Why be good?

[robvalue]

The question a theist has to ask themselves is why they don't follow the word of their holy book blindly and literally.

Quite clearly, they don't. If they did, they'd be dead or in jail in most civilised countries. In fact, it's not even possible because of the contradictory instructions therein. Some may really think they do. But I guarantee you are jumping through huge numbers of mental hoops in order to twist things to mean what you want them to, not what they clearly say. Being an atheist gives me the ability to objectively read the words and not automatically translate them into what I want them to say, or what someone has told me they mean.

Once you "interpret" the text, you've made a subjective judgement of what the morality is, or are just following someone else's. Who has the authority to say what the "correct interpretation" is? Clearly no human. So unless you follow it all literally, it's just your opinion.

Don't get me wrong, I'm eternally thankful people do "interpret" the text. I'm just trying to show you why you do it. I believe it's because you are filtering it with your own sense of morality, which comes from within you, not from religion. If you want to copout and credit God for this innate moral compass, then fine. But then God is filtering himself, and not consistently so... If he gives us an inner compass, why confuse the matter with a book of contradictions and atrocities? And why give us all different compasses and not the same one? Is he helping us or fucking with us?