“If You Need Religion to Be Good You Are Not Good”

The statement “if you need religion to be good you are not good” is one of the many convoluted quibbles that the irreligious use to justify themselves, which borders on insanity. It is a meaningless statement and is totally ambiguous. First, because it does not define religion and secondly, because it does not define what goodness is.

The statement also infers that a good person always does the good which they know they ought to do, and that humans know from instinct what is good. Every truly good person knows that they do not always do, what they know is the right thing to do. Every thinking person, who is not allergic to religion, knows that humans learn good from their culture and some kind of religion is a part of every culture.

The quibble assumes that the reader knows the definition of religion; most people do not. This includes the new atheists who fancy themselves as intellectuals. What happens when you define religion as practicing virtue? Let’s replace the word ‘religion’ in the quibble with ‘virtue’, “If you need to practice virtue to be good, you are not good.” It makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

Consequently the quibble doesn’t define what it means to be good either, and it assumes that everyone knows what constitutes good.  The statement assumes that at the very least, some people are inherently good without any training from culture; or  devoid of outside instruction and limits being placed on them. In other words, some must be born good and some must be born bad, or all are born good and go bad, or all are born bad and some get better. I do wish that a little quibble could solve this paradox. Alas, it cannot for it is nonsense.

The truth is that if you are self-righteous, you do not need religion to feel righteous  because you assume you are righteous (the new atheist). In other words, you lie to yourself, or you have the moral standard of a cockroach.

The statement, “If You Need Religion to Be Good You Are Not Good” is a statement  from a self-righteous person making a fallacious underhanded moral judgment on religion and those that practice it. Did I say moral judgment? I thought the biggest sin of the left (atheism being the furthest left you can go) is to make a moral judgment. However, many of them that I know are very judgmental people. They often are a mirror image of the far right fundamentalist that they despise.

Good religion, honesty and reason would teach a person that they are not as good as they think they are. God did not give humanity religion to make men good; he gave it to show us that we are not as good as we think we are. This may be why there are so many self-righteous atheists, because they lack good religion, honest self-awareness and an enlightened moral reasoning. Good religion will always teach people that they are imperfect and in need of improvement.

In this, I am not saying that atheists are not moral people. In fact, the majority that I know seem to be quite moral. However, I don’t know any that were made moral by their atheism. Most inherited their values from their culture as most people do. In contrast, I have seen a number of people who were not moral, become so, through the help of good religion. I have seen huge numbers of people overcome addictions with the help of faith and good religion. I must sadly admit that I have also seen some fairly good people, become very evil through bad religion.