Why good is so hard to come by?

Have you ever thought about how something good is ruined so easily?

I was pondering this as I was making some pancakes. I was flipping these pancakes that looked so good and great. I was starving. I had to wake up about 7 that morning and I was up late with my best friend talking about our europe trip.

I noticed a hair baked into one of the sides of the pancake. It was not mine. I dont know where it came from. It was gross for sure! I picked it out of the cooked brown batter. Then i thought, how nasty but it is about 99% of the actual pancake. It was sterilized by the heat of the skillet so it was not a health risk. Yet, I wanted to throw it out. Why is that?

I think there are a few good reasons.

One is that good is usually a standard that is unmeetable by human standards. Good is relative in the sense of absolute significance but absolute in the essence of existence. What I mean by this is that Good is not relative when it exists. There is good and bad, but it can be relative about how much good there actually is. It is comparable. We see more goodness in other activities. For example, we all agree that helping the poor is good; however, when we compare it to saving a airplane full of people or some grand event, we usually consider that better (now I am speaking in strictly positive sense, not normative). So we categorize the amount of good in each state.

What does this mean? Good is a constant moving target. Usually when something is actually good, we find it hard to accept that it really is as good as what we are experiencing. We usually deny or poke holes in the absolute goodness. We down grade it and try to find meaning in the "bads". Because, frankly, we are much more obsessed with bad than we are with good. Good is something we often dont study or care much about it. We think it is ordinary and forgettable, even with the paradox that good is often lacking in the world. Take a few examples: the news probigates on drama and usually bad news. We tend to remember the times people hurt us and forget the times people were really good to us. It can take 6 months to gain a good friendship, but you can loose it in 6 seconds. Look at movies, the good kid on the block is usually portrayed as boring and lame. Media thinks that he is missing out on life. Another example, those that God has blessed with salvation early in life usually think their salvation "experience" is boring or not interesting (FYI a interesting salvation story is a perspective argument and "interesting" stories does not lead people to salvation).

It so ironic how most of us think or see the world is cluttered with evil. Good is really hard to come by, yet we think "good" as boring. How often do we forget God? How often do we lose something that was really good but got bored with it? Human beings are sinfully fascinated with evil. I think this relates to our flesh and internal desires. We have a pride issue about good. So, it is a constant paradox: good is often hard to do and hard to see in the world, yet we often are disinterested with good. "Good" is hard to do and hard to be, but our culture values "evil" for its excitement (even if it is easier to do than obey God).

Been a while

I have written elsewhere on my laptop. I have a co-share with my facebook. Most of my friends look at my facebook but I suppose I need to just transpose all of my posts and ideas.

The main brunt of my studies have been psychology lately. I have been looking into the two different processes of the brain, automatic and reflective. There have been some interesting writing from Haidt and his Happiness Hypothesis. One point he stressed over and over is the ability to control our automatic nature that causes us to do things against our long-term interest (He takes the more Socratic approach of Akrsia which means lack of command of oneself). He draws the distinction that this most likely is the sinful and natural side of humans, Haidt quotes Paul from the Bible. He suggests that people meditate on something else to change the direction of the automatic process. It is weird how secular scientists come to the same conclusion scripture teaches.

Joshua 1:6-8 (English Standard Version)

⁶ Be strong and courageous, for you shall cause this people to inherit the land that I swore to their fathers to give them. ⁷Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to do according to all the law that Moses my servant commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may have good success^] wherever you go. ⁸This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.

The way to oppose our flesh is to think about Christ and the Word. Do not focus on what our flesh is saying. This is exactly what Haidt says to do.

All knowledge is the reflection of Christ.

God interacting with the World

So, I was thinking about the nature of grace and the mighty love that God displayed to us with the sacrifice of His Son. I was listening to a debate between Hitchens and D'Souza. Hitchens kept accusing Christianity of being a guiltless and illogical faith or putting your problems on Him instead of fixing yourself. I would not disagree with him, on certain points, but the tone he uses is incorrect. I think it is perfectly logical that grace and mercy is the way of God rather than a works defined salvation.

Lets start with the beginning, human nature. Lets assume that the baseline is how humans act within the world. Leaving aside that all humans act as if God exists, such as speaking in absolutes and morals.

Humanity has a internal desire to improve themselves to strive to be better. We constantly try to break free of our bondage that surrounds us and improve ourselves through whatever means. Every body has a goal or has a set priorities in life. We gauge how we are as people on these goals. If it is your job, then a promotion or getting the job done is your rule of thumb. If it is doing drugs, getting high as much as possible is considered success.

This drive to be good or to be a good human being has to come from somewhere. I do think it is a a priori motive that we are born with.

So if God does interact with the world around us, how would you think God would do this? By interacting, I mean the purpose of salvation. If God does exist, He would have to be a good creator, based on the ability of our own mind, the world itself, rules, love, etc. (this is another debate to be had). God would take the opposite route of salvation rather than what the world presents.

