrue. Catholics really should have learned this elementary fact as children. God bless you.

Except the things in it that are scientifically and historically false.

 

[Winterwolf00]

“Capable of” does not mean actually doing, though, does it?

We are also capable of committing atrocities and we seem to actually do so, quite consistently - the past hundred years are clear evidence of what we are capable of and actually carry out.

We are also capable of thinking that we are getting morally better every day on our own, despite that the “facts” keep smacking us upside the head to remind us that we aren’t.

We are also capable of committing atrocities and we seem to actually do so, quite consistently - the past hundred years are clear evidence of what we are capable of and actually carry out.

And many of those acts were carried out with a theistic/christian worldview in mind.

We are also capable of thinking that we are getting morally better every day on our own, despite that the “facts” keep smacking us upside the head to remind us that we aren’t

Yes in fact we are.
Slavery is no longer a thing just for starters.
Modern values include being anti-racist, pro-women’s rights, pro-human rights, pro-democracy, pro-equality, and anti-hate in general.

So yes we getting and have gotten A LOT better.

 

[Peter_Plato]

And many of those acts were carried out with a theistic/christian worldview in mind.

Yes in fact we are.
Slavery is no longer a thing just for starters.
Modern values include being anti-racist, pro-women’s rights, pro-human rights, pro-democracy, pro-equality, and anti-hate in general.

So yes we getting and have gotten A LOT better.

You know what is interesting here is that those who claim to use evidence and skepticism meticulously are often the ones who fail to do so.
I can address slavery in another post, but my question to you would be: “Have you bothered to look into the Church’s stance on slavery as contained in the long history of Papal Encyclicals?” Take that as a caution if you wish to continue bringing up slavery as part of a “Christian world view.”

In the meantime, let’s address this “many of those acts were carried out with a theistic/Christian world view,” shall we. I noticed you left my question of what you mean by “many” unanswered in this post from another thread, so I’ll take it that you mean something like a “substantial number” at least verging on the majority.

That claim has been decidedly put to rest by the actual evidence.

Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod fortuitously happened to publish their three-volume Encyclopedia of Wars, a massive 1,502-page compendium compiled by nine reputable professors of history, including the director of the Centre of Military History and the former head of the Centre for Defence Studies, of what amounts to a significant percentage of all of the wars that have taken place throughout recorded human history.
…These **1,763 wars **cannot be considered entirely comprehensive— for example, Shalmaneser III’s thirty-four campaigns against various Syrian kingdoms are included in the single entry entitled “Assyrian Wars (c. 1032–c. 746 B.C.).” If one considers that Shalmaneser, despite his martial success, managed to conquer less territory than his father, Ashurnasirpal II, did, we should probably note that what is counted here as a single war could cover as many as 250 separate Assyrian conflicts. But we shall leave that for the compilers of a future military encyclopedia…
At the risk of providing significantly more ammunition to those who argue that religion causes war and invariably cite 1) The Crusades, 2) The Wars of Religion, and 3) The Thirty Years War, here is a list of all of the wars that the authors of the Encyclopedia of Wars saw fit to categorize as religious wars for one reason or another:

Albigensian Crusade, Almohad Conquest of Muslim Spain, Anglo-Scottish War (1559–1560), Arab Conquest of Carthage, Aragonese-Castilian War, Aragonese-French War (1209–1213), First Bearnese Revolt, Second Bearnese Revolt, Third Bearnese Revolt, First Bishop’s War, Second Bishop’s War, Raids of the Black Hundreds, Bohemian Civil War (1465–1471), Bohemian Palatine War, War in Bosnia, Brabant Revolution, Byzantine-Muslim War (633–642), Byzantine-Muslim War (645–656), Byzantine-Muslim War (688–679), Byzantine-Muslim War (698–718), Byzantine-Muslim War (739), Byzantine-Muslim War (741-752 Byzantine-Muslim War (778-783), Byzantine-Muslim War (797- 798), Byzantine-Muslim War (803-809), Byzantine-Muslim War (830-841), Byzantine-Muslim War (851–863), Byzantine-Muslim War (871–885), Byzantine-Muslim War (960–976), Byzantine-Muslim War (995–999), Camisards’ Rebellion, Castilian Conquest of Toledo, Charlemagne’s Invasion of Northern Spain, Charlemagne’s War against the Saxons, Count’s War, Covenanters’ Rebellion (1666), Covenanters’ Rebellion (1679), Covenanters’ Rebellion (1685), Crimean War, First Crusade, Second Crusade, Third Crusade, Fourth Crusade, Fifth Crusade, Sixth Crusade, Seventh Crusade, Eighth Crusade, Ninth Crusade, Crusader-Turkish Wars (1100–1146), Crusader-Turkish Wars (1272–1291), Danish-Estonian War, German Civil War (1077–1106), Ghost Dance Uprising, Siege of Granada, First Iconoclastic War, Second Iconoclastic War, India-Pakistan Partition War, Irish Tithe War, Javanese invasion of Malacca, Great Java War, Kappel Wars, Khurramite’s Revolt, Lebanese Civil War, Wars of the Lombard League, Luccan-Florentine War, Holy Wars of the Mad Mullah, Maryland’s Religious War, Mecca-Medina War, Mexican Insurrections, War of the Monks, Mountain Meadows Massacre, Revolt of Muqanna, Crusade of Nicopolis, Padri War, Paulician War, Persian Civil War (1500–1503), Portuguese-Moroccan War (1458–1471), Portuguese-Moroccan War (1578), Portuguese-Omani Wars in East Africa, Rajput Rebellion against Aurangzeb, Revolt in Ravenna, First War of Religion, Second War of Religion, …

