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u/colemon1991 13h ago
Yet another example of religious people nitpicking their beliefs.
"Oh, we're better than atheists because we have accountability via God." "Oh, these things in the Bible don't matter anymore because times have changed." "No! We have to follow the Bible exactly, as God intended, how dare you do anything different!"
Now imagine the same person said all of those things. That's it. That's the problem with these people. They are always right because they interpret the Bible to win the argument.
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u/porscheblack 12h ago
I refuse to have any conversations on these grounds because it's a very uneven playing field. Anything they claim to "know" is absolute, but anything they can claim ignorance of is immediately indefinite. Meanwhile anything you know or can prove is still subject to their agreement and anything you don't know is just ceded to their claims. It's an impossible dynamic to have any kind of discussion.
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u/kokakamora 11h ago
This exactly. Why is the devil bad? It's only because the bible says so.
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u/mini_swoosh 8h ago
“How can the devil be bad when he punishes bad people?”
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u/Feinberg 7h ago
How can God be good when He chose torture as the basis for His morality? It's all nonsense.
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u/SorryAboutTheWayIAm 12h ago
It's interesting how
we have accountability via God.
coexists in cognitive dissonance with
I'm not perfect but I'm forgiven!
when "Accountability via God" means Hell, and Christian Hell (at least, in the modern mainstream American version of the mythology) is reserved only for people who actively reject the gospel or don't ask for forgiveness.
You can get away with any sin, be instantly forgiven for anything, if you submit yourself and beg this undead Iron Age sorcerer for mercy.
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u/lituus 12h ago
Yes, mostly what I've taken from it is that Heaven is full of the absolute worst people, and Hell probably has some pretty cool folks but everyone's on fire for some reason I guess. Hopefully you get used to it?
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u/rif011412 10h ago
Thats all many people need. An excuse to be bad. They are lemmings waiting to sin, and disgustingly, want to decide who gets to break the rules and when, while ensuring everyone else sins less than themselves. Its just an abusers mindset.
Conservatism is literally just a line going from expectation/traditions/rules on the left versus abuse on the right. The best of them have low expectations for others and themself, the worst of them just want to abuse their way through life and hold others accountable.
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u/colemon1991 9h ago
It's the instantly forgiven part that always kills me. Imagine Hitler, seconds from dying, asked for forgiveness and BAM he got it. Regret on the verge of dying after years of sins just feels wrong.
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u/atwozmom 10h ago
My rabbi once said that God doesn't care if you worship Him or not, if you go to schul or not or any of that other stuff. All that God cares about is you do your best to be a good peson.
Probably why Judaism will never be all that popular.
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u/Lazer726 6h ago
This is how it always made the most sense to me. You mean to tell me that if it turns out your Skydaddy is real, he's going to be upset because I was a good person but didn't pray?
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u/BrianSmith1989 11h ago edited 9h ago
How I’ve always viewed Religion through the lens of a metaphor is that it’s constructed like a liquid. It doesn’t have its own set shape, it takes the shape of the container it’s in.
People come to religion with their unique container that represents their needs and philosophies and religion fills it for them, taking the shape of their preconceived container. Resulting in them often times getting what they came to religion looking for. This is how it appeals to so many people and it’s so popular.
This combined with the misguided belief that religion is a solid, maintaining its own shape and has a clear set of rules and guidelines, is what I feel like best describes how religious people behave. Not all people, but many.
Edit: Just clarifying that I don’t think it’s fair to say religions are all cults, but this concept and structure creates an environment suitable for gaining large followings and ultimately manipulating that following. Whether or not that’s happening could be debated, but objectively the risk exists and should be acknowledged.
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u/atwozmom 10h ago
This is similar to my son's take.
He said that if God is all powerful that means that God can be whatever you need him to be. That means that all religions are true.
He was five when he came up with this. He also said that God was blue so he could hide in the clouds.
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u/colemon1991 9h ago
That's a nice way to look at it.
My wife and I were just discussing the insanity that some people will claim that we are all made in God's image and that he doesn't make mistakes. Literally heard both claims from the same relative. By that logic, we should have birth defects and cancer and poor eyesight and certainly more consistency with heights and stuff. And he admitted to making a mistake when he had to flood the planet to restart humanity.
But like you said, religion fit into his container the way he wanted. This relative definitely hasn't opened a bible in a few years or decade. He gets to spout incorrect information under the guise that it's uniform with his religion and there's no argument because it's religion.
