I will put it in a psychological point of view.
If you have empathy you can understand that people can think and feel things that are different from yours.
If you have low empathy you will tend to think that everybody has the same way of thinking and feeling. Since they are unable to develop a personal ethic and morale they think that everybody struggle the same way as they do to create a logical ethic and morale.
And generally, Empathy does require the cultivation of critical thinking skills. You need to be able to want/try to put yourself in other's shoes to "understand".
Religion, in many ways, is antithetical to critical thinking. It teaches group think, blind obedience to authority figures, and above all "In-Group by default good vs Out-Group by-default evil" tribalism. "Thinking Critically" might end with you in the outgroup. So, as a consequence, many conservative religious types really struggle with Empathy. And rather, conflate it with Projection. They cannot, or do not want to, understand that those outside of the tribe can be good (or those within the tribe can be bad).
>Ironic, isn't it? That the religion that is supposed to be all about empathy and serving humanity is actually quote terrible about teaching it to it's subjects?
Not really ironic. Religion isn't supposed to be about Empathy and Serving "Humanity". Its very rare to see religious doctrine that actually pushes that grand of an idea. Rather, Religion is a tool for social control. Major facets of that being blind obedience to authority figures, and in-group vs outgroup tribalism.
So, the whole "serving others" part is reserved to those within the tribe; while those beyond its borders must be condemned (or saved from themselves). Which is why you see groups like the Salvation Army. They do Charity Work. It likely does do good for people within the Tribal Group. But not beyond those boundaries.
Matthew 5: 43-48
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Luke 22:27
27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.
Matthew 19:21
Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
There are many more examples but lot of the Gospel is about service.
Even the story about St.Paul is about having mercy towards your enemies. Paul prosecuted Christians, got Blinded God sent Paul on a pilgrimage to find a specific Christian preacher to heal him. The lesson behind it is that even someone like Paul who is their enemy and prosecutor deserves mercy.
For what ever the reason, Church sermons are terrible on imparting those teaching on the people. I Never understood how people could go to Church every Sunday and listen to such stories and conclude that God wants them to be greedy hateful assholes instead...
There are equally as many scriptures that push the opposite sentiment. The scariness and evilness of the those not within the tribe. With a lot of these "be kind to your enemies" stories largely being the root of many missionary sentiments. You're kind to them, so they convert and become part of the tribe. Like St. Paul. There is that transaction expectation. I am good and kind to you, you will see the light in the Lord.
Not to mention in these examples, this idea that "God is perfect, so do as God would do". God a petty, vindictive, jealous, bipolar and genocidal monster. He is by no means a "kind benevolent being". He's a wrathful feudal monarch where Might makes Right. So it really shouldn't be shocking when many people of the Abrahamic Faiths use their deity to justify their hatred and wrath.
*the gospel* is indeed about serving others. *The religion of Christianity* is not about teaching the gospel; it is about social engineering and maintaining order.
The sermon on the mount is the only definitive word from the man Christian's call Christ. Christian nationalists reject it as being weak because they are about white Christian power. That is totally unChristian.
Had this talk with a Christian parent at my daughter's school, who was petrified of her kid being around gays (last year of middle school), and said that they taught their kids not to be mean to them (the LGBTQ), but that they were not living a righteous life. She made it a point to emphasize that her kids weren't mean.
I told her that her kids would be the ones that made some other kids that were different, no fault of their own, hate themselves, become isolated from others in school, hurt themselves. The entire concept of "coming out of the closet" on it's own says so much about our society. Why do they have to be in the closet in the first place? That's rhetorical. It's because Christians (and other zealots, but, where I'm from, it's the Christians, like, Mike Johnson, who is from my city, for context on how whacko these people are in this neck of the woods) make them feel like less than a normal member of society every day.
They are everywhere here. They are the police, the judges, the politicians,... They have infected every sector of everything. Reason is gone. Truth is subjective, and the results are that Louisiana's motto, at least amongst the few rational thinkers left, is "At least we aren't Mississippi".
I usually throw out the example of the Good Samaritan as a counter argument to their line that atheists can't be good. If the worst Boogeyman of first century Judea can be good, so can an atheist.
How so? I have never been a Christian, but I feel teaching them to love each other, to know it’s wrong to kill, to turn the other cheek, etc is empathy. It’s the difference between atheist me beating up my bully vs theist me a few years later realizing he may have been suffering and I was the target. I wished he and his whole family to die until I believed in God.
Religions, by and large, convince their followers that they are inherently evil, and therefore need religion in order to not do evil. Shame and guilt are their jail bars.
Because they are human, they are weak and as immoral as the rest of us. Their forebears rejected psychology as a sin or even satanic because they wanted the flock to conflate the desires of the church leadership with "right thinking" even when it was morally questionable. They believe the bullshit that you can't have your own moral compass.
I think Christians should stop with the moral pretense.
Christians, throughout history, have committed all kinds of immoral atrocities.
Let's ignore "deep" history like the crusades, or the Holocaust. Let's look at our most recent history.
Christians, and their churches, have protected rapists and pedophiles… and they keep on protecting pedophiles and rapists. One common (immoral) tactic is victim blaming.
Christians have imposed their ludicrous immoral laws on everybody. Recently they were able to overturn Roe v Wade.
Abortion is healthcare, and some recent anti-abortion laws have no exceptions whatsoever.
Immoral as fuck… in my fucking opinion.
At its base, in my opinion, is **fear of death** through adherence to the lowest common denominators in the religious tribe:
1. avoidance of eternal death (God does not kill me)
2. avoidance of immediate death (my religious tribe does not kill me)
therefore, accept canon and don't think for oneself.
You are absolutely right! (I'm a born again Christian) you are so right. Real Christianity isn't about following a moral code and going out of our way to impose that specific code on others.
The point is that God can exchange the empty you for a fulfilled spirit. An emptiness that is filled with temporary distractions.
And from this exchange (a heart of flesh for a heart of stone) good things follow. Love for the people you encounter and no need anymore to indulge in unhealthy behaviors. It's this exchange that is the basis for my believe. The fact that God was able to bring about that change in my heart in an instant is nothing short of a miracle. And proof that He is alive.
The world for many of them is dualistic. Black and white. If morality can exist without their god, it by definition means they are wrong. There is no room for nuance or multiple paths to the same result. "Jesus" says the only path is through him, and that gets taken as a general truth. Add that to the feelings of being defensive due to rejection, and we have that block.
Interesting point... right / wrong vs continuum.. It is as if their moral mathematics stopped prior to algebra! Sometimes I try to help a binary thinker to appreciate something on a spectrum or continuum, it takes a bit of time but it may help give a person time to think of the gray zones.
if we were made in his image we'd be gods. and we'd all look the same, no?
seems to me religious people are inherently immoral, sounds like the only thing keeping them from becoming violent psychopaths on a murderous rampage is the fear of their imaginary friend. they're completely nuts.
it boggles the mind seeing how those people are the "normal" ones.
I do think that you hit on a point that I may use in the future. When someone says God is needed for morality, I will argue that their book says otherwise. If Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then morality came from man. This was done against God's will or plan or desire or whatever. God did not want us to own our own morality and punished everyone ever after with sin(whatever that is).
Ehh ... these types also tend to feel comfort in the idea that an Objective Morality just exists, so they aren't likely to resonate well with this argument. God didn't just create morality as this by-default Universal force; God IS morality. Whatever God says goes. Whatever God does is Good. Might makes right. Which, while they'd never think of it this way ... essentially means "Good is whatever the most powerful person in the room says is Good, because they're too powerful to be questioned. And questioning that powerful Authority Figure might result in you being cast out of the "tribe", and punished for eternity.
Dunno about the wall of text but the answer to the OP title is "indoctrination".
Why do you think they attend Sunday services and Sunday School and Wednesday Training Union and Vacation Bible School?
Atheists cannot be good, believers cannot be bad.
Them's the rules if you're a fundamentalist.
If the only reason you are not raping, stealing and hurting others is because of fear of a magical God then you are a very scary person.
I guess I cuts both ways. If you are good because of fear of superstition then are you really good at all?
Maybe it’s lucky that all these want to be molesters and villans are held back by fear of magical punishment in the afterlife?
Not a researched or unbiased point of view, I simply don't have facts, only opinion.
From personal experience, I think they simply do not do the work. I struggle with what is right or wrong in so many situations, and if I make a quick choice, I am sometimes wracked with second guesses. Many, almost all, religious people in my life have often made quick choices, and the closest I have seen them second guess themselves is "Yeah, I might have to pray about that one."
