Athiests and Agnostics - does this bother you?

[glooper23]

This is a question for athiests and agnostics out there - does it bother you that many people, specifically christians for me, act based on their religious interests?

When a christian helps me in a dire situation, more than likely he doesn't care about me so much as he wants to be a good christian.

When a christian friend drove to visit me in the hospital, he came because he wanted to be a good christian moreso than wanting to see me.

When two christian parents do everything for their child not because they want to, but because they think God would want them to do it.

When people do charitable work not because they care about the people, but moreso because they want to be good christians.

I can give numerous examples, but the overall feeling bothers me. I am agnostic, and I fully believe that there is no truth to religion / spirituality. I get a sick feeling when I think about all the people who live their lives in fear going to hell or looking bad in the eyes of "god." Why can't these people help, care, invent, lead, and live because they enjoy it? To think that my best friends all believe that they were going to heaven, bad people are going to hell, everyone is special, they must pray to god, yada yada yada, upsets me.

That such well respected people live their lives dependent on an obviously baseless and reckless philosophy makes me think that most of the world is made up of a cult of hypocritical, scared people.

What do you guys think about this?

[jeffevnz]

...does it bother you that many people, specifically christians for me, act based on their religious interests?


Yes and no.

Is there anything immoral about a Xtian obeying his moral code just because he's afraid of Hell/hoping to go to Heaven? I don't think so. I don't think that the rightness or wrongness of an act depends on your motives for doing it. If you decide not to rob a bank just because you think God is watching you, the bottom line is that you did the right thing. Who cares if your reasons are selfish?

Now my objection is that, IMO, this kind of thinking is responsible for a common misconception about atheists: that they have no morals. Xtians (and Jews and Muslims) are so used to acting out of fear of punishment and hope of reward that they can't imagine basing their morality on anything else. So many of them honestly wonder why or how an atheist would have any kind of ethical code. It seldom occurs to them that a person might act out of principle or simply want to behave a certain way. As I've said before, I think the best way to handle such people is to ask them how they would act if they didn't think God existed.

[Ezkerraldean]

it doesnt bother me. i dont think thats how it works.
saving someone is just empathy, or even an instinct. xians will then usually justify it later by saying they did it because they are a caring xian.

[general_koffi]

Most people will "do the right thing" without having to resort to abstract reasoning to justify it. When the "right thing" is something simple, like driving you to hospital, anyway.

[Hawkeye]

No, it doesn't bother me. I tend to look at the actions of other people, not their thoughts and motives which I know little about.

[Alan the Atheist]

I think you act morally for the same type of reason. You don't just do good deads because "its the right thing to do" - thats circular. You do good deeds because it makes you happy, or because of genetic programming.

[babelfish]

This is a question for athiests and agnostics out there - does it bother you that many people, specifically christians for me, act based on their religious interests?

When a christian helps me in a dire situation, more than likely he doesn't care about me so much as he wants to be a good christian.

When a christian friend drove to visit me in the hospital, he came because he wanted to be a good christian moreso than wanting to see me.

When two christian parents do everything for their child not because they want to, but because they think God would want them to do it.

When people do charitable work not because they care about the people, but moreso because they want to be good christians.

I can give numerous examples, but the overall feeling bothers me. I am agnostic, and I fully believe that there is no truth to religion / spirituality. I get a sick feeling when I think about all the people who live their lives in fear going to hell or looking bad in the eyes of "god." Why can't these people help, care, invent, lead, and live because they enjoy it? To think that my best friends all believe that they were going to heaven, bad people are going to hell, everyone is special, they must pray to god, yada yada yada, upsets me.

That such well respected people live their lives dependent on an obviously baseless and reckless philosophy makes me think that most of the world is made up of a cult of hypocritical, scared people.

What do you guys think about this?