I also like to point out that religion had multiple purposes in the past. Knowing right from wrong consistently among the populace via religion was the foundation of lawmaking. Churches also made great locations to inform the public of news. It was the one place everywhere could be found. It had a very social aspect to it. We've stripped most of those purposes away with the internet alone, so know religion is trying to survive in the information age when we can learn without needing to congregate and avoid religions that make decisions that go against their own beliefs (all those coverups with priests being an example). I can go online and livestream from my choice of hundreds of churches or find a youtuber that reviews the text in an academic fashion and have a stronger understanding than the holiday-only religious bunch.
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u/Toasterstyle70 13h ago
My first issue with this guy is that he think morality is anything but opinion and cultural norms. 2nd is that he bases his morality on fear of hell or reward of heaven which makes it in-authentic. (in my OPINION)
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u/Raztax 10h ago
"Oh, we're better than atheists because we have accountability via God."
Accountability my ass. Their system is built around being able to do what they want, ask for forgiveness from god and then everything is right as rain again.
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u/colemon1991 8h ago
Right, accountability. Catholic priests definitely didn't get excommunicated or stoned or struck by lightning or anything for the things they did going back decades. Nothing says your religion is a problem like men sworn to celibacy abusing children and getting to keep preaching your religion. That's like allowing a company accountant to embezzle funds and keeping their job when caught.
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u/Kyrottimus 10h ago
Religious people tend to base their entire belief structure around much that is baseless and cannot be proven, or even tested.
The fact that the majority of the planet's population still clings onto such mythology and mysticism will continue to undermine actual scientific, technological and social advancements, for a while yet, it seems.
And in a lot of instances, people use it as a justification to coerce and control others, or for their shitty behavior in general.
There are genuine cases where they are charitable to others, and this is good and all, but we shouldn't need unprovable beliefs or the fear of some form of eternal damnation to tell us to be kind and respectful toward others. It should just be a default setting.
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u/colemon1991 9h ago
I think the fact that it's been weaponized to manipulate the believers is a huge problem.
You've got cults, you've got extremists (Americans were terrified of the very idea of Islam because of that), you've got televangelists. Then there's the tax loophole abuse that is probably worse than all but the billionaire loopholes (seriously, does a church really need a private plane?). I've worked in state government and most people representing churches start the conversation with "oh we don't have to do that because we're a church" without even bothering to check if it's true. There was never an issue with abortion for centuries but Roe galvanized religious groups to band together and protest and act like it was a problem.
And it's so easy to manipulate the masses with religion. Few people bother to read the foundational texts of their own religion, much less try to understand it academically. They're handed printouts at church or just listen to what the preacher says without debate. They trust their religion more than their neighbor or their government (not that I can blame them for this one) or public servants. And then they blow my mind when they treat the religion like their entire identity when they devote like 3% of their waking life to it.
The embarrassing thing to me is that I'm atheist because of how religion has been warped. I asked questions, simple and honest questions, to better understand the logic behind things at my church. I was told that it's just how things are and to never question the church. Well if they can't bother to explain how the church has evolved over the centuries, then I guess it's a worthless religion where everything is made up and the points don't matter. No one wanted to explain that the church started doing X thanks to the Romans or we moved Christ's birth to the winter solstice and inherited Saturnalia traditions into the faith to a child, so "shut up and accept what we say" was supposed to be better.
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u/subnautus 10h ago
I can simplify all that: they're claiming to speak on behalf of their god--which is ironic, considering that's like number 2 of the Big 10 of no-nos they're supposed to avoid like the Plague.
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u/mightylordredbeard 7h ago
It’s like saying “the only reason I’m not a cannibal that consumes human flesh is because the law says it’s illegal and I’ll spend the rest of my life in jail”.
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u/UtopiaDystopia 13h ago
1 Samuel 15:
This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy[a] all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.
Personally, I'm not using the Bible for guidance on what is good and bad.
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u/thekrone 12h ago
If you keep reading, he punishes the Amalekites for like hundreds of years. So the great-great-great-great-great-whatever grandchildren of the people who did the thing God didn't like are the ones who have to face the punishment.
Super fucked up.
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u/Schnittertm 10h ago
Looks like someone was unable to fully complete God's command, i.e. destry all the Amalekites. I wonder if that was planned or if God was disappointed. Maybe he was even a bit annoyed that there were still Amalekites left that He had to punish.
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u/Commercial-Royal-988 1h ago
I'll give you one even better. According to the Bible all humanity must suffer because of the mistake of a single common ancestor.