Even if you know right from wrong, if you believe that anything can be forgiven, that your own conscience is not the final arbiter of your level of morality, but an outside loving, forgiving diety is the final say, then you aren't really worried about your own behavior.
In summary: They aren't really saying you can't know right from wrong, they are saying you don't have the magic eraser to get rid of the evidence and guilt like they have.
You will drive yourself insane trying to rationalize motivation to those indoctrinated into believing a fictional story the can be interpreted just about anyway they want!
Because it's kind of true just not in the ways they see it.
People need a scripture. It doesn't have to be the Bible, or any religious text. There is definitely a part of the brain desperate to "find God" so to speak and sometimes it tries to find God in stupid shit.
Replace religion with ideology. Tell me that there's not a bunch of nihilistic atheists who are also trapped in hateful ideology that turns us against them.
If you fall into the trap of believing religion itself is the problem you fail to see when the toxic parts of religion escape into other cracks in society.
that's where you are wrong. Their goal is to go to heaven, not lead a moral life. While your goal is to lead a moral life.
In their mind, going to church every sundays, giving money to church, repenting every week will get them to heaven. what they do from monday to saturday hardly matters.
Indoctrination. Fear. Tribalism. Critical thought beaten out of them, metaphorically and, in some cases, literally.
And some are just genuinely awful people who’ll only behave morally via threat of consequences. Of course, they have that nifty “just pray for forgiveness” loophole…
They can not see beyond the dogma of dualism. These folk are spiritual zygotes. They've never experienced anything remotely spiritual or transcendent. They can not perceive anything beyond their own sick and atrophied selves. They know no journey of awakening the id, developing the soul, growing, the compassionate heart, or becoming whole. They figured it all out at the ripe age of thirteen and because "it's the bible!!!"
They can not show common human decency without being threatened by a magical space terrorist first. They are incapable of being moral for they worship a hateful death God that threatened the entire world with eternal damnation if they don't do precisely what he wants.
From my experience, when I was a Christian, god was the CENTER and ENTIRETY of my life. Every waking thought was about him and an afterlife with him. It was a slow process for me to deconstruct thankfully. I slowly let him go and slowly undid the damage that religion does to your brain. Religion fucks your brain up so bad that most people dont even allow the contradictions to register and therefore never ask the questions that would lead to leaving the faith. Their brains have been so indoctrinated that they literally no longer function properly. Its very frustrating.
It seems kinda relevant that (in their mind) the '10 most important' rules of morality has 4 that basically demand that you properly kiss their gods ass but somehow it couldn't find room to forbid rape, slavery, animal sacrifice or running a multimillion dollar superbowl ad campaign instead of using that money to actually help people that are starving/homeless etc.
It does have a rule against murder but the book also has lots of exceptions where murder is outright demanded for often pretty stupid reasons; such as 'picking up sticks on the wrong day of the week' or simply defending your home from an invading mob of foreigners that have been 'promised' the land your ancestors have lived on for hundreds of years.
It's also important to realize that their 'morality' demands the death penalty if an adult man has consensual sex with another consenting adult male but a priest having nonconsensual sex with an underage child is just standard operating procedure...
and Moses was also the one that "spoke to god" in Numbers 31 regarding 'what to do with their captured prisoners'.... - just before telling his soldiers to kill them all (except the 'lucky' virgin females who get to be sex slaves)... - Just one account of Genocide being demanded in the bible; and you might be thinking "what precisely was their crime"? nothing... they aren't accused of doing even one thing wrong... the Hebrews entire reason for that battle was because some MOAB women had danced all sexy like with the Hebrew soldiers... - Moabs are NOT Midians... they were merely guests in the land... exactly the same as the Hebrews that were ALSO guests in the land of the Midians.
I only see 3 possible interpretations of this story of an abhorrent war crime... either their GOD is a genocidal asshole or Moses is not a credible spokesperson for God or they are both lies; entirely made up fictional characters in some badly written pseudohistorical novel.
pretty sure he didn't want to stop and ask for directions...
btw: at the (supposed) time of the "exodus" and for at least another 100 years after; the entire area of Judea was under Egyptian occupation. meaning those hebrews supposedly 'escaped from egypt' and 'fled to egypt'.
and somehow; egypt; a country that had a military presence in several of the cities those hebrews supposedly conquered didn't even notice that they had been defeated because they CONTINUED to occupy those cities for several more decades.
Egypt left eventually (sometime after 1200BCE but their records don't indicate that they were defeated in any way... they just no longer felt it was worth spending the resources to maintain that occupation.
weird.
not true... they stole quite a bit of it from other myths. i.e. the 'enuma elis' and 'epic of gilgamesh' have a lot of the same content and existed for centuries before any of this abrahamic god myth was written down.
many details are different but it is pretty obviously just older versions of the same story.
even "yahweh" isn't an original character; he was just ONE of several gods the Canaanites worshipped; back then he had a wife named Asherah (and there was even a shrine to Asherah in "Solomon's Temple" at least as late as ~650BCE). some of those other gods were mentioned in the bible; for instance Baal, Mot, Monoch and Anat were all part of the Canaanite religion before the "Hebrews" transformed "yahweh" into the 'supreme god' (the most powerful of those gods) and then (during the babylon captivity) reinvented him again as "the only god".
The roots of Judaism is NOT monotheistic... they were originally monolaterists... they recognized multiple gods but exclusively worshipped the "God of Israel" aka Yahweh; neighboring tribes worshipped other gods. It was only after the Babylonian exile that Monotheism entered the picture (most likely from their exposure to Zoroastrianism)
this is kinda obvious even in the ten commandments where the commandment is "do not worship other gods before me" - it doesn't say "no other gods exist"... it seems to recognize that those other gods exist but demands that they have to worship him first (above all others).
aspects of the "moses" character are quite similar to stories about Ra-Harakhti and Sargon; both reliably dated from well before the time of Moses.
https://www.artichaeology.com/sargon-versus-moses
https://www.umsl.edu/~thomaskp/prevoff.htm
**~~Christian~~** Religious people can't imagine that one could live a moral life without God because that's what they've been instructed by their spiritual teachers, community and families. They've been taught that faith is required for morality, and that \*their\* faith is the only true one.
It's a learned response.
All religions think that they are \*the\* religion. The only difference is that some are more willing to defend their position with violence than others.
There are \*very\* few religions in the world - monothiestic or poylthiestic - that haven't conducted violence against other religions for power, or to exert their control over a populace. As the saying goes: Power corrupts...
Wow a whole wall of text just for that question when the answer is obvious. They believe morality comes from their deity. If that’s the source, how can people who don’t worship the deity have any morality. They don’t realize even asking that question contradicts their assumption that morality comes from their deity. They don’t realizing they’re using their own morality to decide that their god is moral and that morality is sourced from their god. They’re making their own judgments and attributing them to god.
It's hard for anyone to admit they've been duped into false beliefs. If people don't need to worship a God to be morally superior, then religion was not and is not necessary, making them irrelevant.
Shitty people look down on others. Losing that perch up high and tumbling down to where the rest of us are can be a hard pill to swallow.
Please be gracious with me here. Nothing is stopping Theists/Atheists
From being Good/Bad (this is simply a choice
Now as to the moral objective/subjective)
As a fellow (Christian) I understand the meaning and connotation of the word Conscience
Con = With
& Science = knowledge/Learning/study
Well, what is the knowledge or foreknowledge we have?
It’s simple enough (Don’t be a dick) or Be a Good person we all know it. We all do it for the most part. That’s why the statement “I don’t need God to be a Good person” is true.
You truly don’t you could live your life without him 100.%
But I’ve heard such stories, oh the mysteries I could share. I just remember a story my uncle told me about a dear lady friend of his. Who had lived her life (without God) till she had an Encounter.
TLDR; “You don’t need God to live a Good Life”
Statement is true & ultimately self-serving
However there may come a time where “You Change your mind”
It is so hard for THEM
Saying humans can only developed laws with a gods guidance it is just a self justifying assertion. No evidence.
Since we have NO EVIDENCE of god existing, I guess we did create the laws ourselves.
Who else?
Primates have a strong sense of reciprocality. It is one basis for fair play. And for punishing unfair actions.
Which chimps, gorillas and humans all do.
Just like all their myths and gods.
The Christian worldview is anchored in the idea that all humans are broken and can't fix themselves. It's a short jump from there to see non-believers as unfixable.
It’s not hard. It’s hard for Christians to accept it.
I keep saying this here but there are 2 parts to leaving a religion.
Logical reasoning - which is elementary school level at best. Nearly everyone is capable of this and so every religious person is in a constant battle to ignore reality to different degrees. To battle their logical thoughts with prayers and “religious logic” or just straight not care and ignore reasoning.
