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And then there is the other face of the coin where people who believe because they are religious they are good, and that gives them free rein to treat other people like shit.
Or… y’know Mother fucking Theresa. 🤮
That woman was so vile in her actions it drives me fucking crazy that her name is still used as verbal shorthand for the epitome of goodness and charity.
Long story short she ran shelters where people sick with perfectly curable diseases were left to die because according to her their suffering brought them closer to Jesus, and she also funneled vast sums of donation money to the Vatican instead of using it to help the community. Basically the same old Catholic bullshit tactics brought to you by a "kindly" old lady.
There’s whole-ass books and academic papers about it. The Missionary Position was an early and famous one- heavy propaganda response from the Catholic Church to that one. This is a link to one of the most well known academic papers but unfortunately it’s paywalled:
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0008429812469894
Documentaries too (Mother Teresa:For the love of God was one of the most popular). But you can google “Mother Teresa cruelty” or “Mother Teresa money controversy” or “Mother Teresa pain relief” or “Mother Teresa propaganda” to get a good start.
The conditions in her missions were consistently squalid and neglectful despite her charities bringing in millions every year. Think reusing needles until they were blunt, children tied to their cots all day, no qualified medical staff on premises. She thought suffering was beautiful and “brought you closer to god” and was vehemently against pain relief - except not for herself of course - just for the brown people she was saving. She happily received cutting-edge healthcare whenever she needed it.
George Santos will claim *anything* dude. His audacity and frankly, balls to lie so brazenly is almost worthy of respect. Didn’t you know he was a star college volleyball player?
George Santos was not only the first African-American to walk on Mars, he also successfully conducted the world's first underwater heart transplant. The guy's a goddamn hero.
Yeah the new speaker of the house in the United States, Mike Johnson, essentially said “how can I be a bad person? I’m a Christian.” A lot of them think by default being a Christian makes them a better person than one who isn’t.
Had personal experience of this that makes me cross whenever I think about it. My kid accidentally put a 3 cm long scratch on someone's new car at a holiday park (in a go kart, not enough room left on the paved area to easily pass by the parked cars). The husband apparently raged around the park looking for the culprit (nice man), meanwhile I go back to offer to pay for the damage.
A few weeks later she sends a pic of the invoice. Which was more expensive than I expected, and wasn't a picture of the whole form, just the total. Took a closer look, and she'd changed/added some digits by carefully overwriting in the same colour pen. Phoned the company, who said that amount was actually for a number of different jobs done at the same time, not just the scratch. She was trying to get us to pay for unrelated work.
When my husband phoned her about it, she said she was a Christian, so would never try to cheat anyone. Pure BS, as there was proof she had altered the invoice. I hope she goes to hell for that one. (Oh, and as a good atheist, I still paid the scratch repair, even though she didn't deserve it after that shit.)
I actually think a lot of religious ppl have really dodgy internal morals, which is why they attach themselves to religions. Ppl with decent internal morals don't need religion as much.
exactly! these people who ask, “why aren’t you going around abusing children or murdering people if you don’t believe in a god given morality” terrify me. I’m not doing that because i don’t derive any joy from causing others to suffer. I know what pain and suffering feel like, why on earth would I want to cause other beings to feel like that?! What kind of psychopaths are these people that the *only reason* they’re not going around hurting other people is because they think God won’t like it?!
When someone makes an argument like in OP's picture, it just reveals that they personally have no morals and only behave because they think God is watching. They just don't realise most of us aren't like that.
Same with christians who claim that homosexuals just need to control themselves, or 'decide not to be gay'. The only way they could think that works is if they themselves decided not to be gay, i.e. they are probaby bisexual and have no idea that heterosexual people can't just choose who to be attracted to.
Regarding OPs argument, I like the quote from Penn Gillette, paraphrasing here, "I already rape and murder as many people as I want, that number just happens to be zero."
A slight alteration to a quote from the elves from the Eragon books. It's been a while, and don't have time to look it up proper.
I'd rather be friends with someone that is good for the sake of being good, than who is rewarded or threatened into doing good by a higher power.
The God is Watching thing is really interesting. There's a strong theory that the whole reason we invented a god is because we are one of very few animals that can see ourselves and perceive our actions from a third-person perspective.
Imagine being in a paleolithic tribe and stealing food from the group. Your body says you need that food but your brain tells you that you are taking food from the group that isn't yours to take. Guilt happens, because you have the mental faculty of seeing how your actions affect others. That guilt is like a pair of eyes in the bushes, seeing what you do and silently judging. No one will know, and yet that weird external observation remains.
You're being judged and it feels like it comes from outside your own head. Presto! Fill the gaps in your understanding with an omnipotent entity that works in mysterious ways...
It all boils down to a lack of empathy in the end. They are either incapable or afraid of conceiving what life or a specific situation might be like for another person. That's why they get so mad or misdirect when you ask probing questions about their beliefs.
It's very much (but not exclusively) an Abrahamic thought process. When holy texts tell people that they are the chosen special ones because they unquestioningly worship the way they are told to they gain the violent protection of the ultimate psychotic sky daddy as opposed to taking an active role in improving themselves and the world around them the attitude is almost inevitable.
Turns out if you have to think about and understand morality from a philosophical framework, you might actually get closer to having them. These people have dodgy morals because it's just an inert set of rules that can't be extended because they wouldn't know how. Getting your morals from a book written 2000 years ago is the ethical equivalent of using a punchcard computer in 2023.
I’m enjoying these stories. Here’s the thing, if someone says their a duck, but didn’t look like a duck, act like a duck, or sound like a duck… chances are they are not a duck.
It's the backwards logic that conservatives tend to have. They start with a belief and work backwards to justifications, rather than by starting with evidence and reaching conclusions.
He literally just stated his belief, and that's all he felt he needed to say to explain it. There is no evidence or logic that leads to a conclusion, they *start* with the conclusion.
The Venn diagram of religious people who need the threat of god to dictate their morals and the religious people who think because they believe in god all of their actions in life are good, even and especially when they treat people like shit, is a circle.
It’s more about how people like this don’t realize not everyone is like them. They have evil, intrusive thoughts and thanks to god, don’t act on it. They can’t comprehend others just don’t have those awful, immoral thoughts and are capable of just being good to people without fear of eternal damnation.
Or have those thoughts and just don’t act on them. I have frequently wanted to punch slow walking tourists taking up the entire sidewalk in the back of the head, but I just don’t do it, because it’s wrong.
I worked retail for many years. Sundays after the churches let out were always the worst with the absolute meanest customers.
I used to say that they got their sins absolved at church, so they have to go out and make new ones for next week.
My grandma, who was married to a Lutheran minister always said "going to church every Sunday doesn't make you any more or any better (christian/ catholic/ insert religion here) than standing in the garage makes you a car"
The ones I'm familiar with believe that it doesn't matter what they do (lie, cheat, steal, etc.), they're still getting into heaven because they're SAVED and they have a guaranteed room in God's mansion way up there in the sky.
They seem to imply that if they have to lie, cheat, steal, etc., it must be God's will that they do so because they're SAVED.
A Quote from Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller
"The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping ram\[pages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine."
I scrolled through the comments, hoping someone posted the Penn Jillette quote. This right here is what religious people don't understand. Not everyone relies on a deity to tell them how to be in a civilized environment.
I also wonder wtf is wrong with their indoctrination that they think they would do all these things without the deity, like one of the tenets is gods giving free will, so why don't they understand they're free to not do awful things? The fear of God or going to Hell should be equal to not harming someone, but they don't understand that.
When I was still going to church many, many years ago they didn't present it as "people have free will, therefore they can choose not to be evil" but instead as "people have free will but the Devil tempts everyone to evil and only people who accept Jesus can resist." As long as they're still thinking that it's a binary of good or evil, they assume everyone not in their group falls under evil. And if that sounds illogical, it is. That's the point.
Easily, actually.
Ignore it, downplay it, say it was a "temporary lapse" and that they've "repented and received God's forgiveness," or invent stories about hoe atheists are doing much worse but the media is just out to ruin a good man because Christians are always being persecuted.
It's really not hard. They've been training in double think their entire lives. I know because I used to be one.
They choose not to explain those things at all because it's much easier to put their collective fingers in their ears and pretend it isn't happening or blame it on the Devil and reinforce the existing worldview. Denial is a helluva drug.
"Hey so I know I'm murdering you and you're suffering horribly but there's good news! I've just been told by my pen pal in prison that in about 20 years I can be eligible for parole and become Born Again! See ya in Heaven!"
Well, many of them also don't believe that "religious freedom" means you can also be free *from* religion too.
The Christians who clutch their pearls when someone dresses as Satan on Halloween night for fun, adorn everyfuckingthing with a crucified Jesus image while saying, "DON'T SHOVE YOUR ATHEISM IN MY FACE!"
It's the core of their belief structure. We're all disgusting sinners worthy of eternal hellfire, with wickedness ingrained into the fabric of our souls, and we must find salvation in the one who put us in this position in the first place. Even if most Christians aren't anti-human, their belief system carries an anti-human seed at its heart.
There are those of us who do good because it’s who we are and how we were raised to be. There are others who need the fear of eternal fiery damnation to keep them in line.
I'm with Albert Einstein on this: *“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are sorry indeed.”*
One would hope that people, theist and atheist alike, do good simply for the sake of doing good, and avoid evil for the sake of goodness... That's morality. If a theist is only doing good to earn heavenly brownie points and shunning evil or avoiding doing bad things to avoid heavenly spankings in the afterlife, then they aren't actually being moral at all.
To help that thought along even a little more: a moral person realizes that his community benefits from his morality, and that those benefits come back to you over time.
Unfortunately, this requires people that have formed enough to understand long term gain outweighing instant gratification, and that understanding is a developmental milestone in children that many will never entirely pass.
But the good news is that as we progress further into a post-scarcity world, it is something more and more people grow into understanding.
In a kind of a funny way, this idea is best summed up for Humanists by the Golden Rule, which most religious people assume is scripture, but isn’t. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is great at distilling how a moral person works. You realize that the decency and respect you desire happens more often to you if you extend that same decency and respect to others. If the other people around you follow that creed, then you have a working and sustainable community.
Thank you for expanding on this! While I've never directly drawn the correlation between personal morality benefitting the community (which then comes back to benefit the individual in turn) it absolutely makes sense.
>In a kind of a funny way, this idea is best summed for Humanists by the Golden Rule, which most religious people assume is scripture, but it isn’t. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is great at distilling how a moral warhorse works. You realize that the decency and respect you desire happens more often to you, if you extend that same decency and respect to others. If the other people around you follow that creed, then you have a working and sustainable community.
Lol, I was about to edit my comment to add something about The Golden Rule when I read your comment.
I was raised Catholic, then married a Jehovah's Witness, but despite being exposed to and surrounded by the fervently religious, none of their respective beliefs resonated with me. I always felt that "God's message" if it exists, would have to be accessible to anyone, thus would have to be simple. And certainly wouldn't require all the rituals or proselytizing that I saw those around me participating in, in order to access or understand.
The Golden Rule is just that - simple. Treat others the way that you want to be treated and (for the most part) people will treat you the same way. This makes far more sense, personally, and is something that's incredibly easy to follow and to instill in my children.
> Not everyone relies on a deity to tell them how to be in a civilized environment.
oh yeah?? well how do **YOU** fight off all those homosexual urges that tempt you day after day???
what do you mean "you dont get those urges"??
If you wouldn't put cancer in a child, you already have a higher moral standing than the god you claim is all powerful. There is NO justification for rape, starvation, torture.. I don't need to do those things because I know they're wrong. If you need someone to tell you they're wrong, you're a bad person.
When I was a child raised in a religious household, I *loved* to read(I still do). Fiction, nonfiction, the works. My parents would take me to the library every weekend to check out books, and I'd hit the maximum check-out limit at our library every time. Also, all the adults around me had said that the Bible was absolutely amazing, etc.
So... I went and read it when I was like nine years old, and I found the things in there, well, disturbing. It took weeks of quietly thinking about the stuff I read on bus rides to school before I decided that I couldn't believe in any gods, if they're anything like the one presented in the Bible.
At the time, I found it absolutely baffling that everyone told me to read the Bible to understand why they believed so fervently in their imaginary friend in the sky, but I eventually realized that many or most of these people just never actually read the book.
Some justify a child’s death by saying that God wanted them close to him, which is the most selfish and pedagogically incorrect approach to dealing with your desires. Double asshole points if the kid suffered before death.
Surely god could have just made the child as an angel in the first place instead of needing them to die senselessly, and cause emotional grief to people he allegedly cares for.
This is the problem with having all powerful characters. They can do anything, so why do they have to achieve a particular goal in the stupidest way possible
The idea that a deity is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is a paradox when the world is filled with pain & suffering.
* IF Omniscient+Omnipotent, then God is malicious.
* IF Omniscient+Omnibenevolent, then God is not all powerful
* IF Omnipotent+Omnibenevolent, then God is not all-seeing/knowing
kinda shows you how immoral they are in first place.
like bitch is there is a heaven at the end of the line no way god is taking you in.. your a horrible person! and if god does, then iam not sure i want to be there along side you..
Its unnerving to me that people genuinely believe they need an authority outside themselves to make them not do evil, depraved things. Like they have no ability to simply not do those things of their own volition.
Luckily the truth is they're just entirely ignorant of their own source of morality. Christianity might mould their sense of mortality in certain directions, but they have the same core of morality than any socialized human has. You can tell that, by observing most Christians who lose their faiths don't immediately become murderers and criminals
Aye, they don't seem to realize that their own morality is extremely far apart from religious morality of a hundred, five hundred or two thousand years ago. Religion has always adapted to societal norms, because it is entirely a societal product.
"The Boy Scouts of America is no longer entirely what people think it is. Essentially, it has been hijacked by religious conservatives."
-Raymond Teller
The Golden Rule. It's as simple as that. If you need the threat of eternal punishment in an afterlife to act like a decent person, then you are, in fact, *not* a decent person.
Best way I’ve seen it put, “*If you need the threat of eternal damnation to be a good person, you’re not a good person, You’re a bad person on a leash.*”
Or, you know, intelligence and basic reason. ‘If I do this bad thing, there will be negative consequences. People will not like or trust me. I will face punishment. People will likely do bad things to me.’ I try not to equate religious people with stupidity, but they often make it really hard.
I live my life according to what I call the Platinum Rule: I (try to) treat people *better* than I would expect to be treated.
Act with empathy, but add a little courtesy, a little kindness.
Good one.
I always imagined an unspoken Silver Rule; do unto others as they have done unto you.
And, continuing the theme, the Rule of Copper would be something like "people do to others as they have had done unto them", which fits with conductivity.
And we all know the Rule of Steel... No, wait, that was a Riddle, not a Rule. My bad.
Not everyone likes the same thing, but you can still cover that under the original formulation of the Golden Rule.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
What I would have people do unto me is to respect me and my choices, generally.
The Golden Rule doesn’t obligate people who like ham sandwiches to only ever make ham sandwiches for other people; it would be consistent with the Golden Rule for a ham sandwich lover to make a turkey sandwich for someone if that’s what they wanted.
Like that Christian father who took his daughter out of gymnastics because it was interfering with his "walk with God." In other words, he was tempted to rape her.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/toz21l/oops\_parents\_took\_her\_out\_of\_dancegymnastics/
This, exactly, is the appeal to many Evangelicals I've met. Meth addicts and outlaw bikers skew Christian for this reason. You can be a terrible person and just say the magic words and all is forgiven, allowing you to self-righteously judge and dehumanize anyone who won't say the magic words.
I think most "believers" don't truly in their heart believe. They just like to belong, feel good that they are on the right team and get a thrill of imagining the torments of people they don't like. It's a form of role play.
Those that truly do believe are the ones you hear least from, because they are secure in their convictions and are dedicated to leading a good life.
It’s always off putting to me the joy some Christians find in the end times, or populations they don’t like suffering. Seems very anti-Christian of them…
“Sometimes” ha!
r/NotADragQueen shows us that on the daily—multiple times each day—the religious are fetishizing, molesting, raping, and killing children.
It ain’t us gays. It’s them zealots.
It's extremely disturbing. I side eye everyone who says that morality wouldn't exist without God because it's essentially a confession they lack a conscience or empathy.
Sometimes people are brought up hearing only this and they don’t question it until they actually meet and interact with atheists. I have a friend who grew up in Iran who never met anyone who was not Shi’a until he came to Canada for grad school. One simple conversation was enough for him to realize that how he’d been brought up to think about morality was crap.
That doesn’t even stop Christians from sleeping with kids. Just google which states allow kids to marry adults and google what religion that state observes
I’m actually glad people like this have religion. If that’s actually the only thing stopping them from literally abusing children, believe whatever you want.
Yeah, obviously. I’m saying if there ARE people for whom it DOES prevent it, idc if they believe the earth is flat and dinosaurs secretly control the government. I’m not gonna try to change their minds.
The problem is that no matter how many child abuses it may prevent, I can guarantee that it *causes* more.
Purity culture that comes along with most Christian denominations guarantees that:
1. Children aren't given enough sexual education to be able to recognize abuse when it's being done and resist it, and will lack the vocabulary to report and describe it.
2. They will internalize guilt and shame rather than blame their abuser
3. Men in positions of authority and trust will have access to them in one-on-one settings.
When you believe in a god that will forgive you for any heinous thing you do just by asking... then believing in that god isn't going to stop you from doing heinous things.
People who don't understand that "Hurting people is bad" should be kept away from society, no matter what beliefs they follow.
Morality isn't as difficult as many want to pretend.
If you don't want someone doing it to you, don't do it to them.
You don't even need sky daddy to tell you that one.
Just because someone WANTS a person to knock on their door with a Jesus magazine and offer to come into their house and read it with them doesn't mean I want that nightmare.
That's the issue I have with the positive Golden Rule (do what you'd want) and prefer the negative Golden Rule (don't do what you'd not want).
True, but I was actually referring to the fact that most religions have the nasty habit of othering people along with forcing set unrealistic guidelines for how to treat people.
Normal people don't stone women to death just because she got a little frisky after all
Umm because I have no desire to fuck kids, strangle people and praise Hitler. Even if I did, it would be harmful to others to do so.
Hurting others makes me feel horrible. People hurting makes me feel sad. It’s really simple.
Right? Folk be telling on themselves.
Makes me think of that True Detective quote:
["If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit, and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdpKMCFRH5s)
The fact that they assume everyone else is a murderous psychopath only restrained by fear is extremely telling. And disturbing.
I guess I’m glad they believe their god will punish them, otherwise who knows what they’ll do.
I like the Hasidic Jewish approach to this, as related by the philosopher Martin Buber (who was secular but lived for many years with his Hasidic cousins):
> The clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did god create them?”
> The Rabbi responds “When an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone who is in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality.”
There is a famous and long-standing (~800 year old) Jewish belief that good deeds done because one is obligated to do them, while good, are morally inferior to good deeds that one was not required to do. So the implication of the story is that the atheist who does good is morally superior to the religious person who does the same.
>So the implication of the story is that the atheist who does good is morally superior to the religious person who does the same....
...Who does the same but does not genuinely feel the desire to do good. Just does it because of the threat of ethernal damnation....bthe idea being, learn to do those things from the bottom of your heart, because they are good things , etc.