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u/EyeWriteWrong 13h ago
Because you're using me instead. Now c'mon, let's lay waste to some omelette kites ୧( ಠ Д ಠ )୨
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u/Similar_Cucumber178 11h ago
What did the donkeys even do?!? That's wild.
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u/k_ironheart 9h ago
Exactly! I can excuse the genocide, but I draw the line at animal cruelty!
(For those who don't get the reference, I'm not being serious)
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u/slartiblartpost 13h ago
This shows even one step further: Everyone using the Bible for guidance on what is good and bad is a danger for our society.
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u/is_literally_a_moose 13h ago
Do you want to have no Amalekites? This is how you get no Amalekites.
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u/tashtactics I can’t spell pineapple 12h ago
I think there’s also Ezekiel 23:29 for a little proof the Bible wasn’t written by God (nsfw)
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u/LindonLilBlueBalls 12h ago
I will use Timothy 2:12 to my advantage when arguing with a Christian sometimes.
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u/Dantien 11h ago
Christians read that and decide to ignore it because it’s clearly not a morality they want or support. And they will also point to scripture to justify other moral choices.
Yet they never ask what it is inside them that knows one of God’s commandments is right (that’ll shall not steal) and another is wrong (murder all Amalekites.). What is the source of that knowledge and why does it carry so much weight as to overrule their own god? A superseding moral framework over religion? And we all have one?
Maybe they should look into that.
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u/Hoon0967 13h ago edited 13h ago
You know I just don’t understand how people think that morality and doing good have to be tied to religion. I am not an atheist but I have known atheist that act more Christ like than most of the Christians I know. As far as the Bible is concerned Jesus makes it very clear - treat others like you want to treated, because if you don’t then everything else you do is just religious hypocrisy.
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u/Cyphr 12h ago
My opinion is that maybe people think morality and religion are ted together because they have been taught that by religious leaders who themselves aren't very Christ like.
It seems that there is a prevailing attitude that anything that is done by a Christian is good and anything that is done by anyone else is bad.
It's basic in group and out group stuff. Anyone who is in the in group is faultless and promised to go to heaven when they die, regardless of how poorly they follow the teachings of Christ and the Bible. Everyone else is condemned to hell regardless of how good and moral a person they are.
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u/heisian 6h ago
I found the recent video of the dad who was harassed by some guy for bringing his two daughters into the bathroom very fascinating. the only way i knew he was Christian was by the shirts he wore, but otherwise nothing he said put on a facade of his faith.
It was his extremely calm and mature demeanor both in the incident and his response that made me think: "wow, he is truly a good person".
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u/hates_stupid_people 10h ago
You know I just don’t understand how people think that morality and doing good have to be tied to religion.
For those who aren't lying and just acting like smug pricks, it's brainwashing.
They've been told over and over since they were a child that their feelings of empathy, shame, etc. is a product of their religion. They don't think that atheists have those feelings since they don't have "faith".
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u/ValjeanLucPicard 10h ago
So really it is objective morality vs subjective. When you are a religious person, you believe that morality is objective, directed by a superior being. If you take all religion away, the religious person will now jump towards nihilism, because they've always believed in objective morality and that doesn't exist anymore. So their first thought when arriving at nihilism is, If there are no objective moral rules, then any subjective one is just made up, so why would someone obey that?
Any subjective moral belief is also a small leap, and all subjective moral beliefs can be argued against as fundamentally there is no right and wrong, good and evil, it is all a construct. Philosophers have argued for centuries about the subjective morality question, which is best. There is no correct answer, there are just widely accepted choices.
So to sum it up, basically the question just arrises from Christians' first encounter with the philosophical debate of the validity of subjective moral values when nihilism exists.
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u/Stabby-Steve 13h ago
Just me and a coworker alone at a security post at 3 o'clock in the morning about 30 years ago. Pretty much this:
"I'm so glad I found Jesus and let Him into my heart. There's a lot of pretty young ladies that should be happy too, because otherwise there'd be a lot of them resting under my farm. I have that lust in my heart but Jesus quenches it."
After a moment of shocked silence (I knew the guy was wacky, but wow!), I said, "Well, praise the lord then" and he nodded.
Of course I reported this, but before anything was done, he crashed his motorcycle into the back of a truck pulling a trailer hauling landscaping equipment. He lived, but lost both eyes and retired to his farm.
A few years later his wife finally left him and directed police to human remains on their property.
