What's So Great About US???

Another reflection on Christopher Hitchens...

He says repeatedly "Any self respecting person would think..." to the effect that anyone with enough dignity and belief in their own self would not need to believe in a God who places constraints and restrictions on us? Why should he? Are we not basically good? Is humanity basically beautiful the way we are?

If Hitchen's assertion seems so self evident to him, then why is it so obvious that man is not so good after all? Who can look around and see man in all his violence, debauchery, cruelty, viciousness, and greed and say that man is innately good? Even outside the Christian perspective (Hitchens says so himself), men more or less understand right and wrong, and still overwhelmingly choose wrong.

The big word here is "fallen." Even the atheist who doesn't believe man was created for good must observe the evidence of fallenness. Perhaps he will blame it all on the religious, but then he dogmatically pursues a utopian dream of a perfected world inaugurated by the atheist elite (Dawkins call them "brights").

In any case, the fallen man is in desperate need for renewal and redirection. Though he wishes to do good, he inevitably falls away. He is either fallen or nothing at all, but certainly not inherently good.
-Steve K