In the past few weeks, advertisements sponsored by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes have been placed around campus announcing a debate: “Can we have Good without God?” If you have seen the posters, you may have noticed the deliberate WWE-style “in this corner: the ex-pastor atheist” VS. “and in this corner: the moral Christian Athlete” format. Clearly, we’re meant to think that on May 15, Dan Barker of the Freedom from Religion Foundation will be squaring off in the rhetorical ring with Christian Apologist Jon Kaus of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes over whether Godless people can have “Good.”
Although I could now lay into the obviously biased format of this debate (organization both sponsoring and participating in the event, a clear attempt to establish hostility between Christian moralists and people who aren’t Christian), and even though I could write the rest of this column about fostering debate conducive to constructive, supportive and interesting dialouges about ethics on campus (because we all know that this debate is merely a forum to spout rhetoric, not come to greater understanding together as a community or anything so outrageous); rather, I want to talk about why this very question makes no sense.
If you can answer both yes and no to a question, it doesn’t make sense as a question to answer. We don’t have street signs that display both red and green simultaneously—it’s a recipe for chaos and death on the motorways. This question, “Can there be Good without God?” then necessarily has us choose a yes or no—ambiguity would deny the question, not merely an answer.
Second, there appears to be no room to stand on the affirmative if we also have Christian faith.Although there is a huge case to be made for Good without God—or merely Good that does not need God—there is no one defending that view in this debate. Clearly the affirmative will be taken up by the atheist, with whom we may agree on some points, but comes with the “ \… and there is no God” baggage that anyone with a notion of God in their religious belief won’t jive with. The counterpoint will take the negative side, probably taking the same rhetoric as 17th century philosophers who said that God is perfection, therefore anything we drive from perfection (like Good) will ultimately be due to God, and therefore we cannot have Good without God.
I’m all for public debate, but I think this event will do more for our community in its anticipation and the ruckus it stirs among us. At least we’ll be thinking about Good and God, even if the two people debating promise nothing in terms of ethical or philosophical revelation for the audience.
Now, call this back-seat driving, or maybe back-seat philosophizing, but if I could have created this event on campus, I would have titled it something like, “Goodness: in God’s image, or of God’s nature?” Since obviously no one would have thought that title any good, let me just explain why it’s philosophically relevant. The question I think is important here is whether “Good” is always necessarily created by God, or whether God can show us the way to “Good.”
I personally think that if we blame the Devil for all the Bad and credit God with the Good, we’re scapegoating our responsibility as active beings. When you get in a car crash, it may feel better if you blame bad karma, but it had probably more to do with the cell phone on your ear than a supernatural force directing the course of events.
How about a concept of Goodness like this: you do something, and then it’s good or bad, depending on what it causes or affects. Now we have plenty of routes to discovering what’s good, pure random trial and error being the least directed of them all. What if we took lessons from the Bible and then applied them to our lives in such a way that guide our actions? We then have a system of doing Good (not just “Good” but doing Good) that, if nothing else, helps replicate the kind of salvation from the Bible on Earth. God isn’t moving our bodies—we are. The wisdom we can get through faith, through millennia of religious life, could really help inform us as to how to do meaningful and good acts.
There are many routes to “Good.” Medicine, sociology, economics, psychology—all try to find the good in various ways through analytic and scientific methods. Why not think of Good as something we can achieve and create, rather than as some necessary or essential part of the universe we’ll always come hopelessly short of being in our time on earth?
Of course anyone, any group, any nation, and best yet the entire planet, when superstitious nonsense is finally erased, can be a much better collective society without the sky-fairy fabrications that create most of the problems to start with. Imagination is a wonderful asset to humankind but needs to be realized as that. Governments at all levels know that keeping the populace under control by the promotion of ignorance, fear, and divisive issues such as religious rivalries disallows unity that might detect and realize the neccessity for change.
Just to note, I’m not decrying religious faith. I rather trying to invite a different understanding of Good that doesn’t rely on a metaphysical truth antecedent to our reality.
I think you are taking the title too literally. The organizers aren’t implying that they are going to tell you the answer to the question; they are telling you this is the question that will be discussed at the event. You are quick to say this event will contain few to zero thoughtful points and also judge the motivation for staging the debate. Lastly, you say the question in the title makes no sense to answer, but I would argue most of the sentences in this article make no sense and exist only to show off your vocabulary. So I’m being quick to judge, but I think it’s fair to judge this article because it is presented as though it is a thoughtful analysis of a debate, when it really is only an analysis of an advertisement.
Sorry to be so harsh, but that’s the impression I get from this article.