There’s the atheist joke that “Christians are announcing that without belief in Hell, they would be horrible people” or something to that effect.
Sad thing is that there indeed is truth to it, and it has consequences. As much as I dislike organized religion and on practical level, would align with scientific, materialist worldview, I do think that without straight forward “be good or be punished” paradigm, a lot of people will be exactly the kind of self-centered assholes we currently see in positions of power in the world.
Back in the day, rich people would fund hospitals and schools in hopes of getting to heaven. These days why bother, religion is mostly a cultural artifact to occasionally pay some lipservice to, while one fully believes that their material possessions are all they got, and even their lowest possible pleasures should be attended to with whatever resource they can spare. Scientific materialism helped get rid of a lot of assbackwards reasoning but with cold hard logic, came the ease of reducing everything to a number. Money, usually. Worth. Nothing else matters. You can’t put a number on love, care, kindness, or something as ephemeral as “goodness” - an ever moving target which is only ever defined by the person using the word, with luck at least slightly informed by (pro-)social contracts. Indeed most people would specifically reject any attempt to put a number on those qualities as it would run counter to their virtuous nature. Which just makes it easier for those with power to devalue those qualities entirely, and with power, build structures that lets them indefinitely get away with it.
Nah, sadly (?) that’s not how it works. People’s desires come first, and then they find a way within their belief system to justify their actions.
The people I’m hurting aren’t human.
They’re bad people.
They would do the same to me.
I’m only doing it because I’m a bad person.
I was hurt, so now is my chance.
That’s just how the world works.
Et cetera. Sometimes if the conflict between their beliefs and their actions gets too great they change their beliefs.
But for the most part, people don’t want to kill, steal, rape, etc. So they make up a reason to not do it, like “God will punish me if I do that” or “It’s morally wrong” or whatever, and then they don’t do it and move on with their lives.
(And those who do that stuff come from literally all belief systems; the only real differences being social environment - acceptability, expectations, protection from consequences, etc)
Throughout history, people have always drawn the line for acceptable behavior just beyond what they were planning to do anyway.
Exactly.
It’s why there are a bazillion Christian denominations and the Bible is left vague enough so that they all fit.