I actually think I know what you mean. Although on the surface, it doesn't matter why people behave, it just matters that they do behave, if you dig deeper, you find that such behavior is somehow phony. I'd like people to be nice to me because they find me valuable and worthy of treating nicely, not because some third party has ordered them to be nice to everybody.

It reminds me of when I was a new Christian and I'd go to youth fellowship meetings and everyone was so nice to me and it made me feel really good until later I thought about it and realized these people didn't even know me. They weren't being nice to me because they liked me, but because they had been told that's the Christian way to be. It made their friendliness towards me meaningless and hollow.

[Chris Porter]

This is a question for athiests and agnostics out there - does it bother you that many people, specifically christians for me, act based on their religious interests?
(snip)
That such well respected people live their lives dependent on an obviously baseless and reckless philosophy makes me think that most of the world is made up of a cult of hypocritical, scared people.

What do you guys think about this?


Does not bother me. To me, I look at the tangible behavior as having the greatest impact on reality, the intentions only minor. If the impact is positive for those around the Christian, I don't think I'd mind if the person were Muslim and trying to get to heaven, Satanist trying for hell, etc. The action was still judged beneficial to others in my book of judgement.

[Ponzi]

My only concern is that if their ethics are based only on religion, then there's nothing to put a check on their actions if their religious beliefs are changed by a charismatic and unbalanced fundie.

[glooper23]

Interesting responses, thanks. I'm not calling their religious motive immoral, it just bothers me that so many people base their lives on such ridiculous beliefs. The biggest one being a destiny or that their life follows "God's plan." That is so sad.

[agnosticdeist]

This is a question for athiests and agnostics out there - does it bother you that many people, specifically christians for me, act based on their religious interests?

What do you guys think about this?

It doesn't bother me, because I don't think religion really is the motivation behind most of the behaviors you cited. While many Christians might think their god would want them to behave a certain way, that does not mean this is their primary motivation. Parents have been taking care of children since the beginning of time, even animals do it, otherwise life would not exist as we know it. While Christians might think god wants them to care for their kids, they don't take care of their children BECAUSE they value god, they do it because they value their kids. Similarly, non-Christian friends help each other out all the time, and so do Christians, but the Christians don't necessarily do it BECAUSE they're Chrisitians.

Certainly there are some cases where a person's religion might be the primary motivation behind such motivation (particularly if the person is evangelical), and in those cases it would turn me off, but I just don't think that's usually the case.

[seraphimkawaii]

After taking a class in psychology, I found it kind of funny that according to one of the theories of moral development (i think kohlberg or someone...the name isn't important lol), that kind of christian attitude of doing things in fear of Hell scores VERY lol on the moral development progression. When I say very low, I mean the first stage of moral development. Like, the kind you have as an infant/toddler, acting pretty much solely on a self-survival basis. It doesn't really bother me that they act in this way, because they can still benefit the world as such, but it just seems slightly immature of them to do so, when you look at it this way.

[AthenaAwakened]

I don't think most people (regardless of religious persuasion) do a whole lot of think about why they need to do the right thing. Friends do things for friends for friendship's sake not Jesus' sake. My observation has been this: Most christians are more moral than the god they profess to worship. It's just a very vocal and well organized minority that does so much damage.

[801live]

That type of behavior, doing good so god will notice you is merely a 'given'. No it doesn't bother me. When I was a christian, and left the church, I found most all friendships to be predictably "phony".
My fiancé's kids go to a catholic high school. They do assignments in 'christian service'. They rack up 'points'. When graduating the kid with the most 'points' gets a special honor onstage. (Whoopee)!! I know them for who they are at home. Self-involved teenagers. At least they do something good occasionally, even by coercion. (The school). I'm sure I've been helped out by atheists, and christians, who didn't think about it. Just did what seemed right.

[Berthold]

It doesn't bother me out of what motive people do things I consider to be ethically good.

The thing gets bothersome when people claim that their worldview has the monopoly on goodness.

[OldYgg]

It bothers me, as these are the same people that take direct offense to me being an atheist. After all, any attack on the existence of god and the premises they have based their life, is a direct attack upon them.