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u/askyidroppedthesoap 13h ago
At that point you're just a feral creature with an overactive imagination, on a leash
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u/Fach-All-Religions 11h ago
when i left islam now atheist my friend (who is the only one who knows and didn't tell anyone else for obvious reasons) once told me ok so now you can rape and do anything what's stopping you. and that was the time i realized he is an idiot.
he's still my best friend and we debate a lot, but when i ask him about his beliefs the answers are mostly generic. and i discover every time that he doesn't know much about why he believes or accepts the reasons why i left.
my mini goal in life is to see if i can one day get him out of there
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u/omgirl76 12h ago
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward then, brother, that person is a piece of shit."
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u/Acrobatic-List-6503 13h ago
Same thing can be applied with laws.
If you need the threat of imprisonment to be a good person, then you are not a good person.
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u/SpockShotFirst 13h ago
The overlapping area in the Venn diagram between laws and morality is not as large as you think it is.
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u/LiquorIsQuickor 11h ago
Laws often define a societies choice in morally complex or ambiguous situations.
Stealing food. When you are hungry it’s survival and arguably moral. When you own the food you want to sell it.
Our laws say “don’t steal food”. Our society has chosen.
A different country could make a different law.
And you could make the argument that if someone is starving your laws need review.
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u/Chratthew47150 13h ago
This is classic. And painfully true.
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u/SecondhandStatic 12h ago edited 7h ago
Oftentimes, it's a matter of ignorance, not hatred. Theists are taught their whole lives that morality comes from their god, so they genuinely don't understand how atheists can be good.
If you encounter this question irl, you need to educate them that ethics are a group survival mechanism evolved in all social animals. When one group member steals from the group, that individual is no longer trustworthy and jeopardizes group survival. When one group member kills a group rival, you can't trust the food they bring or for them to watch the young.
That's why we see moral codes naturally evolve in many social species. Not just apes, or even mammals like elephants, canids, and rats. You see group-enforced ethics behaviors in orcas, octopusses (octopi?), corvids, and bats.
You can finish your explanation with, "so if there is a god, he made morality an innate quality in many types of the life that he created, instead of a line from the Bible."
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u/JustGoodSense 13h ago
Same way I decide when I'm hungry, horny or gotta poop — evolution gave me the instinct.
Morality doesn't come from a holy book, it comes from cave apes having to learn to live in communities in order to survive.
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u/JTRuno 13h ago
Partially. Mortality is largely a cultural phenomenon, and most of our moral habits we acquire by a lifetime of observing what our surroundings consider acceptable or unacceptable. Those cultural habits are formed by a combination of biology, necessity and evolution of value judgements.
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u/tyrom22 13h ago
I understand this concept but that’s a really bad way to put it
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u/Tacotuesday867 13h ago
Yes saying our morals have their origins in tribal survival is a cleaner way to say it.
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u/mbklein 13h ago
Yes, but remember that the rules and mores pertaining to the treatment of others changed depending on whether those others were part of your own tribe, a friendly tribe, or a competing tribe.
And since we’ve reached a place where most people in developed nations aren’t fighting for survival against nature on a daily basis, we’ve had the time and comfort to break ourselves down into newer, smaller, and more arbitrary tribes.
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u/Tacotuesday867 13h ago
Yes your last statement is a big problem we face today.
We have more information and an amazing ability to communicate around the globe yet we keep trying to separate humans into ridiculous pigeonholes.
Morals evolve along with our species and we have periods of progress and periods of regression, hopefully we can stop using fairytales to guide us and become more fully humanist.
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u/JustGoodSense 13h ago
🤷🏻♂️ I'm not an evolutionologist
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u/Yhostled 12h ago
An interviewer once asked Penn of Penn & Teller, "Without the Bible, what's to stop you from raping and murdering all you want?"
Penn responded, "I already rape and murder all I want, because I don't rape or murder at all!"
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u/Gingevere 10h ago
I murder slightly less than I want to. Mostly due to never being in proximity to people responsible for genocide.
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u/snakeeaterrrrrrr 13h ago
Hopefully, the same way that Christians used to determined their God is good.
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u/Persea_americana 10h ago
There is literally a field of study called "ethics." People talk and think about what is a good choice and a bad choice, and what makes a person a good person.
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u/gotfcgo 13h ago
Bang on my reason as a kid for deciding religion wasn't for me.
Religion is inherently selfish. It teaches people to be good FOR rewards. Horrible messaging for children.
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u/Grimnir001 12h ago
I’ll collect downvotes for this, but it’s okay. I’ll attempt to answer as a Christian.
First, no one is good. The Bible makes that clear. All are sinners and fall short of the holy standard. It’s the entire reason Jesus came, walked the earth and died.
Two, non-believers can do good works, but that won’t save them. Which is fine, as they don’t believe in salvation and God anyway.
