Why isn't piety and essential part of human goodness?

Question

For an essay we are supposed to: 1)either agree or disagree with the following statement: "Piety is an essential part of human goodness. That is, a person who is an atheist lacks some crucial human goodness that only a belief in God can provide." I was going to disagree with this but we have to give reasons supporting our decision and the only one I can come up with is that I know people who don't believe in God and they are still good people. Anyone have any other reasons this statement isn't true?
Also, we have to 2) write how we might see Socrates' challenge to Euthyphro as a challenge to this view
If anyone can help me out with one or both of these parts I would greatly appreciaite it! Thanks :)

Answer 1

In Euthyphro, it is made to seem that what is good is either completely arbitrary and at the whim of the gods, or the what is good is set somehow and is above even the gods. This proves a difficulty for pious Euthyphro, who neither likes the idea of completely arbitrary good nor the idea of gods being subservient to it.

This is important in part one of your question, because if there is some concrete goodness that exists independantly of the divine, the it's possible that a person might be very good indeed even if they were an atheist. But if there is no concrete good and it's based only on the whim of gods, then it's simply not possible to be good unless you are pious first - without gods to tell you, you'd never know what to do.

Of course, even with that view there's some middle ground. It's possible that the universal good still requires piousness even without gods enforcing it. Or it could be that humans are not capable for one reason or another of figuring out what that good is and still be dependant on gods for that reason.

If you believe that non-pious people can still be good, it suggests at least that you believe people can understand and achieve goodness on their own, and that it is something that is not determined directly by the gods themselves.

That you can think of good people who were not pious is probably a good piece of evidence. You might also mention that many completely different religions have similar ideas of what it means to be good, suggesting that any particular one may not have a monopoly on the good stuff. It also bears mention that pretty much all religions had some starting point in history, so unless you accept that everyone before the genesis of religion was unremittingly evil it is possible that no particular piety was necessary to achieve goodness.

Where Socrates would get you would be to try and pin you down. If the gods don't determine what it good, he would probably argue, and if people can figure it out, then it should be easy for us to produce some kind of ethical system that can unquestionably determine whether any particular action is good or bad. Of course, though each of us may have a moral code, none of us has a system with easy definitions that would be universally accepted. Even the collections of rules we tend to use would be scorned by Socrates - to him, a class of objects should have very specific and narrow metrics, making lists of rules seem awkward and ridiculous.

Hope that helps! Peace.

Answer 2

My people believe that each of us have a relationship with the Spirit World which is uniquely our own. Even the 'athiest' has a relationship which is based on denial. But the Spirit World and the Physical World are very separate things and ones beliefs are never justification (or excuse) for actions taken in the Physical World.

Doug

Answer 3

you can believe in God and still not do right, so believing in God really does not matter to be honest. a good person is a good person no matter if they are Catholic, athiest, or Jewish. the heart of a person, the good nature of a person, the honest of a person, and the purity of one actions is what really counts. a bad or evil person is just that as well. yet, in every good person there lies a bit of anger for if the right person or thing pushes the right button even the best of us lose our temper; we are sorry after words but we still can lose it, we are only human.