• Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 days ago

    I think, and it’s hard for me as an agno-atheist to really put myself in a devout person’s shoes, making the religuosity too reward based.

    Actually devout people aren’t that for an afterlife reward, they’re religious because of actual faith that it’s better for the world.

    If anyone only holds to their faith for whatever it’s purported benefits are, they’re not pious, simply herd followers who would cling to whatever creed they were raised under.

    • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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      3 days ago

      I doubt this. Atheists (myself included) often get the frustrating question of “what stops you from harming people if you don’t believe in Hell?” when people learn about our lack of faith.

      Many of them think that promises of reward and punishment are the only thing ensuring that people act morally.

      If you’ve ever talked to a religious conservative American, many of them believe that religion, particularly Christianity, has a monopoly of defining what morality is.

      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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        3 days ago

        Yes, and those are the people that I think are herd-followers and not actually devout.

        Anyone who asks “why don’t you become a murder hobo if you don’t think there’s a hell?” is probably not a very functional being.

        Their need for a patriarch figure to impose external order and validation on them explains a whole lot about US nuttiness.

        • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.works
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          2 days ago

          Anyone who asks “why don’t you become a murder hobo if you don’t think there’s a hell?” is probably not a very functional being.

          Funnily enough, this plays into a comment I made in a different thread that some people actually do behave like NPC’s

    • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org
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      3 days ago

      You just described every religious person. Christians especially, waiting for the kingdom in heaven.

      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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        3 days ago

        Not all of them, though sure you Yanks probably have a much larger percentage of the nutty ones who need The Patriarch to impose order and moralitytm on Earth due to their own inability to do morality.