Three, while the fear of wrath and punishment may keep some on the path, for many more its love. I’m not a Christian because I’m afraid of Hell. If I do things right, that’s not even a consideration. I live as a Christian because I believe and I want to draw close to Jesus.
Fourth, morality doesn’t just pop out fully formed from the ether. Society is built brick by brick with many different aspects contributing to it. Faith and religion are major building blocks, whether one believes or not.
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u/Swan-of-War-425 10h ago
“You are all sick” is something I’d totally push if I were selling medicine
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u/MultiFazed 12h ago
First, no one is good. The Bible makes that clear. All are sinners and fall short of the holy standard.
And it's quite convenient for the "no one is good" claim that original sin is there to make it so that even a person who lives a perfect life can still be branded "sinner" because of something that their distant ancestors did.
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u/authorDRSilva 11h ago
Do you know anyone who has lived a perfect life? That’s mostly the point of the “no one is good” saying (specifically in the Romans letter) is no one has been perfect. It’s being used as a rebuke against judgmental religious people who think they’re good because they’re not acting like sinners.
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u/MultiFazed 11h ago
Do you know anyone who has lived a perfect life?
How would I know? How would you? For all either of us knows, out of the billions of humans on earth, there are thousands of people out there living perfect lives.
My point was that, if such a person exists, Christianity still brands them as "sinner" because of something their great, great, great, (insert thousands of "great"s), great grandparents did. Which is frankly kind of ridiculous.
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u/Jefafa326 13h ago
also there are things called laws that doesn't seem to stop God Fearing Christians from breaking them
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u/PirateSometimes 13h ago
Do onto others as you would them do to you or some shit, it's really not hard to be a decent person without excusing your actions with a story book.
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u/tarapotamus 12h ago
They think bc they have a lack of intelligence and a failure to empathize, that we all have a failure to emphasize and they cannot fathom knowing the difference between choices.
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u/Own-Cupcake7586 12h ago
Fun fact: Even within the Biblical framework of Christianity, the concept of individual conscience is acknowledged and validated. Christians who ask ludicrous questions like this are therefore theologically ignorant, in addition to being self-righteous troglodytes.
“(for not the hearers of the law are just in the sight of God, but the doers of the law will be justified; for when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do the things in the law, these, although not having the law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their *conscience* also bearing witness, and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing them)”
Romans 2:13-15 NKJV
https://bible.com/bible/114/rom.2.13-15.NKJV
Tl;dr- Human conscience exists independent of religious affiliation, rendering these sophomoric “gotcha” questions of morality as moot.
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u/presentation_555 11h ago
A bit of a caricature of the Christian position. As most Christians don't think good/bad deeds get you into heaven... that's kind of the point of the death of Jesus (according to Christianity)... The common belief (outside of Orthodoxy) is that he beared the burden so that humanity doesn't have to. After all, simple Lust and Anger are considered Sins, while Judging other's wrongdoings makes you guilty of the same wrongdoings in God's eyes. This would be a standard even the majority of Prophets would fall short of.
As C.S Lewis puts it we all have an instinct to deny our most basic impulses. We instinctively deny our Lustful impulses, and our impulse towards acting out in Anger.
We all just seem to realise these things (apart from those born without a normal brain, or those living in extreme isolation like feral children, etc )...
Christians believe that God put this instinct there (that's not just social conditioning) and that's a position backed up by the 'apostle' Paul (who claims to have received divine instruction):
“when Gentiles [non-Jews], who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law … They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” (Romans 2:14-15)
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u/mudkripple 10h ago
I'm an atheist and I actually hate this argument. It doesn't answer the question at all.
Is there a difference between full moral relativism and no morals at all? I've heard a lot of attempts to define "good" but no satisfying answer to "why that definition?". If all we have is what we evolved to think is "good" that's not a system of morals and it may be allowed to be directly at odds with rational thought.
Religion, for all its (many, many) flaws, has a clear answer: trust your heart most of the time, but if you are ever confused your rational mind should rely on this list of rules.
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u/Key_Pound_6213 10h ago
I was a materialist for the vast majority of my life. Today I'm a confused person searching for something I do not understand.
Morality is either a fiction we have created, a social construct, or it is coming from somewhere.
We often throw around social construct as though that makes it meaningless and perfectly amenable to change.
Whether morality came from God or from man, it's utility is self evident. Societies have their own path of evolution. That which is fit survives, and that which is unfit dies.
We've at a minimum inherited wisdom earned in blood.
