The Highest Good A Human Being Can Attain on Earth!!

 The whole article is fictious. However, I believe that it captures the world views so presented. The names are not exact representations of anybody in particular, with exception of Kidha who is myself. If it by any chance corresponds to your name, I am sorry but I didn’t mean you. Now get on and read for yourself, the verdict is yours.
Persons of the DialogueKidha (Christian Philosopher) who is also the narratorOloo Aguambo (ancestral representative)David Humes (Atheist)Abdul Osman Min Mandela(Muslim Philosopher)

And others who are mute auditors
The scene is laid in the house of Abdul Osman Min Mandela; and Kidha narrates the whole dialogue the day after it took place to Gustafson, Dejong and Kibor (My university lecturers).
I went down yesterday to Mavivye with Oloo the son of Aguambo, that I might offer my prayers to Jehovah; and also I wanted to see in what manner I would most sensibly live my life.
Kidha: It is very encouraging that all of us made it in time as agreed. Let us continue being good stewards of the same by starting our discussion straight away. I will start by posing this question to Abdul Osman. What do you perceive as the highest good a human being can hope for?
Abdul: It all goes without saying, being a righteous and God-fearing man through submission to Allah because he only is God. It is in his power to bless us or to destroy us.

Humes: That isn’t all you would call the highest good, I suppose.

Abdul:Certainly.

Kidha: That seems too cheap an idea for me to buy. Please clarify what submission to Allah means to you.
Abdul: Islam has laid down some universal fundamental rights for humanity as a whole, which are to be observed and respected under all circumstances. To achieve these rights Islam provides not only legal safeguards but also a very effective moral system. Thus whatever leads to the welfare of the individual or the society is morally good in Islam and whatever is injurious is morally bad. Islam attaches so much importance to the love of God and love of man that it warns against too much of formalism. Sura 2:177 of the Holy Quran gives a clear and beautiful description of the righteous and God-fearing man. He should not only obey salutary regulations, but he should also fix his gaze on the love of God and the love of his fellow men. We are given four heads: Our faith should be true and sincere, we must be prepared to show it in deeds of charity to our fellow-men, we must be good citizens, supporting social organization and, our own individual soul must be firm and unshaken in all circumstances.

Aguambo: What a vague and misconceived understanding of the highest good! It sounds quite highly unattainable? Indeed, that is not what I would prefer to hold on as my highest good. Rather, the highest good is to live in harmony with my ancestors. Since they are never visible, reverence for them is portrayed in the way we live with others. This lies in the philosophy that I am because we are. I need to be happy and make my ancestors happy. The joy of everyone else is the joy I want to have. Happiness is only happiness when everybody else shares the same feelings with the others. It is rather happier to mourn with the mourners than to rejoice with those who rejoice if at all the option of mourning is available. This is so because the consciousness of mourning once conceived in the mind remains disturbing even while you seek pleasures in other ways as rejoicing. Thus, the issue of rejoicing is pushed aside because it will obviously fail to materialize as a genuine act and feeling. Therefore, in order to make the rejoicing a reality that is felt in act and mind undisturbed, the sharing of sorrows with those in sorrowful moments is given the first priority as a prerequisite to enjoying happy moments with those who are happy. In other words, it is a moral obligation for every individual to know the weight of one another’s burden and this is only possible through carrying of one another’s burden. This is not an issue of choice but an obligation. Whoever fails to obey is administered to the necessary disciplinary actions equal to his conduct. This is done by the relevant authorities: the ancestors: also called the living dead. The punishment is often severe and ranges from inflicting pain on the offender to even causing his death.

Humes: Abdul echoed some sentiments that to me are improbable to think of. How do you expect me to think of a God who does not exist? What slightest evidence do you have for the existence of Allah?
Abdul: There is more evidence than I can give for the existence of Allah. The simplest that I believe you quite easily understand is that of the way he delivered the Quran to Mohammed through angel Gabriel.
Humes: Wait a minute a minute. Do you mean to talk about what my good friend Kidha would probably call miracles? The transgression of the law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity, or the interposition of some invisible agent? Forget it. That is very a cheap and an untested theory. Miracles don’t really occur. It is that you people have just mistaken natural events for supernatural events. These people who talk of miracles have distorted or misinterpreted what they have observed. Either, their senses are poor. Or their emotions are worked up, or they need a miracle and thus project their inner wishes into some otherwise ordinary events. These things you call miracles can be perfectly explained by ordinary laws of nature, which have not yet been discovered. After all, there is much about the world we do not yet understand. Therefore no events need to be explained by appeal to the supernatural, no matter how much they go against what we know as the law of nature. The simple reason is that it is intrinsically impossible for natural laws to have exceptions3. To wind up dear friends, I feel that anyone who accepts the report of miracle as true and thus believes in God, must do so on the basis of pure faith and against what his reason and the evidence tell him.