Continued …

 

[Peter_Plato]

… from last

Third War of Religion, Fourth War of Religion, Fifth War of Religion, Sixth War of Religion, Eighth War of Religion, Ninth War of Religion, Roman-Persian War (421–422), Roman- Persian War (441), Russo Turkish War (1877–1878), First Sacred War, Second Sacred War, Third Sacred War, Saladin’s Holy War, Schmalkaldic War, Scottish Uprising against Mary of Guise, Serbo- Turkish War, Shimabara Revolt, War of the Sonderbund, Spanish Christian-Muslim War (912–928), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (977–997), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1001–1031), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1172–1212), Spanish Christian-Muslim War (1230–1248), Spanish Christian- Muslim War (1481–1492), Spanish Conquests in North Africa, Swedish War, Thirty Years War, Transylvania-Hapsburg War, Tukulor-French War, Turko-Persian Wars, United States War on Terror, Vellore Mutiny, Vjayanagar Wars, First Villmergen War, Second Villmergen War, Visigothic-Frankish War.

That is 123 wars in all, which sounds as if it would support the case of the New Atheists, until one recalls that these 123 wars represent only 6.92 percent of all the wars recorded in the encyclopedia. …It’s also interesting to note that more than half of these religious wars, sixty-six in all, were waged by Islamic nations, which is rather more than might be statistically expected considering that the first war in which Islam was involved took place almost three millennia after the first war chronicled in the Encyclopedia, Akkad’s conquest of Sumer in 2325 B.C.
In light of this evidence, the fact that a specific religion is currently sparking a great deal of conflict around the globe cannot reasonably be used to indict all religious faith, especially when one considers that removing that single religion from the equation means that all of the other religious faiths combined only account for 3.35 percent of humanity’s wars.
Source: voxday.net/mart/TIA_free.pdf

Now, 6.92% seems hardly a drop in the bucket considering that wars are typically fought for very important reasons and one would suppose that the “ultimate meaning of life” would appear to be an important, if not the most important reason to do anything. It seems, however, that there is something about religion – despite that it addresses the big questions – does not really instigate or facilitate the fighting of wars. Well, except for 6.92% of those fought in all of human history.

In one sense, 123 wars is “many,” but in another sense, relative to all the wars ever fought, it hardly seems to be a factor at all.

 

[Peter_Plato]

Modern values include being anti-racist, pro-women’s rights, pro-human rights, pro-democracy, pro-equality, and anti-hate in general.

So yes we getting and have gotten A LOT better.

Yes, of course, in theory, all of this looks quite impressive. The problem is that self-perception can be deceiving. It is easy to convince ourselves that we are good, in fact better than those “barbarians” who preceded we, the good, the humanitarian, the evolved. Unfortunately, the evidence does not show what you suppose that it does.

R.J. Rummel has done quite a massive study of “democide” or death at the hands of the political elite. His results show that the 20 century was the most deadly in all of history - not merely in overall numbers, but in proportion to the total human population on the planet.

I have taken the liberty to provide a summary table of the past 3000 years from Rummel’s website

I have circled in red the proportion for the twentieth century in the attached table. His findings are that 4.437% of the total world’s population (about 200 million people) have been killed by genocide or wars in the past 100 years. That rate is 15 times the rate of death in the centuries from the 5th to the 19th and double that for centuries prior. Of course, this does not include the 1.35 BILLION unborn children worldwide who have been killed by those who think of themselves, ironically, as pro-human rights. (God needs to save us from people who think their morals are impeccable, apparently.)

Now, you may want to claim that “observation” is everything and your perception tells you that we are much more humane and less savage than ever before, but reality, as they say, “BITES."