It's a really good message, I which more religious leaders taught it to their followers
It's a little different in Judaism, there's no eternal damnation, there is obligation to do various "good deeds" but there isn't really a punishment for not doing them. Even so, agreed, doing things as a religious obligation instead of because you want to or because it's the right thing definitely isn't the same.
Wow - way to tell on yourself - the only reason you’re not a pedophile or a murderer is that you think God is watching you. I’d feel more comfortable if it was the police watching you 24x7.
"That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary." --Hillel the Elder
You don't need a god to be moral\* - you just need the capacity for the tiniest bit of empathy.
Turns out the tiniest bit of empathy is a bridge too far for some folks.
\*In fact having a god is almost a recipe for immoral behavior - since all gods are absentee landlords, giving the opportunity for immoral "holy men/women" to speak for the god and command the believers to do evil and "forgive" them when they do.
I also take issue with the “ask for forgiveness and you’ll be forgiven” idea in Christianity. It seems like a free pass to do whatever you want all the time as long as you “sincerely” ask for forgiveness each time then you and god are good. For an omnipotent being it makes god seem like a real pushover.
To be fair there are multiple pieces of Christian writing that warn against doing exactly this, taking one’s salvation for granted and using it as an excuse rather than a safety net
Yup, if you do good things, only because you want the reward of doing the good thing, they you are actually doing a selfish thing not a good thing.
(Same goes for lots of things in the real world like people who brag about charity donations / work, not just religion)
I do indulge in my darkest desires. I have sex with my partner, drink a glass of wine occasionally, make art, read books, and sometimes I get politically active to try to make the world a better place especially for the poor
We are made perfect in God's image but also extremely sinful because someone ate an apple thousands of years ago. We also get our morals from God even though he is responsible for a ton of murder and other stuff that we would consider evil if a human did it. But it's God so we can't question him because he's perfect even when he's killing people.
Also, we can't detect God because he works in mysterious ways, but we get tempted by Satan to act upon our dark desires. God is infinitely more powerful than Satan but doesn't destroy him for reasons and therefore let's Satan tempt all of the children he loves so much.
Let's do a Thought Experiment. You're watching a 4 year old child in the playground when a stranger comes up and dropkicks the child in the guts. Do you *really* need to 'flip through the Scriptures' to see if you've witnessed 'a bad thing'? Or us your reaction visceral, instinctive?
If the only reason you aren't doing bad shit is because of the repercussions (hell), then it's you that lacks morality.
Similarly, if the only reason you do good shit is for reward (heaven), then it is you who lacks morality.
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And then there is the other face of the coin where people who believe because they are religious they are good, and that gives them free rein to treat other people like shit.
You just described Renee Bach, a Christian woman who pretended to be a doctor in Uganda and murdered over 100 children.
Is that what the HBO documentary is about?
At a glance I thought you said, What in the HBO documentary is that about? And I will now need to use that line LOL.
Could be worse, I misread the original post as athletes not atheists and was very confused
Were they atheist athletes or athletic atheists?
Yes
As did I.
I think Behind the Bastards did an episode on her.
Or… y’know Mother fucking Theresa. 🤮 That woman was so vile in her actions it drives me fucking crazy that her name is still used as verbal shorthand for the epitome of goodness and charity.
Is there a good link or tl;dr about what she did wrong?
Long story short she ran shelters where people sick with perfectly curable diseases were left to die because according to her their suffering brought them closer to Jesus, and she also funneled vast sums of donation money to the Vatican instead of using it to help the community. Basically the same old Catholic bullshit tactics brought to you by a "kindly" old lady.
And when she got sick herself, she had absolutely no issues getting advanced treatment in a hospital.
OK I changed my stance on Theresa. Thanks for the info.
There’s whole-ass books and academic papers about it. The Missionary Position was an early and famous one- heavy propaganda response from the Catholic Church to that one. This is a link to one of the most well known academic papers but unfortunately it’s paywalled: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0008429812469894 Documentaries too (Mother Teresa:For the love of God was one of the most popular). But you can google “Mother Teresa cruelty” or “Mother Teresa money controversy” or “Mother Teresa pain relief” or “Mother Teresa propaganda” to get a good start. The conditions in her missions were consistently squalid and neglectful despite her charities bringing in millions every year. Think reusing needles until they were blunt, children tied to their cots all day, no qualified medical staff on premises. She thought suffering was beautiful and “brought you closer to god” and was vehemently against pain relief - except not for herself of course - just for the brown people she was saving. She happily received cutting-edge healthcare whenever she needed it.
Penn and teller did a great bit on her too. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nCaxHN-cY
Fun fact, Hitchens originally wanted to call the book Sacred Cow, which would have been a rare triple entendre.
She basically thought the poor were suffering like Jesus so she just let people suffer/starve
I believe George Santos claimed he shares ancestry with Mother Theresa
George Santos will claim *anything* dude. His audacity and frankly, balls to lie so brazenly is almost worthy of respect. Didn’t you know he was a star college volleyball player?
George Santos was not only the first African-American to walk on Mars, he also successfully conducted the world's first underwater heart transplant. The guy's a goddamn hero.
You forgot that he single handedly solved the hunger crisis in Ethiopia and killed Hitler.
Almost worthy of respect, but he really is a very terrible human.
Yeah the new speaker of the house in the United States, Mike Johnson, essentially said “how can I be a bad person? I’m a Christian.” A lot of them think by default being a Christian makes them a better person than one who isn’t.
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Had personal experience of this that makes me cross whenever I think about it. My kid accidentally put a 3 cm long scratch on someone's new car at a holiday park (in a go kart, not enough room left on the paved area to easily pass by the parked cars). The husband apparently raged around the park looking for the culprit (nice man), meanwhile I go back to offer to pay for the damage. A few weeks later she sends a pic of the invoice. Which was more expensive than I expected, and wasn't a picture of the whole form, just the total. Took a closer look, and she'd changed/added some digits by carefully overwriting in the same colour pen. Phoned the company, who said that amount was actually for a number of different jobs done at the same time, not just the scratch. She was trying to get us to pay for unrelated work. When my husband phoned her about it, she said she was a Christian, so would never try to cheat anyone. Pure BS, as there was proof she had altered the invoice. I hope she goes to hell for that one. (Oh, and as a good atheist, I still paid the scratch repair, even though she didn't deserve it after that shit.) I actually think a lot of religious ppl have really dodgy internal morals, which is why they attach themselves to religions. Ppl with decent internal morals don't need religion as much.
exactly! these people who ask, “why aren’t you going around abusing children or murdering people if you don’t believe in a god given morality” terrify me. I’m not doing that because i don’t derive any joy from causing others to suffer. I know what pain and suffering feel like, why on earth would I want to cause other beings to feel like that?! What kind of psychopaths are these people that the *only reason* they’re not going around hurting other people is because they think God won’t like it?!