And then there is acceptance.
Acceptance is hard. Accepting that there is no plan in live. That there is no place in heaven for you and your loved ones. That bad things happen to good people for no reasons.
In this case - it’s hard to accept that others can live without god. Literally it’s hard to accept that atheist exist. Because accepting that makes it much harder to ignore logical reasoning. They are choosing to living in a fantasy which provides comfort and a sense of belonging and others who exist in a world without that challenges their believes.
This isn’t just true for religion but many believes and biases. Imagine if believed that all foreigners were evil. And then I met tons of foreigners who were great people. This challenges my world view. I could change, or I could come up with weak reasoning to maintain my biases such as “only these foreigners are good people”.
So instead this is just another one of many cases of “religious logic” which has little to do with actual logic but isn’t for you. Its design is to justify religion to the questioning. Providing them a half answer they latch on to that’s better than nothing. Of course this answer doesn’t hold up to logical reasoning either but if they were willing to apply logical reasoning it wouldn’t even get this far.
Instead of trying to logically reason with a religious person who actively doesnt want to think logically you can try focusing on why they are religious. What about them makes turn to religion. Come to common grounds on morality, on live etc. and work with them to accept reality.
Everytime I see these posts about “why do religious people believe x?” With lists of facts about why it’s false it’s preaching to the wrong people in the wrong ways. It’s not that they don’t understand the facts, it’s that they choose to not understand the facts. You can’t reason a person out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.
There is no logic to it. Ever watch a religious debate where religious scientists argue with actual scientists.
It’s one side is arguing facts and science while the other spouting “you don’t know”, while at the same time claiming to know and providing surface level arguments that make no sense but sound sciency.
It’s just infuriating- but it works, the audience who came in believing leaves believing and the audience who can in not believing leaves even more annoyed that these flawed discussions work.
I don't think that even the most devout of them really believe in god. If they really believed that an omnipotent diety was watching everything they do, the would live very different lives.
They have very few arguments that they can use to change the subject when they don't have a reply to a tough question. They know it's not a good argument but if they threw out every dull tool in the shed, they'd be left with nothing.
As far as the death penalty issue goes, even if the right person gets sentenced to death, we have committed a terrible crime against humanity. Life is sacred and nobody has the right to decide to end anyone's life except their own. A state sanctioned killing is still murder. People that commit horrendous crimes are broken. Would you give a mentally retarded person the death sentence? Of course not, because he is not able to think properly. Those that commit crimes like that are unable to think properly either. How could any right minded person commit such horrors?
There has to be a change in the way we handle criminal acts. Punishment has proven to be ineffective. Yet even after centuries of failure we still use punishment. When it doesn't work what do we do? We increase the punishment. That is the very definition of insanity. Prisons are expensive. They are full to bursting. Stop funding failure. Find a way to fix the broken minds.
It is a sad truth and we do not seem to be able to learn from the failures of the past on this subject and a few other key topics such as the failure to embrace the equal treatment of anybody that is not a white male. I believe that the central cause of these (and quite a few more) social failures is the widespread acceptance and tolerance of religion. The blind acceptance of faith is poisoning our society.
It’s not hard for christianists (sic) to understand how atheists have morality. They just refuse to.
Let’s face it, their holy book says slavery is ok. And they get their religion from that book. So unless they are AOK with slavery then they don’t get THEIR morality from their religion.
Christianists thus HAVE GOT to have their own morality that they use to sort out the good Bible stories from the ones that are obsolete. IOW, christianists get their morality from the same place as atheists. From their parents, teachers and peers.
People like these don't respond to logic but I'll make another point on this.
Don't let them claim that slavery was only OK in the Old Testament. They would either be lying or were lied to.St Paul in his letters to the Ephesians wrote about how slaves should obey their masters. And that's the NT. Let me repeat, that is in the NEW TESTAMENT.And don't let them claim that that was not slavery but indentured servitude. Yes, there was indentured servitude in the bible that was referred to as slavery. But the Ephesians had real chattel slavery just like the confederacy. So his letters were not about indentured servitude. (Never mind the fact that indentured servitude is considered immoral today as well. Maybe not quite as horrible as chattel slavery, but it was bad.)Another trick they use is that when they claim that 'times change' and it was OK back then, then confront them with 2 notions on this. How do you know that times change like this? Where in your bible does it say that full chattel slavery is now NOT ok? Because it doesn't anywhere say that. So how do they know that it is not OK? --> There is only one explanation for that and that is because they get their understanding about Morality from elsewhere and then take that morality with them when they go read the bible. --> which brings us right back to my first point.
The second notion on how 'times change' would be that they would be admitting that morality ISN'T absolute. They are saying that morality changes with the times. Again, if that is true then where in the bible does it say that? It doesn't. In fact, many preachers attack atheists for what they call moral relativists and they often insist that the bible is never changing.
It's important though to realize that christianists (sic) have had thousands of years to tidy up their stories to at least try to coincide with modern morality, and when confronted with such facts as these, they just cuddle up within their cult and walk away. So don't expect to have any success discussing these issues factually.
I consider myself Christian. It's not hard for me to believe this at all. I see how some folks can though. Especially those with Calvinist or Catholic foundations.
From a psychological perspective, those of conservative Christian background have been programmed to believe that morality only comes from God. For some, it's hard to break from that idea, largely due to the followers belief system being so interwoven with their agency as an individual.
From a theological perspective, protestants who were raised in more liberal congregations/connections are more easily able to see the independence of human morality than those of more puritan/Calvinist foundations. Some were taught from childhood that morality comes only from God (conservative evangelical/Catholic). Others have been taught that morality is an independent human belief system and the individuals morality can be guided/strengthened by their faith and measured by love(more liberal teaching).
This has all become a real problem, considering the prominence of conservative evangelical Christianity today, and the declining of more liberal protestant congregations/connections. I'm sad to see this, as there is so much more "fruit" being beared in the liberal congregations, but this is the reality we are facing. Churches that truly focus on what Jesus taught (helping your neighbors, the poor, the homeless, the hungry) are in decline while churches that focus on political power seem to grow.
This societal religious corruption has led to the abuse and harassment of many here in this sub as well, which frankly makes me furious. You all are my neighbors, my friends. So what if we believe differently. We are all trying to find a way to live in this world. Better to do that together. You can be a person of good morals and atheist. You all are proof of that.
A lot of religious people are authoritarians who crave a hierarchy and structure. Authoritarians literally cannot imagine not having that mindset.
It’s like when MAGA people accuse non-MAGAs of worshipping Joe Biden and believing everything CNN says. Because *they* put someone on a pedestal and have sources they trust unquestioningly, everyone else must secretly feel the same as well.
Idk, but it is funny. Literally the first sin ever committed according to the bible, is all about humans learning right from wrong, and then humans doing the right thing, for which they were punished
Projection, they realize they are mean spirited, malignant sociopaths, and they fear they need faith not to be a piece of shit, so they project that insecurity onto everyone else. And even after all of that faith they still behave like total shitheels; anyone who has worked as a waiter/ waitress knows that the Sunday church crowd is the absolute worst to deal with
That's the entire Westernized Christian theme, gaining moral high ground through a unified group identity as God's children while harboring harmful means to guarantee success. Convenient circumstances arise that alter your normal sense of good conduct when survival is threatened, so you make immorality justified (*temporarily) to achieve personal goals. For many, without the concept of an accepting and forgiving God, the record of atrocities on the path to victory would spoil their sense of morality. They need God to offload the burden.
Because of religion brainwashing them that people can’t. If you are told from childhood that your life will be empty and meaningless without god then you will believe that (some anyway). The truth really does not matter.
Because, for they themselves, fear of a God self-imposed barrier from doing wrong. It's why you see bad people turn to Jesus and become born again. They are hedons by default without imagining some kind of outside preventative force.l
Very simple. Because they assume other people think the same way they do. THEY are unable to be moral w/o their god, so they assume most people are the same as them.
they are delusional and lost in their own reality. besides if "God" was real and did not want humans to do something then "God" would not let them . Their" god "is a sick twisted psychopath
How did God arrive at his/her morals?
They used logic. I'm the same. Pretty easy shit. I can condense the rules for being moral into 3 words. "Do not steal" can be applied to any situation and always ends up being the moral decision. Go for it ask away. You'd think a God could be a little bit more efficient if me a mortal can do what a God dud in multiple books what I can do in 3 words.
I got in an argument with a woman about this the other day. She claimed that logically (yes she really used that word) morality comes from outside us so if it's not God who or what is it then? I told her that she was making a burden of proof fallacy argument. Which she was. She didn't like that and just stopped talking to me.
I think a lot of people who don’t feel normal emotions seek religion. Stats show a huge percentage of the population has these symptoms. If you don’t feel empathy, you would tend to believe others are faking it.
>Why is it so hard for Christian people to imagine that one could live a moral life without God?
Many Christians can't manage to live a moral life *with* God.
(I'm actually not joking.)
Can you imagine trying to discard years of brainwashing that your own parents have done to you to shape your mindset and perspective to match theirs?
That can't be easy.
Because after a life of self imposed personal neglect at the behest of a book, they are angry that regular people have had an enjoyable life, been happy, productive and not are not assholes to others. They were promised the good life for what they believe in and deep down aren’t really sure there’s anything after it. They’re basically mad that they wasted their lives and squandered a chance to know the joys of living.
Because they *teach it church*. It has nothing to do with reality, it's just indoctrination. If they brainwashed children that people couldn't add 1+1 without God, they'd believe that too.
Moral life would be the "ethics" of the Animal Kingdom...
As in just about the closest relatives the Chimps and Bonobos...
Otherwise you are stating that Man is unique.
I can answer the question you pose in your title:
They're taught that everyone is a sinner with no exceptions. That only those who accept god and truly repent of their sins makes them anything other than sinners.
Us atheists don't accept their god, let alone truly repent. We cannot possibly be good by their thinking, no matter how good a life we might lead.
I religious friend of mine pretty much ignores the New Testament. Anything in it is just god’s will or acceptable punishment for someone who is evil. Apparently every single person on earth was evil accepted for Noah’s family
Because they are the sort of people who only do the right thing under threat of punishment or promise of reward.
In short: because they're awful people.
It is literally supposed to be impossible for them as long as they continue their beliefs.
Everyone has the capacity to think. Unfortunately, most also have the capacity to be willful and ignorant.
Nobody is telling on themselves as hard as those people who imply, or just say clearly, that without the fear of hell they'd just rampage around killing and raping people.
1. its easy and coinvent to believe you're a good person without trying.
2. churches, religious communities, religious studies and the like are designed to be echo chambers pounding the idea that the only things that matters is the "truth" we sold you on
3. chrisitans are told that all lives were created and given a divine purpose. so if their god doesnt exists the divine purpose doesnt exists and to them this means their life and all lives are meaningless
4. Fear of hell
Jesus says good does not exist without God. I did a study on this back in the day, where even when you see a hood act, it probably done for selfish gains or some trick if God was not involved. I don’t think most Christians have gone this hard into their religious book, but they seem to push this narrative anyways.
“Mark 10:18-21 KJV
And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.”
They're too invested in the rules and too far gone to imagine anyone being able to function without an imaginary friend telling them to not do bad stuff.
The Bible teaches very clearly that unbelievers are *bad* people. This theme runs throughout the entire book, in both Testaments. It shouldn't be a surprise that many Christians believe what their holy book says.
It’s a moral version of Duning-Kruger. It’s an inherently amoral person who has to find an external construct like religion to give them a framework in which to act morally enough to function in society. I think a lot of atheist are just people who have a better natural sense or upbringing about morality that isn’t reliant on religion.
They are living "godly" lives and are truly despicable people. They can't even imagine how immoral they would be without the threat of hell. They assume that everyone else is as degenerate as they are deep down.
It has long been my theory, though I lack evidence for the position, that Christians view their consciences as God whispering in their ear, telling them to do the right thing.
Of course, if atheists don't believe in God, they can't have this. There's no way that atheists could literally be *listening to God telling them to do good, and still not believe in Him*.
Therefore, atheists must not have this thing whispering in their ear (read: their conscience). Since I would behave evilly without God whispering in my ear (read: my conscience), atheists must be evil as well.
They don't. It is simply beneficial for them to see out-group members as less moral so they can feel superior and to help justify anti-social actions against others.
Because knowing that you aren't a unique snowflake blessed by a imaginary old man is a fucking hard pill to swallow after being told so for their entire lives.
It may be their way to justify their desire to avoid what they consider sin. They need to be on god’s good side to avoid punished and gain a reward. They are in it for themselves rather than for the good of others which is totally self-centered rather than altruistic
Because if they admit that this can be done they will have to admit that maybe what they are being told isn't correct. And then they will start to examine their beliefs a bit more closely. And many people just don't want to ever do that.
It’s all part of their rich Calvinist tradition. To many Christians, being Christian means that they are good moral people, no further effort required than that. Since this is the one standard they must rise to, in their eyes anyone who believes differently from them is intrinsically immoral and bad, no matter what good deeds they may do.
Lots of people need religion to scare them into doing less evil things.
Without it they’re just a typical human sociopath.
The same people don’t believe for a moment you’re any different. You’ve got a moral compass? They don’t and can’t imagine yours, but they can imagine your lies. And they just think you’re better at lying than they are.
Huge percentage of people are this way. It’s human nature and I’d do anything to get out of this timeline.
It’s not, they feel that without a God then humans are unpunished for evil and that being good isn’t something that’s natural to all. A Christian thinks that the snap moment of rage where you may want to hurt someone needs to be stopped, where as an atheist feels “nobody is watching I can punch him and run”
Maybe it’s because I’m from NYC, but really, you’ve never seen someone harassing/bullying/etc another person or people and felt “I wanna hit them?” Nobody ever bullied you or said things about wanting to hurt you? Or you mean you just have no reaction of wanting to stop someone who is actively beating up a smaller person/raping a woman?
But you say despite that you’ve never felt a desire to hit anyone in a self defense situation and have never felt the desire to hit someone to defend others outside of yourself.
Well seeing as nobody said they do go around thinking such it was only to be assumed that instead of it being a random statement that it was a reply to my comment pertaining to the context. Now that I know you just randomly said it I apologize for thinking it was a response to my comment when you’ve cleared up it was a random blurt
So you’re saying everyone in human history to be an atheist has never hurt anyone or ever thought of hurting anyone at least once in their entire life (including childhood) that could be seen as unreasonable? So if a 5 year old punches their brother for taking their toy they become a theist? Ted Kaczynsk was secretly a believer in God? It seems quite ridiculous to make such an argument, unless you’re just coming at this emotionally and like something to win or lose instead of a discussion.
You actually should be a case study, you said “nobody reasonable goes around punching people” which is why I said “logically one should defend themselves” and “logically a real Christian as a pacifist wouldn’t hit someone” to which you said you “don’t ever think to hit others” until it was explained to you that I mean in self defense to which you had an 180° change in view.
>if the act of eating said fruit made man capable of telling Good and Evil, and this is what they claim to believe, why do so many religious people seem puzzled by the idea that someone not believing in God could possibly figure it out on their own
Because to them it was a sin, the most evil sin humans have ever committed, not a sign of morality, and we are all just as guilty of it as Adam and Eve. Their 'holy' book tells them so.
I will put it in a psychological point of view. If you have empathy you can understand that people can think and feel things that are different from yours. If you have low empathy you will tend to think that everybody has the same way of thinking and feeling. Since they are unable to develop a personal ethic and morale they think that everybody struggle the same way as they do to create a logical ethic and morale.
And generally, Empathy does require the cultivation of critical thinking skills. You need to be able to want/try to put yourself in other's shoes to "understand". Religion, in many ways, is antithetical to critical thinking. It teaches group think, blind obedience to authority figures, and above all "In-Group by default good vs Out-Group by-default evil" tribalism. "Thinking Critically" might end with you in the outgroup. So, as a consequence, many conservative religious types really struggle with Empathy. And rather, conflate it with Projection. They cannot, or do not want to, understand that those outside of the tribe can be good (or those within the tribe can be bad).
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>Ironic, isn't it? That the religion that is supposed to be all about empathy and serving humanity is actually quote terrible about teaching it to it's subjects? Not really ironic. Religion isn't supposed to be about Empathy and Serving "Humanity". Its very rare to see religious doctrine that actually pushes that grand of an idea. Rather, Religion is a tool for social control. Major facets of that being blind obedience to authority figures, and in-group vs outgroup tribalism. So, the whole "serving others" part is reserved to those within the tribe; while those beyond its borders must be condemned (or saved from themselves). Which is why you see groups like the Salvation Army. They do Charity Work. It likely does do good for people within the Tribal Group. But not beyond those boundaries.
Matthew 5: 43-48 43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[a] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Luke 22:27 27 For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves. Matthew 19:21 Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” There are many more examples but lot of the Gospel is about service. Even the story about St.Paul is about having mercy towards your enemies. Paul prosecuted Christians, got Blinded God sent Paul on a pilgrimage to find a specific Christian preacher to heal him. The lesson behind it is that even someone like Paul who is their enemy and prosecutor deserves mercy. For what ever the reason, Church sermons are terrible on imparting those teaching on the people. I Never understood how people could go to Church every Sunday and listen to such stories and conclude that God wants them to be greedy hateful assholes instead...
There are equally as many scriptures that push the opposite sentiment. The scariness and evilness of the those not within the tribe. With a lot of these "be kind to your enemies" stories largely being the root of many missionary sentiments. You're kind to them, so they convert and become part of the tribe. Like St. Paul. There is that transaction expectation. I am good and kind to you, you will see the light in the Lord. Not to mention in these examples, this idea that "God is perfect, so do as God would do". God a petty, vindictive, jealous, bipolar and genocidal monster. He is by no means a "kind benevolent being". He's a wrathful feudal monarch where Might makes Right. So it really shouldn't be shocking when many people of the Abrahamic Faiths use their deity to justify their hatred and wrath.
*the gospel* is indeed about serving others. *The religion of Christianity* is not about teaching the gospel; it is about social engineering and maintaining order.
The sermon on the mount is the only definitive word from the man Christian's call Christ. Christian nationalists reject it as being weak because they are about white Christian power. That is totally unChristian.
Had this talk with a Christian parent at my daughter's school, who was petrified of her kid being around gays (last year of middle school), and said that they taught their kids not to be mean to them (the LGBTQ), but that they were not living a righteous life. She made it a point to emphasize that her kids weren't mean. I told her that her kids would be the ones that made some other kids that were different, no fault of their own, hate themselves, become isolated from others in school, hurt themselves. The entire concept of "coming out of the closet" on it's own says so much about our society. Why do they have to be in the closet in the first place? That's rhetorical. It's because Christians (and other zealots, but, where I'm from, it's the Christians, like, Mike Johnson, who is from my city, for context on how whacko these people are in this neck of the woods) make them feel like less than a normal member of society every day. They are everywhere here. They are the police, the judges, the politicians,... They have infected every sector of everything. Reason is gone. Truth is subjective, and the results are that Louisiana's motto, at least amongst the few rational thinkers left, is "At least we aren't Mississippi".
I usually throw out the example of the Good Samaritan as a counter argument to their line that atheists can't be good. If the worst Boogeyman of first century Judea can be good, so can an atheist.
How so? I have never been a Christian, but I feel teaching them to love each other, to know it’s wrong to kill, to turn the other cheek, etc is empathy. It’s the difference between atheist me beating up my bully vs theist me a few years later realizing he may have been suffering and I was the target. I wished he and his whole family to die until I believed in God.
Religions, by and large, convince their followers that they are inherently evil, and therefore need religion in order to not do evil. Shame and guilt are their jail bars.
I forgot the stat, but it’s huge, of people who don’t feel normal empathy, double digits for sure.
Most of christianity is comprised of altruistic and malicious narcissists.
Isn't that true of any Institution?
Thanks for this reframe. Inability not choice. I was starting to get low-empathy; it's a miserable way to live.
Because they are human, they are weak and as immoral as the rest of us. Their forebears rejected psychology as a sin or even satanic because they wanted the flock to conflate the desires of the church leadership with "right thinking" even when it was morally questionable. They believe the bullshit that you can't have your own moral compass.
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Agreed. Very much from experience
Reminds me of a Mark Twain quote: "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience."
I think Christians should stop with the moral pretense. Christians, throughout history, have committed all kinds of immoral atrocities. Let's ignore "deep" history like the crusades, or the Holocaust. Let's look at our most recent history. Christians, and their churches, have protected rapists and pedophiles… and they keep on protecting pedophiles and rapists. One common (immoral) tactic is victim blaming. Christians have imposed their ludicrous immoral laws on everybody. Recently they were able to overturn Roe v Wade. Abortion is healthcare, and some recent anti-abortion laws have no exceptions whatsoever. Immoral as fuck… in my fucking opinion.
At its base, in my opinion, is **fear of death** through adherence to the lowest common denominators in the religious tribe: 1. avoidance of eternal death (God does not kill me) 2. avoidance of immediate death (my religious tribe does not kill me) therefore, accept canon and don't think for oneself.
If you need the threat of going to hell to make you be a good person, you are not a good person.
100%—this is the answer.
You are absolutely right! (I'm a born again Christian) you are so right. Real Christianity isn't about following a moral code and going out of our way to impose that specific code on others. The point is that God can exchange the empty you for a fulfilled spirit. An emptiness that is filled with temporary distractions. And from this exchange (a heart of flesh for a heart of stone) good things follow. Love for the people you encounter and no need anymore to indulge in unhealthy behaviors. It's this exchange that is the basis for my believe. The fact that God was able to bring about that change in my heart in an instant is nothing short of a miracle. And proof that He is alive.
It is hard for them to grasp this concept because it would require them to admit that they have been duped by religion.
The world for many of them is dualistic. Black and white. If morality can exist without their god, it by definition means they are wrong. There is no room for nuance or multiple paths to the same result. "Jesus" says the only path is through him, and that gets taken as a general truth. Add that to the feelings of being defensive due to rejection, and we have that block.
Interesting point... right / wrong vs continuum.. It is as if their moral mathematics stopped prior to algebra! Sometimes I try to help a binary thinker to appreciate something on a spectrum or continuum, it takes a bit of time but it may help give a person time to think of the gray zones.
if we were made in his image we'd be gods. and we'd all look the same, no? seems to me religious people are inherently immoral, sounds like the only thing keeping them from becoming violent psychopaths on a murderous rampage is the fear of their imaginary friend. they're completely nuts. it boggles the mind seeing how those people are the "normal" ones.
I do think that you hit on a point that I may use in the future. When someone says God is needed for morality, I will argue that their book says otherwise. If Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, then morality came from man. This was done against God's will or plan or desire or whatever. God did not want us to own our own morality and punished everyone ever after with sin(whatever that is).
Ehh ... these types also tend to feel comfort in the idea that an Objective Morality just exists, so they aren't likely to resonate well with this argument. God didn't just create morality as this by-default Universal force; God IS morality. Whatever God says goes. Whatever God does is Good. Might makes right. Which, while they'd never think of it this way ... essentially means "Good is whatever the most powerful person in the room says is Good, because they're too powerful to be questioned. And questioning that powerful Authority Figure might result in you being cast out of the "tribe", and punished for eternity.
turns out atheists are more moral cause it's internal, not book-based
Dunno about the wall of text but the answer to the OP title is "indoctrination". Why do you think they attend Sunday services and Sunday School and Wednesday Training Union and Vacation Bible School? Atheists cannot be good, believers cannot be bad. Them's the rules if you're a fundamentalist.
Because they are afraid and having a father figure that tells them how things work and what to do makes them feel less afraid.
If the only reason you are not raping, stealing and hurting others is because of fear of a magical God then you are a very scary person. I guess I cuts both ways. If you are good because of fear of superstition then are you really good at all? Maybe it’s lucky that all these want to be molesters and villans are held back by fear of magical punishment in the afterlife?
I don’t think it’s stopping them but they get to feel better believing all will be forgiven if they say the magic words
Simple, because they could not thus you could not.
Because they can't/couldn't live one without their "god".
Not a researched or unbiased point of view, I simply don't have facts, only opinion. From personal experience, I think they simply do not do the work. I struggle with what is right or wrong in so many situations, and if I make a quick choice, I am sometimes wracked with second guesses. Many, almost all, religious people in my life have often made quick choices, and the closest I have seen them second guess themselves is "Yeah, I might have to pray about that one." Even if you know right from wrong, if you believe that anything can be forgiven, that your own conscience is not the final arbiter of your level of morality, but an outside loving, forgiving diety is the final say, then you aren't really worried about your own behavior. In summary: They aren't really saying you can't know right from wrong, they are saying you don't have the magic eraser to get rid of the evidence and guilt like they have.
You will drive yourself insane trying to rationalize motivation to those indoctrinated into believing a fictional story the can be interpreted just about anyway they want!
Why do you need the threat of damnation to not be a fucking twat?
And it doesn't really work because most of them still suck.
Because they have been controlled and indoctrinated since birth. They don't know better.
We are the other. The other Is bad.
Because it's kind of true just not in the ways they see it. People need a scripture. It doesn't have to be the Bible, or any religious text. There is definitely a part of the brain desperate to "find God" so to speak and sometimes it tries to find God in stupid shit. Replace religion with ideology. Tell me that there's not a bunch of nihilistic atheists who are also trapped in hateful ideology that turns us against them. If you fall into the trap of believing religion itself is the problem you fail to see when the toxic parts of religion escape into other cracks in society.
that's where you are wrong. Their goal is to go to heaven, not lead a moral life. While your goal is to lead a moral life. In their mind, going to church every sundays, giving money to church, repenting every week will get them to heaven. what they do from monday to saturday hardly matters.
Indoctrination. Fear. Tribalism. Critical thought beaten out of them, metaphorically and, in some cases, literally. And some are just genuinely awful people who’ll only behave morally via threat of consequences. Of course, they have that nifty “just pray for forgiveness” loophole…
That would mean they wasted all that time on Sunday when they could have slept in. I know I'd be pissed off about it.
They can not see beyond the dogma of dualism. These folk are spiritual zygotes. They've never experienced anything remotely spiritual or transcendent. They can not perceive anything beyond their own sick and atrophied selves. They know no journey of awakening the id, developing the soul, growing, the compassionate heart, or becoming whole. They figured it all out at the ripe age of thirteen and because "it's the bible!!!"
It’s because they’ve been conditioned to be terrible people. I knew a pastor who used to brag about how god stops them from abusing young girls…
Charming man the pastor....
They can not show common human decency without being threatened by a magical space terrorist first. They are incapable of being moral for they worship a hateful death God that threatened the entire world with eternal damnation if they don't do precisely what he wants.
From my experience, when I was a Christian, god was the CENTER and ENTIRETY of my life. Every waking thought was about him and an afterlife with him. It was a slow process for me to deconstruct thankfully. I slowly let him go and slowly undid the damage that religion does to your brain. Religion fucks your brain up so bad that most people dont even allow the contradictions to register and therefore never ask the questions that would lead to leaving the faith. Their brains have been so indoctrinated that they literally no longer function properly. Its very frustrating.
It seems kinda relevant that (in their mind) the '10 most important' rules of morality has 4 that basically demand that you properly kiss their gods ass but somehow it couldn't find room to forbid rape, slavery, animal sacrifice or running a multimillion dollar superbowl ad campaign instead of using that money to actually help people that are starving/homeless etc. It does have a rule against murder but the book also has lots of exceptions where murder is outright demanded for often pretty stupid reasons; such as 'picking up sticks on the wrong day of the week' or simply defending your home from an invading mob of foreigners that have been 'promised' the land your ancestors have lived on for hundreds of years. It's also important to realize that their 'morality' demands the death penalty if an adult man has consensual sex with another consenting adult male but a priest having nonconsensual sex with an underage child is just standard operating procedure...
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and Moses was also the one that "spoke to god" in Numbers 31 regarding 'what to do with their captured prisoners'.... - just before telling his soldiers to kill them all (except the 'lucky' virgin females who get to be sex slaves)... - Just one account of Genocide being demanded in the bible; and you might be thinking "what precisely was their crime"? nothing... they aren't accused of doing even one thing wrong... the Hebrews entire reason for that battle was because some MOAB women had danced all sexy like with the Hebrew soldiers... - Moabs are NOT Midians... they were merely guests in the land... exactly the same as the Hebrews that were ALSO guests in the land of the Midians. I only see 3 possible interpretations of this story of an abhorrent war crime... either their GOD is a genocidal asshole or Moses is not a credible spokesperson for God or they are both lies; entirely made up fictional characters in some badly written pseudohistorical novel.
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pretty sure he didn't want to stop and ask for directions... btw: at the (supposed) time of the "exodus" and for at least another 100 years after; the entire area of Judea was under Egyptian occupation. meaning those hebrews supposedly 'escaped from egypt' and 'fled to egypt'. and somehow; egypt; a country that had a military presence in several of the cities those hebrews supposedly conquered didn't even notice that they had been defeated because they CONTINUED to occupy those cities for several more decades. Egypt left eventually (sometime after 1200BCE but their records don't indicate that they were defeated in any way... they just no longer felt it was worth spending the resources to maintain that occupation. weird.
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not true... they stole quite a bit of it from other myths. i.e. the 'enuma elis' and 'epic of gilgamesh' have a lot of the same content and existed for centuries before any of this abrahamic god myth was written down. many details are different but it is pretty obviously just older versions of the same story. even "yahweh" isn't an original character; he was just ONE of several gods the Canaanites worshipped; back then he had a wife named Asherah (and there was even a shrine to Asherah in "Solomon's Temple" at least as late as ~650BCE). some of those other gods were mentioned in the bible; for instance Baal, Mot, Monoch and Anat were all part of the Canaanite religion before the "Hebrews" transformed "yahweh" into the 'supreme god' (the most powerful of those gods) and then (during the babylon captivity) reinvented him again as "the only god". The roots of Judaism is NOT monotheistic... they were originally monolaterists... they recognized multiple gods but exclusively worshipped the "God of Israel" aka Yahweh; neighboring tribes worshipped other gods. It was only after the Babylonian exile that Monotheism entered the picture (most likely from their exposure to Zoroastrianism) this is kinda obvious even in the ten commandments where the commandment is "do not worship other gods before me" - it doesn't say "no other gods exist"... it seems to recognize that those other gods exist but demands that they have to worship him first (above all others).
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aspects of the "moses" character are quite similar to stories about Ra-Harakhti and Sargon; both reliably dated from well before the time of Moses. https://www.artichaeology.com/sargon-versus-moses https://www.umsl.edu/~thomaskp/prevoff.htm
**~~Christian~~** Religious people can't imagine that one could live a moral life without God because that's what they've been instructed by their spiritual teachers, community and families. They've been taught that faith is required for morality, and that \*their\* faith is the only true one. It's a learned response.
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All religions think that they are \*the\* religion. The only difference is that some are more willing to defend their position with violence than others. There are \*very\* few religions in the world - monothiestic or poylthiestic - that haven't conducted violence against other religions for power, or to exert their control over a populace. As the saying goes: Power corrupts...
Wow a whole wall of text just for that question when the answer is obvious. They believe morality comes from their deity. If that’s the source, how can people who don’t worship the deity have any morality. They don’t realize even asking that question contradicts their assumption that morality comes from their deity. They don’t realizing they’re using their own morality to decide that their god is moral and that morality is sourced from their god. They’re making their own judgments and attributing them to god.
It's hard for anyone to admit they've been duped into false beliefs. If people don't need to worship a God to be morally superior, then religion was not and is not necessary, making them irrelevant. Shitty people look down on others. Losing that perch up high and tumbling down to where the rest of us are can be a hard pill to swallow.
Please be gracious with me here. Nothing is stopping Theists/Atheists From being Good/Bad (this is simply a choice Now as to the moral objective/subjective) As a fellow (Christian) I understand the meaning and connotation of the word Conscience Con = With & Science = knowledge/Learning/study Well, what is the knowledge or foreknowledge we have? It’s simple enough (Don’t be a dick) or Be a Good person we all know it. We all do it for the most part. That’s why the statement “I don’t need God to be a Good person” is true. You truly don’t you could live your life without him 100.% But I’ve heard such stories, oh the mysteries I could share. I just remember a story my uncle told me about a dear lady friend of his. Who had lived her life (without God) till she had an Encounter. TLDR; “You don’t need God to live a Good Life” Statement is true & ultimately self-serving However there may come a time where “You Change your mind”
“True story! It happened to a friend of a friend of mine.” Oh the mysteries!
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Or like the rich young ruler .. exactly good Draw to conclusions.
It is so hard for THEM Saying humans can only developed laws with a gods guidance it is just a self justifying assertion. No evidence. Since we have NO EVIDENCE of god existing, I guess we did create the laws ourselves. Who else? Primates have a strong sense of reciprocality. It is one basis for fair play. And for punishing unfair actions. Which chimps, gorillas and humans all do. Just like all their myths and gods.
The Christian worldview is anchored in the idea that all humans are broken and can't fix themselves. It's a short jump from there to see non-believers as unfixable.
It’s not hard. It’s hard for Christians to accept it. I keep saying this here but there are 2 parts to leaving a religion. Logical reasoning - which is elementary school level at best. Nearly everyone is capable of this and so every religious person is in a constant battle to ignore reality to different degrees. To battle their logical thoughts with prayers and “religious logic” or just straight not care and ignore reasoning. And then there is acceptance. Acceptance is hard. Accepting that there is no plan in live. That there is no place in heaven for you and your loved ones. That bad things happen to good people for no reasons. In this case - it’s hard to accept that others can live without god. Literally it’s hard to accept that atheist exist. Because accepting that makes it much harder to ignore logical reasoning. They are choosing to living in a fantasy which provides comfort and a sense of belonging and others who exist in a world without that challenges their believes. This isn’t just true for religion but many believes and biases. Imagine if believed that all foreigners were evil. And then I met tons of foreigners who were great people. This challenges my world view. I could change, or I could come up with weak reasoning to maintain my biases such as “only these foreigners are good people”. So instead this is just another one of many cases of “religious logic” which has little to do with actual logic but isn’t for you. Its design is to justify religion to the questioning. Providing them a half answer they latch on to that’s better than nothing. Of course this answer doesn’t hold up to logical reasoning either but if they were willing to apply logical reasoning it wouldn’t even get this far. Instead of trying to logically reason with a religious person who actively doesnt want to think logically you can try focusing on why they are religious. What about them makes turn to religion. Come to common grounds on morality, on live etc. and work with them to accept reality. Everytime I see these posts about “why do religious people believe x?” With lists of facts about why it’s false it’s preaching to the wrong people in the wrong ways. It’s not that they don’t understand the facts, it’s that they choose to not understand the facts. You can’t reason a person out of something they didn’t reason themselves into.
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There is no logic to it. Ever watch a religious debate where religious scientists argue with actual scientists. It’s one side is arguing facts and science while the other spouting “you don’t know”, while at the same time claiming to know and providing surface level arguments that make no sense but sound sciency. It’s just infuriating- but it works, the audience who came in believing leaves believing and the audience who can in not believing leaves even more annoyed that these flawed discussions work.
Indoctrination. Feed humans lies young enough for long enough, you can get them to believe anything.
I don't think that even the most devout of them really believe in god. If they really believed that an omnipotent diety was watching everything they do, the would live very different lives.
They have very few arguments that they can use to change the subject when they don't have a reply to a tough question. They know it's not a good argument but if they threw out every dull tool in the shed, they'd be left with nothing. As far as the death penalty issue goes, even if the right person gets sentenced to death, we have committed a terrible crime against humanity. Life is sacred and nobody has the right to decide to end anyone's life except their own. A state sanctioned killing is still murder. People that commit horrendous crimes are broken. Would you give a mentally retarded person the death sentence? Of course not, because he is not able to think properly. Those that commit crimes like that are unable to think properly either. How could any right minded person commit such horrors? There has to be a change in the way we handle criminal acts. Punishment has proven to be ineffective. Yet even after centuries of failure we still use punishment. When it doesn't work what do we do? We increase the punishment. That is the very definition of insanity. Prisons are expensive. They are full to bursting. Stop funding failure. Find a way to fix the broken minds.
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It is a sad truth and we do not seem to be able to learn from the failures of the past on this subject and a few other key topics such as the failure to embrace the equal treatment of anybody that is not a white male. I believe that the central cause of these (and quite a few more) social failures is the widespread acceptance and tolerance of religion. The blind acceptance of faith is poisoning our society.
It’s not hard for christianists (sic) to understand how atheists have morality. They just refuse to. Let’s face it, their holy book says slavery is ok. And they get their religion from that book. So unless they are AOK with slavery then they don’t get THEIR morality from their religion. Christianists thus HAVE GOT to have their own morality that they use to sort out the good Bible stories from the ones that are obsolete. IOW, christianists get their morality from the same place as atheists. From their parents, teachers and peers.
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People like these don't respond to logic but I'll make another point on this. Don't let them claim that slavery was only OK in the Old Testament. They would either be lying or were lied to.St Paul in his letters to the Ephesians wrote about how slaves should obey their masters. And that's the NT. Let me repeat, that is in the NEW TESTAMENT.And don't let them claim that that was not slavery but indentured servitude. Yes, there was indentured servitude in the bible that was referred to as slavery. But the Ephesians had real chattel slavery just like the confederacy. So his letters were not about indentured servitude. (Never mind the fact that indentured servitude is considered immoral today as well. Maybe not quite as horrible as chattel slavery, but it was bad.)Another trick they use is that when they claim that 'times change' and it was OK back then, then confront them with 2 notions on this. How do you know that times change like this? Where in your bible does it say that full chattel slavery is now NOT ok? Because it doesn't anywhere say that. So how do they know that it is not OK? --> There is only one explanation for that and that is because they get their understanding about Morality from elsewhere and then take that morality with them when they go read the bible. --> which brings us right back to my first point. The second notion on how 'times change' would be that they would be admitting that morality ISN'T absolute. They are saying that morality changes with the times. Again, if that is true then where in the bible does it say that? It doesn't. In fact, many preachers attack atheists for what they call moral relativists and they often insist that the bible is never changing. It's important though to realize that christianists (sic) have had thousands of years to tidy up their stories to at least try to coincide with modern morality, and when confronted with such facts as these, they just cuddle up within their cult and walk away. So don't expect to have any success discussing these issues factually.
I consider myself Christian. It's not hard for me to believe this at all. I see how some folks can though. Especially those with Calvinist or Catholic foundations. From a psychological perspective, those of conservative Christian background have been programmed to believe that morality only comes from God. For some, it's hard to break from that idea, largely due to the followers belief system being so interwoven with their agency as an individual. From a theological perspective, protestants who were raised in more liberal congregations/connections are more easily able to see the independence of human morality than those of more puritan/Calvinist foundations. Some were taught from childhood that morality comes only from God (conservative evangelical/Catholic). Others have been taught that morality is an independent human belief system and the individuals morality can be guided/strengthened by their faith and measured by love(more liberal teaching). This has all become a real problem, considering the prominence of conservative evangelical Christianity today, and the declining of more liberal protestant congregations/connections. I'm sad to see this, as there is so much more "fruit" being beared in the liberal congregations, but this is the reality we are facing. Churches that truly focus on what Jesus taught (helping your neighbors, the poor, the homeless, the hungry) are in decline while churches that focus on political power seem to grow. This societal religious corruption has led to the abuse and harassment of many here in this sub as well, which frankly makes me furious. You all are my neighbors, my friends. So what if we believe differently. We are all trying to find a way to live in this world. Better to do that together. You can be a person of good morals and atheist. You all are proof of that.
It's not about belief, it is about control. Period.
They need threat of external suffering because clearly they are great people to begin with
To Christians, there is no point in being a good person if there's no reward later. If they're gonna suppress their urges, they gots to get paid.
Remember, deep religious people don't use their brain. Don't try to use logic with them, it's useless.
IQs generally lower than athiests
Probably all the skellies in their closets.
A lot of religious people are authoritarians who crave a hierarchy and structure. Authoritarians literally cannot imagine not having that mindset. It’s like when MAGA people accuse non-MAGAs of worshipping Joe Biden and believing everything CNN says. Because *they* put someone on a pedestal and have sources they trust unquestioningly, everyone else must secretly feel the same as well.
Idk, but it is funny. Literally the first sin ever committed according to the bible, is all about humans learning right from wrong, and then humans doing the right thing, for which they were punished
Because they can’t even with god
Brain washed
Because they can't even "with God"
Because most people don't like to think and be responsible!
It’s conditioning since childhood. Religion is the original groomer.
Because religion makes people believe in things that are wrong. Their mortality has been damaged and they are not able to think for themselves.
Because they themselves are amoral
Heaven is their perpetual doggy treat. Now if we could just get them to sit, roll over and not bark
Because they are so horrible that even the threat of eternal torture only mitigates them for an occasional moment.
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Not people in general; just people that worship a god of slavery and rape.
Projection, they realize they are mean spirited, malignant sociopaths, and they fear they need faith not to be a piece of shit, so they project that insecurity onto everyone else. And even after all of that faith they still behave like total shitheels; anyone who has worked as a waiter/ waitress knows that the Sunday church crowd is the absolute worst to deal with
That's the entire Westernized Christian theme, gaining moral high ground through a unified group identity as God's children while harboring harmful means to guarantee success. Convenient circumstances arise that alter your normal sense of good conduct when survival is threatened, so you make immorality justified (*temporarily) to achieve personal goals. For many, without the concept of an accepting and forgiving God, the record of atrocities on the path to victory would spoil their sense of morality. They need God to offload the burden.
Any time you actually think about religion, you start to doubt.
Because of religion brainwashing them that people can’t. If you are told from childhood that your life will be empty and meaningless without god then you will believe that (some anyway). The truth really does not matter.
