What's God got to do with goodness?

The question of moral goodness can’t be considered without looking at religion. After all, religious leaders have been declaring themselves to be the true arbiters of goodness for thousands of years. But does God really have anything to do with human goodness?

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Goodness by any other name

Any search for goodness is probably doomed to wander through the wilds of religion at some point. Variations on political themes will undoubtedly slither through the under brush. Philosophies, moral codes, science and clashing systems of ethics can be expected to pounce more than once on the unsuspecting seeker. All those things have happened to me since I launched this quest on June 1.

Most days this feels like chaos and blood sport. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if there’s something wonderful about the fact that I first conceived of my destination as being the disarmingly vague concept of “goodness.” I could have been decided to search for God, one true morality, or the right kind of code for living.

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Sam Harris & the incredible, shrinking idea

I’m going to do something I rarely do. I’m going to recommend that you NOT buy a book. That’s because there is no there there, no beef on the bun of Sam Harris’ already bestselling The Moral Landscape.

Harris throws 191 pages of text and 84 pages of footnotes and references at a handful of thin ideas. He leaves so many pesky questions unanswered and glosses over so much that you don’t have to read the book to get his point. Watch Harris’ TED talk or read the Q and A or Harris’ defense of his ideas on his website and save the $26.99 for another book.

Here are Harris’ ideas in a nutshell:

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The stickiness of God

Happy Monday to you. In today’s Must Read, Emory University Professor Frans De Waal writes in The New York Times that human morality wasn’t born in religion. But that doesn’t mean we’ll ever be free of God.

(F)emale chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society?

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There ARE many paths up the mountain to enlightenment

By Diane Silver

There are many paths to enlightenment, or to the divine if you prefer, or so I've always believed. I am so pleased to see our very own Pamela K. Taylor post that thought at On Faith. Unfortunately, I'm not so pleased to see all the hate she gets in response to a very inclusive statement. I haven't read all the comments, but the first few are choice. We have a lot to learn as human beings.

If God is love, why do so many religious people hate?

By Nancy Jane Moore

If God is great and God is good
Why is your heaven so small?

That's from the song "Heaven So Small," by Susan Werner (pictured at above right), on her new album "The Gospel Truth."

I heard her on NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday this morning and immediately flashed on the Phelps family. Of course, they are just one example of religious haters.

Different religious traditions often hate others: Muslims and Jews both trace their heritage back to Abraham, but are at each others' throats. The Crusades were partly intended to bring Christianity to the Muslim world, either by conversion or by killing off Muslims. The conflict between India and Pakistan has a lot to do with conflicts between Hindus and Muslims -- aggravated by Christians during the British control of the subcontinent.

But even within religious traditions there is a lot of hate. We see it in the conflicts between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq right now, but the conflict between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland has always brought the conflict home to me -- perhaps because a chunk of my ancestors were Irish. If people who come from the same ethnic background and worship the same God as Christians are killing each other in the name of that God, somebody clearly wasn't listening to Jesus. (I've got my fingers crossed about the recent resolution of this fight.)

And yes, I know that all those conflicts also have a lot to do with politics and money, but religion always fans the flames. People who are not willing to fight to make their leaders wealthy will often enthusiastically go to war if they're told it's in the name of God.

This hate in the name of God exists in many smaller venues. I recall once visiting a Baptist Sunday School class with a friend. The teacher spent most of the time telling us how evil Roman Catholics were, and then, realizing that she had guests, said, "I hope none of you are Catholic." I regret to this day that I didn't say "I am."

In Washington, D.C., the local joke is that the most segregated hour of the week is 11 AM on Sunday morning -- an embarrassing legacy of slavery and its aftermath.

The Episcopal Church -- the church of my childhood and once a denomination associated more with wealth and privilege than anything else -- has become one of the few established churches trying to open its doors to all. There are historically black and historically white Episcopal congregations, but they're starting to merge. The church was one of the earliest to ordain women, and then to accept gays in the priesthood and now even as bishops. This has caused conflict within the church -- and even more within the larger Anglican communion -- but the Episcopalians are struggling to survive these fights while remaining open to all.

Alas, the Phelps family is only one of the more extreme examples of those who call themselves Christians but preach a gospel of hate.

The Episcopalians appear to have a very expansive view of heaven. With Susan Werner, I ask all the religious haters, "Why is your heaven so small?"

Religion & meaning: How to talk about Islam and atheism

Let me call your attention to the fascinating exchange between Bill and our very own Pamela K. Taylor. Bill started with a comment on Pamela's post about the veil in Islam, and then a dialogue on Islam, atheism, religion, rigidity and meaning ensued.

It's good stuff, and it shows how people of very different perspectives can talk reasonably. Here are some snippets.

Bill:

I'm sure there is importance to these rituals, but I think when their observance is seen more important than the underlying reason for them, true meaning is lost in the religion and the religious leaders are capable of corrupting people into following their will instead of the actual religion.

Pamela:

I think you are raising really important issues when it comes to rigidity in faith...To me, it's not extreme at all to pray five times a day in a ritual format, rather the prayers are a beautiful ritual, that provide just the right balance -- short reminders throughout the day of your true place in the universe (something I think atheists can relate to very well, or I least I certainly did when I was an atheist...