Thursday, July 05, 2007

This is interesting...

Belief in God is usually not merely belief in God; it is usually at least four beliefs rather than one: 1) There is a god. 2) It is good. 3) It wants us to be good in a particular way. 4) We have reliable knowledge of 1-3.

What I thought about as I read this was the 'good' part. Every religion has their morals, what is 'good' and what is 'bad'. I find it very difficult to understand how someone can convince themselves that an understanding of good and bad would be anything but anthropogenic. Even a basic comprehension of human beings should lead anyone to the conclusion that any assertions concerning the concepts of good and evil would have to be motivated to some degree by self interests. This means that any definition of good and evil should be very suspect, no matter who originates the definition.

No comments: