(November 22, 2010 at 1:53 am)cdog Wrote:(November 21, 2010 at 11:30 pm)DANSURP Wrote: I mean that what holds people back from doing horrible things like murder besides the law is fear of being punished in the afterlife. I should have phrased it as if the world had no religion or belief in anything after death rather than true atheist. Though it would be one in the same. If everyone truly believed that once you are dead, you cease to exist in any form forever, they would risk doing alot more in life.
Unless you know of any case where a religion has brought with it a sudden and permanent drop in crime and wrongdoing, I see that as a pretty weak argument. As for the law, you seem to dismiss that rather lightly; codes of law going back 4000 years have prohibitions against murder, rape, theft. It's ubiquitous among human societies. This doesn't have to do so much with religion, or fear of punishment in an afterlife (an aspect many religions don't have) as the fact that any society that allowed these things wouldn't continue to exist for very long.
Would you kill somebody if you knew you could get away with it?
I already answered I wouldnt kill people myself because I think it is wrong. I haven't talked about people killing in gods name because that doesn't matter. People kill for many reasons and if there is no god, people can't kill in god's name. (the argument was if there was no god or afterlife, would crime go up or down compared to now) I don't know if you read alot about history, but people murdered people all the time as little as 1875 and earlier. There wasn't any way to prove someone killed someone else unless there was a witness. Look at America's own wild west. Murder was against the law going back to the first middle east settlements.
I am going to give up on this thread for the simple reason that there are so many factors that shaped our own civilization right now. I would be happy to debate this via video or phone, but this subject is just too broad.
Like I said before...right now we have law that will prohibits murder as well as our religions. If one deterent isn't strong enough for someone, the other may be. If you take out consequence of punishment by god and know when you die, its truly over, more people will kill. The reasoning isn't complicated. Some people may not care about our criminal law, but fear God will punish them if they kill. With one of the two major deterents removed, why would there be fewer murders? This is my main point and the only one that can be easily reasoned. However, if you believe that murders would go down if it was proven once we are dead, we are dead forever and no god would punish us, then I would like to hear why you would think there would be fewer murders with no fear of retribution from god.