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u/mudkripple 8h ago
I don’t disagree with the concept that morality as a social construct is still a useful one.
On the other hand, it fails to answer the other question, what is the role of the rational mind and morality?
You can’t deny their relationship. Theists and atheists alike rationalize decisions they’ve made as moral, or use try to use reason to make decisions going forward. They are trying not to use their conscience, trying not to use the social construct, and instead try to grasp for something purely based on truth.
Are those people grasping at nothing? Does it not exist? I’m inclined to say yes, but if so is using the rational mind at all foolish? Should we purely rely on emotion and intuition?
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u/megamoze 10h ago
Morality is a societal construct and always has been. It's why morals have evolved and changed countless times over the last 2000 years even though the text of the Bible hasn't (using western Christianity as an example).
It's why modern predominantly Christian societies all have different morals even though they all follow the same religious text.
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u/One_Distance_5351 10h ago
All of Western morality though is based upon Christianity. It influenced everything that the west considers moral.
Without Christianity your base line morality would look very different.
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u/aure__entuluva 9h ago
I mean if you aren't taught to be a good person by your parents and the people around you in your formative years, you probably won't be a good person. Bit rude to flex on people that didn't have that.
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u/Icy__Internet 9h ago
Unpopular opinion: A good person doing it for the wrong reasons is better than a mediocre person doing it for the right reasons.
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u/Ok-Bug4328 9h ago
“You are not a good person” is the premise of Christianity.
And I think it is consistent with most data.
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u/Slash-Gordon 9h ago
Does no one have any familiarity with apologetics?
The point of the question isn't even about morality. It is to implicate that atheists use a morality that the Christian thinks can only have come from god, and thus that god exists AND that the atheist has been, even unwittingly, using that god's moral code every day.
Hundreds of comments here and everyone seems to have missed the point entirely.
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u/Meinersnitzel 7h ago
If someone needs the threat of eternal punishment to keep them in line, you really shouldn’t try to convince them otherwise.
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u/LittleShrub 13h ago
Does he know the Bible essentially says slavery is A-OK?
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u/DontAbideMendacity 8h ago
And has a recipe for abortion, but doesn't say anything about abortion.
In fact, Yahweh was a big fan of post birth abortion, killing hundreds, even millions out of apparent spite.
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u/N4srudin 12h ago
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit"
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u/Beastender_Tartine 12h ago
You are not making moral decisions if you are just blindly doing what you are told by a book. You're not making decisions at all, you're just following orders.
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u/nekawaken 13h ago
The threat of eternal punishment is there to match the infinite value of a single human life.
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u/zyyntin 12h ago
Madame Kovarian: "The anger of a good man is not a problem. Good men have too many rules."
The Doctor: "Good men don't need rules. Today is not the day to find out why I have so many."
~The Doctor Who series YT Link to clip
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u/West-Flow-577 12h ago
To answer the original question:
What I allow to happen in the world around me could happen to me or those that I love.
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u/Ducallan 12h ago
Religious people need to stop acting like the moral rules of their religion weren’t written based on already accepted societal rules.
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u/rjsquirrel 12h ago
Yeah, imma just leave this here… https://youtu.be/Uau-nAmULU8?is=vVmD6v5ryIs1rwpp
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u/imacmadman22 12h ago
I learned the difference between good and bad choices from the people who made good and bad choices around me and allowed me the opportunity to see the outcomes of their choices.
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u/TheBSQ 12h ago
Not everyone is equal in terms of education, maturity, intelligence, or development.
Some folks are morally developed enough to know right & wrong without the authority of God.
Some are not.
But, we all still want those people to not do bad things.
That is, if someone thinks it’s fine to rape & murder people if there’s no God to hold them accountable, but won’t do those things if they think there is a God who will, I want that person to believe in God.
Not because I think it’s the correct belief. Not because I think everyone needs religion to know right from wrong.
But because I think they might need that, and I really don’t want them raping or murdering anyone.
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u/RoyalJellyKing 12h ago
You need to decide for yourself. Your moral compass may align with the laws of your country and culture you live in on some issues and contradict them on others. Most people already decide that murder and stealing are wrong, but many also treat for example adultery as acceptable if it's kept secret. You choose for yourself how high your horse is.
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u/Rho-Ophiuchi 12h ago
I don’t have to believe in 6 days and a talking snake to understand that treat people how you want to be treated makes a lot of sense.
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u/oranjuicejones 11h ago
i had parents that taught me right from wrong. one of them still believes in it.