Aguambo: You sound very rebellious and unreligious Humes. Who made you? You haven’t told us your highest your highest good too.
Humes: Nature. I was able to develop a belief system based upon respect for truth and knowledge, questioning all assumptions backed by a sense of morality because of the culture I have grown up in. I am not a rebel; I have not rejected huge chunks of our society’s basic values despite the fact that we live in a culture that pays lip service to respecting the rebel. I have adopted a subculture that respects freedom of thought as being one of the highest values. This has been relatively pain-free for me compared to for example, a white woman from Mississippi taking up Islam or a Peruvian becoming a Hindu. Indeed I can claim some credit for my choice of atheism. But that does not matter, the truthfulness of a proposition is not affected either way by the number of people who adhere to it or the level of sacrifice they endure to propound it. You could martyr a billion nuns and they would still be just as misguided. The highest good is a mental tranquility, freedom from disturbance. Pleasures of the mind, the joy of beauty and friendship are most preferred to me above all.

Kidha: Your objection on the existence of God based on miracles is rather shallow. My counter – objection is based on the fact that your approach seems to be purely arbitrary. How do we know that miracles are impossible? If it is merely a dogmatic assumption, what reason is there to accept it? Who are we to legislate what reality can and cannot do? It would have been better if you asked how we account for it. Still, I beg to prove to you that God exists by saying that the very concept or idea of God implies his reality. If a person can clearly conceive of God, then he ought to be able to understand that God must exist. Even for the fool who says in his heart that there is no God, I say that to deny the existence of God, the fool must understand the idea of God. God must exist at least as an idea in the understanding of the fool. And to Whom God is I say he is the greatest conceivable being: that which none greater can be conceived. It is greater to exist in reality than merely to exist in the understanding. Since God is the greatest possible being, it is impossible for God to exist only in the understanding of the fool. For in that case, a greater being than God could easily be conceived, namely, a being that exists both in understanding and reality. Having explained the existence of God, I beg to give an explanation of the highest good a human being can hope for. Man’s highest good is to know God and enjoy fellowship with him forever. Love, then, is the highest virtue, for it is the kind of love (agape) that has its source and its end in God himself.

Abdul: Kidha is partially right on the issue of God. However, I beg to differ with him in one or two points of his belief in God. I believe in one God called Allah. Allah is united and is only one. He is not three as portrayed by the Christians in the name of trinity. This is the jargon that I fail to comprehend, how one God is said to be three and the three is one at the same time, as Kidha supposes it to be. It beats the logic and is self-contradicting unless he can convincingly argue it out; I strongly feel that his understanding of God is ill advised and misconceived.
Aguambo: I don’t see us progressing in this discussion if we keep at this pace. Moreover, I have a commitment elsewhere so I must be out of here in the next one hour.
Humes: It seems as if everyone’s perception of the highest good takes totally different directions. Perhaps we can redirect this dialogue by posing the question: how can a person achieve this greatest good? Aguambo, you may want to bring around the conversation?
Aguambo: Just as I had indicated earlier I wish to assert that being happy and doing good to everyone else. Do good do for yourself; do bad do for yourself so goes an old saying in my village. The only way to achieve the highest good is by living interdependently with others. Living as if you depended on everyone and as if everyone depended on you. Making everybody feel happy whenever you cannot avoid it. This way the ancestors will be happy and you will be guaranteed good life both now and later when you become an ancestor. By being good you secure yourself chance of being a good spirit when you graduate from the ancestry.

Humes: Knowledge, as I had stated earlier is the highest good one can hope for. The idea of God does not have a place in my thinking.
Abdul: I do not understand what you mean.

Humes: Then I must make you understand; and perhaps I may be more intelligible if I put the matter in this way. It is obvious that we have no perception of God by means of our senses. We are to imagine that we could discover effects from their causes by the mere operation of reason, without experience. We should let the ideas of the world exist in their own right. It is simpler and more empirical.

Aguambo: That too I do not quite understand.
Humes: I fear that I must be a ridiculous teacher when I have so much difficulty in making myself apprehended. Like a bad speaker, therefore I will not take the whole of the subject, but will break a piece of in illustration of my meaning. Everything is reduced to the subjective experience of the moment and the fading memory traces of past experience. Ideas of God, matter, casualty or self have no foundation in sensory experience. Thus, there is no justification in believing them. We cannot help in life believing in many things. The point is that there are no solid reasons for accepting any of those beliefs. We need to make use of our common senses.
Kidha: Pardon my intrusion sir, I’m questioning whether this world you are describing would have any element of truth in it.
Humes: It will certainly be a truer world. I mean people would have a truer view of the world. I think it would probably be a better world. I think people would be less ready to fight each other because so much of the motivation for fighting would have been removed. I think it would be a better world. It would be a better world in the sense that people would be more fulfilled in having a proper understanding of the world instead of a superstitious understanding.

Kidha: Don’t you feel like a vacuum when you live like you depended on your own.

