The nearness to God factor. How do Atheists feel about moving higher or lower?
April 20, 2014 at 7:54 pm
(This post was last modified: April 20, 2014 at 7:59 pm by Rampant.A.I..)
(April 20, 2014 at 7:32 pm)Little lunch Wrote: Religious people don't do anything good to be closer to god, they do it for themselves.
Just like Atheists. It's evolution.
Don't throw rocks at others because it may harm your chances of survival.
God doesn't need to be in the equation.
On top of that, if there is any such thing as free will, there's not much room to move between your personality, environment and history.
Personally, I think most people are as good as they can be.
I think you should reexamine your idea of being closer to god. It's really, who does god love the most, isn't it?
Sibling rivalry, daddy loves me more than you because I'm better behaved.
But "closer to God = Good" can lead to the individual automatically rating all of their actions that actually effect other people as more virtuous than the actions of others, even when they aren't. It leads to delusions of grandeur: Any action you take is divinely inspired, religious hate and even terrorism are justifiably good as the will of God.
And practically, the individual can be a total religious a-hole who thinks he's more virtuous than anyone else, where few others do. Take Fred Phelps.
Believing you are good doesn't make you good. Dogma doesn't make you good. Displaying religious symbols doesn't make you good.
Actions are deemed good or evil, independent of the actor's internal justification of their actions.
Having a set of rules to follow doesn't exempt the individual's actions from external judgement. Actively working to strip rights and demonize other people using religion as an excuse, does not make you a good person.
Posting a thread announcing you're "better" than all the heathens here, actively working to be a better person like the heathens are "incapable" of doing, does not make you a better person.
It's an excuse. A justification. And it's meaningless.