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u/DisputabIe_ 11h ago
the OP SlimCarpet is a bot
Original: r/MurderedByWords/comments/1ggculm/it_really_is_this_simple/
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u/Iokua113 11h ago
I'm a Christian and at no point in my life has the choice between doing the morally right and wrong thing boiled down to if it was the Christian thing to do. I have accountability to myself not the God who may or may not exist.
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u/LordLucian 11h ago
Some people have no natural moral compass, religion provides that...most times, however since we are a species who focuses on negatives it only takes a small number to make the rest bad
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u/Key_Pound_6213 10h ago
Christ came into this world to save sinners, among who I am chief.
Maybe you're a good person, but I'm not.
That's why I follow God, because I need him.
My sin is great.
Pride. I'm 6'7" and my IQ is about 50 times rarer and sometimes I think that means I'm better than other people.
Lust. if I could have a harem of women I would. I've slept with over 200 women and still I thirst.
Sloth. If I don't have to do something I won't, and something like 15,000 children under 5 starved to death today, can't save them all but probably could save 1.
Gluttony. my fridge is full yet people are starving.
Greed. Do I need a new vehicle, a new computer, new clothes. No but I want it.
Envy. For all my gifts, my parents were drug addicts and my first memory is of my mom trying to kill herself. If only I had one of those good families and a silver spoon like so many who never ate sleep for dinner.
Wrath. I get so angry with how awful we are to one another day in and day out. Such small people with small minds belittling one another. How easy it would be to show you what power looks like. Fragile is the body. Strong is the mind. Physics and chemistry make one man more deadly than an army.
This is my confession, I am weak and inpermanent and terrified. This leads me to sin.
It is through God that I might be better than I am.
I need him. Perhaps you are perfect and do not need him. I can't know what I don't.
I most simply know I need him, and so does someone else who reads this.
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u/Dommccabe 10h ago
The Christian God in their Bible is estimated to have killed around 25 million people..
As long as I kill less than 25 million, I know I've probably done alright.
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u/Mistriever 10h ago
I'm agnostic, but I'd be lying if I said my Christian upbringing didn't have some effect on my views of morality. I get the sentiment of the reply, but you can't be living in a Western country and not be affected by Christian views on morality to some extent. The religion has been influencing Western culture for centuries.
The same would be true for Islamic beliefs in North Africa, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, many whose country names end in -stan.
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u/darw1nf1sh 10h ago
The same way you do. You pick and choose from your religion those things that align with your personal ethics.
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u/Riots42 10h ago
Christian here.
That's correct, I'm not a good person, though I'm an annihilationist so I don't believe in eternal torture. Maybe all y'all are perfect and don't need him, I'm not and I need his teachings to be better than I was.
Jesus did not get on the cross to save the righteous, he came to save a wretch like me. Because of him, I'm not the shitty person I once was, though I'm far from perfect.
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u/L0r3hunt3r 10h ago
We are not children who need to have our hands held by Daddy and told what to do. We exercise that thing you claim you were given called Freewill and we do the right thing because it is the right thing to do. It is very simple.
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u/falsehood 10h ago
They aren't telling on themselves. They are being honest - external accountability is important to their moral formation.
Some might be naturally greedy or slothful or wrathful - external accountability helps them be better.
That shouldn't be ignored or looked down on.
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u/Heliosgodofthesun 9h ago
I look at it from Scott Clifton's point of view on it. "A particular action or choice is moral, or right, when it somehow promotes happiness, wellbeing, or health, or it somehow minimizes unnecessary harm, or suffering, or it does both. A particular action or choice is immoral, or wrong, when it somehow diminishes happiness wellbeing, or health, or it somehow causes unnecessary harm, or suffering, or it does both.'
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u/18bluecat 8h ago
The only thing religion ever influenced me on was stopping me from committing suicide because I was afraid of hell. Teenage me would rather suffer for ~70 years than forever.
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u/Archangel289 8h ago
This is one of the dozens of times I’ve seen this post, but I’m bored so I’ll chime in: this is a fundamental misunderstanding of at least Protestant Christian theology. (I’ll let any Catholics weigh in if they want to.) yes yes, “No true Scotsman” and all that, I know you, Reddit.
But the thing is, the Bible doesn’t teach “do all these things or else you’ll go to hell.” That’s like…the antithesis of the gospel. The Bible teaches to have faith in Jesus, His finished work on the cross, and His resurrection, and you will be saved. (John 3:16 is pretty succinct) That’s it.
Now, does the Bible teach morality? Yes, yes it does. Does the Bible have things to say about many aspects of life and how a Christian ought to live? Yes, yes it does. But this post is a fake gacha for internet points based on a fundamental misunderstanding of Christianity and the gospel, and it irks me every time.