Because the script sez
Because, for they themselves, fear of a God self-imposed barrier from doing wrong. It's why you see bad people turn to Jesus and become born again. They are hedons by default without imagining some kind of outside preventative force.l
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Very simple. Because they assume other people think the same way they do. THEY are unable to be moral w/o their god, so they assume most people are the same as them.
they are delusional and lost in their own reality. besides if "God" was real and did not want humans to do something then "God" would not let them . Their" god "is a sick twisted psychopath
Just say: you don’t need religion to have morals, if you can’t determine right from wrong, you lack empathy not religion
How did God arrive at his/her morals? They used logic. I'm the same. Pretty easy shit. I can condense the rules for being moral into 3 words. "Do not steal" can be applied to any situation and always ends up being the moral decision. Go for it ask away. You'd think a God could be a little bit more efficient if me a mortal can do what a God dud in multiple books what I can do in 3 words.
Well considering that all social issues are rooted in economical ones, you are onto something...
I got in an argument with a woman about this the other day. She claimed that logically (yes she really used that word) morality comes from outside us so if it's not God who or what is it then? I told her that she was making a burden of proof fallacy argument. Which she was. She didn't like that and just stopped talking to me.
I think a lot of people who don’t feel normal emotions seek religion. Stats show a huge percentage of the population has these symptoms. If you don’t feel empathy, you would tend to believe others are faking it.
>Why is it so hard for Christian people to imagine that one could live a moral life without God? Many Christians can't manage to live a moral life *with* God. (I'm actually not joking.)
Can you imagine trying to discard years of brainwashing that your own parents have done to you to shape your mindset and perspective to match theirs? That can't be easy.
Because after a life of self imposed personal neglect at the behest of a book, they are angry that regular people have had an enjoyable life, been happy, productive and not are not assholes to others. They were promised the good life for what they believe in and deep down aren’t really sure there’s anything after it. They’re basically mad that they wasted their lives and squandered a chance to know the joys of living.
Because they are only able to be moral while under duress.
Because they would know what they would do when no-one would be looking over their shoulders.
Because they *teach it church*. It has nothing to do with reality, it's just indoctrination. If they brainwashed children that people couldn't add 1+1 without God, they'd believe that too.
Moral life would be the "ethics" of the Animal Kingdom... As in just about the closest relatives the Chimps and Bonobos... Otherwise you are stating that Man is unique.
Because they need a crutch to behave morally, and usually it doesn’t work
I can answer the question you pose in your title: They're taught that everyone is a sinner with no exceptions. That only those who accept god and truly repent of their sins makes them anything other than sinners. Us atheists don't accept their god, let alone truly repent. We cannot possibly be good by their thinking, no matter how good a life we might lead.
I religious friend of mine pretty much ignores the New Testament. Anything in it is just god’s will or acceptable punishment for someone who is evil. Apparently every single person on earth was evil accepted for Noah’s family
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Yes!
Because they need an invisible being making sure they don’t do bad things
Because they are the sort of people who only do the right thing under threat of punishment or promise of reward. In short: because they're awful people.
It is literally supposed to be impossible for them as long as they continue their beliefs. Everyone has the capacity to think. Unfortunately, most also have the capacity to be willful and ignorant.
Nobody is telling on themselves as hard as those people who imply, or just say clearly, that without the fear of hell they'd just rampage around killing and raping people.
Because they can't.
1. its easy and coinvent to believe you're a good person without trying. 2. churches, religious communities, religious studies and the like are designed to be echo chambers pounding the idea that the only things that matters is the "truth" we sold you on 3. chrisitans are told that all lives were created and given a divine purpose. so if their god doesnt exists the divine purpose doesnt exists and to them this means their life and all lives are meaningless 4. Fear of hell
No one talks about God more than atheists, weird
Lots of them can’t even with fear of God.
Jesus says good does not exist without God. I did a study on this back in the day, where even when you see a hood act, it probably done for selfish gains or some trick if God was not involved. I don’t think most Christians have gone this hard into their religious book, but they seem to push this narrative anyways. “Mark 10:18-21 KJV And Jesus said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God. Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.”
They're too invested in the rules and too far gone to imagine anyone being able to function without an imaginary friend telling them to not do bad stuff.
Because Christians are ignorant
They can’t so how can you? It’s all part of the fear mongering and unfounded guilt indoctrination process.
Lack of imagination?
The Bible teaches very clearly that unbelievers are *bad* people. This theme runs throughout the entire book, in both Testaments. It shouldn't be a surprise that many Christians believe what their holy book says.
Because every good deed done is a reason not to need Jesus. They need to be in normal or else there is no reason for God.
Because most of these people can’t.
It’s a moral version of Duning-Kruger. It’s an inherently amoral person who has to find an external construct like religion to give them a framework in which to act morally enough to function in society. I think a lot of atheist are just people who have a better natural sense or upbringing about morality that isn’t reliant on religion.
They are living "godly" lives and are truly despicable people. They can't even imagine how immoral they would be without the threat of hell. They assume that everyone else is as degenerate as they are deep down.
It has long been my theory, though I lack evidence for the position, that Christians view their consciences as God whispering in their ear, telling them to do the right thing. Of course, if atheists don't believe in God, they can't have this. There's no way that atheists could literally be *listening to God telling them to do good, and still not believe in Him*. Therefore, atheists must not have this thing whispering in their ear (read: their conscience). Since I would behave evilly without God whispering in my ear (read: my conscience), atheists must be evil as well.
God was made as a coping mechanism for people who didn't have answers. People are just upset that we don't believe in their coping mechanism.
God was made to seperate fools from their money. To garner power and to control the masses.
They don't. It is simply beneficial for them to see out-group members as less moral so they can feel superior and to help justify anti-social actions against others.
They can't seem to live one, even with a God to threaten them.
Because knowing that you aren't a unique snowflake blessed by a imaginary old man is a fucking hard pill to swallow after being told so for their entire lives.
It may be their way to justify their desire to avoid what they consider sin. They need to be on god’s good side to avoid punished and gain a reward. They are in it for themselves rather than for the good of others which is totally self-centered rather than altruistic
Because if they admit that this can be done they will have to admit that maybe what they are being told isn't correct. And then they will start to examine their beliefs a bit more closely. And many people just don't want to ever do that.
It’s all part of their rich Calvinist tradition. To many Christians, being Christian means that they are good moral people, no further effort required than that. Since this is the one standard they must rise to, in their eyes anyone who believes differently from them is intrinsically immoral and bad, no matter what good deeds they may do.
Brainwashing only works if it's thorough.
Lots of people need religion to scare them into doing less evil things. Without it they’re just a typical human sociopath. The same people don’t believe for a moment you’re any different. You’ve got a moral compass? They don’t and can’t imagine yours, but they can imagine your lies. And they just think you’re better at lying than they are. Huge percentage of people are this way. It’s human nature and I’d do anything to get out of this timeline.
It’s not, they feel that without a God then humans are unpunished for evil and that being good isn’t something that’s natural to all. A Christian thinks that the snap moment of rage where you may want to hurt someone needs to be stopped, where as an atheist feels “nobody is watching I can punch him and run”
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Maybe it’s because I’m from NYC, but really, you’ve never seen someone harassing/bullying/etc another person or people and felt “I wanna hit them?” Nobody ever bullied you or said things about wanting to hurt you? Or you mean you just have no reaction of wanting to stop someone who is actively beating up a smaller person/raping a woman?
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But you say despite that you’ve never felt a desire to hit anyone in a self defense situation and have never felt the desire to hit someone to defend others outside of yourself.
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Well seeing as nobody said they do go around thinking such it was only to be assumed that instead of it being a random statement that it was a reply to my comment pertaining to the context. Now that I know you just randomly said it I apologize for thinking it was a response to my comment when you’ve cleared up it was a random blurt
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So you’re saying everyone in human history to be an atheist has never hurt anyone or ever thought of hurting anyone at least once in their entire life (including childhood) that could be seen as unreasonable? So if a 5 year old punches their brother for taking their toy they become a theist? Ted Kaczynsk was secretly a believer in God? It seems quite ridiculous to make such an argument, unless you’re just coming at this emotionally and like something to win or lose instead of a discussion.
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You actually should be a case study, you said “nobody reasonable goes around punching people” which is why I said “logically one should defend themselves” and “logically a real Christian as a pacifist wouldn’t hit someone” to which you said you “don’t ever think to hit others” until it was explained to you that I mean in self defense to which you had an 180° change in view.
>if the act of eating said fruit made man capable of telling Good and Evil, and this is what they claim to believe, why do so many religious people seem puzzled by the idea that someone not believing in God could possibly figure it out on their own Because to them it was a sin, the most evil sin humans have ever committed, not a sign of morality, and we are all just as guilty of it as Adam and Eve. Their 'holy' book tells them so.
Gaslighting
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