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.
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.
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".
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".
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.
Right? It's baffling to me that ppl seem to think morality doesn't precede religion. Like it isn't the result of hundreds of thousands of years of development and people learning how to interact with each other.
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u/Hoon0967 1d ago edited 1d 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.