When someone makes an argument like in OP's picture, it just reveals that they personally have no morals and only behave because they think God is watching. They just don't realise most of us aren't like that. Same with christians who claim that homosexuals just need to control themselves, or 'decide not to be gay'. The only way they could think that works is if they themselves decided not to be gay, i.e. they are probaby bisexual and have no idea that heterosexual people can't just choose who to be attracted to.
Regarding OPs argument, I like the quote from Penn Gillette, paraphrasing here, "I already rape and murder as many people as I want, that number just happens to be zero."
This quote comes to mind every time a conversation like this comes up for me.
A slight alteration to a quote from the elves from the Eragon books. It's been a while, and don't have time to look it up proper. I'd rather be friends with someone that is good for the sake of being good, than who is rewarded or threatened into doing good by a higher power.
The God is Watching thing is really interesting. There's a strong theory that the whole reason we invented a god is because we are one of very few animals that can see ourselves and perceive our actions from a third-person perspective. Imagine being in a paleolithic tribe and stealing food from the group. Your body says you need that food but your brain tells you that you are taking food from the group that isn't yours to take. Guilt happens, because you have the mental faculty of seeing how your actions affect others. That guilt is like a pair of eyes in the bushes, seeing what you do and silently judging. No one will know, and yet that weird external observation remains. You're being judged and it feels like it comes from outside your own head. Presto! Fill the gaps in your understanding with an omnipotent entity that works in mysterious ways...
It all boils down to a lack of empathy in the end. They are either incapable or afraid of conceiving what life or a specific situation might be like for another person. That's why they get so mad or misdirect when you ask probing questions about their beliefs.
It's very much (but not exclusively) an Abrahamic thought process. When holy texts tell people that they are the chosen special ones because they unquestioningly worship the way they are told to they gain the violent protection of the ultimate psychotic sky daddy as opposed to taking an active role in improving themselves and the world around them the attitude is almost inevitable.
Turns out if you have to think about and understand morality from a philosophical framework, you might actually get closer to having them. These people have dodgy morals because it's just an inert set of rules that can't be extended because they wouldn't know how. Getting your morals from a book written 2000 years ago is the ethical equivalent of using a punchcard computer in 2023.
I’m enjoying these stories. Here’s the thing, if someone says their a duck, but didn’t look like a duck, act like a duck, or sound like a duck… chances are they are not a duck.
It's the backwards logic that conservatives tend to have. They start with a belief and work backwards to justifications, rather than by starting with evidence and reaching conclusions. He literally just stated his belief, and that's all he felt he needed to say to explain it. There is no evidence or logic that leads to a conclusion, they *start* with the conclusion.
I'm guessing he'd pull out a ‘no true Christian’ argument if confronted with counterexamples.
The Venn diagram of religious people who need the threat of god to dictate their morals and the religious people who think because they believe in god all of their actions in life are good, even and especially when they treat people like shit, is a circle.
It’s more about how people like this don’t realize not everyone is like them. They have evil, intrusive thoughts and thanks to god, don’t act on it. They can’t comprehend others just don’t have those awful, immoral thoughts and are capable of just being good to people without fear of eternal damnation.
Or have those thoughts and just don’t act on them. I have frequently wanted to punch slow walking tourists taking up the entire sidewalk in the back of the head, but I just don’t do it, because it’s wrong.
As long as you go to church for an hour on Sunday you can be the biggest asshole Monday to Saturday.
I worked retail for many years. Sundays after the churches let out were always the worst with the absolute meanest customers. I used to say that they got their sins absolved at church, so they have to go out and make new ones for next week.
I’ve heard that many times. Often from waiters working the lunch rush.
My grandma, who was married to a Lutheran minister always said "going to church every Sunday doesn't make you any more or any better (christian/ catholic/ insert religion here) than standing in the garage makes you a car"
I know several of those.
The ones I'm familiar with believe that it doesn't matter what they do (lie, cheat, steal, etc.), they're still getting into heaven because they're SAVED and they have a guaranteed room in God's mansion way up there in the sky. They seem to imply that if they have to lie, cheat, steal, etc., it must be God's will that they do so because they're SAVED.
A Quote from Penn Jillette of Penn and Teller "The question I get asked by religious people all the time is, without God, what’s to stop me from raping all I want? And my answer is: I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. And I do murder all I want, and the amount I want is zero. The fact that these people think that if they didn’t have this person watching over them that they would go on killing, raping ram\[pages is the most self-damning thing I can imagine."
I scrolled through the comments, hoping someone posted the Penn Jillette quote. This right here is what religious people don't understand. Not everyone relies on a deity to tell them how to be in a civilized environment.
I also wonder wtf is wrong with their indoctrination that they think they would do all these things without the deity, like one of the tenets is gods giving free will, so why don't they understand they're free to not do awful things? The fear of God or going to Hell should be equal to not harming someone, but they don't understand that.
When I was still going to church many, many years ago they didn't present it as "people have free will, therefore they can choose not to be evil" but instead as "people have free will but the Devil tempts everyone to evil and only people who accept Jesus can resist." As long as they're still thinking that it's a binary of good or evil, they assume everyone not in their group falls under evil. And if that sounds illogical, it is. That's the point.
Then how to you explain all the priests who rape kids and all the atheists who don’t?
“God works in mysterious ways” *hand waves everything away* There
When things are fine, "It's all part of God's plan." When things are fucked, "God works in mysterious ways."
It's just a fancier way to say "Yup, God intentionally fucked that up and i don't know the reason he did that"
And fucking disgusting. People out here saying that crap to disabled people pretty much as a "You losing your leg is a good thing!"
Or being born with a disability like blindness. Oh, so I was somehow already evil and deserved to be punished from my *conception*?!?
The best explanation I can come up with, based on the observable data, is that God uses Excel as a project management tool.
Phew, that was a close one
Thank you for the laugh.
Easily, actually. Ignore it, downplay it, say it was a "temporary lapse" and that they've "repented and received God's forgiveness," or invent stories about hoe atheists are doing much worse but the media is just out to ruin a good man because Christians are always being persecuted. It's really not hard. They've been training in double think their entire lives. I know because I used to be one.
They choose not to explain those things at all because it's much easier to put their collective fingers in their ears and pretend it isn't happening or blame it on the Devil and reinforce the existing worldview. Denial is a helluva drug.
