What Drives Goodness

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Goodness is one of the many facets of Love. The fact that a person can exhibit “goodness” reflects that they understand Love. And although they may be athiestic in their views, their being “good” and sharing “goodness” with others reflects an umbilical cord of Love to GOD within themselves.

Now they will clearly deny any such connection between them and GOD exist, which is paramount to their athieistic choice, but as GOD “is” Love, GOD “is” Goodness.

Therefore, the answer to the question of “What drives goodness” is GOD drives goodness. And even in those who chose not to Love HIM, and show HIM goodness, HE still is the entire source of all that is good, and HE still welcomes those who refuse HIM goodness.
 
catsrus said:
Goodness is driven by a well developed conscience.
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And such conscience is a product of character development. This type of character development has mostly come through struggling with God in our Judeo-Christian cultures.

We are not born into goodness There is no goodness gene, nor is the difference between good and evil always transparent and obvious.
 
Darryl1958 said:
We are not born into goodness There is no goodness gene, nor is the difference between good and evil always transparent and obvious.
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“Goodness” or morality is a strategy that humans – as cooperative animals – have developed to promote our goals and values.

Early on in the existence of our species, these goals were simple survival. Over time, and thanks to civilization, we’ve developed much grander goals for ourselves (for example, the goals of personal fulfillment and “happiness,” etc.).

If you study animals, you’ll see that other social animals similarly have codes of behavior and rules regulating members of their communities. Wolf packs make good examples – we’ve observed wolf packs banish members of their community for violating some of their most stringent laws, the most stringent of which is not harming the young, of which the pack is extremely protective.

While there may not be a “good gene,” that’s only because the behaviors we describe as good are too complicated to be regulated by a single gene. “Good” is part of a pattern of cooperative behavior that is indeed hard-wired into humans as it is in other social animals.
 
The second of the letter writers in the link brings up a version of Euthypro’s dilemma (“Are actions good only because God says so, or does God say that the actions are good because they are inherently good”?). If you choose the first option, then there’s no such thing as “good” – “good” is an arbitrary decree of god. If you choose the second option, “good” is something that exists independently of god, and he’s not necessary for morality.

[Incidentally, some theologians try to get around this by claiming that god doesn’t “declare” what good is…his “nature” is goodness itself…this is a really lame semantic attempt to dance around the question, and it only succeeds in pushing the dilemma back one step. Does God choose his own nature? If he does, then he’s choosing what good is, and it’s arbitrary. If he doesn’t, then good exists independent of his conscious choice]

There’s a spin on this particular dilemma that I like. I always ask believers, “How do you know that your god is good?”

There are only two possible responses:
  1. “I believe he’s good because he says he’s good” – in this case, you’re just accepting that your god is good without sufficient reason.
  2. “I believe he’s good because he does actions X, Y, Z, and actions X, Y, Z are good” – in this case, you have to have an idea of goodness already and use it to evaluate the actions of your god.
There was a thread on here a while back – it’s probably been deleted since the rhetoric was getting pretty heated – but on it, a number of Catholics freely admitted that slavery was not bad in and of itself and that in some contexts – such as when God condones it, as he does in the Old Testament – slavery can be good.

From where I stand, this is a disgusting point of view, and it demonstrates that Theists can be extreme kinds of “moral relativists.”
 
Pope John Paul II relects on this in his encyclical, “Dominum et Vivificantum” by Neil Anthony

*36. According to the witness concerning the beginning which we find in the Scriptures and in Tradition, after the first (and also more complete) description in the Book of Genesis, sin in its original form is understood as “disobedience,” and this means simply and directly transgression of a prohibition laid down by God. But in the light of the whole context it is also obvious that the ultimate roots of this disobedience are to be sought in the whole real situation of man. Having been called into existence, the human being-man and woman-is a creature. The “image of God,” consisting in rationality and freedom, expresses the greatness and dignity of the human subject, who is a person. But this personal subject is also always a creature: in his existence and essence he depends on the Creator. According to the Book of Genesis, “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” was to express and constantly remind man of the “limit” impassable for a created being. God’s prohibition is to be understood in this sense: the Creator forbids man and woman to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The words of the enticement, that is to say the temptation, as formulated in the sacred text, are an inducement to transgress this prohibition-that is to say, to go beyond that “limit”: “When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God “like gods”], knowing good and evil.”