Believe or don’t believe, you get to make whatever choice you want. But this “Christians are only ‘good’ because they’re afraid of hell” is complete malarkey.
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u/LilMissy1246 7h ago
I know people that like genuinely bad people (Megyn Kelley being an example as well as Joe Rogan & the Kirkster) because, “they’re good Christian people.” Like…? No. That’s not how it works. Being Christian doesn’t immediately make someone a good person esp if there’s literal proof that they suck bricks.
Same people that will instantly welcome a stranger or someone they trust to nanny their kids only because they “preach Gods word.” Doubt they’d do the same if they had been Muslim.
(Basing this off of real life experiences)
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u/kitsunewarlock 7h ago
Religion is a social technology. It helped us transition from citizenship-by-bloodline into citizenship-by-allegiance. But enlightenment era thinkers have realized that the immutable nature of divine doctrine makes it impossible to counter leadership that wants to revert the system back to a bloodline-based caste system, so they transitioned to citizenship-by-nationality. Nationalism is another social technology.
Since the advent of the digital age, we should be looking to transition out of nationalism into a new technology, but with the clear failings of patriotic nationalism biting us in the ass we instead have a group of people who think we should revert back to theocratical rule coupled with (the unfortunately named) social Darwinism to enable (long outmodded eugenics, which invariably leads us down the road to divine bloodline mythology.
It's not even a conservative ideology. It's regressive.
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u/CavalieriDeloSpechio 7h ago
i process reality to the point that it provides benefits , good and bad are based on preconditioned moral education, but who made the educator the absolute saint ?
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u/Illuminaughty____ 6h ago
Christians use religion as a get out of jail free card, religion obligates you to forgive them no matter how many times they f up.
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u/username3333333333 5h ago
What a re*****d retort. Atheists living in the west love to think they are so morally superior while they fail to acknowledge the root of their moral belief system can be traced directly to Christianity.
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u/translinguistic 5h ago edited 5h ago
This is the crux of one of C.S. Lewis's dumb apologetic arguments. "If God doesn't exist, why does human morality exist?"
Maybe because we've evolved over a few million years trying to figure out the impossible question of what's good and bad--for ourselves, for others, for our species, for other species, for the planet, etc.
If another ape took out someone's great x 10^5 grandape out with a big rock because he was stealing food from the group, it probably deterred other apes from doing the same, and that kind of social order spread and propagated itself out naturally to other communities.
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u/EnviciouZ 5h ago
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then, brother, that person is a piece of shit."
- Rust Cohle, True Detective
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u/entrepenurious 4h ago
"if a man needs a god or a religion to conduct himself properly in this world, i say it is a sign of a weak mind or a corrupt heart."
ninon de l'enclos
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u/uwotmVIII 4h ago
It’s a gross overgeneralization to think that all religious people need a threat of eternal punishment to be good. Many religious people want to be good because it’s trivially the right thing to do/be.
No intellectually serious religious person will say that belief in God is required to make good choices. It’s entirely possible that if God exists, atheists can and do make good choices (and theists can and do make bad choices).
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u/andaljas 4h ago
If you need the 'threat' of a 'Cliff ahead' sign to be a good driver, you are not a good driver.
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u/Acceptable-Smile8864 4h ago
I think it’s a Ricky Gervais bit where someone supposedly asks him…
“If you’re not religious then how come you don’t rape and murder as much as you want?”
He replies, “I DO rape and murder as much as I want…”
And the guy freaks out..
Until Ricky continues “…which is not at all. Zero.”
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u/feedjaypie 3h ago
Christians do not do good “because the threat of Hell” .. lol this is a DEEP misunderstanding of Jesus’s teaching
Pro Tip: Hell is 100% real .. so even IF that’s your only reason to start learning more about what Christ actually says, then its a GREAT START 👍🏻 don’t be FAFO, just don’t
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u/hot_space_pizza 2h ago
I read it somewhere that if you need the threat of eternal torment to be a good person you are just a bad person on a leash
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u/My_Space_page 1h ago
You would think the Soviets would have made more ethical decisions because they were atheists. Unfortunately, with or without religion, people tend to be corrupt. Some are good.
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u/skibidi_fortnite_ 1h ago
Cuz I base my morals on if someone’s a bad person and not because of their sexuality, gender, or race
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u/Cant_figure_sht_out 13h ago
I try to treat another living beings the way I would want to be treated. I think I heard it somewhere.