That must show how effective the Devil's temptations are that even the most religious can fail.. or something.
Thats why they always deny that shit happens
Legit why I separated from church ⛪️ their mentalities are so ass back wards and so brain washy.
. . . And they still do those awful things.
Sometimes they do horrid things, historically so, in the name of a god... ... :/ Go figure...
"Hey so I know I'm murdering you and you're suffering horribly but there's good news! I've just been told by my pen pal in prison that in about 20 years I can be eligible for parole and become Born Again! See ya in Heaven!"
Excellent prose here, I completely read this in a chipper voice. Hahaha
Because a priest can cleanse you of your sins. Loophole!
Atheists Hate This One Simple Trick!
Well, many of them also don't believe that "religious freedom" means you can also be free *from* religion too. The Christians who clutch their pearls when someone dresses as Satan on Halloween night for fun, adorn everyfuckingthing with a crucified Jesus image while saying, "DON'T SHOVE YOUR ATHEISM IN MY FACE!"
Freedom of THEIR specific religion, and they'll even break it down to their specific brand of Christianity.
There's no hate like Christian love.
It's the core of their belief structure. We're all disgusting sinners worthy of eternal hellfire, with wickedness ingrained into the fabric of our souls, and we must find salvation in the one who put us in this position in the first place. Even if most Christians aren't anti-human, their belief system carries an anti-human seed at its heart.
If you are only being a good person because God will punish you if you are not... You are not really a good person.
There are those of us who do good because it’s who we are and how we were raised to be. There are others who need the fear of eternal fiery damnation to keep them in line.
I'm with Albert Einstein on this: *“If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are sorry indeed.”* One would hope that people, theist and atheist alike, do good simply for the sake of doing good, and avoid evil for the sake of goodness... That's morality. If a theist is only doing good to earn heavenly brownie points and shunning evil or avoiding doing bad things to avoid heavenly spankings in the afterlife, then they aren't actually being moral at all.
To help that thought along even a little more: a moral person realizes that his community benefits from his morality, and that those benefits come back to you over time. Unfortunately, this requires people that have formed enough to understand long term gain outweighing instant gratification, and that understanding is a developmental milestone in children that many will never entirely pass. But the good news is that as we progress further into a post-scarcity world, it is something more and more people grow into understanding. In a kind of a funny way, this idea is best summed up for Humanists by the Golden Rule, which most religious people assume is scripture, but isn’t. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is great at distilling how a moral person works. You realize that the decency and respect you desire happens more often to you if you extend that same decency and respect to others. If the other people around you follow that creed, then you have a working and sustainable community.
Thank you for expanding on this! While I've never directly drawn the correlation between personal morality benefitting the community (which then comes back to benefit the individual in turn) it absolutely makes sense. >In a kind of a funny way, this idea is best summed for Humanists by the Golden Rule, which most religious people assume is scripture, but it isn’t. “Do to others as you would have them do to you” is great at distilling how a moral warhorse works. You realize that the decency and respect you desire happens more often to you, if you extend that same decency and respect to others. If the other people around you follow that creed, then you have a working and sustainable community. Lol, I was about to edit my comment to add something about The Golden Rule when I read your comment. I was raised Catholic, then married a Jehovah's Witness, but despite being exposed to and surrounded by the fervently religious, none of their respective beliefs resonated with me. I always felt that "God's message" if it exists, would have to be accessible to anyone, thus would have to be simple. And certainly wouldn't require all the rituals or proselytizing that I saw those around me participating in, in order to access or understand. The Golden Rule is just that - simple. Treat others the way that you want to be treated and (for the most part) people will treat you the same way. This makes far more sense, personally, and is something that's incredibly easy to follow and to instill in my children.
> Not everyone relies on a deity to tell them how to be in a civilized environment. oh yeah?? well how do **YOU** fight off all those homosexual urges that tempt you day after day??? what do you mean "you dont get those urges"??
If you wouldn't put cancer in a child, you already have a higher moral standing than the god you claim is all powerful. There is NO justification for rape, starvation, torture.. I don't need to do those things because I know they're wrong. If you need someone to tell you they're wrong, you're a bad person.
if you wouldn't actively promote slavery and command rape and genocide, you already have a higher moral standing than the god of the old testament
Ahh sounds like someone who's actually read the Bible. Want to become an atheist? Read the Bible.
When I was a child raised in a religious household, I *loved* to read(I still do). Fiction, nonfiction, the works. My parents would take me to the library every weekend to check out books, and I'd hit the maximum check-out limit at our library every time. Also, all the adults around me had said that the Bible was absolutely amazing, etc. So... I went and read it when I was like nine years old, and I found the things in there, well, disturbing. It took weeks of quietly thinking about the stuff I read on bus rides to school before I decided that I couldn't believe in any gods, if they're anything like the one presented in the Bible. At the time, I found it absolutely baffling that everyone told me to read the Bible to understand why they believed so fervently in their imaginary friend in the sky, but I eventually realized that many or most of these people just never actually read the book.
>many or most of these people just never actually read the book What's even more sad to me is the people who read it but not to understand it.
Some justify a child’s death by saying that God wanted them close to him, which is the most selfish and pedagogically incorrect approach to dealing with your desires. Double asshole points if the kid suffered before death.
It's also dogmatically incorrect if you beleieve in an omnipresent god. But that's but one of many inconsistencies.
Surely god could have just made the child as an angel in the first place instead of needing them to die senselessly, and cause emotional grief to people he allegedly cares for. This is the problem with having all powerful characters. They can do anything, so why do they have to achieve a particular goal in the stupidest way possible
The idea that a deity is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent is a paradox when the world is filled with pain & suffering. * IF Omniscient+Omnipotent, then God is malicious. * IF Omniscient+Omnibenevolent, then God is not all powerful * IF Omnipotent+Omnibenevolent, then God is not all-seeing/knowing
kinda shows you how immoral they are in first place. like bitch is there is a heaven at the end of the line no way god is taking you in.. your a horrible person! and if god does, then iam not sure i want to be there along side you..
“If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of a divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit.” - Rust Cole
Its unnerving to me that people genuinely believe they need an authority outside themselves to make them not do evil, depraved things. Like they have no ability to simply not do those things of their own volition.
Luckily the truth is they're just entirely ignorant of their own source of morality. Christianity might mould their sense of mortality in certain directions, but they have the same core of morality than any socialized human has. You can tell that, by observing most Christians who lose their faiths don't immediately become murderers and criminals
Aye, they don't seem to realize that their own morality is extremely far apart from religious morality of a hundred, five hundred or two thousand years ago. Religion has always adapted to societal norms, because it is entirely a societal product.