“Disobedience” means precisely going beyond that limit, which remains impassable to the will and the freedom of man as a created being. For God the Creator is the one definitive source of the moral order in the world created by him. **Man cannot decide by himself what is good and what is evil-cannot “know good and evil, like God.” *In the created world God indeed remains the first and sovereign source for deciding about good and evil, through the intimate truth of being, which is the reflection of the Word, the eternal Son, consubstantial with the Father. To man, created to the image of God, the Holy Spirit gives the gift of conscience, so that in this conscience the image may faithfully reflect its model, which is both Wisdom and eternal Law, the source of the moral order in man and in the world. “Disobedience,” as the original dimension of sin, means the rejection of this source, through man’s claim to become an independent and exclusive source for deciding about good and evil The Spirit who “searches the depths of God,” and who at the same time is for man the light of conscience and the source of the moral order, knows in all its fullness this dimension of the sin inscribed in the mystery of man’s beginning. And the Spirit does not cease “convincing the world of it” in connection with the Cross of Christ on Golgotha.

The encyclical can be found online here
The Baltimore Catechism: The Purpose of Man’s Existence
  1. Why did God make us? God made us to show forth His goodness and to share with us His everlasting happiness in heaven.
Eye has not seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man, what things God has prepared for those who love him. (I Corinthians 2:9)

Goodness comes from God.

God Bless you.
+Jesus, I Trust In You!
Love, Dawn
 
AntiTheist said:
“Goodness” or morality is a strategy that humans – as cooperative animals – have developed to promote our goals and values.

Early on in the existence of our species, these goals were simple survival. Over time, and thanks to civilization, we’ve developed much grander goals for ourselves (for example, the goals of personal fulfillment and “happiness,” etc.).

If you study animals, you’ll see that other social animals similarly have codes of behavior and rules regulating members of their communities. Wolf packs make good examples – we’ve observed wolf packs banish members of their community for violating some of their most stringent laws, the most stringent of which is not harming the young, of which the pack is extremely protective.

While there may not be a “good gene,” that’s only because the behaviors we describe as good are too complicated to be regulated by a single gene. “Good” is part of a pattern of cooperative behavior that is indeed hard-wired into humans as it is in other social animals.
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Unlike wolves and other animals, human behavior involves choice.
That is why only the behavior of men can really be labeled as good or evil. Wolves are genetically encoded into the social behaviors that they display. Like chickens or chimps, they have no guilt or shame for any of the behaviors that they demonstrate on the pecking order. Their social roles likewise are based on superior and inferior individual biology. There is no remorse or pride in the roles that they play.

Warfare and murder and cheating and stealing are very much human behaviors, as is self-sacrifice. The possibility of such behaviors creates a whole new quantum of animal existence in which morality not only becomes possible, but absolutely necessary for continuing survival as a species.

Asmuch as the secular scientist may insist that human behavior is entirely determined by physics and biology, the moral indignation that the secular scientist displays when someone randomly and maliciously jabs him with a pin is exactly the same as the reaction that the theist displays from such a jab.
for the fact remains, for the theist as much as the atheist, human existence without the fact of moral choice becomes an impossible absurdity.

Simply put, as it was in the Garden when Eve chose to listen to the snake, we are not animals. The snake was simply guiltlessly follow his own nature in his suggestion that desire for the fruit was enough, while Eve was going contrary to her own.

Human behavior is not just quantitatively different than the instinctual existence of the snake, but qualitatively so. As humans we must struggle against our inner desires, or die.

The wolf engages in no such inner struggle. His role in the social structure of the pack is based entirely on instinct and pure animal ability.
 
AntiTheist said:
…
There was a thread on here a while back – it’s probably been deleted since the rhetoric was getting pretty heated – but on it, a number of Catholics freely admitted that slavery was not bad in and of itself and that in some contexts – such as when God condones it, as he does in the Old Testament – slavery can be good.

From where I stand, this is a disgusting point of view, and it demonstrates that Theists can be extreme kinds of “moral relativists.”
Click to expand...
On the contrary, from where you stand, inasmuch as slavery is an effective strategy which cooperative animals take to promote their own goals, it indeed may be defined as ‘good’.

How, according to that view, can anything become predefined as good or evil, but that it is capable of effectively promoting goals or values? Slavery has in fact been rather useful in this regard.

It is an aberration in human history—a byproduct of a particular Judeo-Christian world view— that slavery has even become considered as something which is disgusting in the first place. As it was for the Pharoahs of Egypt, so too for the Ceasars of Rome, and the Greeks and the Chinese and the caliphs too.
Without Moses leading us out of the slavery of Egypt, there would be no cries for freedom that have come to define our disgust with slavery in the first place. As they were in the past, such cries would even now be considered as silly, if not downright immoral by everyone.

Your disgust with slavery is not a product of your worldview, but a product of a Judeo-Christian world view that has now come to define disgust over slavery pan-globally.
It is no longer a moral issue, precisely because of Moses struggling with Yaweh.
 
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