 

[Peter_Plato]

And many of those acts were carried out with a theistic/christian worldview in mind.

Let’s address this point more specifically, shall we?

…there have been twenty-eight countries in world history that can be confirmed to have been ruled by regimes with avowed atheists at the helm, beginning with the First French Republic and ending with the four atheist regimes currently extant: the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. These twenty-eight historical regimes have been ruled by eighty-nine atheists, of whom more than half have engaged in democidal acts of the sort committed by Stalin and Mao and are known to have murdered at least 20,000 of their own citizens.
The total body count for the ninety years between 1917 and 2007 is approximately 148 million dead at the bloody hands of fifty-two atheists, three times more than all the human beings killed by war, civil war, and individual crime in the entire twentieth century combined. The historical record of collective atheism is thus 182,716 times worse on an annual basis than Christianity’s worst and most infamous misdeed, the Spanish Inquisition.

…the average atheist crime against humanity is 18.3 million percent worse than the very worst depredation committed by Christians, even though atheists have had less than one-twentieth the number of opportunities with which to commit them. If one considers the statistically significant size of the historical atheist set and contrasts it with the fact that not one in a thousand religious leaders have committed similarly large-scale atrocities, it is impossible to conclude otherwise, even if we do not yet understand exactly why this should be the case. Once might be an accident, even twice could be coincidence, but fifty-two incidents in ninety years reeks of causation!
Source: THE IRRATIONAL ATHEIST Vox Day BENBELLA BOOKS, INC.
Dallas, Texas 2008, p. 241-2

 

[Almagor]

The original post was, "If I can be a good person without God, why do I need Him. I don’t think that specific answer was ever answered. The original question was framed to imply that God is only of use to us in enabling us to act or behave in better ways that Atheists but the question was, “Why do I need God?”

I need God to forgive my sins, to enable me to obtain Eternal Life, and to help me in all of the many difficult situations I find myself in that I am inadequate to resolve by my self. Maybe the main reason I need God is because He has created us to need love and to be able to receive His Love and to Love Him in return.

In my 71 years of life on Earth I have never found any human being that loved me and did not ever let me down. God has never let me down; Never! Even the difficulties I have to go through He has let me know that they are for my ultimate long term benefit and the benefit of others. He has given me Spiritual experiences that I would not trade for any amount of money in the world and once He granted me the experience of Union with Him which nothing compares to and I would not trade if forgetting it was to save my life. This post is not meant in any way to be critical of your comment. I am new to this website and could not find how to answer the question directly. I hope you found my answer helpful even if it was not a direct reply to your answer. God bless you.

 

[PRmerger]

Except the things in it that are scientifically and historically false.

Since it’s not a scientific annal, it doesn’t need to be a scientific treatise.

That would be like saying, “I reject this poem by Yeats because stars don’t run and shadows don’t eat”.

For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.

Anyone who would read Yeats and assert that deserves this response:

 

[Winterwolf00]

You know what is interesting here is that those who claim to use evidence and skepticism meticulously are often the ones who fail to do so.
I can address slavery in another post, but my question to you would be: “Have you bothered to look into the Church’s stance on slavery as contained in the long history of Papal Encyclicals?” Take that as a caution if you wish to continue bringing up slavery as part of a “Christian world view.”

In the meantime, let’s address this “many of those acts were carried out with a theistic/Christian world view,” shall we. I noticed you left my question of what you mean by “many” unanswered in this post from another thread, so I’ll take it that you mean something like a “substantial number” at least verging on the majority.

That claim has been decidedly put to rest by the actual evidence.

Continued …

You realize a good number of those only prove my point yes?

Simply saying “Oh well bad things have been done for secular reasons too!” doesn’t really prove anything as I never claimed otherwise.

I never claimed that bad things have happened without religion, I’m merely de-bunking the myth that they are somehow unique to a ‘secular worldview’ as you seemed to be claiming.

If that’s not what you were claiming then I apologize but that’s what I gathered.

 

[Winterwolf00]

Since it’s not a scientific annal, it doesn’t need to be a scientific treatise.

That would be like saying, “I reject this poem by Yeats because stars don’t run and shadows don’t eat”.

For he would be thinking of love
Till the stars had run away
And the shadows eaten the moon.

Anyone who would read Yeats and assert that deserves this response:

Then it shouldn’t be considered a valid source for anything other then some good morals, historical fiction, and a lot of poetry.
Eat your heart out Ken Ham.

 

[PRmerger]

Then it shouldn’t be considered a valid source for anything other then some good morals, historical fiction, and a lot of poetry.
Eat your heart out Ken Ham.

Were you aware that the Catholic faith does not view the Bible as its source of dogma/doctrine?

It is not our source for “good morals”–that’s quite clear.