{"id":986,"date":"2009-02-04T05:22:39","date_gmt":"2009-02-04T09:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/?p=986"},"modified":"2023-04-11T15:18:15","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T19:18:15","slug":"meditation-point-126-good-motivates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/meditation-point-126-good-motivates\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation Point #126 – Good Motivates…"},"content":{"rendered":"

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
\n<\/em>— Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999<\/p>\n

At first glance this seems to make sense, but the more I ponder this quote, the more apparent is becomes that it is a total load of horse5#!7.\u00a0 It amazes me how intelligent people can say some of the stupidest things…and believe them.\u00a0 That does not mean that my views are beyond question as I am sure some will assert.\u00a0 But this statement relies on facts that are not present or demonstrable.\u00a0 First the above statement predisposes people to either do good or evil things, hence the “good” people do good things and those “evil” people doing evil things.\u00a0 Hmmm if this is true than we should be able to determine who is good and who is evil, perhaps with the help of Santa Clause, and then round them up and eradicate them from society.\u00a0 Then you would only have good people doing good things!\u00a0 Is that realistic?\u00a0 No, it isn’t very realistic, the good people would probably view this type of behavior as evil…no?\u00a0 In reality, the evil people left unchecked will consume the good people until the evil people far outnumber the good people leaving the good people helpless for perpetual victimization. A good person is one defined as someone who is “good to other people”.\u00a0 While an evil person is “somebody whose selfishness and perceived inhumanity or vicious behavior terrifies and disgusts people”!\u00a0 But in this world without religion would people be inclined to do good?\u00a0 If so why?\u00a0 Without religion you would be much more prone to only be concerned with your own needs and desires.\u00a0 By definition this would make you a candidate to be labeled an evil person.\u00a0 This has to lead to the understanding that Steven Weinberg’s “without religion” is incorrect.\u00a0 Since he knows religion exists this quote must en a dig at religion indicating that only through religion can good people do evil things.\u00a0 There is that presumption that we can discern good people from evil but let’s let that slide for now.<\/p>\n

Examining with his caveat, good people do evil things when religion is involved, we should first define religion.\u00a0 For simplicity let’s leave God out of this for right now.\u00a0 So this argument stands first we should define religion: “A set of beliefs and practices, often centered upon specific supernatural and moral claims about reality, the cosmos …”\u00a0 The “often centered upon” text means we do NOT need a God to have a religion so we can continue.\u00a0 If we look at this from a non-God centric view we again will quickly see that evil will most likely win over good since the tendency will be toward selfish goals.\u00a0 Notice I am not putting a time line on how long this transition will take.\u00a0 Giving the “good” people the benefit of the doubt and assuming we start with more good than evil people the outcome will eventually lead to evil people being the norm.\u00a0 This shift will occur because the secular religion is subject to the whim of it’s parishioners, what feels good today may not tomorrow and hence lead to a morally acceptable shift over time.\u00a0 This happens even with God centered religion involved so there is no reason to feel secular religion would fair any better.\u00a0 Some will argue that Godless does not always equate to selfish and I will agree with the “not always” part, however, this is an exception not the norm.\u00a0 Want proof?\u00a0 Look at divorce, fidelity rates, drug use, pick your poison.<\/p>\n

What if we put God into the mix?\u00a0 From Steven Weinberg’s view this would provide the excuse for good people to do evil things.\u00a0 I am sure he would site the Crusades or the Spanish Inquisition among his reasons for such a statement since we all know that the only atrocities in the world were motivated by religious teachings!\u00a0 Religion is to often used as an excuse of those without any for the problems of the world.\u00a0 There is a term for that, self-justification.\u00a0 Since religion is practiced by humans who are imperfect there will always be wolves in sheep’s clothing leading the flocks of the world to do wrong.\u00a0 The real problem is not with the religion but with the complacent and sheeple that follow blindly when diverting from the teachings of the religion.\u00a0 There again the real problem is that people often do not even understand their own religion much less what is acceptable.\u00a0 This is further exacerbated by the current culture of personal morality where people feel they can select which aspects of a religion they accept or deny to follow.\u00a0 If you don;t like the rules, simply change them!\u00a0 Christianity is perhaps the best example of this problem.\u00a0 In reality religion leads people to more selfless acts if a person truly believes and is part of a peaceful religion.\u00a0 Interestingly I would say that he only got the last part wrong, meaning ‘for evil people to do good things, that takes religion’!<\/p>\n

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for evil people to do good things, that takes religion.
\n<\/em>— Sensei Mitch, February 4, 2009<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. — Steven Weinberg, quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999 At first glance this seems to make sense, but the more I ponder this Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123458,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-a-zen-thing","category-it-is-a-zen-thing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123458"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=986"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4847,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/986\/revisions\/4847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karatetraining.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}