Humes: I feel no vacuum. I mean, I feel very happy, very fulfilled. I love my life and I love all sorts of aspects of it, which have nothing to do with my science. So I don’t have a vacuum. I don’t feel cold and bleak. I don’t think the world is a cold and bleak place. I think the world is a lovely and a friendly place and I enjoy being in it.
Abdul: So how do you prepare for this highest good?
Humes: You prepare for it by facing up to the truth, which is that life is what we have and so we had better live our life to the full while we have it, because there is nothing after it. We are very lucky accidents or at least each one of us is – if we hadn’t been here, someone else would have been. I take all this to reinforce my view that I am fantastically lucky to be here and so are you, and we ought to use our brief time in the sunlight to maximum effect by trying to understand things and get as full a vision of the world and life as our brains allow us to, which is pretty full.
Abdul: Actually, according to the Quran and Sunnah a Muslim has to discharge his moral responsibility not only to his parents, relatives and neighbors but also to the entire mankind, animals and useful trees and plants. For example, hunting of birds and animals for the sake of game is not permitted. Similarly cutting trees and plants that yield fruit is forbidden unless there is a very pressing need for it. Thus, on the basic moral characteristics, Islam builds a higher system of morality by virtue of which mankind can realize its greatest potential. Islam purifies the soul from self-seeking egotism, tyranny, wantonness and indiscipline. It creates God-fearing men, devoted to their ideals, possessed of piety, abstinence and discipline and uncompromising with falsehood. It induces feelings of moral responsibility and fosters the capacity for self-control. Islam generates kindness, generosity, mercy, sympathy, peace, disinterested goodwill, scrupulous fairness and truthfulness towards all creation in all situations. It nourishes noble qualities from which only good may be expected.
Kidha: I wonder whether you will agree with this different remark that occurs to me?

Aguambo: What may that be?
Kidha: Faith. The means of attaining the highest good.
Humes: How does that work?
Kidha: Christian faith turns on the reality of God’s existence, his being there. It also turns on an acceptance of the fact that man’s dilemma is moral and not metaphysical. Each person must face these two things on his own level as a matter of truth. A Philippian jailer asked Paul and Silas, What must I do to be saved? They answered: Believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shall be saved, thou and thy house. The answers of Paul and Silas were not spoken in a vacuum. Because of the earthquake and the way Paul and Silas behaved in the prison, the jailer had a reason to be aware of the existence of a personal God – one who acts in history, answers prayers, and gives men reality in their lives. True Christian faith rests on content. it is not a vague thing which takes the place of real understanding, nor is it the strength of belief which is of value. The true basis for faith is not the faith itself but the work, which Christ finished on the cross. My believing is not the basis for being saved. The basis is the work of Christ. Christian faith is turned outward to an objective person: Believe on the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved. Once the truth of God’s existence is known to us, and we know that we have a true moral quilt before a holy God, then we should be glad to know the solution to our dilemma. The solution is from God’s side not ours.

Humes: It was clear from the onset. You Christians would always take the slightest opportunity to make others feel how most right you are. You are going round and round. Please tell us how faith achieves the highest good.

Kidha: I was coming to that. Every nation without a rule is like a tree without the roots. I had to build a basis for my belief, otherwise without the roots, like a tree, it would collapse. As man is faced with God’s promises, Christian faith means bowing twice: First, he needs to bow in the realm of Being: “that is to acknowledge that he is a creature before the infinite Personal Creator who is there. Second, he needs to bow in the realm of morals that is, to acknowledge that he has sinned and therefore he has true guilt before the God who is there. If he has a true moral quilt before an infinite God, he has the problem that he, as finite, has no way to remove such quilt. Thus what he needs is a non-humanist solution. Now he is faced with God’s prepositional promise, believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved. In conclusion, I am saying that salvation is the means of attaining the highest good. From salvation other great promises that accompany it will follow. But without salvation, whatever they are may be more of fantasies to you because they are unseen but just hoped for.

Aguambo: You have just complicated issues and I suggest that you should not be let off to continue with such unpolished sentiments. A man of your age should leave in reality. Talk of confirmed things like the experiences often had with the ancestors and not just what you think will cool your head off the many worries that escalate from you incompetence in managing your daily affairs. You are just escaping from responsibility.
Kidha: Why am I especially not to be let off?
Abdul: Why? We think that you are lazy, and mean to cheat us out of a whole chapter which is a very important part of the story; and you fancy that we shall not notice your airy way of proceeding; as if it were self evident to everybody, that the matter of goodness and its attainment have all things in common. Faith is quite illusionary. You are in a dreamland. You must simply be good, do most good and least evil and you then anticipate the highest good in heaven if at all Allah deems it appropriate.  

Kidha’s argument is based on William’s philosophy of William Frankena, a contemporary philosopher who adopted the term ‘agapism’ to refer to an ethical theory that reduces morality to one principle, the principle of love. The word comes from a Greek word for love used in the New Testament to refer to love that is unconditional and willed on the basis of need rather than merit. The same ethic is summarized in the words of Jesus according to Matthew 22: 37-40. Thus, to Frankena, this is the principle from which other ethical duties spring from.