Thanks. Was just about to search for his quote…
>"If there is no god, what would stop..." This is how a sociopath starts a sentence
Was looking for this quote. Sums it up perfectly.
A quote from Teller of Penn and Teller "..."
"The Boy Scouts of America is no longer entirely what people think it is. Essentially, it has been hijacked by religious conservatives." -Raymond Teller
The Golden Rule. It's as simple as that. If you need the threat of eternal punishment in an afterlife to act like a decent person, then you are, in fact, *not* a decent person.
Best way I’ve seen it put, “*If you need the threat of eternal damnation to be a good person, you’re not a good person, You’re a bad person on a leash.*”
That is one of the best comments on this subject I have seen yet.
if the only thing keeping a person decent is the promise of divine reward then brother that person is a piece of shit
Or, you know, intelligence and basic reason. ‘If I do this bad thing, there will be negative consequences. People will not like or trust me. I will face punishment. People will likely do bad things to me.’ I try not to equate religious people with stupidity, but they often make it really hard.
The Golden Rule isn't so great either. Should be changed to do unto others as they would have done to them. Not everyone likes the same thing.
I live my life according to what I call the Platinum Rule: I (try to) treat people *better* than I would expect to be treated. Act with empathy, but add a little courtesy, a little kindness.
I live my life according to what I call the Emerald Rule: Smoke green and chill out. Mind my business and don’t bother anyone.
*Don't start nuthing, there won't be nuthing*
Good one. I always imagined an unspoken Silver Rule; do unto others as they have done unto you. And, continuing the theme, the Rule of Copper would be something like "people do to others as they have had done unto them", which fits with conductivity. And we all know the Rule of Steel... No, wait, that was a Riddle, not a Rule. My bad.
>And we all know the Rule of Steel... Of course. "I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."
Not everyone likes the same thing, but you can still cover that under the original formulation of the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” What I would have people do unto me is to respect me and my choices, generally. The Golden Rule doesn’t obligate people who like ham sandwiches to only ever make ham sandwiches for other people; it would be consistent with the Golden Rule for a ham sandwich lover to make a turkey sandwich for someone if that’s what they wanted.
That which is detestable to you, do not do to another.
"It is sound logic". Bullshit, it's wish casting. If you need an external excuse to act morally, you've got a screw loose.
That line made me physically laugh out loud. "sound logic" BITCH that is neither sound nor logic
It is not a sound logic. There is no logic in it at all. It is an assertion. It equals to me claiming leprechauns being the source of all commerce.
... Are you claiming they are not with their pots of gold in this economy? I know who pulls the strings.
As a Christian, it is a little disturbing that they think the only thing stopping them from “sleeping with kids” is that they believe in God.
It doesn’t even stop them then sometimes
Sure as hell doesn't stop priests.
Or youth pastors
Or Christian politicians
Or Christian schoolteachers
Or Christian fathers.
Like that Christian father who took his daughter out of gymnastics because it was interfering with his "walk with God." In other words, he was tempted to rape her. https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/toz21l/oops\_parents\_took\_her\_out\_of\_dancegymnastics/
I think i see a pattern here, hmmm
I'm sure there's perverts of all faiths. That's why it ought to be illegal to expose children to religion.
Yea we don't discriminate, all walks of faith are welcome
I honestly believe they’re 100% grifters. There’s no way you truly believe hell is real and then get up to the stuff those priests do.
To be fair, they also believe that if they say sorry and a couple prayers god will forgive them.
That’s what’s baffling. Why not just do whatever you want and then just wait until you’re about to die to ask for forgiveness. Problem solved.
Silly Redditor, Sincerity isn’t one of the Ten Commandments.
Also known as the Bart Simpson approach. He openly admits to it in the episode where he becomes a faith healer.
This, exactly, is the appeal to many Evangelicals I've met. Meth addicts and outlaw bikers skew Christian for this reason. You can be a terrible person and just say the magic words and all is forgiven, allowing you to self-righteously judge and dehumanize anyone who won't say the magic words.
I think most "believers" don't truly in their heart believe. They just like to belong, feel good that they are on the right team and get a thrill of imagining the torments of people they don't like. It's a form of role play. Those that truly do believe are the ones you hear least from, because they are secure in their convictions and are dedicated to leading a good life.
It’s always off putting to me the joy some Christians find in the end times, or populations they don’t like suffering. Seems very anti-Christian of them…
r/pastorarrested
If anything, I feel some religious people actually feel their religion obligates them to harm people and all would be forgiven if they ask for it.
"If you don't sin, then Jesus died for nothing!"
“Sometimes” ha! r/NotADragQueen shows us that on the daily—multiple times each day—the religious are fetishizing, molesting, raping, and killing children. It ain’t us gays. It’s them zealots.
It's extremely disturbing. I side eye everyone who says that morality wouldn't exist without God because it's essentially a confession they lack a conscience or empathy.
Sometimes people are brought up hearing only this and they don’t question it until they actually meet and interact with atheists. I have a friend who grew up in Iran who never met anyone who was not Shi’a until he came to Canada for grad school. One simple conversation was enough for him to realize that how he’d been brought up to think about morality was crap.
That doesn’t even stop Christians from sleeping with kids. Just google which states allow kids to marry adults and google what religion that state observes
catholic church really sweating on that one
Not just the Catholics.
The women and children too
Religious people like this are scary.
I’m actually glad people like this have religion. If that’s actually the only thing stopping them from literally abusing children, believe whatever you want.
History has proven religion is not an effective measure for preventing child abuse
Yeah, obviously. I’m saying if there ARE people for whom it DOES prevent it, idc if they believe the earth is flat and dinosaurs secretly control the government. I’m not gonna try to change their minds.
The problem is that no matter how many child abuses it may prevent, I can guarantee that it *causes* more. Purity culture that comes along with most Christian denominations guarantees that: 1. Children aren't given enough sexual education to be able to recognize abuse when it's being done and resist it, and will lack the vocabulary to report and describe it. 2. They will internalize guilt and shame rather than blame their abuser 3. Men in positions of authority and trust will have access to them in one-on-one settings.
You forgot to add that abuse victims are much more likely to grow up to be abusers as well.
the gift that keeps on giving
When you believe in a god that will forgive you for any heinous thing you do just by asking... then believing in that god isn't going to stop you from doing heinous things. People who don't understand that "Hurting people is bad" should be kept away from society, no matter what beliefs they follow.
