Do people who do good but do it because they think they will go to heaven because of it actually selfish?
Now of course I am sure that a lot of religious people would be nice even if they were atheists, but do some people only care about going to heaven? And would God see through this deception?
Apparently god doesn't care how or why you come to worship him, only that you do. Worship him out of fear or love or loneliness or simply to fit in with everyone around you. He just doesn't care.Quote by: kane
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
He also doesn't really seem to care if you worship him. Just live a life of heresy and recant and atone on your deathbed. Then you're a shoe-in for heaven admittance!
You're right. That couldn't have anything to do with people giving away their estate to the church on their deathbed so they can have more afterlife could it?? Nah! The church would never be so crass... or would they?
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
What are you basing this opinion on?
My read of the bible says otherwise.
“The heart has its reason which reason does not know.” - Blaise Pascal
"chewtabacachewtabacachewtabaca-spit" - Blake Shelton
To do good out of the kindness of ones heart is simply to do good for its own sake.
"If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so." Thomas Jefferson
I was nice when I was religious. I'm not religious any more, and I'm still quite nice.
When I do good, it's not because I expect to score any brownie points with the man upstairs. In fact, I don't even have reason to believe there is a man upstairs, and the way believers describe him I'm not sure I care to score brownie points with him even if he does exist. But that aside, my reasons for being a decent human being after I stopped being religious are the same as they were when I was still religious.
It's an interesting paradox when religious people tell you God defines what good is, and that without God we would have no reason not to hurt each other. If that were really true, then we really would have no reason not to hurt each other - so why are you suggesting that it would be a bad thing if that were the case? You're arguing that (for example) murder is wrong because God exists, and that murder would be okay if God didn't exist, as there would thus be no "objective" morality - but if that were the case, then why would it be bad if God didn't exist? If murder is truly only bad because God says it is, then society would be no worse off if God didn't exist. The fact is that murder is bad regardless, and religious people know this which is why they wouldn't go around murdering people even if they knew God didn't exist. The argument only works if murder is already bad, before God ever said it was, but if that's the case then the argument is wrong, because murder is bad even without God existing. Their reasons for not murdering people are because murder is bad, not because God said murder is bad.
That's the majority anyways. I suspect there might be a very small minority of theists who really wouldn't have any compunctions against killing people if they knew God didn't exist. And that possibility scares the hell out of me. And then there are those who don't care at all. Those are the ones that end up in jail, or mental institutions. Or sometimes blowing themselves up.
An aside note: I think doing good "out of the kindness of your heart" means that you are following your moral instincts. Someone might help another person out for a specific, rational reason, which they might give - but if they have no rational reason then they are doing it "out of the kindness of their heart," i.e. out of the very human instinct to help (honed by evolution during a time when our species needed to be able to work together). Why your heart? Presumably the heart beats faster or something when someone feels they are doing good, hence the many phrases and ideas about love and emotion coming from the heart, even though we know that in reality these things occur in the brain and affect the whole body. I believe the emotion at work here is pride, which we can positively declare to be a virtue, not a sin, when we observe that people often do good for the sole purpose of being able to feel proud of their actions.
YouTube - ‪Pride is a Virtue NOT a Sin!‬‏
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.--Napoleon Bonaparte
Enlighten me. For what reason does god prefer me to worship him and for what reason does he not accept my worship? What does the bible say about deathbed conversions?
Religion is poison because it asks us to give up our most precious faculty, which is that of reason, and to believe things without evidence. It then asks us to respect this, which it calls faith. - Christopher Hitchens
Is acting nice so you can feel pride later any different. Whenever I do something nice I always think “Why did I do that?” not being an impartial adviser to myself, I can never answer. What I wonder is that if given a true test of character somehow, who would be consisted nice.
A true test would be one with no conceivable benefit, you don’t feel better because of it, you don’t go to heaven because of it and you don’t gain that persons favor. In real life I cannot conceive a situation where this would be important so it is a purely philosophical question.
Do we act kind because of evolution or maybe because we were trained by our God fearing parents.
And I agree pride is not a sin.
Last edited by kane; 1st June 2011 at 05:53 PM.
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