It is very reasonable that God would offer salvation apart from what our human nature is prone too. We always lean on our own works or our own self to justify our existence. Have you ever played bomb shelter? Well, the situation is that there is a bunch of fictional people standing outside a bomb shelter. There are only 10 spots in the shelter but 20 people standing outside. Your job is tell who is saved and who dies in the bomb that will go off soon. The point of the exercise is to show what the participants really value. Immediately, everyone goes straight to what this person did or what they do for a living. It is a entire work/ man centered logic of salvation. With Christianity, my entire identity and purpose is found not in myself but in God. My salvation came only by grace so that no one can boast and no one can say that they deserve salvation. God showed grace apart from my own doing.

If God offered salvation in the scope of what the world is prone to, what is the need for that salvation? If salvation was defined by the adherence to rules of the Mormon church or following the 5 pillars, how is this different than just trying to be a good person without these religions?

It is necessary that God would offer salvation the way He did otherwise it could be attained through other means rather than strictly through Him. If God does exist, He would certainly want to be with those He wants and those that follow Him. If salvation is no different than what the world presents, there is no need to follow what He wants or He desires because it would be a moot subject; you already saved. How special would that be? There would be no differential between those saved and those who are not. Granted, this is under the presupposition that there is both heaven and hell, but without this God could not enact justice in the afterlife and salvation would be pointless. He would have to accept everyone regardless of whatever soul does on this earth.

Yet I digress into another topic, why heaven and hell are both needed.

To summate,

1) It is reasonable that God would offer salvation opposite of human tendencies otherwise their is no significance

2) Salvation through God, by grace, is a completely foreign idea to our own nature.

3) Human tendency is to make works the definition of who we are (what we do is who we are)

4) Relying only on grace of God for salvation is consistent with differentiation needed for judgement to take place in the afterlife. As in, this grace is consistent with a good natured God, a just God.

5) If God does exist, He would want us to follow His will but if salvation can be attained through the world, there is no need to follow His will.

Absolutes

I have been thinking about the nature of absolutes. My central concern about this issue is whether absolutes can exist in a materialistic universe. As in, can a naturalist explain the existence of moral, logical, ethical, scientific, absolutes?



I would like to focus on the idea of moral and ethical absolutes. It seems to me that the core doctrine of a naturalist is that we are created in a series of gradual processes from a single ancestry. So basically, everything in existence is explained only in the terms of natural things. The soul and spirit do not exist. These are actually made up and detrimental to mental health, according to fascist Darwinists of Hitchens, Harris, and Dawkins. Humans are simply chemical beings who are no different from the ant or a dog at the most basic level. Although, Sam Harris would say that we are different and disagrees with Hitchens, Peter Singer, and Dawkins about the nature of PETA and animal rights. In general though, humans do not have any special status.



So, moving on from this point, my main disagreement with naturalists is how can they make absolute statements? Think about what worldview they present. If life is the product of purely random processes, then what is there to appeal to make a moral and ethical absolute statement?

My position is that these people operate under the presupposition that God does exist. The only way to make a statement of truth and claim it is absolute is to appeal to something constant and everlasting. The absolute statement by itself is suppose to exist for all-time. The only thing or idea that a naturalist could appeal to is the idea of evolution. Macro Evolution does not fit the requirements of a good authority. First, it is not directed. Those who argue that evolution has purpose or a plan is ignorant of the original theory. This is addition to the idea of a purely RANDOM process. To claim Evolution has a direction is to claim their is a ultimate purpose to life or goal to life. Then you have to ask, what is this goal? Who placed this goal or plan because ideas or plans have to have author or mind? Ideas do not appear from nothing, then again evolutionary theory is a self-contradictory statement because there has to be a ultimate cause and plus they have NO answer for how life began, unless you believe in directed panspermia (which is laughable).

Secondly, it is not consistent or predictable. Thirdly, only immaterial concepts or beings can actually be considered valid absolute authorities. The reason is absolutes are supposed to be transcendental and true for all known times. It does not change per person or a change per location. So appealing to a naturalism authority is no authority of any significance at all. There is no consistency what so ever, so thus you would be claiming it is not absolute but can in some ways be self-refuting, a internally inconsistent truth, which is not truth at all.

On a more graduated level, speaking in absolutes requires a presupposition that a transcendental idea or mind exists. The only possible way for universal statements to make any sort of sense is for immateriality to exist as well, unless we all want to be incoherent beings. Naturalism fails to explain the existence of immateriality and fails to account for the idea of universalism.

Certainly, a Darwinist came make a absolute statement, like there is no god and evolution is the answer to all of our problems. I think there statement really has no authority to support it because it is not based on any significant idea that is considered universal in nature. They are making a leap from the natural world to the universal world. Darwinists cannot give in moral or ethical guidance (well in actually there is no morals or ethics to them in the first place) and cannot make any supportable absolute claim about life. Eventually, if you believe in a naturalism, you reach a cross hair. You reach the worldview that truth does not exist and nothing is absolute. You also reach the point of no morals or intrinsic value to anything at all. So does this even remotely compare to how we live our life? NO! A naturalistic worldview is completely irrational and removed from the reality of human life. So ultimately, this worldview fails on one the best tests for a validity of a worldview: how does it compare to real life. Although naturalists speak as though they have universal and exclusive truth, they really do not have the philosophical support to make such claims. The existence of God is implied in their logic.