Being Good Takes God

One of my friends and brothers, Linn Hartman, spoke to me concerning a 60 Minutes spot about a young man named Greg Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University. Epstein wrote a book titled, You Can Be Good Without God. In describing his book, Epstein tells us it is a book about community or being a community of Humanists who can be and are good without God. He speaks about nurturing the spiritual (offering a disclaimer saying you don't have to use the word spiritual, you could use the word emotional) needs of people that arise because we're human.

There are two things in the last sentence that are interesting to me: 1) The first word that came to his mind as he was discussing his Humanist Philosophy is the word "spiritual." No one uses the word spiritual when talking about the needs of a dog or a daffodil. They use the word when speaking about the needs of people. Why would that word come to mind? Could it be that there is within us a spiritual longing? We could use the word emotional or emotions, but it gives an entirely different thought than the word spiritual. When we think of emotions we think of feelings - depression or euphoria; happy or sad. But when we think of spiritual we think more of a state of being, something higher than earthly or touchy, feely, at least that's how I understand it. Why is it that man seeks things spiritual? It's a good question and needs to be pondered. 2) That he uses the word human. If there is no God why would we make a distinction between us and the other animals? We would be only a little higher form of primordial soup. We just happen to have climbed, through no plan or thought of our own, to a higher plain than our sign language capable monkey cousins.

Man makes distinctions between animals and us because there is an obvious distinction. There are so many distinctions that I couldn't make even a reasonable attempt to list them all or even half of them. But I will say that two of them, as stated above, are mentioned by Epstein and they demonstrate this great distinction. If we are just higher plain same, then these seeming distinctions must be brushed aside because me and my pet goldfish are equals.

In addition, where do we get the definition of good if there is no God? If I am just an animal and I kill another animal and I say it's good, is it not good? Why not? Does it take a collective to determine the good? And if a collective, does a 51 to 49 vote determine it or do we have to have a 65 to 35 ratio? Who decides what the ratio should be. Was Hitler correct in his attempt to annihilate the seeming weaker races? Why not? He was in power and the people beneath him appeared to agree with his doctrine. Would it not be good to kill all the Jewish people?

We understand that those who would espouse such a doctrine are evil (another of those without God undefinable words) and warped in their thinking. We understand it this way because we have within us that great understanding of what is right and what is wrong and it was placed there by an infinite God. Without the placing of those definitions we would be nothing but animals and good would be whatever I say good is.