Then you see people who appear perfectly normal turn in to fire breathing dragons the moment you mention - "I'm an atheist."

Old Ygg

[sbaii]

It's a pretty childish version of morality according to Kohlberg. I think it explains why some Xians can't imagine someone doing the right thing without a reward in mind. No eternal reward = people running wild in the streets.

http://www.vtaide.com/blessing/Kohlberg.htm

[LoneReaction]

It's a pretty childish version of morality according to Kohlberg. I think it explains why some Xians can't imagine someone doing the right thing without a reward in mind. No eternal reward = people running wild in the streets.

http://www.vtaide.com/blessing/Kohlberg.htm

Interesting link there. (funny how it is a christian site)
Yay I'm stage 6!
But it still has its inadequacies. :(

[dettus]

It bothers me when people attribute acts of good to their religion. Why not be good for the sake of being good, or to be good because it makes you feel good, or the be good because you'd want others to be good to you, or to do good because you want to help others.

This sort of reasoning helps perpetuate the myth that one needs to fear hell or love jesus to do good. This myth leads to the notion that atheists are immoral.

[wiploc]

When a christian helps me in a dire situation, more than likely he doesn't care about me so much as he wants to be a good christian.


So when atheists help you, are you going to say it's because they're atheists? And when Christians hurt you, is that because they're Christians?




When people do charitable work not because they care about the people, but moreso because they want to be good christians.


Consider the possibility that people who say they are doing charitable work because they are Christians would actually do charitable work even if they weren't Christians.

crc

[glooper23]

So when atheists help you, are you going to say it's because they're atheists? And when Christians hurt you, is that because they're Christians?

crc

Not really, I just feel weird knowing people are walking around believing in some loony story where people go to heaven and hell after they die.

[EthnAlln]

It really doesn't bother me. The only time I recall noticing it particularly was in a widely broadcast interview of the late Mother Theresa conducted by the late Malcolm Muggeridge, where he suggested that one needed to be careful not to help people for purely human reasons; the really important thing, he said, was to do it for the glory of God. She agreed with him. I puked (nearly). Right, I said, can't have such abominations as real human compassion not taking account of the jealous deity now, can we?

Off topic: Muggeridge pretty much went insane after that interview. They used a new kind of film in it, which caused a kind of light aura to appear around the people. Muggeridge proclaimed a miracle had occurred and soon after converted to Catholicism. From that point on, the tenuous contact he had with reality began to disappear. It made a cameo appearance in his book "Jesus Rediscovered," in which, discussing the Resurrection, he asked rhetorically, "Did it happen the way it was reported?" and answered his own question with another rhetorical question, "What difference does it make?" That, I would have thought, should raise some eyebrows among the Catholic clergy; but they were apparently so happy to get a prominent convert that they conveniently looked the other way.

[EthnAlln]

Consider the possibility that people who say they are doing charitable work because they are Christians would actually do charitable work even if they weren't Christians.

crc

To quote Bertrand Russell: "Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and these would have been kindly in any case."

[Edward Gorey]

Why not be good for the sake of being good, or to be good because it makes you feel good

To play devil's advocate, how is this motivation any purer than another? Couldn't you argue that selfless acts with this motivation in mind are actually selfish acts in disguise. Someone could merely be a junky for the good feeling they get after doing good works. ;)

I don't like to speculate on the motivations behind others decisions mainly because we can't jump into their heads and find out. It's all speculation.

[Nostalgic Pushhead]

I think there are very few people who do nice things because their religion tells them too. That's giving religion too much credit, and human nature too little.

I think they do nice things because they're decent people, and then they justify it with their silly religion.

I think religion makes bad people worse more than it makes good people better...

[TomboyMom]

No, what bothers me is when Christians:
deny me equal rights
kill their children
slaughter innocent non-Christians
vote for morons
etc.
because of their religious beliefs.