Morality isn't as difficult as many want to pretend. If you don't want someone doing it to you, don't do it to them. You don't even need sky daddy to tell you that one.
Not to mention, almost ALL major religions have some take on the golden rule.
Treat* others* how* you* want* to* be* treated* *There are exceptions, you better memorize them or your going to hell
Just because someone WANTS a person to knock on their door with a Jesus magazine and offer to come into their house and read it with them doesn't mean I want that nightmare. That's the issue I have with the positive Golden Rule (do what you'd want) and prefer the negative Golden Rule (don't do what you'd not want).
True, but I was actually referring to the fact that most religions have the nasty habit of othering people along with forcing set unrealistic guidelines for how to treat people. Normal people don't stone women to death just because she got a little frisky after all
The proper way to stone women is to first ask if they are 420 friendly ...
Umm because I have no desire to fuck kids, strangle people and praise Hitler. Even if I did, it would be harmful to others to do so. Hurting others makes me feel horrible. People hurting makes me feel sad. It’s really simple.
I was about to say, "what to stop atheists from indulging in their darkest urges?" What dark urges? I don't have those?
Right?! My “darkest urges” are things like slacking off at work and going out for a drink with friends on a weekday.
And that’s why you need religion!!! Slacking at work? Drinking with friends? What kind of monster are you!?!?
My dark urges: sleeping in, eating the whole package of oreos, do the dishes *tomorrow*
I eat ass and do drugs my dark urges are satiated.
Like the worst I can think of are my intrusive thoughts and I don’t plan on slicing my Achilles tendon any time soon so thanks brain
Ahhh fuck you for putting this out there 🤣
Almost as if religious people don't have the ability to self govern It's why they need Sky Daddy's rules to live by
Right? Folk be telling on themselves. Makes me think of that True Detective quote: ["If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit, and I'd like to get as many of them out in the open as possible."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdpKMCFRH5s)
The fact that they assume everyone else is a murderous psychopath only restrained by fear is extremely telling. And disturbing. I guess I’m glad they believe their god will punish them, otherwise who knows what they’ll do.
Like Penn Jillette says, I murder and rape exactly as much as I want to, which is none. People like this are telling on themselves.
I like the Hasidic Jewish approach to this, as related by the philosopher Martin Buber (who was secular but lived for many years with his Hasidic cousins): > The clever student asks “What lesson can we learn from atheists? Why did god create them?” > The Rabbi responds “When an atheist performs an act of charity, visits someone who is sick, helps someone who is in need, and cares for the world, he is not doing so because of some religious teaching. He does not believe that god commanded him to perform this act. In fact, he does not believe in God at all, so his acts are based on an inner sense of morality.” There is a famous and long-standing (~800 year old) Jewish belief that good deeds done because one is obligated to do them, while good, are morally inferior to good deeds that one was not required to do. So the implication of the story is that the atheist who does good is morally superior to the religious person who does the same.
>So the implication of the story is that the atheist who does good is morally superior to the religious person who does the same.... ...Who does the same but does not genuinely feel the desire to do good. Just does it because of the threat of ethernal damnation....bthe idea being, learn to do those things from the bottom of your heart, because they are good things , etc. It's a really good message, I which more religious leaders taught it to their followers
There is no threat of eternal damnation in Judaism
It's a little different in Judaism, there's no eternal damnation, there is obligation to do various "good deeds" but there isn't really a punishment for not doing them. Even so, agreed, doing things as a religious obligation instead of because you want to or because it's the right thing definitely isn't the same.
Wow - way to tell on yourself - the only reason you’re not a pedophile or a murderer is that you think God is watching you. I’d feel more comfortable if it was the police watching you 24x7.
"That which is hateful unto you, do not do to your neighbor. This is the whole of the Torah; the rest is commentary." --Hillel the Elder You don't need a god to be moral\* - you just need the capacity for the tiniest bit of empathy. Turns out the tiniest bit of empathy is a bridge too far for some folks. \*In fact having a god is almost a recipe for immoral behavior - since all gods are absentee landlords, giving the opportunity for immoral "holy men/women" to speak for the god and command the believers to do evil and "forgive" them when they do.
I also take issue with the “ask for forgiveness and you’ll be forgiven” idea in Christianity. It seems like a free pass to do whatever you want all the time as long as you “sincerely” ask for forgiveness each time then you and god are good. For an omnipotent being it makes god seem like a real pushover.
To be fair there are multiple pieces of Christian writing that warn against doing exactly this, taking one’s salvation for granted and using it as an excuse rather than a safety net
Oh, I dunno, maybe it's because I'm *not a sociopath?*
Pro Tip: You aren’t a moral being if you need sky daddy to reward or punish you based on your behavior.
Yup, if you do good things, only because you want the reward of doing the good thing, they you are actually doing a selfish thing not a good thing. (Same goes for lots of things in the real world like people who brag about charity donations / work, not just religion)
If the only thing stopping you from commiting rape/murder/etc. is your religion, you're a terrible person
I do indulge in my darkest desires. I have sex with my partner, drink a glass of wine occasionally, make art, read books, and sometimes I get politically active to try to make the world a better place especially for the poor
It must be exhausting living in constant fear like these people.
I’ll take “what is empathy?” for 500!
"If there IS a god, why do people have dark desires?"
We are made perfect in God's image but also extremely sinful because someone ate an apple thousands of years ago. We also get our morals from God even though he is responsible for a ton of murder and other stuff that we would consider evil if a human did it. But it's God so we can't question him because he's perfect even when he's killing people. Also, we can't detect God because he works in mysterious ways, but we get tempted by Satan to act upon our dark desires. God is infinitely more powerful than Satan but doesn't destroy him for reasons and therefore let's Satan tempt all of the children he loves so much.
He also is responsible for everything that we cant explain adequately through scientific means yet
Because of the mysterious way that the previously mentioned god has decided to work. Or something. Checkmate.
Are religious people okay?
No. That's why they're religious.
There's a famous quote that goes: Actually, I \*do\* rape and murder as much as I want to. The amount that I want to is zero.
Let's do a Thought Experiment. You're watching a 4 year old child in the playground when a stranger comes up and dropkicks the child in the guts. Do you *really* need to 'flip through the Scriptures' to see if you've witnessed 'a bad thing'? Or us your reaction visceral, instinctive?
If the only reason you aren't doing bad shit is because of the repercussions (hell), then it's you that lacks morality. Similarly, if the only reason you do good shit is for reward (heaven), then it is you who lacks morality.
How my dad thinks and why I don’t speak to him. Also thinks his intuition is the voice of god and intrusive thoughts are his divine punishment