Friday, September 7, 2007

Being Good for Goodness' Sake

Sorry I've been gone so long - school has started up, and I just haven't had the time to invest here as I would like.

But hey, even if I can't produce anything good right now, at least I can point you to someone who is! Paul Scott Pruett recently examined the objection to Christian morality that says one shouldn't do good things to get a reward (i.e. heaven) but rather because those things are good in and of themselves - being "good for goodness' sake." His post is called Santa Claus Morality, and it's well worth the read. Go check it out, and tell him I sent ya!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I took a quick look at it. Bill Maher is well known to be an atheist. Another person, Dan Barker, Paul explicitly claims is an atheist. But the third person paul rails against is Natalie Portman.

Natalie might be a rabid anti-Christian, but the quotes Paul chooses don't illustrate that. Portman is expressing a personal preference: "I think [heaven is] a bad concept"; "I hate that"; "I like doing...". I think Christianity is big enough, both in numbers of adherents and in its magnanimity, to allow Portman a personal opinion without getting all paranoid or huffy about it.

Aaron Snell said...

Portman seems to have been quoted as an example of the current mentality. How you got "paranoid" and "huffy" out of it is frankly beyond me. Might I humbly suggest that personal issues are clouding your judgment here?